Fac id,quod est humanitatis tuae

Ailments of Real Democracy and Their Treatment

There is practically no alternative created for democracy as a form of political organisation of society based on humanism. However, its implementation is still carried out, ignoring democratic values, tirelessly modifying and trying to subordinate the will of citizens to the interests of the authorities. As a result, the principles of the rule of the people are violated on a regular basis.

This practice, implemented by many Western democracies is being justified, in the usual geopolitical style, by pragmatic arguments about the need to treat tolerantly the ambitions of the leaders of autocratic states, to pander to opponents and to cut corners in every possible way, organising informal alliances and even replacing democratic guidelines in favour of commercial interests and selfish gain.

This happens by living in illusions created by local narrow-mindedness about the possibility of creating an atmosphere of mutual trust among partners who are at antagonistic positions; with a phantom hope of bringing the politics pursued by dictators and state leaders into line with democratic rights and values, while naively believing that a partner a priori is a trustworthy, decent official.... Read more: https://www.amazon.com/HOW-GET-RID-SHACKLES-TOTALITARIANISM-ebook/dp/B0C9543B4L/ref=sr_1_1?crid=19WW1TG75ZU79&keywords=HOW+TO+GET+RID+OF+THE+SHACKLES+OF+TOTALITARIANISM&qid=1687700500&s=books&sprefix=how+to+get+rid+of+the+shackles+of+totalitarianism%2Cstripbooks-intl-ship%2C181&sr=1-1

Socialism for the rich’: the evils of bad economics

The economic arguments adopted by Britain and the US in the 1980s led to vastly increased inequality – and gave the false impression that this outcome was not only inevitable, but good. By Jonathan Aldred

Thu 6 Jun 2019 06.00

In most rich countries, inequality is rising, and has been rising for some time. Many people believe this is a problem, but, equally, many think there’s not much we can do about it. After all, the argument goes, globalisation and new technology have created an economy in which those with highly valued skills or talents can earn huge rewards. Inequality inevitably rises. Attempting to reduce inequality via redistributive taxation is likely to fail because the global elite can easily hide their money in tax havens. Insofar as increased taxation does hit the rich, it will deter wealth creation, so we all end up poorer.

One strange thing about these arguments, whatever their merits, is how they stand in stark contrast to the economic orthodoxy that existed from roughly 1945 until 1980, which held that rising inequality was not inevitable, and that various government policies could reduce it. What’s more, these policies appear to have been successful. Inequality fell in most countries from the 1940s to the 1970s. The inequality we see today is largely due to changes since 1980.

In both the US and the UK, from 1980 to 2016, the share of total income going to the top 1% has more than doubled. After allowing for inflation, the earnings of the bottom 90% in the US and UK have barely risen at all over the past 25 years. More generally, 50 years ago, a US CEO earned on average about 20 times as much as the typical worker. Today, the CEO earns 354 times as much.

Any argument that rising inequality is largely inevitable in our globalised economy faces a crucial objection. Since 1980 some countries have experienced a big increase in inequality (the US and the UK); some have seen a much smaller increase (Canada, Japan, Italy), while inequality has been stable or falling in others (France, Belgium and Hungary). So rising inequality cannot be inevitable. And the extent of inequality within a country cannot be solely determined by long-run global economic forces, because, although most richer countries have been subject to broadly similar forces, the experiences of inequality have differed.

The familiar political explanation for this rising inequality is the huge shift in mainstream economic and political thinking, in favour of free markets, triggered by the elections of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Its fit with the facts is undeniable. Across developed economies, the biggest rise in inequality since 1945 occurred in the US and UK from 1980 onwards.

The power of a grand political transformation seems persuasive. But it cannot be the whole explanation. It is too top-down: it is all about what politicians and other elites do to us. The idea that rising inequality is inevitable begins to look like a convenient myth, one that allows us to avoid thinking about another possibility: that through our electoral choices and decisions in daily life we have supported rising inequality, or at least acquiesced in it. Admittedly, that assumes we know about it. Surveys in the UK and US consistently suggest that we underestimate both the level of current inequality and how much it has recently increased. But ignorance cannot be a complete excuse, because surveys also reveal a change in attitudes: rising inequality has become more acceptable – or at least, less unacceptable – especially if you are not on the wrong end of it.

Inequality is unlikely to fall much in the future unless our attitudes turn unequivocally against it. Among other things, we will need to accept that how much people earn in the market is often not what they deserve, and that the tax they pay is not taking from what is rightfully theirs.

One crucial reason why we have done so little to reduce inequality in recent years is that we downplay the role of luck in achieving success. Parents teach their children that almost all goals are attainable if you try hard enough. This is a lie, but there is a good excuse for it: unless you try your best, many goals will definitely remain unreachable.

Ignoring the good luck behind my success helps me feel good about myself, and makes it much easier to feel I deserve the rewards associated with success. High earners may truly believe that they deserve their income because they are vividly aware of how hard they have worked and the obstacles they have had to overcome to be successful.

But this is not true everywhere. Support for the idea that you deserve what you get varies from country to country. And in fact, support for such beliefs is stronger in countries where there seems to be stronger evidence that contradicts them. What explains this?

Attitude surveys have consistently shown that, compared to US residents, Europeans are roughly twice as likely to believe that luck is the main determinant of income and that the poor are trapped in poverty. Similarly, people in the US are about twice as likely as Europeans to believe that the poor are lazy and that hard work leads to higher quality of life in the long run.

Yet in fact, the poor (the bottom 20%) work roughly the same total annual hours in the US and Europe. And economic opportunity and intergenerational mobility is more limited in the US than in Europe. The US intergenerational mobility statistics bear a striking resemblance to those for height: US children born to poor parents are as likely to be poor as those born to tall parents are likely to be tall. And research has repeatedly shown that many people in the US don’t know this: perceptions of social mobility are consistently over-optimistic.

European countries have, on average, more redistributive tax systems and more welfare benefits for the poor than the US, and therefore less inequality, after taxes and benefits. Many people see this outcome as a reflection of the different values that shape US and European societies. But cause-and-effect may run the other way: you-deserve-what-you-get beliefs are strengthened by inequality.

Psychologists have shown that people have motivated beliefs: beliefs that they have chosen to hold because those beliefs meet a psychological need. Now, being poor in the US is extremely tough, given the meagre welfare benefits and high levels of post-tax inequality. So Americans have a greater need than Europeans to believe that you deserve what you get and you get what you deserve. These beliefs play a powerful role in motivating yourself and your children to work as hard as possible to avoid poverty. And these beliefs can help alleviate the guilt involved in ignoring a homeless person begging on your street.

This is not just a US issue. Britain is an outlier within Europe, with relatively high inequality and low economic and social mobility. Its recent history fits the cause-and-effect relationship here. Following the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979, inequality rose significantly. After inequality rose, British attitudes changed. More people became convinced that generous welfare benefits make poor people lazy and that high salaries are essential to motivate talented people. However, intergenerational mobility fell: your income in Britain today is closely correlated with your parents’ income.

If the American Dream and other narratives about everyone having a chance to be rich were true, we would expect the opposite relationship: high inequality (is fair because of) high intergenerational mobility. Instead, we see a very different narrative: people cope with high inequality by convincing themselves it is fair after all. We adopt narratives to justify inequality because society is highly unequal, not the other way round. So inequality may be self-perpetuating in a surprising way. Rather than resist and revolt, we just cope with it. Less Communist Manifesto, more self-help manual.

Inequality begets further inequality. As the top 1% grow richer, they have more incentive and more ability to enrich themselves further. They exert more and more influence on politics, from election-campaign funding to lobbying over particular rules and regulations. The result is a stream of policies that help them but are inefficient and wasteful. Leftwing critics have called it “socialism for the rich”. Even the billionaire investor Warren Buffett seems to agree: “There’s been class warfare going on for the last 20 years and my class has won,” he once said.

This process has been most devastating when it comes to tax. High earners have most to gain from income tax cuts, and more spare cash to lobby politicians for these cuts. Once tax cuts are secured, high earners have an even stronger incentive to seek pay rises, because they keep a greater proportion of after-tax pay. And so on.

Although there have been cuts in the top rate of income tax across almost all developed economies since 1979, it was the UK and the US that were first, and that went furthest. In 1979, Thatcher cut the UK’s top rate from 83% to 60%, with a further reduction to 40% in 1988. Reagan cut the top US rate from 70% in 1981 to 28% in 1986. Although top rates today are slightly higher – 37% in the US and 45% in the UK – the numbers are worth mentioning because they are strikingly lower than in the post-second-world-war period, when top tax rates averaged 75% in the US and were even higher in the UK.

Some elements of the Reagan-Thatcher revolution in economic policy, such as Milton Friedman’s monetarist macroeconomics, have subsequently been abandoned. But the key policy idea to come out of microeconomics has become so widely accepted today that it has acquired the status of common sense: that tax discourages economic activity and, in particular, income tax discourages work.

This doctrine seemingly transformed public debate about taxation from an endless argument over who gets what, to the promise of a bright and prosperous future for all. The “for all” bit was crucial: no more winners and losers. Just winners. And the basic ideas were simple enough to fit on the back of a napkin.

One evening in December 1974, a group of ambitious young conservatives met for dinner at the Two Continents restaurant in Washington DC. The group included the Chicago University economist Arthur Laffer, Donald Rumsfeld (then chief of staff to President Gerald Ford), and Dick Cheney (then Rumsfeld’s deputy, and a former Yale classmate of Laffer’s).

While discussing Ford’s recent tax increases, Laffer pointed out that, like a 0% income tax rate, a 100% rate would raise no revenue because no one would bother working. Logically, there must be some tax rate between these two extremes that would maximise tax revenue. Although Laffer does not remember doing so, he apparently grabbed a napkin and drew a curve on it, representing the relationship between tax rates and revenues. The Laffer curve was born and, with it, the idea of trickle-down economics.

The key implication that impressed Rumsfeld and Cheney was that, just as tax rates lower than 100% must raise more revenue, cuts in income tax rates more generally could raise revenue. In other words, there could be winners, and no losers, from tax cuts. But could does not mean will. No empirical evidence was produced in support of the mere logical possibility that tax cuts could raise revenue, and even the economists employed by the incoming Reagan administration six years later struggled to find any evidence in support of the idea.

Yet it proved irresistible to Reagan, the perennial optimist, who essentially overruled his expert advisers, convinced that the “entrepreneurial spirit unleashed by the new tax cuts would surely bring in more revenue than his experts imagined”, as the historian Daniel T Rodgers put it. (If this potent brew of populist optimism and impatience with economic experts seems familiar today, that might be explained in part by the fact that Laffer was also a campaign adviser to Donald Trump.)

For income tax cuts to raise tax revenue, the prospect of higher after-tax pay must motivate people to work more. The resulting increase in GDP and income may be enough to generate higher tax revenues, even though the tax rate itself has fallen. Although the effects of the big Reagan tax cuts are still disputed (mainly because of disagreement over how the US economy would have performed without the cuts), even those sympathetic to trickle-down economics conceded that the cuts had negligible impact on GDP – and certainly not enough to outweigh the negative effect of the cuts on tax revenues.

But the Laffer curve did remind economists that a revenue-maximising top tax rate somewhere between 0% and 100% must exist. Finding the magic number is another matter: the search continues today. It is worth a brief dig into this research, not least because it is regularly used to veto attempts to reduce inequality by raising tax on the rich. In 2013, for example, the UK chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne reduced the top rate of income tax from 50% to 45%, arguing Laffer-style that the tax cut would lead to little, if any, loss of revenue. Osborne’s argument relied on economic analysis suggesting that the revenue-maximising top tax rate for the UK is about 40%.

Yet the assumptions behind this number are shaky, as most economists involved in producing such figures acknowledge. Let’s begin with the underlying idea: if lower tax rates raise your after-tax pay, you are motivated to work more. It seems plausible enough but, in practice, the effects are likely to be minimal. If income tax falls, many of us cannot work more, even if we wanted to. There is little opportunity to get paid overtime, or otherwise increase our paid working hours, and working harder during current working hours does not lead to higher pay. Even for those who have these opportunities, it is far from clear that they will work more or harder. They may even decide to work less: since after-tax pay has risen, they can choose to work fewer hours and still maintain their previous income level. So the popular presumption that income tax cuts must lead to more work and productive economic activity turns out to have little basis in either common sense or economic theory.

There are deeper difficulties with Osborne’s argument, difficulties not widely known even among economists. It is often assumed that if the top 1% is incentivised by income tax cuts to earn more, those higher earnings reflect an increase in productive economic activity. In other words, the pie gets bigger. But some economists, including the influential Thomas Piketty, have shown this was not true for CEOs and other top corporate managers following the tax cuts in the 1980s. Instead, they essentially funded their own pay rises by paying shareholders less, which led in turn to lower dividend tax revenue for the government. In fact, Piketty and colleagues have argued that the revenue-maximising top income tax rate may be as high as 83%.

The income tax cuts for the rich of the past 40 years were originally justified by economic arguments: Laffer’s rhetoric was seized upon by politicians. But to economists, his ideas were both familiar and trivial. Modern economics provides neither theory nor evidence proving the merit of these tax cuts. Both are ambiguous. Although politicians can ignore this truth for a while, it suggests that widespread opposition to higher taxes on the rich is ultimately based on reasons beyond economics.

When the top UK income tax rate was raised to 50% in 2009 (until Osborne cut it to 45% four years later) the composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, one of Britain’s wealthiest people, responded bluntly: “The last thing we need is a Somali pirate-style raid on the few wealth creators who still dare to navigate Britain’s gale-force waters.” In the US, Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of private equity firm Blackstone, likened proposals to remove a specialised tax exemption to the German invasion of Poland.

While we may scoff at these moans from the super-rich, most people unthinkingly accept the fundamental idea behind them: that income tax is a kind of theft, taking income which is rightfully owned by the person who earned it. It follows that tax is, at best, a necessary evil, and so should be minimised as far as possible. On these grounds, the 83% top tax rate discussed by Piketty is seen as unacceptable.

There is an entire cultural ecosystem that has evolved around the idea of tax-as-theft, recognisable today in politicians’ talk about “spending taxpayers’ money”, or campaigners celebrating “tax freedom day”. This language exists outside the world of politics, too. Tax economists, accountants and lawyers refer to the so-called “tax burden”.

But the idea that you somehow own your pre-tax income, while obvious, is false. To begin with, you could never have ownership rights prior to, or independent from, taxation. Ownership is a legal right. Laws require various institutions, including police and a legal system, to function. These institutions are financed through taxation. The tax and the ownership rights are effectively created simultaneously. We cannot have one without the other.

‘There’s been class warfare going on for the last 20 years, and my class has won’ … US billionaire Warren Buffett. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

However, if the only function of the state is to support private ownership rights (maintaining a legal system, police, and so on), it seems that taxation could be very low – and any further taxation on top could still be seen as a form of theft. Implicit in this view is the idea of incomes earned, and so ownership rights created, in an entirely private market economy, with the state entering only later, to ensure these rights are maintained. Many economics textbooks picture the state in this way, as an add-on to the market. Yet this, too, is a fantasy.

In the modern world, all economic activity reflects the influence of government. Markets are inevitably defined and shaped by government. There is no such thing as income earned before government comes along. My earnings partly reflect my education. Earlier still, the circumstances of my birth and my subsequent health reflects the healthcare available. Even if that healthcare is entirely “private”, it depends on the education of doctors and nurses, and the drugs and other technologies available. Like all other goods and services, these in turn depend on the economic and social infrastructure, including transport networks, communications systems, energy supplies and extensive legal arrangements covering complex matters such as intellectual property, formal markets such as stock exchanges, and jurisdiction across national borders. Lord Lloyd-Webber’s wealth depends on government decisions about the length of copyright on the music he wrote. In sum, it is impossible to isolate what is “yours” from what is made possible, or influenced, by the role of government.

Talk of taxation as theft turns out to be a variation on the egotistical tendency to see one’s success in splendid isolation, ignoring the contribution of past generations, current colleagues and government. Undervaluing the role of government leads to the belief that if you are smart and hard-working, the high taxes you endure, paying for often wasteful government, are not a good deal. You would be better off in a minimal-state, low-tax society.

One reply to this challenge points to the evidence on the rich leaving their home country to move to a lower tax jurisdiction: in fact, very few of them do. But here is a more ambitious reply from Warren Buffett: “Imagine there are two identical twins in the womb … And the genie says to them: ‘One of you is going to be born in the United States, and one of you is going to be born in Bangladesh. And if you wind up in Bangladesh, you will pay no taxes. What percentage of your income would you bid to be born in the United States?’ … The people who say: ‘I did it all myself’ … believe me, they’d bid more to be in the United States than in Bangladesh.”

Much of the inequality we see today in richer countries is more down to decisions made by governments than to irreversible market forces. These decisions can be changed. However, we have to want to control inequality: we must make inequality reduction a central aim of government policy and wider society. The most entrenched, self-deluding and self-perpetuating justifications for inequality are about morality, not economy. The great economist John Kenneth Galbraith nicely summarised the problem: “One of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy … is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. It is an exercise which always involves a certain number of internal contradictions and even a few absurdities. The conspicuously wealthy turn up urging the character-building value of privation for the poor.”

Adapted from Licence to be Bad: How Economics Corrupted Us by Jonathan Aldred, published by Allen Lane and available at guardianbookshop.co.uk

https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2019/jun/06/socialism-for-the-rich-the-evils-of-bad-economics?utm_

21 Lessons for the 21st Century

By Yuval Noah Harari ( יובל נח הררי)

In bringing his focus to the here and now, Harari will help us to grapple with a world that is increasingly hard to comprehend, encouraging us to focus our minds on the essential questions we should be asking ourselves today. Employing his trademark entertaining and lucid style, Harari will examine some of the world’s most urgent issues, including terrorism, fake news and immigration, as well as turning to more individual concerns, from resilience and humility to meditation.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38820046-21-lessons-for-the-21st-century

Why Democracy Doesn't Work.

Nas Daily posted an episode. 10. augusts plkst. 01:00

This will certainly be controversial.

It's impossible to discusss such big topics in 3 minute or 30 hour videos. So I stuck to 4 minutes. But the hope is to spark conversation (and Googling). And if this video achieves that, then I'm happy.

INSTGARAM: @nasdaily

The Crisis of Anglo-American Democracy

Jul 25, 2019 JEFFREY D. SACHS

There is an obvious answer to the question of how the world's two oldest and most venerable democracies installed disordered minds in power and enabled them to pursue unpopular policies. But there is also a deeper explanation.

NEW YORK – How did the world’s two most venerable and influential democracies – the United Kingdom and the United States – end up with Donald Trump and Boris Johnson at the helm? Trump is not wrong to call Johnson the “Britain Trump” (sic). Nor is this merely a matter of similar personalities or styles: it is also a reflection of glaring flaws in the political institutions that enabled such men to win power.1

Their Faintest Hour

With Boris Johnson’s improbable ascendance as Britain’s new prime minister, the absurdity of British politics in the age of Brexit has plumbed new depths.

In this special double issue of On Point, Edoardo Campanella seeks to uncover the deeper forces behind Johnson’s rise, and Nicholas Reed Langen anticipates the consequences of his victory.

PreviousNext

Both Trump and Johnson have what the Irish physicist and psychologist Ian Hughes calls “disordered minds.” Trump is a chronic liar, purveyor of racism, and large-scale tax cheat. US Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on his 22-month investigation of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign described repeated cases of Trump’s obstruction of justice. Trump stands accused by more than 20 women of sexual predation, a behavior he bragged about on tape, and directed his attorney to make illegal payments of hush money that constituted campaign finance violations.

Johnson’s personal behavior is similarly incontinent. He is widely regarded as a chronic liar and as unkempt in personal life, including two failed marriages and an apparent domestic altercation on the eve of becoming prime minister. He has been repeatedly fired from jobs for lying and other disreputable behavior. He led the Brexit campaign in 2016 on claims that have been proven false. As British Foreign Secretary, he twice leaked secret intelligence – in one case, French intelligence about Libya, and in another case British intelligence about Iran. Like Trump, he has a high disapproval rating among all age groups, and his approval ratings rise with voter age.

Trump’s record in office presents a further political puzzle. His policies are generally unpopular, and rarely reflect a majority of public opinion. His most important legislative victory – the 2017 tax cut – was unpopular at the time and remains so today. The same is true of his positions on climate change, immigration, building a wall along the Mexican border, cutting social spending, ending key provisions of Obamacare, withdrawing from the Iran nuclear agreement, and much else. Trump’s approval rating is consistently below 50% and currently stands at around 43%, with 53% disapproval.

Trump uses emergency decrees and executive orders to implement his unpopular agenda. While the courts have overturned many decrees, the judicial process is slow, meandering, and unpredictable. In practice, the US is as close to one-person rule as imaginable within its Constitution’s precarious constraints.

The situation with Johnson may be similar. Public opinion turned against Brexit, Johnson’s hallmark issue, after the withdrawal negotiations with the European Union exposed the Leave campaign’s lies and exaggerations ahead of the 2016 referendum. Though the public and a majority in Parliament strongly oppose a no-deal Brexit, Johnson has pledged just that if he fails to negotiate an alternative.

There is an obvious answer to the question of how two venerable democracies installed disordered minds in power and enabled them to pursue unpopular policies. But there is also a deeper one.

The obvious answer is that both Trump and Johnson won support among older voters who have felt left behind in recent decades. Trump appeals especially to older white male conservatives displaced by trade and technology, and, in the view of some, by America’s movements for civil rights, women’s rights, and sexual rights. Johnson appeals to older voters hit hard by deindustrialization and to those who pine for Britain’s glory days of global power.

Yet this is not a sufficient explanation. The rise of Trump and Johnson also reflects a deeper political failure. The parties that opposed them, the Democrats and Labour respectively, failed to address the needs of workers displaced by globalization, who then migrated to the right. Yet Trump and Johnson pursue policies – tax cuts for the rich in the US, a no-deal Brexit in the UK – that run counter to the interests of their base.3

The common political flaw lies in the mechanics of political representation, notably both countries’ first-past-the-post voting systems. Electing representatives by a simple plurality in single-member districts has fostered the emergence of two dominant parties in both countries, rather than the multiplicity of parties elected in the proportional representation systems of Western Europe. The two-party system, which then leads to a winner-take-all politics, fails to represent voter interests as well as coalition governments, which must negotiate and formulate policies that are acceptable to two or more parties.

Consider the US situation. Trump dominates the Republican Party, but only 29% of Americans identify themselves as Republicans, with 27% identifying as Democrats and 38% as independents, not comfortable with either party but unrepresented by an alternative. By winning power within the Republican Party, Trump scraped into office with fewer votes than rival Hillary Clinton but with more Electoral College delegates. Given that only 56% of eligible Americans voted in 2016 (partly owing to deliberate Republican efforts to make voting difficult), Trump received the support of just 27% of eligible voters.

Trump controls a party that represents less than one-third of the electorate, and governs mostly by decree. In the case of Johnson, fewer than 100,000 Conservative Party members elected him as their leader, thus making him prime minister, despite his approval rating of just 31% (compared to 47% who disapprove).

Political scientists predict that a two-party system will represent the “median voter,” because each party moves to the political center in order to capture half the votes plus one. In practice, campaign financing has dominated US party calculations in recent decades, so the parties and candidates have gravitated to the right to curry favor with rich donors. (Senator Bernie Sanders is trying to break the chokehold of big money by raising large sums from small donors).

In the UK, neither major party represents the majority who oppose Brexit. Yet the UK political system may nonetheless enable one faction of one party to make historic and lasting choices for the country that most voters oppose. Most ominously, winner-take-all politics has enabled two dangerous personalities to win national power despite widespread public opposition to them.

No political system can perfectly translate the public will into policy, and the public will is often confused, misinformed, or swayed by dangerous passions. The design of political institutions is an ever-evolving challenge. Yet today, owing to their antiquated winner-take-all-rules, the world’s two oldest and most venerated democracies are performing poorly – dangerously so.

Jeffrey D. Sachs, Professor of Sustainable Development and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University, is Director of Columbia’s Center for Sustainable Development and of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. His books include The End of Poverty, Common Wealth, The Age of Sustainable Development, Building the New American Economy, and most recently, A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism.

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/trump-and-johnson-victories-result-of-institutional-flaw-by-jeffrey-d-sachs-2019-07

50155421-twilight-of-democracy

Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy

by Daron Acemoğlu, James A. Robinson

What forces lead to democracy's creation? Why does it sometimes consolidate only to collapse at other times? Written by two of the foremost authorities on this subject in the world, this volume develops a framework for analyzing the creation and consolidation of democracy. It revolutionizes scholarship on the factors underlying government and popular movements toward democracy or dictatorship. Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson argue that different social groups prefer different political institutions because of the way they allocate political power and resources. Their book, the subject of a four-day seminar at Harvard's Center for Basic Research in the Social Sciences, was also the basis for the Walras-Bowley lecture at the joint meetings of the European Economic Association and Econometric Society in 2003 and is the winner of the John Bates Clark Medal. Daron Acemoglu is Charles P. Kindleberger Professor of Applied Economics at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received the 2005 John Bates Clark Medal awarded by the American Economic Association as the best economist working in the United States under age 40. He is the author of the forthcoming text Introduction to Modern Economic Growth. James A. Robinson is Professor of Government at Harvard University. He is a Harvard Faculty Associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and a member of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research's Program on Institutions, Organizations, and Growth. He is coeditor with Jared Diamond of the forthcoming book Natural Experiments in History.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/231791256_Economic_Origins_of_Dictatorship_and_Democracy

**10-13-20*These are the new rules of capitalism***

What does the future of capitalism look like? Here’s what members of the Fast Company Impact Council had to say back in June.

The Fast Company Impact Council, an invitation-only group of corporate leaders, entrepreneurial founders, and other leaders from across industries, gathered on June 30 to share their insights. Members split into small groups, moderated by Fast Company editors, and shared their perspectives on how they are managing and innovating amid a trio of crises: the global pandemic, the economic slowdown, and calls for social justice in the wake of the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery.

In this roundtable discussion, led by deputy editor David Lidsky, top executives discussed the new rules of capitalism and how stakeholders can make it work for everyone. In alphabetical order, the participants in this session were Will Ahmed, CEO of Whoop; Barie Carmichael, Batten Fellow at the Darden Business School; Frank Cooper, CMO of BlackRock; Patrick Criteser, president and CEO of Tillamook County Creamery Association; Laura González-Estéfani, founder, CEO, and partner at The Venture City; Andrew King, managing partner at Bastille; Margery Kraus, founder and executive chairman of APCO Worldwide; Stuart Landesberg, CEO and cofounder of Grove Collaborative; and Oliver Libby, managing partner at Hatzimemos/Libby.

Excerpts of the roundtable have been edited for length and clarity.

Stuart Landesberg: I believe that business is the biggest agent for change in our society, and I believe it to be the core organizing principle of humans outside of the nuclear family over the last several hundred years. And certainly the organizing principle that drives the most change in our societal infrastructure. Over the last several hundred years, the desire for monetary gain has outweighed the desire for the things that are good for people and the planet—in the decision tree of the best and brightest people in the world. So I am optimistic, because I’ve seen, in my own experience, that companies focused on mission, purpose, sustainability [because] being good stewards of the world and leaving the place a little better than we found it is a sustainable competitive advantage. It’s an advantage in hiring. It’s an advantage in partnership. It’s an advantage in brand. It’s an advantage in a lot of ways.

Frank Cooper: I spent most of my career outside of financial services. I’ve been in entertainment and technology. I’ve been in packaged goods through PepsiCo. I’ve been at BuzzFeed, Motown, and Def Jam. The one common thread that I’ve had through all those experiences was this idea of purpose. I’ve carried that with me from the very beginning. Here at BlackRock, we feel like we’re one of the critical players in trying to help to advance this idea that purpose-driven capitalism and purpose-driven companies are, in fact, the future. I think purpose is one of the most important topics to cover, but it’s also one of the most misunderstood topics. It’s often seen as an abstract idea and a massive departure from capitalism, which I don’t think it is at all.

Barie Carmichael: The executives and leaders I’ve watched who have been able to break through [and build an inclusive corporate culture] are the ones who have learned to cultivate dissension [and] something that I call being a constructive skeptic, to begin to really break through and understand their “social footprint.” Just as every company has a carbon footprint, it also has a social footprint. The question is, Does it really know what that social footprint is that’s embedded in the way it does business? This is not something that can be cured by philanthropy or writing a check. It has to be cured by that breaking through the blind spot to get at what it takes to make the change happen.

Margery Kraus: We keep talking about diversity, [but] part of the issue is that diversity is a number, and we can all, in some ways, have control over that. Inclusion is a totally different thing. And inclusion is really where we need to pay more attention—inclusion and equity. People spend a lot of time bringing in diverse candidates, and if the culture is not accepting of diversity, then you’re never going to have the benefit of diversity. The benefit of diversity is that you learn things from sitting in a room with people who are different than you are, and your clients get benefit from that.

Will Ahmed: The focus on unlocking human performances is one that drives a lot of our decision-making, and [that means] anchoring a lot of what we do in research. Doing research on health is really important, independent from whether or not it helps build our business. Putting a big focus on research has helped us maintain our mission and purpose. So when we saw COVID-19 was becoming this this global pandemic, we added COVID-19 tracking in our app. This was in early March—I think we were one of the first consumer products to have COVID-19 tracking in an app. Within about two weeks, we had over 1,000 responses of people who tested positive for COVID-19. We were then able to partner with Cleveland Clinic and CQUniversity, two leading research institutions. And we were able to collect a lot of data on what does COVID-19 look like alongside Whoop data. It effectively showed that having a super elevated respiratory rate could be a predictor to COVID-19. Now if we weren’t grounded in research, I don’t think we would have taken all those steps . . . and a result of publishing that research, it appears to be good for our business, too.

Laura González-Estéfani: I kind of don’t trust a lot of these companies with these amazing statements [about their commitment to diversity and inclusion]. You know, you just look around to your people. They’re all white Americans. I think it’s super important to state that you, at the end of the day, you lead by example. It’s as simple as that. It’s just a matter of mindset. You cannot to a board, you cannot put out a company statement, when you look around and everybody’s just like you, when your leadership team is just like you.

Andrew King: My background is basically sports and esports . . . and when you’re dealing with 12-, 13-, 14-year-olds, it’s a very different mindset. What you see as the leading edge is really catering to an audience that isn’t there yet. There is a lot that, ethically, we have to get our heads around, not just kind of the YouTube issues of click authorization, click acceptance for privacy, and things like that, but with some real issues regarding mental illness, mental health, addiction, and things like that that are going on. Esports is growing leaps and bounds, and that’s great for the owners and participants and stakeholders, but it’s also very problematic. It really doesn’t have the controls or the research in it to actually identify best practices and actually how we navigate it with the next generation of consumers.

Patrick Criteser: I’ve been at my company eight years, and the concept of purpose is something that has certainly evolved. My view is that employees have to resonate with the purpose. Increasingly, with your employees, there are fewer barriers to them opting into the company, and whether you’re a startup or 111 year-old company [like ours], you need the talent. You need people to identify with and share values with the company. So it starts there. In my mind, the rest of the business is constructed to serve that purpose. And the market either rejects it or accepts it.

Oliver Libby: We have 600 entrepreneurs in about 80 countries, starting them with very small amounts of capital very early in their entrepreneurship journey. For me, the two things that are the main lessons are, number one, impact and diversity are linked to high returns when done properly. Without quoting returns, I would say we are certainly outperforming industry benchmarks and disproving the fact that impact investing is concessionary. The second thing is that the more hands-on approach is really helpful. This idea that people place their bets on the roulette table and then the little ball spins around and maybe a unicorn shows up is not a really great way to invest over the long term. The venture capital industries’ returns demonstrate that pretty clearly. They underperform the S&P as a group.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90560412/new-rules-capitalism-purpose-sustainability

From Dictatorship to Democracy

Author: Gene Sharp

From Dictatorship to Democracy is virtually the handbook for (almost) peaceful overthrow of repressive regimes, the manual consulted by revolutionary leadership throughout the Middle East, from Tunis to Egypt.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1119326

Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism

by Anne Applebaum

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author, professor, and historian offers an expert guide to understanding the appeal of the strongman as a leader and an explanation for why authoritarianism is back with a menacing twenty-first century twist.

Across the world today, from the Americas to Europe and beyond, liberal democracy is under siege while populism and nationalism are on the rise. In Twilight of Democracy, prize-winning historian Anne Applebaum offers an unexpected explanation: that there is a deep and inherent appeal to authoritarianism, to strongmen, and, especially, to one-party rule--that is, to political systems that benefit true believers, or loyal soldiers, or simply the friends and distant cousins of the Leader, to the exclusion of everyone else.
People, she argues, are not just ideological; they are also practical, pragmatic, opportunistic. They worry about their families, their houses, their careers. Some political systems offer them possibilities, and others don't. In particular, the modern authoritarian parties that have arisen within democracies today offer the possibility of success to people who do not thrive in the meritocratic, democratic, or free-market competition that determines access to wealth and power.
Drawing on reporting in Spain, Switzerland, Poland, Hungary, and Brazil; using historical examples including Stalinist central Europe and Nazi Germany; and investigating related phenomena: the modern conspiracy theory, nostalgia for a golden past, political polarization, and meritocracy and its discontents, Anne Applebaum brilliantly illuminates the seduction of totalitarian thinking and the eternal appeal of the one-party state.

https://www.academia.edu/43672870/Twilight_of_Democracy_The_Seductive_Lure_of_Authoritarianism_by_Anne_Applebaum

Viral Authoritarianism

Apr 13, 2020PATRICK GASPARD

In the rush to mitigate a public-health emergency like the COVID-19 pandemic, illiberal governments around the world are testing the limits of civil rights and democratic checks and balances. As history has shown time and again, there is no better moment than an emergency for aspiring strongmen to consolidate power.

NEW YORK – “God and the people are the source of all power … I have taken it, and damn it, I will keep it forever,” declared Haiti’s François “Papa Doc” Duvalier in 1963. And so he did, remaining president until his death in 1971, whereupon he was succeeded by his son, Jean-Claude (“Baby Doc”), who extended the dictatorship another 15 years.

This may seem like ancient history. But not to me. My family is Haitian, and though we immigrated to the United States during my childhood, we always seemed to remain within reach of the Duvaliers’ ruthless regime. I have never lost sight of the brutal lessons Haitians learned under the Duvaliers, including how they regularly used natural disasters and national crises to tighten their stranglehold on power.

We must heed that lesson today. COVID-19 is a threat not just to public health, but also to human rights. Throughout history, crises like the current one have served as a convenient pretext for authoritarian regimes to normalize their tyrannical impulses. My parents witnessed this firsthand in Haiti. We are all seeing it again now.1

The new threat started in China, where an already authoritarian government’s initial effort to cover up the epidemic allowed it to spread globally. But China is hardly alone. In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government instituted a 21-day lockdown with only four hours’ notice, providing no time for millions of the world’s poorest people to stockpile food and water. Worse, Indian law-enforcement authorities have since been using the lockdown to increase their targeted discrimination against the country’s Muslims.

Meanwhile, in Kenya and Nigeria, police and military forces have pummeled anyone who does not seem to be complying quickly enough with social-distancing protocols. In Israel, the authorities have joined around two dozen other governments in stretching privacy protections to the breaking point, by using cellphone data to track citizens’ movements. And in Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who has been consolidating power for years, has pushed through a law that effectively codifies his status as an absolute dictator.

The response to these violations from the world’s democracies has barely risen to the level of a whisper. But lest Americans think themselves immune from such power grabs, they should consider that, in late March, the US Department of Justice asked Congress for the power to detain American citizens (not just undocumented immigrants) indefinitely without trial.

Governments that adopt such measures justify them as necessary to combat the pandemic. But history shows us that illiberal leaders rarely, if ever, allow their emergency powers to expire. To be sure, every government has a duty to respond forcefully to the unfolding public-health calamity, and doing so might require temporary but significant restrictions on citizens’ actions. But many of the policies adopted by authoritarian leaders in recent weeks are not just anti-democratic; they are also counterproductive in fighting the pandemic.

For example, far from preventing the spread of disease, suppressing press freedoms makes it far more difficult to raise awareness about how the public should respond. Likewise, detaining civilians without trial undermines trust in government precisely when it is needed most. And canceling elections removes any incentive political leaders have to place the public’s interests first.

As we take the fight to COVID-19, we also must do everything we can to protect the health of our democracies. More to the point, we must recognize that, in many ways, defending public health and defending democracy are two fronts in the same battle.

Fortunately, civil-society organizations and individuals are not powerless in the face of pandemic crackdowns. After more than three decades on the front lines in defense of democracy, we at the Open Society Foundations have learned some relevant lessons.

For starters, we must use every tool available to protect civil liberties. While the pandemic calls for social distancing, it does not justify police brutality and abuse of government power. The instant that political leaders start restricting free speech and the right to protest, or spurn checks on their power, the risk of a slide into authoritarianism becomes real. Governments that start to test these limits must be held accountable immediately.

The second lesson is that we must resist scapegoating. In responding to the pandemic, too many governments have sought to label COVID-19 a “Chinese” virus, setting the stage for surveillance and stigmatization of people of Chinese descent.

As a Haitian-American, I witnessed such persecution firsthand during the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1980s, when the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that AIDS was being transmitted by “homosexuals, heroin users, hemophiliacs, and Haitians.” As a result of that unscientific, biased messaging, the US started detaining Haitian asylum seekers in a horrific Guantánamo Bay prison camp, which actually undermined efforts to prevent the spread of HIV.

Finally, we must address the underlying economic and social disparities that pandemics tend to exacerbate. To see how the coronavirus has laid bare America’s profound inequities, look no further than Rikers Island, New York City’s main jail, which now has the highest infection rate on the planet. More broadly, the crisis is demonstrating once again that far too many American families lack access to health care, paid sick leave, worker protections, personal savings, and other basic needs.

Even as we fend off new attacks on democracy and civil rights, we must use this moment to recognize all the ways our societies were stripping the rights of citizens, refugees, migrants, and asylum seekers before the pandemic hit. Yes, concerns about the state of democracy is not most people’s main concern nowadays. But if safeguarding democracy is not on your own personal “to-do” list, it is safe to assume that it isn’t on anyone else’s, either.

Sadly, too many of those in power will never take it upon themselves to protect our rights. We must do that for ourselves. Democracy is more than just a system of governance; it is a lens through which to view the world and one’s place in it. If we break that lens during an emergency, we may never see ourselves the same way again.

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/covid19-authoritarianism-goes-viral-by-patrick-gaspard-2020-04?utm_source

Boston experimented with using generative AI for governing. It went surprisingly well

BY SANTIAGO GARCES AND STEPHEN GOLDSMITH

The recent Biden White House Executive Order on AI (FACT SHEET: President Biden Issues Executive Order on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence)

addresses important questions. If it’s not implemented in a dynamic and flexible way, however, it runs the risk of impeding the kinds of dramatic improvements in both government and community participation that generative AI stands to offer.

Current bureaucratic procedures, developed 150 years ago, need reform, and generative AI presents a unique opportunity to do just that. As two lifelong public servants, we believe that the risk of delaying reform is just as great as the risk of negative impacts.

Anxiety around generative AI, which has been spilling across sectors from screenwriting to university education, is understandable. Too often, though, the debate is framed only around how the tools will disrupt us, not how these they might reform systems that have been calcified for too long in regressive and inefficient patterns.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT and its competitors are not yet part of the government reform movement, but they should be. Most recent attempts to reinvent government have centered around elevating good people within bad systems, with the hope that this will chip away at the fossilized bad practices.

The level of transformative change now will depend on visionary political leaders willing to work through the tangle of outdated procedures, inequitable services, hierarchical practices, and siloed agency verticals that hold back advances in responsive government.

New AI tools offer the most hope ever for creating a broadly reformed, citizen-oriented governance. The reforms we propose do not demand reorganization of municipal departments; rather, they require examining the fundamental government operating systems and using generative AI to empower employees to look across agencies for solutions, analyze problems, calculate risk, and respond in record time.

What makes generative AI’s potential so great is its ability to fundamentally change the operations of government.

Bureaucracies rely on paper and routines. The red tape of bureaucracy has been strangling employees and constituents alike. Employees, denied the ability to quickly examine underlying problems or risks, resort to slow-moving approval processes despite knowing, through frontline experience, how systems could be optimized. And the big machine of bureaucracy, unable or unwilling to identify the cause of a prospective problem, resorts to reaction rather than preemption.

Finding patterns of any sort, in everything from crime to waste, fraud to abuse, occurs infrequently and often involves legions of inspectors. Regulators take months to painstakingly look through compliance forms, unable to process a request based on its own distinctive characteristics. Field workers equipped with AI could quickly access the information they need to make a judgment about the cause of a problem or offer a solution to help residents seeking assistance. These new technologies allow workers to quickly review massive amounts of data that are already in city government and find patterns, make predictions, and identify norms in response to well framed inquiries.

Together, we have overseen advancing technology innovation in five cities and worked with chief data officers from 20 other municipalities toward the same goals, and we see the possible advances of generative AI as having the most potential. For example, Boston asked OpenAI to “suggest interesting analyses” after we uploaded 311 data. In response, it suggested two things: time series analysis by case time, and a comparative analysis by neighborhood. This meant that city officials spent less time navigating the mechanics of computing an analysis, and had more time to dive into the patterns of discrepancy in service. The tools make graphs, maps, and other visualizations with a simple prompt. With lower barriers to analyze data, our city officials can formulate more hypotheses and challenge assumptions, resulting in better decisions.

Not all city officials have the engineering and web development experience needed to run these tests and code. But this experiment shows that other city employees, without any STEM background, could, with just a bit of training, utilize these generative AI tools to supplement their work.

To make this possible, more authority would need to be granted to frontline workers who too often have their hands tied with red tape. Therefore, we encourage government leaders to allow workers more discretion to solve problems, identify risks, and check data. This is not inconsistent with accountability; rather, supervisors can utilize these same generative AI tools, to identify patterns or outliers—say, where race is inappropriately playing a part in decision-making, or where program effectiveness drops off (and why). These new tools will more quickly provide an indication as to which interventions are making a difference, or precisely where a historic barrier is continuing to harm an already marginalized community.

Civic groups will be able to hold government accountable in new ways, too. This is where the linguistic power of large language models really shines: Public employees and community leaders alike can request that tools create visual process maps, build checklists based on a description of a project, or monitor progress compliance. Imagine if people who have a deep understanding of a city—its operations, neighborhoods, history, and hopes for the future—can work toward shared goals, equipped with the most powerful tools of the digital age. Gatekeepers of formerly mysterious processes will lose their stranglehold, and expediters versed in state and local ordinances, codes, and standards, will no longer be necessary to maneuver around things like zoning or permitting processes.

Numerous challenges would remain. Public workforces would still need better data analysis skills in order to verify whether a tool is following the right steps and producing correct information. City and state officials would need technology partners in the private sector to develop and refine the necessary tools, and these relationships raise challenging questions about privacy, security, and algorithmic bias.

However, unlike previous government reforms that merely made a dent in the issue of sprawling, outdated government processes, the use of generative AI will, if broadly, correctly, and fairly incorporated, produce the comprehensive changes necessary to bring residents back to the center of local decision-making—and restore trust in official conduct.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90983427/chatgpt-generative-ai-government-reform

Artificial intelligence in government

Artificial intelligence (AI) has a range of uses in government. It can be used to further public policy objectives (in areas such as emergency services, health and welfare), as well as assist the public to interact with the government (through the use of virtual assistants, for example). According to the Harvard Business Review, "Applications of artificial intelligence to the public sector are broad and growing, with early experiments taking place around the world."^[1] Hila Mehr from the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard University notes that AI in government is not new, with postal services using machine methods in the late 1990s to recognise handwriting on envelopes to automatically route letters.^[2] The use of AI in government comes with significant benefits, including efficiencies resulting in cost savings (for instance by reducing the number of front office staff), and reducing the opportunities for corruption.^[3] However, it also carries risks.^[^{citation needed}^][^{further explanation needed}^]

Uses of AI in government[edit]

The potential uses of AI in government are wide and varied,^[4] with Deloitte considering that "Cognitive technologies could eventually revolutionize every facet of government operations".^[5] Mehr suggests that six types of government problems are appropriate for AI applications:^[2]

1. Resource allocation - such as where administrative support is required to complete tasks more quickly.

2. Large datasets - where these are too large for employees to work efficiently and multiple datasets could be combined to provide greater insights.

3. Experts shortage - including where basic questions could be answered and niche issues can be learned.

4. Predictable scenario - historical data makes the situation predictable.

5. Procedural - repetitive tasks where inputs or outputs have a binary answer.

6. Diverse data - where data takes a variety of forms (such as visual and linguistic) and needs to be summarised regularly.

Mehr states that "While applications of AI in government work have not kept pace with the rapid expansion of AI in the private sector, the potential use cases in the public sector mirror common applications in the private sector."^[2]

Potential and actual uses of AI in government can be divided into three broad categories: those that contribute to public policy objectives; those that assist public interactions with the government; and other uses.

Contributing to public policy objectives[edit]

There are a range of examples of where AI can contribute to public policy objectives.^[4] These include:

Receiving benefits at job loss, retirement, bereavement and child birth almost immediately, in an automated way (thus without requiring any actions from citizens at all)^[6]
Social insurance service provision^[3]
Classifying emergency calls based on their urgency (like the system used by the Cincinnati Fire Department in the United States^[7])
Detecting and preventing the spread of diseases^[7]
Assisting public servants in making welfare payments and immigration decisions^[1]
Adjudicating bail hearings^[1]
Triaging health care cases^[1]
Monitoring social media for public feedback on policies^[8]
Monitoring social media to identify emergency situations^[8]
Identifying fraudulent benefits claims^[8]
Predicting a crime and recommending optimal police presence^[8]
Predicting traffic congestion and car accidents^[8]
Anticipating road maintenance requirements^[8]
Identifying breaches of health regulations^[8]
Providing personalised education to students^[7]
Marking exam papers^[1]
Assisting with defence and national security (see Artificial intelligence § Military and Applications of artificial intelligence § Other fields in which AI methods are implemented respectively).
Making symptom based health Chatbot AI Vaid for diagnosis^[9]

Assisting public interactions with government[edit]

AI can be used to assist members of the public to interact with government and access government services,^[4] for example by:

Answering questions using virtual assistants or chatbots (see below)
Directing requests to the appropriate area within government^[2]
Filling out forms^[2]
Assisting with searching documents (e.g. IP Australia's trade mark search^[10])
Scheduling appointments^[8]

Examples of virtual assistants or chatbots being used by government include the following:

Launched in February 2016, the Australian Taxation Office has a virtual assistant on its website called "Alex".^[11] As at 30 June 2017, Alex could respond to more than 500 questions, had engaged in 1.5 million conversations and resolved over 81% of enquiries at first contact.^[11]
Australia's National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is developing a virtual assistant called "Nadia" which takes the form of an avatar using the voice of actor Cate Blanchett.^[12] Nadia is intended to assist users of the NDIS to navigate the service. Costing some $4.5 million,^[13] the project has been postponed following a number of issues.^[14]^[15] Nadia was developed using IBM Watson,^[16]^[12] however, the Australian Government is considering other platforms such as Microsoft Cortana for its further development.^[17]
The Australian Government's Department of Human Services uses virtual assistants on parts of its website to answer questions and encourage users to stay in the digital channel.^[18] As at December 2018, a virtual assistant called "Sam" could answer general questions about family, job seeker and student payments and related information. The department also introduced an internally-facing virtual assistant called "MelissHR" to make it easier for departmental staff to access human resources information.^[18]
Estonia is building a virtual assistant which will guide citizens through any interactions they have with the government. Automated and proactive services "push" services to citizens at key events of their lives (including births, bereavements, unemployment, ...). One example is the automated registering of babies when they are born.^[19]^[20]

Other uses[edit]

Other uses of AI in government include:

Translation ^[2]
Language interpretation pioneered by the European Commission's Directorate General for Interpretation and Florika Fink-Hooijer.
Drafting documents^[2]

Potential benefits[edit]

AI offers potential efficiencies and costs savings for the government. For example, Deloitte has estimated that automation could save US Government employees between 96.7 million to 1.2 billion hours a year, resulting in potential savings of between $3.3 billion to $41.1 billion a year.^[5] The Harvard Business Review has stated that while this may lead a government to reduce employee numbers, "Governments could instead choose to invest in the quality of its services. They can re-employ workers' time towards more rewarding work that requires lateral thinking, empathy, and creativity — all things at which humans continue to outperform even the most sophisticated AI program."^[1]

Risks[edit]

Risks associated with the use of AI in government include AI becoming susceptible to bias,^[2] a lack of transparency in how an AI application may make decisions,^[7] and the accountability for any such decisions.^[7]

AI in governance and the economic world might make the market more difficult for companies to keep up with the increases in technology. Large U.S. companies like Apple and Google are able to dominate the market with their latest and most advanced technologies. This gives them an advantage over smaller companies that do not have the means of advancing as far in the digital technology fields with AI.^[21]

Organizations should consider the following best practices to establish a robust AI governance framework:

Manage AI Models. ...
Data Governance & Security. ...
Algorithmic Bias Mitigation. ...
Implement Frameworks. ...
Explainability & Transparency. ...
Engage Stakeholders. ...
Continuous Monitoring.

The Crash of 2024: The breathtaking pace of Dan Brown, the astute take on war of Tom Clancy, and the author’s grasp of the dark side of international finance.

by Stefan Folster

This page turner thriller puts us on the cutting edge of a new type of war – a war where all methods are allowed. A war that has already started in real life. The plot is exceptionally realistic and authentic. A must read for those wanting to prepare for the future.Dan Wolf is suddenly cast on to center stage in the western world’s struggle to survive, after years as an investigator of financial crime. An unexpected attack forces him underground to save his family. As he fights back he is drawn into a war between superpowers, a war fought with bullets, financial crime and digital inventiveness. With the help of tough-as-nails Cathy he tries to turn the tables. But don’t expect the usual happy end. The plausible real-world plot springs more surprises than fantasy.This book combines the breathtaking pace of Dan Brown, the astute take on international conflict of Tom Clancy, and the author’s personal knowledge of the secrets of international finance. The frightful scheme emerging from disparate puzzling events risks pushing the world back to the dark ages.The peril to western civilization exposed in this book is imminent. Criminals and their organizations that are described here are real, as are their ability to ruin countries financially and politically. All the scams, frauds, conspiracies, and aggressions in this book are currently being perpetrated or planned. Some may already have succeeded or have been exposed by the time this book reaches its readers. Learn how to save yourself, while immersing in suspense that will keep you up all night.

https://www.amazon.com/Crash-2024-breathtaking-international-finance-ebook/dp/B07NSYLHMC

GDP Is Not a Measure of Human Well-Being

Amit Kapoor, Bibek Debroy

OCTOBER 04, 2019

Economic growth has raised living standards around the world. However, modern economies have lost sight of the fact that the standard metric of economic growth, gross domestic product (GDP), merely measures the size of a nation’s economy and doesn’t reflect a nation’s welfare. Yet policymakers and economists often treat GDP, or GDP per capita in some cases, as an all-encompassing unit to signify a nation’s development, combining its economic prosperity and societal well-being. As a result, policies that result in economic growth are seen to be beneficial for society.

We know now that the story is not so simple – that focusing exclusively on GDP and economic gain to measure development ignores the negative effects of economic growth on society, such as climate change and income inequality. It’s time to acknowledge the limitations of GDP and expand our measure development so that it takes into account a society’s quality of life.

A number of countries are starting to do this. India, for instance, where we both work advising the government, is developing an Ease of Living Index, which measures quality of life, economic ability and sustainability.

When our measures of development go beyond an inimical fixation towards higher production, our policy interventions will become more aligned with the aspects of life that citizens truly value, and society will be better served. But before we attempt to improve upon the concept of GDP, it is instructive to understand its roots.

The origins of GDP

Like many of the ubiquitous inventions that surround us, the modern conception of GDP was a product of war. While Simon Kuznets is often credited with the invention of GDP (since he attempted to estimate the national income of the United States in 1932 to understand the full extent of the Great Depression), the modern definition of GDP was developed by John Maynard Keynes during the second world war.

In 1940, one year into the war with Germany, Keynes, who was working in the UK Treasury, published an essay complaining about the inadequacy of economic statistics to calculate what the British economy could produce with the available resources. He argued that such data paucity made it difficult to estimate Britain’s capacity for mobilization and conflict.

According to him, the estimate of national income should be the sum of private consumption, investment and government spending. He rejected Kuznets’ version, which included government income, but not spending, in his calculation. Keynes realized that if the government’s wartime procurement was not considered as demand in calculating national income, GDP would fall despite actual economic growth taking place. His method of calculating GDP, including government spending into a country’s income, which was driven by wartime necessities, soon found acceptance around the world even after the war was over. It continues to this day.

How GDP falls short

But a measure created to assess wartime production capabilities of a nation has obvious drawbacks in peacetime. For one, GDP by definition is an aggregate measure that includes the value of goods and services produced in an economy over a certain period of time. There is no scope for the positive or negative effects created in the process of production and development.

For example, GDP takes a positive count of the cars we produce but does not account for the emissions they generate; it adds the value of the sugar-laced beverages we sell but fails to subtract the health problems they cause; it includes the value of building new cities but does not discount for the vital forests they replace. As Robert Kennedy put it in his famous election speech in 1968, “it [GDP] measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.”

Environmental degradation is a significant externality that the measure of GDP has failed to reflect. The production of more goods adds to an economy’s GDP irrespective of the environmental damage suffered because of it. So, according to GDP, a country like India is considered to be on the growth path, even though Delhi’s winters are increasingly filled with smog and Bengaluru’s lakes are more prone to fires. Modern economies need a better measure of welfare that takes these externalities into account to obtain a truer reflection of development. Broadening the scope of assessment to include externalities would help in creating a policy focus on addressing them.

GDP also fails to capture the distribution of income across society – something that is becoming more pertinent in today’s world with rising inequality levels in the developed and developing world alike. It cannot differentiate between an unequal and an egalitarian society if they have similar economic sizes. As rising inequality is resulting in a rise in societal discontentment and increased polarization, policymakers will need to account for these issues when assessing development.

Another aspect of modern economies that makes GDP anachronistic is its disproportionate focus on what is produced. Today’s societies are increasingly driven by the growing service economy – from the grocery shopping on Amazon to the cabs booked on Uber. As the quality of experience is superseding relentless production, the notion of GDP is quickly falling out of place. We live in a world where social media delivers troves of information and entertainment at no price at all, the value for which cannot be encapsulated by simplistic figures. Our measure of economic growth and development also needs to adapt to these changes in order to give a more accurate picture of the modern economy.

How we’re redefining development in India

We need alternative metrics to complement GDP in order to get a more comprehensive view of development and ensure informed policy making that doesn’t exclusively prioritize economic growth. We’re seeing some efforts already, such as Bhutan’s attempt to measure Gross National Happiness, which considers factors like equitable socio-economic development and good governance, and UNDP’s Human Development Index (HDI), which encapsulates health and knowledge apart from economic prosperity.

As a step in this direction, India is also beginning to focus on the ease of living of its citizens. Ease of living is the next step in the development strategy for India, following the push towards ease of doing business that the country has achieved over the last few years. The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs has developed the Ease of Living Index to measuring quality of life of its citizens across Indian cities, as well as economic ability and sustainability. It is as well expected to evolve into a measurement tool to be adopted across districts. We believe that this more holistic measure will provide more accurate insights into the state of development of the Indian economy.

The end goal is to have a more just and equitable society that is economically thriving and offering citizens a meaningful quality of life. With a change in what we measure and perceive as a barometer of development, how we frame our policies will also catch up. In an economy with well-being at its heart, economic growth will simply be another tool to guide it in the direction that the society chooses. In such an economy, the percentage points of GDP, which are rarely connected with the lives of average citizens, will cease to take the center stage. The focus would instead shift towards more desirable and actual determinants of welfare.

https://hbr.org/2019/10/gdp-is-not-a-measure-of-human-well-being?utm

Tim Berners-Lee unveils global plan to save the web

Inventor of web calls on governments and firms to safeguard it from abuse and ensure it benefits humanity

Ian Sample Science editor Sun 24 Nov 2019 23.01

Sir Tim Berners-Lee: ‘If we leave the web as it is, there’s a very large number of things that will go wrong.’ Photograph: Rosdiana Ciaravolo/Getty Images

Sir Tim Berners-Lee has launched a global action plan to save the web from political manipulation, fake news, privacy violations and other malign forces that threaten to plunge the world into a “digital dystopia”.

The Contract for the Web requires endorsing governments, companies and individuals to make concrete commitments to protect the web from abuse and ensure it benefits humanity.

“I think people’s fear of bad things happening on the internet is becoming, justifiably, greater and greater,” Berners-Lee, the inventor of the web, told the Guardian. “If we leave the web as it is, there’s a very large number of things that will go wrong. We could end up with a digital dystopia if we don’t turn things around. It’s not that we need a 10-year plan for the web, we need to turn the web around now.”

The contract, which has been worked on by 80 organisations for more than a year, outlines nine central principles to safeguard the web – three each for governments, companies and individuals.

The document, published by Berners-Lee’s Web Foundation, has the backing of more than 150 organisations, from Microsoft, Twitter, Google and Facebook to the digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation. At the time of writing, Amazon had not endorsed the principles.

Those who back the contract must show they are implementing the principles and working on solutions to the tougher problems, or face being removed from the list of endorsers. If the stipulation is properly enforced, some may not last long. A report from Amnesty International accuses Google and Facebook of “enabling human rights harm at a population scale”. The report comes weeks after Google was found to have acquired the personal health records of 50 million Americans without their consent.

The contract’s principles require governments to do all they can to ensure that everyone who wants to can connect to the web and have their privacy respected. People should have access to whatever personal data is held on them and have the right to object or withdraw from having that data processed.

Further principles oblige companies to make internet access affordable and calls on them to develop web services for people with disabilities and those who speak minority languages. To build trust online, companies are compelled to simplify privacy settings by providing control panels where people can access their data and manage their privacy options in one place.

Another principle requires companies to diversify their workforces, consult broad communities before and after they release new products, and assess the risk of their technology spreading misinformation or harming people’s behaviour or personal wellbeing.

Three more principles call on individuals to create rich and relevant content to make the web a valuable place, build strong online communities where everyone feels safe and welcome, and finally, to fight for the web, so it remains open to everyone, everywhere.

“The forces taking the web in the wrong direction have always been very strong,” Berners-Lee said. “Whether you’re a company or a government, controlling the web is a way to make huge profits, or a way of ensuring you remain in power. The people are arguably the most important part of this, because it’s only the people who will be motivated to hold the other two to account.”

Emily Sharpe, the director of policy at the Web Foundation, said: “The web’s power to be a force for good is under threat and people are crying out for change. We are determined to shape that debate using the framework that the Contract sets out.

“Ultimately, we need a global movement for the web like we now have for the environment, so that governments and companies are far more responsive to citizens than they are today. The contract lays the foundations for that movement.”

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/nov/24/tim-berners-lee-unveils-global-plan-to-save-the-internet

Contract for the Web

A global plan of action to make our online world safe and empowering for everyone.

Contract for the Web

A global plan of action to make our online world safe and empowering for everyone

1. Governments

2. Companies

3. Citizens

Themes

The Web was designed to bring people together and make knowledge freely available. It has changed the world for good and improved the lives of billions. Yet, many people are still unable to access its benefits and, for others, the Web comes with too many unacceptable costs.

Everyone has a role to play in safeguarding the future of the Web. The Contract for the Web was created by representatives from over 80 organizations, representing governments, companies and civil society, and sets out commitments to guide digital policy agendas. To achieve the Contract’s goals, governments, companies, civil society and individuals must commit to sustained policy development, advocacy, and implementation of the Contract text.

Governments

Principle 1

Ensure everyone can connect to the internet

Principle 2

Keep all of the internet available, all of the time

Principle 3

Respect and protect people’s fundamental online privacy and data rights

Companies

Principle 4

Make the internet affordable and accessible to everyone

Principle 5

Respect and protect people’s privacy and personal data to build online trust

Principle 6

Develop technologies that support the best in humanity and challenge the worst

Citizens

Principle 7

Be creators and collaborators on the Web

Principle 8

Build strong communities that respect civil discourse and human dignity

Principle 9

Fight for the Web

READ MORE …:

https://contractfortheweb.org/

What Happens When Democracies Become Perniciously Polarized?

The United States’ democracy is being threatened by increasingly polarized politics. Other countries’ histories offer warnings and suggest possible solutions.

by Jennifer McCoy and Benjamin Press

Published on January 18, 2022

Democracy, Conflict, and Governance

The Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program is a leading source of independent policy research, writing, and outreach on global democracy, conflict, and governance. It analyzes and seeks to improve international efforts to reduce democratic backsliding, mitigate conflict and violence, overcome political polarization, promote gender equality, and advance pro-democratic uses of new technologies.

The rise of political polarization in the United States has pushed analysts to ask a fundamental question: what long-term effects will polarized politics have on the United States’ democracy?¹ Existing evidence provides ample reason for concern. At the elite level, deep political divides in Washington have crippled efforts at legislative compromise, eroded institutional and behavioral norms, and incentivized politicians to pursue their aims outside of gridlocked institutions, including through the courts. Yet these divides extend far beyond the corridors of power, as polarization at the mass level is pushing Americans across the country to divide themselves into distinct and mutually exclusive political camps. The rise of an “us versus them” mindset and political identity in American sociopolitical life is evident in everything from the rise of highly partisan media to the decline in Americans’ willingness to marry someone from the opposing political party.² Even more concerningly, these dynamics are contributing directly to a steep rise in political violence.³ Polarization has already brought on serious problems—what more lies ahead? Are insights on this critical question available from the experience of other polarized democracies?

Many other democracies around the world have grappled or are grappling with the difficulties posed by the onset of pernicious polarization, which McCoy and Somer have defined elsewhere as the division of society into mutually distrustful political camps in which political identity becomes a social identity.⁴ The experiences of these other countries can provide useful insights into the United States’ own struggles—and may help to predict what may be to come. Comparative studies have already shown that pernicious polarization is directly linked with democratic erosion and that the United States is far from the only democracy to confront severe polarization.⁵ Yet broader context for understanding how democracies fare when facing pernicious polarization is lacking.

To rectify this gap, we used the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) data set to take a close look at episodes of pernicious polarization around the world since 1950 and trace their relationships with levels of democracy.⁶ The findings are not encouraging. Severe polarization correlates with serious democratic decline: of the fifty-two instances where democracies reached pernicious levels of polarization, twenty-six—fully half of the cases—experienced a downgrading of their democratic rating.⁷ Only sixteen episodes were able to reduce polarization to below-pernicious levels, and the decline in polarization was only sustained in nine of those cases. Quite strikingly, the United States is the only advanced Western democracy to have faced such intense polarization for such an extended period. The United States is in uncharted and very dangerous territory.

Political Outcomes of Pernicious Polarization

To situate the United States’ experience within the broader universe of polarized democracies, we compiled a comprehensive list of episodes since 1950 when a democracy reached pernicious levels of polarization for at least two years.⁸ We then compared the trajectories of their democratic ratings with their levels of political polarization.⁹

Four basic outcomes were possible from this comparison, as reflected in table 1:

The country manages to depolarize and keep its democracy intact.
The country manages to depolarize but suffers democratically.
The country’s democracy is able to live with the chronically high levels of polarization without undergoing any democratic downgrading (to date).
The country experiences pernicious polarization and a downgrading of its democracy score.

Table 1: Outcomes of Episodes of Pernicious Polarization
		DEMOCRATIC REGIME CATEGORY
		Stable	Downgraded
POLARIZATION LEVEL	Depolarized	16	0
POLARIZATION LEVEL	Remains Pernicious	10	26

Depolarization

The data show that it is possible for democracies to depolarize. In these cases, listed in table 2, the public and the political elite were able to find ways to reduce the tensions that have divided them. The diversity of these cases shows that there are many ways of doing this: in some instances, divides over the future of the country were able to be resolved through democratic processes, while the rule of law checked polarizing leaders who were concentrating power elsewhere. For example, Brazil’s newly restored democracy allowed for the successful impeachment and removal of its president following a corruption scandal in 1992, and a decade later managed the smooth transition to a government led for the first time by the leftist Workers Party. In Colombia between 2009 and 2010, an independent Constitutional Court restrained a president attempting to push through a constitutional amendment to allow him to run for a third term.

Other cases benefited from international intervention, such as in Timor-Leste in 2006, when the threat of a military rebellion immediately polarized the country’s politics and only depolarized after foreign military forces helped stabilize the country and the prime minister resigned. Finally, political agreements between elites may depolarize a country’s politics. In Bolivia, for example, highly charged disputes in 2008 over autonomy for the country’s southern regions were resolved through negotiations and a political settlement that provided for a constitutional referendum.

These cases illustrate that depolarization—though very difficult—is possible. However, it is often quite fragile; as table 2 shows, a significant number of instances later repolarized to pernicious levels. The progress toward depolarization in seven of sixteen episodes was later undone, underscoring that the threat of pernicious polarization never fully disappears.

Table 2: Cases of Depolarization From Pernicious Levels
1. Bolivia, 2003–2005 [repolarizes in 2007] 2. Bolivia, 2007–2012 [repolarizes in 2016] 3. Brazil, 1989–1993 [repolarizes in 2012] 4. Colombia, 2009–2011 [repolarizes in 2014] 5. Cyprus, 1974–1989 6. El Salvador, 1999–2010 7. Georgia, 2007–2015 [repolarizes in 2017] 8. Guyana, 1998–2020 9. Indonesia, 2000–2020 10. Malta, 1963–1990 [repolarizes in 2014] 11. Mauritius, 2019–2020 12. Nepal, 2014–2020 13. Senegal, 1988–1991 [repolarizes in 1993] 14. Senegal, 1993–1995 15. Suriname, 1992–1997 16. Timor-Leste, 2006–2008
Note: The start of each episode represents the first year in which the country attained both pernicious levels of polarization (3.0 on V-Dem’s political polarization metric) and a democratic Regimes of the World score (either liberal or electoral democracy). The end year of each episode denotes the year in which V-Dem’s polarization metric declines below pernicious levels. The year in which a country repolarizes is the year in which the polarization score returned to pernicious levels.

Table 2: Cases of Depolarization From Pernicious Levels

1. Bolivia, 2003–2005 [repolarizes in 2007]

2. Bolivia, 2007–2012 [repolarizes in 2016]

3. Brazil, 1989–1993 [repolarizes in 2012]

4. Colombia, 2009–2011 [repolarizes in 2014]

5. Cyprus, 1974–1989

6. El Salvador, 1999–2010

7. Georgia, 2007–2015 [repolarizes in 2017]

8. Guyana, 1998–2020

9. Indonesia, 2000–2020

10. Malta, 1963–1990 [repolarizes in 2014]

11. Mauritius, 2019–2020

12. Nepal, 2014–2020

13. Senegal, 1988–1991 [repolarizes in 1993]

14. Senegal, 1993–1995

15. Suriname, 1992–1997

16. Timor-Leste, 2006–2008

Note: The start of each episode represents the first year in which the country attained both pernicious levels of polarization (3.0 on V-Dem’s political polarization metric) and a democratic Regimes of the World score (either liberal or electoral democracy). The end year of each episode denotes the year in which V-Dem’s polarization metric declines below pernicious levels. The year in which a country repolarizes is the year in which the polarization score returned to pernicious levels.

Persistent Polarization Without Democratic Degradation

This survey also yielded a group (see table 3) of countries that have experienced chronically pernicious levels of polarization for some time without undergoing democratic downgrading. Some countries, like Bosnia and Ecuador, have managed to juggle pernicious polarization and at least somewhat functional democracy for many years. While it is beyond the scope of this article to speculate as to why this might be, institutional factors like Bosnia’s ethnoreligious power-sharing agreement backed by international institutions and neighboring countries may play a key role. However, for other countries, like Brazil, Mexico, and the United States, the onset of pernicious polarization is a much more recent phenomenon, and it is far from clear that their institutions will successfully manage the pressures of pernicious polarization. Indeed, a more sensitive metric—V-Dem’s Liberal Democracy Index—shows that many members of this group, including Brazil, Colombia, Georgia, Mexico, and the United States, have seen their democratic health suffer since becoming perniciously polarized, albeit not to the point where their score on the Regimes of the World (RoW) index was downgraded. Especially for more recently polarized countries, their membership on this list may be more transitory as they either find a way to depolarize or their democracies degrade. All of the countries on this list, with the exception of the United States, are electoral democracies that lack the full protections of a liberal democracy.

Table 3: Cases of Chronic Pernicious Polarization and Sustained Democracy
Argentina, 2013–present Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1999–present Brazil, 2013–present Colombia, 2014–present Ecuador, 2007–present Georgia, 2017–present Malta, 2014–present Mexico, 2019–present North Macedonia, 2017–present United States, 2015–present
Note: The beginning year of the episode represents the first year the country became perniciously polarized (defined as above 3.0 on V-Dem’s political polarization metric).

Polarization and Democratic Decline

The most common outcome of episodes where democracies reached pernicious levels of polarization was some form of major democratic decline. In total, twenty-six out of the fifty-two observed episodes (or 50 percent of cases) saw their country’s RoW score downgraded, with the vast majority of those—twenty-three of twenty-six—descending into some form of authoritarianism. The other three cases underwent backsliding within democracy, falling from liberal democracy status to be reclassified as an electoral democracy. The full list of such cases is shown in table 4.

Table 4: Outcomes of Episodes of Pernicious Polarization
Backsliding Within Democracy [From Liberal Democracy to Electoral Democracy]	Erosion From Democracy to Electoral Autocracy [From Liberal or Electoral Democracy to Electoral Autocracy]	Democratic Collapse [From Liberal or Electoral Democracy to Closed Autocracy]
Mauritius, 1968–2019	Bangladesh, 1992–2002	Argentina, 1964–1966
Poland, 2011–2016	Comoros, 2010–2015	Argentina, 1974–1976
Slovenia, 2018–2020	Dominican Republic, 1982–1990	Chile, 1970–1973
	Hungary, 2010–2018	Fiji, 1993–2000
	India, 2014–2019	Fiji, 2002–2006
	Indonesia, 1956–1958	Malta, 1950–1957
	Kosovo, 2002–2005	Thailand, 2004–2006
	Lebanon, 2010–2018	Turkey, 1966–1980
	Maldives, 2009–2013	Uruguay, 1966–1973
	Montenegro, 2004–2006
	Nepal, 2010–2012
	North Macedonia, 2008–2012
	Suriname, 1988–1991
	Turkey, 2002–2013
Note: Episode years are determined as follows: the first year of the episode is the year that the country first reached pernicious levels of polarization, and the end year is the year in which the country’s RoW score was downgraded.

This list illustrates clearly that extraordinary levels of polarization have been an important feature of the ongoing wave of democratic decline. Indeed, fourteen of the twenty-six countries in table 4 saw their democracies downgraded since 2005, the year widely observed to have been the beginning of a new global wave of autocratization.¹⁰ Some of the world’s most prominent backsliders, including Hungary, India, Poland, and Turkey, register on the list.

This wide assortment of countries illustrates how polarization can contribute to democratic downgrading in multiple ways. In some cases, as in Bangladesh in 2002 or Thailand in 2006, polarization—and government dysfunction—became so intense that security forces stepped in and attempted to realign the country’s politics. In other cases, like Turkey and Poland, leaders relied on explicitly polarizing populist strategies to gain and retain power, sowing division to energize their supporters while claiming that it is necessary to curtail democracy in order to overcome opponents’ resistance and enact their agenda.

American Exceptionalism

Another troubling realization stands out: the United States is quite alone among the ranks of perniciously polarized democracies in terms of its wealth and democratic experience. Of the episodes since 1950 where democracies polarized, all of those aside from the United States involved less wealthy, less long-standing democracies, many of which had democratized quite recently. None of the wealthy, consolidated democracies of East Asia, Oceania, or Western Europe, for example, have faced similar levels of polarization for such an extended period, as figure 1 shows.¹¹

Only two other episodes come close. First, France briefly reached pernicious levels of polarization during its 1968 political crisis, when student protests and union strikes pushed France’s government to the brink of collapse. However, the unrest faded within a few months and the temperature of politics quickly returned to a more normal level with the signing of the Grenelle Accords and the holding of legislative elections in June 1968. The other episode was in Italy between 1971 and 1978, when levels of polarization were just shy of pernicious as the country faced a surge of violence from far-right and far-left terrorist groups. Italy eventually depolarized as the major political parties agreed to jointly address the violence, law enforcement cracked down on terrorism, and public support for extremist movements faded. Italy has been repolarizing in recent years, however, and reached pernicious levels in 2020. Yet neither Italy nor France reached levels of political polarization as high as the United States’ current levels for as long a period. There are no peer analogues for the United States’ current political divisions—and the track record of all democracies does not provide much consolation.

This status as an outlier could stem from a number of features that make the United States both especially susceptible to polarization and especially impervious to efforts to reduce it. One such feature is the durability of identity politics in a racially and ethnically diverse democracy. The United States is not the only such democracy—Brazil and India are large multiracial and multicultural democracies also suffering pernicious polarization, while Canada and Australia are increasingly multicultural but without such levels of polarization. Yet the United States is perhaps alone in experiencing a demographic shift that poses a threat to the white population that has historically been the dominant group in all arenas of power, allowing political leaders to exploit insecurities surrounding this loss of status.

Second, institutional characteristics likely contribute to the sustained severe polarization in the United States. Binary choice is deeply embedded in the U.S. electoral system, creating a rigid two-party system that facilitates binary divisions of society. For example, only five of twenty-six wealthy consolidated democracies elect representatives to their national legislatures in single-member districts.¹² Like the United States, these countries tend to have two-party dominant systems; however, most have also seen new parties rise over the last two decades, a development that has not been mirrored in the United States.

Another institutional factor is the unique combination of a majoritarian electoral system with strong minoritarian institutions in the United States. The Senate is highly disproportionate in its representation, with two senators per state regardless of population, from Wyoming’s 580,000 to California’s 39,500,000 persons. The practices of the Senate also give individual senators unusual authority to single-handedly hold up presidential nominations or debate on legislation, while the filibuster rule enables the minority party to block consideration of legislation that would have a majority vote in favor. These contribute to government gridlock and fuel public disapproval of Congress. Finally, the disproportionality of Senate representation translates to disproportionality in the Electoral College—whose indirect election of the president is again exceptional among presidential democracies.

A third factor contributing to the seemingly entrenched political polarization in the United States is the three-decade-old trend of partisan sorting, in which the two parties reinforce urban-rural, religious-secular, and racial-ethnic cleavages rather than promote cross-cutting cleavages. With partisanship now increasingly tied to other kinds of social identity, affective polarization is on the rise, with voters perceiving the opposing party in negative terms and as a growing threat to the nation.¹³ Voters also tend to follow cues from party leaders about policy positions and there is greater homogeneity within parties, impeding the kind of cross-party coalitions common in the past. With such perceptions of threat, voters are more willing to tolerate or even embrace antidemocratic actions by their leaders.

Partisan sorting and rising polarization create a pernicious logic of zero-sum politics that incentivizes behavior undermining democratic institutions and norms. The final year of Donald Trump’s presidency saw the president and his party fuel a false narrative to discredit the electoral process, attempt to overturn the presidential election, and refuse to disavow political violence. All of these factors impede attempts to overcome pernicious polarization and portend an ominous future for American democracy.

Conclusion

Placing the United States’ struggles with pernicious polarization in a broader context yields a deeply troubling picture. At least since 1950, no other established democracy has become this polarized for this long. Within the broader pool of perniciously polarized democracies, the comparisons become even less encouraging—a plurality have descended into authoritarianism, and even those that depolarize face significant risks of repolarizing in the future. This reinforces a key theme emerging in the growing field of literature on how polarization plays out in different contexts: pernicious polarization is a uniquely corrosive and dangerous force in democracies.

Yet all is not lost. Systemic interventions can help reduce polarization before polarization imperils democracy. Whether through institutional reform, voter education, or sounding the alarm about the dangers to democracy, policymakers, activists, and civic leaders should urgently prioritize systemic efforts that will change the incentives undergirding the dangerous binary logic of pernicious polarization. Such reforms should aim to lower the high stakes of elections and give voters more voice and more choice.¹⁴

Lessons from abroad give us some hints: reforms such as shifting to a proportional representation system (as New Zealand did in the 1990s) and/or using ranked choice voting in multimember districts (such as in Ireland) could break up America’s rigid binary logic, give voters more choice, and allow for coalition-building to ease the gridlock. Political parties and cultural influencers need to clearly distance themselves from individuals and groups employing political violence, exclusionary nationalist appeals, or antidemocratic measures, as the Italian parties did to end a decade of violence in the 1970s. Elected leaders should listen to legitimate grievances and pursue policies to benefit the whole, not just one party or a small elite. Reducing the threat of pernicious polarization to democracy requires deliberate, urgent action. Or, as this research suggests, American democracy itself may cease to be.

Notes

¹ This article is part of a larger project from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on comparative depolarization, led by Jennifer McCoy and Murat Somer.

² Wendy Wang, “Marriages Between Democrats and Republicans Are Extremely Rare,” Institute for Family Studies, November 3, 2020, https://ifstudies.org/blog/marriages-between-democrats-and-republicans-are-extremely-rare.

³ Rachel Kleinfeld, “The Rise of Political Violence in the United States,” Journal of Democracy 32, no. 4 (October 2021): 160–76.

⁴ Jennifer McCoy, Tahmina Rahman, and Murat Somer, “Polarization and the Global Crisis of Democracy: Common Patterns, Dynamics, and Pernicious Consequences for Democratic Polities,” American Behavioral Scientist 62, no. 1 (January 1, 2018): 16–42.

⁵ Jennifer McCoy and Murat Somer, eds., “Special Issue on Polarized Polities: A Global Threat to Democracy,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 681, no. 1 (January 2019); Thomas Carothers and Andrew O’Donahue, Democracies Divided: The Global Challenge of Political Polarization (Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 2019); and Murat Somer, Jennifer McCoy, and Russell Luke, “Pernicious Polarization, Autocratization and Opposition Strategies,” Democratization 28, no. 5 (2021): 929–948.

⁶ Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) index, version 11.1, March 2021, accessed at https://www.v-dem.net/vdemds.html.

⁷ We do not make a causal inference here that pernicious polarization causes democratic deterioration, but our prior research does show a strong correlation even lagged for one to five years. See Somer, McCoy, and Luke, “Pernicious Polarization, Autocratization and Opposition Strategies.”

⁸ We identified democracies as those countries that met the definition of either “liberal democracy” or “electoral democracy” on V-Dem’s Regimes of the World measure. On this measure, a score of 0 signifies that the country is rated as a closed autocracy (defined by V-Dem as having “No multiparty elections for the chief executive or the legislature”); a score of 1 signifies an electoral autocracy (“Multiparty elections for the chief executive and the legislature, but failing to achieve that elections are free and fair”); 2 signifies an electoral democracy (“Free and fair multiparty elections but deficits in either access to justice, or transparent law enforcement, or liberal principles of respect for personal liberties, rule of law, and judicial as well as legislative constraints on the executive”); and a 3 corresponds to a liberal democracy (“Free and fair multiparty elections and access to justice, transparent law enforcement and the liberal principles of respect for personal liberties, rule of law, and judicial as well as legislative constraints on the executive satisfied.”). For more on the Regimes of the World metric, see https://www.v-dem.net/static/website/img/refs/codebookv111.pdf, page 283.

⁹ We defined pernicious levels of political polarization as at least a 3.0 out of 4.0 on V-Dem’s Political Polarization metric. This measure asks country experts to rate the degree to which society is polarized into antagonistic political camps, especially the extent to which political differences affect social relationships beyond political discussions. Societies are highly polarized if supporters of opposing political camps are reluctant to engage in friendly interactions, for example, in family functions, civic associations, their free time activities, and workplaces. The score ranges from 0 (low degree of polarization) to 4 (highly polarized). Under the two-year minimum condition, we removed cases like Venezuela in 2002, which, though perniciously polarized, was downgraded to an electoral autocracy in 2003 and thereby failed the condition of being both a democracy and perniciously polarized for at least two years. For more on the political polarization metric, see https://www.v-dem.net/static/website/img/refs/codebookv111.pdf, page 224.

¹⁰ Sarah Repucci and Amy Slipowitz, “Freedom in the World 2021: Democracy Under Siege,” Freedom House, February 2021, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2021/democracy-under-siege.

¹¹ Southern Europe’s pernicious levels of polarization until the mid-1970s reflected dictatorships in Greece, Portugal, and Spain until third-wave democratic transitions, as well as the decade of violence in Italy in the 1970s.

¹² Only three established democracies use exclusively first-past-the-post plurality voting to choose their legislators: Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. France adds a second round (run-off election) in its single-member district system, and Australia adds the alternative vote, or ranked choice voting, which acts as an instant runoff in its single-member-district system; for more, see “Electoral System Design Database,” International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, accessed January 10, 2022, https://www.idea.int/data-tools/data/electoral-system-design.

¹³ Levi Boxell, Matthew Gentzkow, and Jesse Shapiro, “Cross-Country Trends in Affective Polarization,” National Bureau of Economic Research, January 2020.

¹⁴ Ezra Klein, Why We’re Polarized (New York: Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster, 2020); Lee Drutman, Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020); and American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Our Common Purpose: Reinventing American Democracy for the 21st Century (Cambridge, MA: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2020).

https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2022/01/what-happens-when-democracies-become-perniciously-polarized?lang=en

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otrdiena, 2018. gada 11. septembris

Ailments of Real Democracy and Their Treatment

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