Partisan Politics Makes Smart People Stupid

I've started a new blogging gig at Learn Liberty, a project of the Institute for Humane Studies. I'll be putting links to these posts here. My posts there will have the benefit of an editor, which is probably something I need. The first is on partisan rationalization and why epistocracy may not save us after …

The Meaning of the Arrow Theorem

Recently I finished reading the book Gaming the Vote by William Poundstone. I also assigned part of it to my Ethics & Economics Challenge students. It's a fun and informative read, draping heavy-duty political science in engaging story-telling. (My post at e3ne.org on the topic is here.) The book's central thesis is that the American …

Why So Little Decentralization?

Some of these developing countries are both huge and ethnically and regionally diverse, India and Indonesia most notably. One might think that these governments would have even more reason to decentralize than would the governments of comparatively homogeneous Western democracies. Therefore, the relative lack of decentralization in developing countries remains a puzzle.

Can Globalization Go Too Far?

Dani Rodrik, the political scientist's favorite economist, argues for a limit to globalization in his recent book Globalization's Paradox. The LSE EUROPP blog has a nice little summary of the book's argument: Markets require a wide range of non-market institutions (of regulation, stabilisation, and legitimation) in order to work well and remain socially sustainable. These …

Voter Support for Limiting Voting’s Reach

John Sides has a short but interesting post on 538 today looking at surprisingly strong public support for technocratic limitations on pure democracy. A few months ago I floated the idea of multiple voting as a way of overcoming, partially, the baleful effects of voter irrationality. Technocratic management would be another way to do it. …

This Week in Democracy Promotion, Bahrain Edition

Glenn Greenwald highlights the fact that the Obama Administration is doing something about the Bahrain regime's crackdown on pro-democracy protestors... by selling the government more weapons. Does anyone really think US intervention in Libya is about human rights?

Do We Want Everyone Represented Equally?

Political scientist John Sides has contributed an interesting guest post to FiveThirtyEight, in which he reviews the evidence that social class influences the way Congresspeople vote. In particular, Congresspeople are unlikely to come from working-class backgrounds, and class seems to affect voting at the individual level. If Congress had the same mix of class backgrounds …

Should DC Get Representation?

Washington City Paper has a story this week about how gun control became the issue that sank voting rights for the District of Columbia's congressional representative. Over at Hit & Run, Matt Welch has blogged it, but what I want to focus on is the normative question of whether D.C. has a right to be …