Term limits proposed for congress

December 18, 2016

In a December 9 Washington Post opinion, senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and representative Ron DeSantis (R-FL) stated that they plan to introduce a constitutional amendment to limit the number of terms that senators can serve to two terms (12 years) and three terms for representatives (6 years). They stated that this is a way for Congress to show it heard the voice of the people.

Cruz and DeSantis asserted that “on Election Day, the American people made a resounding call to “drain the swamp” that is modern Washington. . . . . Thankfully, there’s a solution available that, while stymied by the permanent political class, enjoys broad public support: congressional term limits. . . . . Passing term limits will demonstrate that Congress has actually heard the voice of the people. . . . . huge majorities of rank-and-file Republicans, Democrats and independents favor enacting this reform. Indeed, according to a Rasmussen survey conducted in October, 74 percent of likely voters support establishing term limits for all members of Congress. This is because the concept of a citizen legislature is integral to the model of our democratic republic.”

Normally, it’s reasonable to believe that any talk of amending the US constitution is idle chatter with essentially no chance of any amendment becoming law. But these aren’t normal times. During the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump called for term limits. House Speaker Paul Ryan also backs the idea. Maybe there's more than a vanishingly small chance that this could happen. Or, maybe not.

What do term limits do?: Since term limits have been in place in various state legislatures, it’s worth asking what impact, if any, that has on governance. The evidence suggests that term limits tend to have documented unintended, but presumably unwanted, consequences that don’t obviously outweigh whatever benefits there are to the people’s will or anything else other than beneficiaries of the change.

Pro-term limit politicians and partisans routinely ignore those consequences, while the public is basically unaware of them.

Unintended consequences of term limited legislators include:

1. Loss of state legislator influence to special interests, lobbyists and career bureaucrats who are not generally accessible to elections and voters.

2. A power shift from state legislative leaders to governors, legislative staffs and unelected bureaucrats.

3. A decrease in state legislator professionalism, e.g., because there simply isn’t time for a legislator to become specialized and expert in a policy area.

4. A decreased for state legislatures role in crafting state budgets because less sophisticated short term legislators are outmaneuvered by more experienced executive branches.

5. Less legislative innovation as evidenced by (i) a reduced capacity to take advantage of flexibility in federal program guidelines, and (ii) a lower rate of innovation awards from the Council of State Governments.

6. A failure to fill legislatures with citizen legislators, while experienced professional politicians are replaced with less experienced professional politicians who are climbing their career ladders.

As discussed before, democracy doesn’t work the way voters generally believe it does and/or should. According to the research data, unintended consequences of term limits on legislatures is another disconnect between voter ideals and reality.

Questions: Is there any reasonable chance that a constitutional amendment on term limits for congress (or anything else) might become law under current political conditions? If the effects of term limits found by political science research are true and apply to members of congress, is pushing for term limits desirable or not? Is the research data on the effects of term limits on legislatures credible or not? Is the concept of a citizen legislature is integral to your model of our democratic republic as Cruz and DeSantis argue?

Recent activity at Biopolitics and Bionews

October, 26, 2106

Recent rational politics-related posts on (i) my Disqus channel Biopoltics and bionews, and (ii) other Disqus channels include these:

On the republican party establishment and its future: https://disqus.com/home/discussion/channel-biopoliticsandbionews/the_republican_party_establishment/

Wikileaks: Journalism or espionage: https://disqus.com/home/discussion/channel-biopoliticsandbionews/wikileaks_valiant_journalism_or_espionage/

My experiences with politics: https://disqus.com/home/discussion/channel-biopoliticsandbionews/my_experiences_with_politics/ (this one generated intense hostility from multiple people)

data-based philanthropy: https://disqus.com/home/discussion/channel-biopoliticsandbionews/my_experiences_with_politics/

Debasement of democracy and the rule of law: https://disqus.com/home/discussion/channel-politicalrhetoricbusters/debasement_of_democracy_and_the_rule_of_law/

Lies & BS in politics: https://disqus.com/home/discussion/channel-biopoliticsandbionews/lies_bs_in_politics/

The biology of subjetive facts and biases: https://disqus.com/home/discussion/channel-biopoliticsandbionews/the_biology_of_subjective_facts_and_biases/

Religious attacks on a pragmatic political idology: https://disqus.com/home/discussion/channel-biopoliticsandbionews/the_biology_of_subjective_facts_and_biases/

Empathy, conflict and war: https://disqus.com/home/discussion/channel-biopoliticsandbionews/empathy_conflict_and_war/

The rationally irrational citizen: https://disqus.com/home/discussion/channel-biopoliticsandbionews/the_rationally_irrational_citizen/

Book review: The rational voter myth: https://disqus.com/home/discussion/channel-biopoliticsandbionews/book_review_the_rational_voter_myth/

Moral courage in politics: https://disqus.com/home/discussion/channel-biopoliticsandbionews/moral_courage_in_politics/

Book review: Superforecasting redux

In Superforecasting: The Art & Science of Prediction, social scientist Philip E. Tetlock and journalist Dan Gardner (Crown Publishers, September 2015) observe that at its heart, politics is usually about predicting the future. The exercise boils down to finding and implementing policies that will do best for the public interest (general welfare or common good), regardless of how one defines the concept.

What most accurately describes the essence of intelligent, objective, public service-oriented politics? Is it primarily an honest competition among the dominant ideologies of our times, defense of one’s social identity, a self-interested quest for money, influence and/or power or some combination? Does it boil down to understanding the biological functioning of the human mind and how it sees and thinks about the world? Is it some something else entirely?



Subject to caveats, Superforecasting comes down on the side of getting brain biology or cognition right. Everything else is subordinate. Superforecasting describes Tetlock's research into asking what factors, if any, can be identified that contribute to a person’s ability to predict the future. Tetlock asks how well intellectually engaged but otherwise non-professional people can do. The performance of volunteers is compared against experts, including professional national security analysts with access to classified information.

The conscious-unconscious balance: What Tetlock and his team found was that interplay between dominant, unconscious, fact- and common sense-distorting intuitive human cognitive thinking (“System 1” or the “elephant” as described before) and our far less-powerful but conscious, rational thinking (“System 2” or the “rider”) was a key factor in how well people predicted future events. The imbalance of power or bandwidth between conscious thinking and unconsciousness thinking is estimated to be at least 100,000-fold in favor of unconsciousness. The trick to optimal performance appears to be found in people who are able to strike a balance between the two modes of thinking, with the conscious mind constantly self-analyzing to reduce fact distortions and logic biases or flaws that the unconscious mind constantly generates.

Tetlock observes that a “defining feature of intuitive judgment is its insensitivity to the quality of the evidence on which the judgment is based. It has to be that way. System 1 can only do its job of delivering strong conclusions at lightning speed if it never pauses to wonder whether the evidence at hand is flawed or inadequate, or if there is better evidence elsewhere. . . . . we are creative confabulators hardwired to invent stories that impose coherence on the world.”
Coherence can arise even when there's insufficient information. In essence, the human mind evolved an ‘allergy’ to ambiguity, contradictions and concepts that are threatening to personal morals, identity and/or self-interest. To deal with that, we rapidly and unconsciously makes those uncomfortable things go away.

It turns out, that with some training and the right mind set, a few people, “superforecasters”, routinely trounce professional experts at predicting future events. Based on a 4-year study, Tetlock’s “Good Judgment Project”, funded by the DoD’s Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency, about 2,800 volunteers made over a million predictions on topics that ranged from potential conflicts between countries to currency and commodity, e.g., oil, price fluctuations. The predictions had to be precise enough to be analyzed and scored.

About 1% of the 2,800 volunteers turned out to be superforecasters who beat national security analysts by about 30% at the end of the first year. One even beat commodities futures markets by 40%. The superforecaster volunteers did whatever they could to get information, but they nonetheless beat professional analysts who were backed by computers and programmers, spies, spy satellites, drones, informants, databases, newspapers, books and whatever else that professionals with security clearances have access to. As Tetlock put it, “. . . . these superforecasters are amateurs forecasting global events in their spare time with whatever information they can dig up. Yet they somehow managed to set the performance bar high enough that even the professionals have struggled to get over it, let alone clear it with enough room to justify their offices, salaries and pensions.”

What makes superforecasters so good?: The top 1-2% of volunteers were analyzed for personal traits. In general, superforecasters tended to be people who were open-minded about collecting information, their world view and opposing opinions. They were also able to step outside of themselves and look at problems from an “outside view.” To do that they searched out and integrated other opinions into their own thinking.

Those traits go counter to the standard human tendency to seek out information that confirms what we already know or want to believe. That bias is called confirmation bias. The open minded trait also tended to reduce unconscious System 1 distortion of problems and potential outcomes by other unconscious cognitive biases such as the powerful but subtle “what you see is all there is” bias, hindsight bias and scope insensitivity, i.e., not giving proper weight to the scope of a problem.


 

Superforecasters tended to break complex questions down into component parts so that relevant factors could be considered separately. That tends to reduce unconscious bias-induced fact and logic distortions. In general, superforecaster susceptibility to unconscious biases was lower than for other volunteers in the GJP. That appeared to be due mostly to their capacity to use conscious (System 2) thinking to recognize and then reduce unconscious (System 1) biases. Analysis revealed that superforecasters tended to share 15 traits including (i) cautiousness based on an innate knowledge that little or nothing was certain, (ii) being reflective, i.e., introspective and self-critical, (iii) being comfortable with numbers and probabilities, (iv) being pragmatic and not wedded to any particular agenda or ideology, and, most importantly, (v) intelligence, and (vi) being comfortable with (a) updating personal beliefs or opinions and (b) belief in self-improvement (having a growth mindset). Tetlock refers to that mind set as being in “perpeutal beta” mode.

Unlike political ideologues, superforecasters tended to be pragmatic, i.e., they generally did not try to “squeeze complex problems into the preferred cause-effect templates [or treat] what did not fit as irrelevant distractions.” Compare that with politicians who promise to govern as proud progressives or patriotic conservatives and the voters who demand those mind sets.

What the best forecasters knew about a topic and their political ideology was less important than how they thought about problems, gathered information and then updated thinking and changed their minds based on new information. The best engaged in an endless process of information and perspective gathering, weighing information relevance and questioning and updating their own judgments when it made sense, i.e., they were in “perpetual beta” mode. Doing that required effort and discipline. Political ideological rigor such as conservatism or liberalism was generally detrimental.

Regarding common superforecaster traits, Tetlock observed that “a brilliant puzzle solver may have the raw material for forecasting, but if he also doesn’t have an appetite for questioning basic, emotionally-charged beliefs he will often be at a disadvantage relative to a less intelligent person who has a greater capacity for self-critical thinking.” Superforecasters have a real capacity for self-critical thinking. Political, economic and religious ideology is mostly beside the point. Instead, they are actively open-minded, e.g., “beliefs are hypotheses to be tested, not treasures to be protected.”

Tetlock asserts that politicians and partisan pundits opining on all sorts of things routinely fall prey to (i) not checking their assumptions against reality, (ii) making predictions that can’t be measured for success or failure, and/or (iii) knowingly lying to advance their agendas. Politicians, partisan pundits and experts are usually wrong because of their blinding ideological rigidity and/or self- or group-interest and the intellectual dishonesty that accompanies those mind sets. Given the nature of political rhetoric that dominates the two-party system and the biology of human cognition, it is reasonable to argue that most of what is said or written about politics is more spin (meaningless rhetoric or lies-deceit) than not.

Is Tetlock’s finding of superforecasters real? Does that point to a human potential to at least partially rationalize politics for individuals, groups, societies or nations?

A fact and logic distortion-reducing political ideology

This is my most refined articulation of how social and cognitive science knowledge might be applied to mainstream politics. The point is to describe a mind set, set of morals or political ideology that might partially rationalize politics. Partially rationalized politics means, relative to existing the existing state of affairs, politics based more on (i) unbiased or real facts, and (ii) less biased common sense. The underlying assumption is that politics that is at least somewhat better grounded in reality and 'logical' reason will do better in the long run than "normal" or standard nonsense politics.

People can reject the assertion that mainstream politics is more nonsense than not. Regardless of popular belief, cognitive and social science makes it clear that most people deal more in nonsense (false facts and flawed common sense) than not. That's just how the human mind works when it comes to politics.

Current cognitive and social science of politics strongly suggests that humans generally have a very limited capacity to see unbiased reality or facts and apply unbiased common sense to the reality they think they see. The situation is complicated and multi-faceted. Evolution resulted in a human mental capacity that was at least sufficient for modern humans to survive the early days. Building existing human civilization has been based on about the same mental firepower our modern ancestors had. What evolution conferred was a mind that operates using (i) a high bandwidth unconscious mind or mental processes that can process about 11 million bits of information per second, and (ii) a very low bandwidth conscious mind that can process at most about 45-50 bits per second.

Although our conscious mind believes it is aware of a great deal and is in control of decision-making and behavior, that perception of reality is more illusion than real. Our unconscious thinking exerts much more control over decision-making and behavior than we are aware of. Our conscious mind plays into the illusion. Unconscious innate biases, personal morals, social identity and political ideology all inject distortions into our perceptions of reality or facts and our application of common sense. Conscious reason acts primarily to rationalize or defend unconscious beliefs and rationales, even when they are wrong.

False unconscious beliefs include a widespread fundamental misunderstanding of democracy. Our political thinking and behaviors are usually based on major disconnects with reality. Our unconscious mind is usually moralistic, self-righteous and intolerant. That creates a human social situation where “our righteous minds guarantee that our cooperative groups will always be cursed by moralistic strife.”

Based on that description of the human condition, it's reasonable to believe that mostly irrational human politics cannot be made demonstrably more rational. That may or may not be true. Some evidence that suggests that at least some people can operate with significantly less bias in perceiving reality and conscious reasoning. They are measurably more rational than average. The finding of superforecasters among average people and their mental traits suggests that politics might be partially rationalizable for at least some people, if not societies or nations as a whole.

Research observations on how superforecasters improve over time, i.e., predict, get feedback, revise, and then repeat, there is reason to believe that evidence-based politics could be a route to better policy. Although the effort is in its infancy, there is some real-world evidence that cognitive science-based political policy can be simple but very successful. The trick is figuring a way to how to deal with personal morals, self-interest and other unconscious distortion sources that impedes politics based on less biased reality and common sense.

If it’s possible to rationalize mainstream politics at all, accepting the reality of human cognition and behavior is necessary. There’s no point in denying reality and trying to propose false reality-based solutions. Given that, one needs to accept that (i) politics is fundamentally a matter of personal morals, ideology, and self- or group identity, and (ii) current political, economic, religious and/or philosophical moral sets or ideologies, e.g., liberalism, conservatism, capitalism, socialism, libertarianism, anarchy, etc, are fundamental to what makes people tick in terms of politics.

 One can argue that since existing ideological or moral frameworks have failed to rationalize politics beyond what it is now, and probably always has been, then a new moral or ideological framework is necessary (although maybe not sufficient). Since morals are personal and they vary significantly among people, there’s no reason to believe that a set of morals or ideological principles cannot be conceived that could temper or significantly substitute for existing morals such as the care-harm moral foundation that tends to drive liberal perceptions and beliefs, or the loyalty-betrayal and other foundations that drives conservatives.

How can one rationalize politics? Swim downstream: Why swim upstream if there’s a potential solution to be had by swimming downstream with the cognitive current? Morals or variants thereof that essentially everyone already claims to adhere to (even though science says that’s just not the case) seems like a good place to start. Most people (> 97% ?) of all political ideologies claim that they (i) work with unbiased facts, and (ii) unbiased common sense. And, most people believe that their politics and beliefs best serve the public interest (general welfare or common good). Few or no people say they rely on personally biased facts and common sense or that that’s the best way to do politics, although social science argues that that’s exactly how politics works for most people.

Three pragmatic morals:  Can it really be that simple?

If that’s the case, then a set of three already widely accepted morals or political principles that might operate to rationalize politics to some extent without being rejected out of hand. They are (i) fidelity to less biased facts, and (ii) fidelity to less biased common sense, both of which (iii) are applied in service to the public interest.

Service to the public interest: Service to the public interest means governance based on identifying a rational, optimum balance between serving public, individual and commercial interests based on an objective, fact- and logic-based analysis of competing policy choices, while (1) being reasonably transparent and responsive to public opinion, (2) protecting and growing the American economy, (4) fostering individual economic and personal growth opportunity, (5) defending personal freedoms and the American standard of living, (6) protecting national security and the environment, (7) increasing transparency, competition and efficiency in commerce when possible, and (8) fostering global peace, stability and prosperity whenever reasonably possible, all of which is constrained by (i) honest, reality-based fiscal sustainability that limits the scope and size of government and regulation to no more than what is needed and (ii) genuine respect for the U.S. constitution and the rule of law with a particular concern for limiting unwarranted legal complexity and ambiguity to limit opportunities to subvert the constitution and the law.

As explained here, that conception of the public interest is broad. It reflects the reality that politics is a competition for influence and money among competing interests and ideologies, all of whom essentially always claim they want what’s best for the public interest. A broad conception encompasses concepts that fully engage all competing interests, morals and ideologies, e.g., (i) national security defense (a conservative moral or concern), (ii) concern for fostering peace and environmental protection (liberal) and (iii) defense of personal freedom (libertarian). Although broad, that public service conception is meaningfully constrained by the first two pragmatic morals, less biased fact and less biased common sense.

For regular “subjective” or non-pragmatic politics, neither of those are powerful constraints on most people’s perceptions of reality or facts or their conscious thinking about politics. That’s not intended as a criticism of people’s approach to or thinking about politics. It’s intended to be a non-judgmental statement of fact based on research evidence: For politics, “. . . . cherished ideas and judgments we bring to politics are stereotypes and simplifications with little room for adjustment as the facts change. . . . . the real environment is altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance. We are not [intellectually] equipped to deal with so much subtlety, so much variety, so many permutations and combinations. Although we have to act in that environment, we have to reconstruct it on a simpler model before we can manage it.”

From existing mind sets → AN AVALANCHE OF CRITICISMS!: Many or most liberals, conservatives, libertarians and others will instantly jump all over this “political ideology” as nonsense. For example, how could such a broad conception of serving the public interest make one iota of difference in how allegedly distorted political thinking and debate works now?

That’s a good, reasonable question, the answer to which is already given in the discussion, i.e., fidelity to less biased fact and less biased common sense. The assumption is that in the long run, politics better grounded in reality and reason would make a difference for the better. Obviously, people who see a threat to their own beliefs and ideologies will reject that as nonsense. They already believe (know) that they employ unbiased fact and logic to politics, although the scientific evidence strongly argues that’s not true.
Plenty of other criticisms can be raised. Some libertarians and/or conservatives might claim that this subverts personal freedoms and that the concept pays only lip service to defense of personal freedoms. In other words, this ideology seems at best meaningless or at worst a Trojan horse of some sort, e.g., a smoke screen for socialism, fascism and/or tyranny. From a pragmatic POV, it’s easy to see, understand and anticipate that reaction from people trapped in their standard subjective political ideologies, e.g., liberals, conservatives, libertarians, socialists, etc.

What this conception does is it forces everyone and every ideology to (i) defend their policy choices on the basis of a less distorted world view and less biased common sense, and (ii) pay more than self-deluded and/or cynical lip service to serving the public interest. Everyone has to win arguments on less spun merits.

For standard ideologues, that makes this brand of “pragmatic politics” a dead on arrival nonstarter. That’s why politics based on these three political principles may be a new ideology. This won’t work for liberals, conservatives, libertarians, socialists or believers in any other existing ideology or set of morals. To accept this set of political morals, one has to move away from existing mind sets and accept this for what it is, i.e., advocacy of a cold, harsh competition in a brutal marketplace of less spun ideas and arguments based on less spun facts and realities.

Some thought has gone into this. Here are responses to a list of criticisms to this three morals-based political ideology.

How terrorists are made

In the last decade or so, social science has focused attention on the question of how terrorism arises and sustains itself. Although research ongoing, an answer is beginning to come into focus. Current understanding points to a way out. However, the road to peace is going to take time, persistence and real moral courage to face reality. That’s probably no surprise to most people.

The good news is that with persistent focus and the courage to do so, any nation including all Western countries, can remove one of the two fuels that is necessary to sustain terrorism. The two fuels that ignite and sustain terrorism are (1) primed and ready new terrorist recruits and (2) how the terrorist group’s enemies respond to the terrorist group’s threats and/or actual violence. Both fuels are necessary to light the fire and to keep it burning with fresh manpower.

Most Islamic terrorists, more than 99%, are psychologically normal and not psychopaths or sadists. Conversion to terrorism is based not on the person’s initial ideology or religion. It is based on the person’s social identity and the dynamics of the person’s social group or country. A progression from normalcy to extremism appears to result from four things. Once they have converted, the converts aren’t mindless killers. They are marked by an unstoppable willingness to enthusiastically and creatively murder innocents.

Does this sound familiar?: If reference to social identity sounds vaguely familiar to some readers, it should. The research into the fundamental basis of democracy I described also found that the dominant factor driving voter’s beliefs and behavior was their social or group identity, not their ideology or objectively rational thinking. Social identity and what happens to it is critical to understand the process.

How to make a homegrown terrorist: For the US and Western countries, the pre-terrorist identifies with and supports his home country and its authorities. The next step occurs when, on a number of occasions, society and/or the country’s authorities treat this person differently, e.g., constantly imposing extra scrutiny at airports, monitoring Islamic religious activities or being removed from an airplane for simply speaking in Arabic on a cell phone before the flight. The latter incident occurred a couple of days ago in California.

Although third step in the process doesn’t happen with everyone, some people who have experienced treatment they believe is inexplicable, humiliating and/or unwarranted respond by beginning to disengage from their identification with their home country. Their social identity begins to loosen.

At this point, the typical pre-terrorist becomes susceptible to the minority of voices who promise a new and better thing to identify with such as the utopian Caliphate that ISIS promises its recruits. In this “alienated” state of mind, the pre-terrorist can easily identify with the new message and rationalize the horrors and slaughter it will take to get to a better society. The final step in the transition from pre-terrorist to terrorist willing to murder is full loss of identification with the home country. At that point, the person’s transition to a terrorist is essentially complete. Terrorist recruiters now essentially own the new recruit if they can get to him or her.

In America with its powerful freedom of speech constitutional law, there is no significant barrier to block the recruiter. The path is clear.

The first fuel: The first fuel needed to start the fire in a new recruit is clear. In the process from normal to murderer, how the pre-terrorist’s home country treats him and his religion determines if the second step is present or absent. Everything from vilifying Islam or Islamic immigration in public to surveillance of Mosques to kicking someone off an airplane for simply speaking in Arabic can be enough to move the progression to steps 3 and 4. Two group dynamics are needed for this Tango - the first group is the home country acting badly. The second dynamic is the terrorist recruiter offering a new social identity and dynamic. If the home country doesn’t act badly, the fire never starts.
Of course, that exact scenario my not apply in all situations. Research is ongoing. Despite some uncertainty, this is what modern science, not closed-minded political ideologues and arrogant blowhards, believes constitutes the path to terrorism for nearly all new recruits. This scenario plays out in Islamic countries too. In those countries, the first fuel is the corrupt local dictator acting badly toward its own people and as we all know, there’s way more than plenty of that to go around.

And, of course, there’s The Donald: On the campaign trail, The Donald publicly suggested that all Muslim immigrants are potential enemies who need to be kept out of the US. That was a victory for ISIS. They immediately turned it into a recruiting tool and used it to smear all Americans. Talk like that fosters completing the second step in the progression -- it's the first fuel.
What we need to do as a country is obvious. The question is whether we have the intelligence and courage to do it. Do we? Or, is it best to simply ignore the science and trust the politicians?
This discussion is based on an article in my favorite unbiased source for understanding the science of politics, Scientific American. This article, “Fueling Extremes” is in the May-June 2016 issue at pages 34-39. An online version, “Fueling Terror: How Extremists Are Made”, is available for $5.99 at: http://www.scientificamerican....

Book review: Democracy for Realists

A recently published book, Democracy For Realists: Why Elections Do not Produce Responsive Governments (Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels (“A&B”), Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ, April 2016) analyzes data on the nature of voting and democracy in America and other countries from the early 1900’s through 2012. Much of they find isn’t anywhere close to what people believe about the elements of democracy under the folk theory, e.g., where sovereignty resides, “the will of the people”, or the true nature of voters’ role in democracy.

A&B, both social scientists, have found that most American's vision of what democracy is has little to do with the reality of democracy. Instead of ideology and logic defining voter's political beliefs, party affiliation and voting preferences, the evidence points instead to people's social identities. Due to their misunderstanding, frustrated voters try to “fix” certain aspects of democracy by, e.g., imposing term limits or resorting to state level ballot measures. Analysis of the data suggests that those measures mostly backfire and tend to shift power from voters to special interests. The key lesson this book has to teach is that fixing democracy requires understanding it first.

The folk theory of democracy

The common perception holds that the people elect their leaders at the polls and then hold them accountable for representing their will. The folk theory is appealing because it puts the will of the people and their interests at the heart of government. Sovereignty resides with the people who control the agenda. Voters act as government watchdogs to enforce shared values and curb abuses. Voters correct their mistakes or punish failure at the polls by changing governments, while rewarding competence with continued time in power.

My guess is that many readers would at least suspect that the there’s something not quite right with the folk theory. For example, many people believe that one or both parties and the will of the people are often or usually co-opted by special interests backed by money in politics. That’s out of synch with the common perception of democracy. Those people would be correct in their suspicions.

If the current election season is any indication, most Americans are pretty unhappy with the state of affairs in their democracy. They see something wrong. So do A&B:

“One consequence of our reliance on old definitions is that the modern American does not look at democracy before he defines it; he defines it first and then is confused by what he sees. We become cynical about democracy because the public does not act the way the simplistic definition of democracy says it should act, or we try to whip the public into doing things it does not want to do, is unable to do, and has too much sense to do. The crisis here is not a crisis in democracy but a crisis in theory.”

Give that observation a moment to sink in. Don’t overlook the phrase “is unable to do.” That reflects the reality that most people (> 90% ?) don’t pay attention to politics, often can’t pay attention and are biologically too limited to understand what’s going on even if they tried:

“. . . . the typical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field. He argues and analyzes in a way which he would readily recognize as infantile within the sphere of his real interests. . . . cherished ideas and judgments we bring to politics are stereotypes and simplifications with little room for adjustment as the facts change. . . . . the real environment is altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance. We are not equipped to deal with so much subtlety, so much variety, so many permutations and combinations. Although we have to act in that environment, we have to reconstruct it on a simpler model before we can manage it.”

From the biological point of view, that’s reality, not a criticism of people or their limitations. Almost everything in politics, if not everything, is more complex than people give it credit for. And, most if it is either at least partially hidden from the public, distorted in the name of “free speech”, or both.

It is hard to understate the role of cognitive biology and associated human behavior in politics. A&B point out that “a democratic theory worthy of serious social influence must engage with the findings of modern social science.” Although A&B’s book dissects democratic theory and analyzes mountains of science and history data from the last hundred years or so, the exercise is really about analyzing the role of human cognitive biology as it pertains to how democracy works. Our beliefs about democracy are shaped much more by human biology than political theory.

In Democracy for Realists, A&B assert that democratic theory has to adapt to the reality of what democracy is. That directly reflects the necessity of understanding human biology by analyzing the data.

Two points exemplify the case that this is about human biology first and what political theory needs to do to be helpful. The first point is that the “will of the people” that’s so central to the folk theory is a myth. There is no such thing as the will of the people. The people are divided on most everything and they usually don’t know what they want.

For example, voter opinions can be very sensitive to variation how questions are worded. This reflects a powerful cognitive bias called framing effects. Marketers and politicians are acutely aware of unconscious biases and they use them with a vengeance to get what they want.

For example in one 1980’s survey, about 64% said there was too little federal spending on “assistance to the poor” but only  about 23% said that there was too little spending on “welfare.” The 1980s was the decade when vilification of “welfare” was common from the political right. Before the 1991 Gulf War, about 63% said they were willing to “use military force”, but less than 50% were willing to “engage in combat”, while less than 30% were willing to “go to war.” Again, the overwhelmingly subjective nature of political concepts is obvious, i.e., assistance vs. welfare and military force vs. combat vs. war. Where is the will of the people in any of this? If it is there, what is it?

Serving the will of the people under the folk theory of democracy is often hard or impossible because there’s often no way to know what it is.

The second point is that voters usually don’t rationally hold politicians accountable for failure or reward them for success. People don’t logically distinguish success from failure. A&B point out that politicians are routinely voted out of office for things they cannot logically be held accountable for. For example, droughts, floods and an increase in shark attacks (yes, shark attacks) routinely cost incumbent presidents significant numbers of votes.

On economic issues, voters only consider a few months leading up to an election to decide if a president or party has done well. Data analysis suggests that if the 1938 recession had occurred two years earlier, FDR would not have been reelected and the New Deal would have ended. Similar “myopic” voting in the 1930s occurred in other countries and ideology had nothing to do with it. Perceptions of success and failure dominated voting in response to the Great Depression, not anything else.

That voting behavior contradicts the notion that voters rationally reward success and punish failure. In other words, politicians have little incentive to adhere to the folk theory. They know that their own success and failure can easily depend on things outside their control. That’s another key aspect of the folk theory that the data blows to smithereens.

If democracy is so strange, then what’s the point of doing more research? A&B give compelling reasons. They argue that “the mental frameworks” that both liberals and conservatives employ can be defended “only by willful denial of a great deal of credible evidence . . . . intellectual honesty requires all of us to grapple with the corrosive implications of that evidence for our understanding of democracy.”

Social identity & flawed fixes

Collectively, A&B see the data as showing that most voters vote less on policy preferences or ideology, and more on who they are or their social identities. For most voters, social identity shapes most thinking and voting behavior. That largely “reflects and reinforces social loyalties.”

A&B observe that our flawed perception of democracy led to failed remedies to reform it. Such fixes, including term limits and state level ballot initiatives, often undercut what people want from their democracy. Instead of acting to make democracy fit the theory, “more democracy” fixes that voters keep trying usually shift power to organized special interests. That outcome is precisely what voters did not want.

Why understanding democracy is critical

The point is clear. If you don’t understand how and why democracy works, you can’t change what you don’t like about it. Therefore, go figure out what democracy really is, not what one thinks it is or should be. A&B have gone a long way toward pointing out how and why it works. However, solutions to democracy issues are not clear. It may require years of empirical trial and error. Despite the surprising nature of democracy, A&B point to a more rational understanding of how things work. That is encouraging. The disappointment is that solutions are not obvious.

DP repost: 4/1/20