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Politics and Economics
The Chandler Institute of Governance (CIG) is an international non-profit organisation that works with governments around the world to build effective and accountable governments, institutions and policies. CIG promotes good governance on the principle that good governance “leads to better outcomes and increased public trust”.
Democratic countries are happier and healthier than autocratic countries, even after controlling for economic factors like wealth and poverty (Tov & Diener, 2009; Barnish, Tørnes, et al, 2018). I want a peace plan that maximizes the wellbeing of people on both sides of the conflict and for that to happen, a peace plan should seek to strengthen the democratic institutions and cultures of both Israel and Palestine. Of course, democracy by itself can’t guarantee good governance, public safety or economic prosperity – but it lays the foundation for their possibility and improvement.
Freedom House (FH) is a non-profit organization that was founded in 1941, with Wendell Willkie and Eleanor Roosevelt serving as its first honorary chairpersons. Best known for political advocacy surrounding issues of democracy, political freedom, and human rights, the organization's annual Freedom in the World report assesses the political rights and civil liberties of countries and territories around the world.
In prepping for this series on social justice, I came across a great meta-analysis on the research and theory of "relative deprivation", which the authors define as "the judgment that one is worse off compared to some standard accompanied by feelings of anger and resentment" (Smith, Pettigrew et al, 2011, p 203)
It's no accident that political arguments about social justice tend to focus on the role of hard work versus luck. For instance, in a recent Pew Research Survey, 73 % of Solid Liberals agreed that “hard work and determination are no guarantee of success for most people”, compared to 4% of Core Conservatives. That's a huge difference. No wonder the partisan divide has turned into a chasm. The disagreements are on so many levels: bickering turtles all the way down.
So how does this all connect with the psychology of social justice? Mainly to show that there is no "natural" response to status differences and inequality. Whether we respond with resentment, depression, fear, stress, envy, anger, indignation, admiration, aesthetic pleasure, or even happiness at another's good fortune...all depends.
Hmmm. There is a general drift downward since around the Great Recession, although confidence in small business didn’t fall until the pandemic crash. Confidence in big business took a hit after the 2001 dot-com recession, after which it remained fairly flat until 2018 when it fell further. Confidence in the presidency plunged during the second Bush II term, recovered and then fell again during the Obama years, actually going up during Trump, and falling once again with Biden. Congress hit a high point circa 2003-2004 (I’m guessing before disillusion with US wars set in) and basically hasn’t recovered since. As for confidence in higher education, the trend is obvious and rather alarming.
Mmm…pretty steady in the confidence department until around 2017, then a downward trend, accelerating since 2020. I put the “civil unrest” lines in the chart to see if confidence in police dipped after periods of anti-police civil unrest. No pattern there until 2020, when high confidence responses dipped 5 points over the period of 2020 - 2023.
Since 2012, the US violent crime rate has fluctuated a bit, but it’s still higher than in 1960, when the violent crime rate was 161 crimes per 100,000 population, compared to a rate of 381 per 100,000 in 2022 (the most recent year available).
There actually have been people and movements that were more broadly antiscience than today’s this-or-that skeptics: what we used to call “new age” types, e.g., members of religious cults and believers in the occult. In his oft-cited 1993 book Science and Anti-Science, Gerald Holton mentions “interest in astrology” as indicative of antiscience beliefs, as least as “conventionally” understood (his word).
This all seems so counterintuitive. You don’t die of Covid unless you are infected with Covid, so why wouldn’t there be an association between infection and death rates?
A sense of panic rarely leads to thoughtful planning. More often panic leads to bad policies, rushed implementation, poor outcomes, and political backlash. Better to tread carefully and self-correct as necessary.
“Stop all grants to advocacy groups?” I’m assuming “advocacy groups” refers to environmental groups, many of which employ scientists and policy wonks with expertise directly relevant to EPA concerns…Why in the world should the EPA simply stop using these groups? It’s possible to have strong convictions about the environment (whether nature-or human-centered, whether left or right) and maintain a high level of professional integrity. Environmental activists can still provide high quality information and advice. The EPA doesn’t have to embrace their ideological convictions to benefit from their input.
There was a time when Republicans embraced the cause of environmental protection. Think Progress noted that “some of the greatest conservationists ever to take the oath of office were Republicans.” Both Greenpeace and the Union of Concerned Scientists rated Richard Nixon one of the greenest president ever. And we're not talking ancient history here: both Presidents Bush supported cap and trade policies to reduce pollution…So what happened?
The American public has largely come around to Carter’s vision of protecting huge swaths of wilderness in the US. For example, by 2017, 70% of American voters opposed drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This included 84% of Democrats, 64% of Independents, and 52% of Republicans. (Leiserowitz et al, 2017). However, Trump was not among those Republicans…on his last day of office, his administration “issued drilling leases on more than 400,000 acres (160,000 hectares) of Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge” (Reuters, January 19, 2021)
“Abstraction is the enemy of personal empathy, but it’s essential for equitable elections. Villages are communal, but they aren’t truly democratic. A level of abstraction is necessary to imagine other citizens as equal agents with rights, not clan histories.” - Adam Gopnik, To Fix Democracy, First Figure Out What’s Broken
Excerpt from Plan for Trump Administration: “The next Administration should champion the elimination of the Conservation Reserve Program…The USDA should work with Congress to eliminate this overbroad program.”
Comment: Note that the Conservation Reserve program, established during the Reagan administration, already targets highly erodible land and areas with “significant adverse water quality, wildlife habitat, or other natural resource impacts related to activities of agricultural production”. Those are specific and concrete environmental harms – not overly broad at all.
From Chapter 10 of Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise , a project led by the Heritage Foundation that outlines policy goals for a second Trump term: “For a conservative USDA to become a reality, and for it to stay on course with the mission as outlined, the White House must strongly support these reforms and install strong USDA leaders… There would be strong opposition from environmental groups and others who want the federal government to transform American agriculture to meet their ideological objectives.”
Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise is a project led by the Heritage Foundation that outlines policy goals for a second Trump term. William Perry Pendley is the author of Chapter 16: Department of the Interior. Pendley was appointed to deputy director of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in 2019 and later served in an unofficial capacity as acting director of the BLM for the remainder of the Trump administration. My intention for this series of posts is purely informational, so for now I’m keeping my opinions to myself.