Author Archives: Peter Levine

another argument for redistricting

Growing up in a politically competitive community turns out to have important educational advantages. Gimpel, Lay, and Schuknecht find that young people who live in communities with competitive elections are more knowledgeable about politics, more confident in their own capacity to make a difference, more trusting in government to be responsive, more tolerant, and more likely to discuss politics than their peers, holding many other factors constant.

Competition probably enhances civic learning because politicians and parties must reach out to citizens when elections are close. They reach out with messages that make people feel important and that convey interesting information. Also, regardless of how politicians behave, one can learn from growing up among roughly equal groups of Democrats and Republicans. In politically diverse communities, young people are exposed to divergent political views and understand that disagreement is inevitable. (The same advantage also arises from religious diversity.)

Political competitiveness can compensate for economic disadvantage. In fact, Gimpel and colleagues found that in poor communities with a mix of Democratic and Republican voters, young people grow up more knowledgeable than their peers who live in wealthy, single-party suburbs. Political competition boosts the level of discussion “by an amazing 17 percentage points among those with no plans to attend college,” because exposure to robust politics compensates for their relatively poor formal educations.

However, most Americans do not grow up in competitive districts. Only four incumbent Representatives were defeated in 2002, and only five in 2004. The same pattern occurs in many states. For example, in 2004, none of California’s 153 legislative seats changed parties. The 2006 elections are expected to be more competitive than usual. Yet even a loss of 15 Republican seats in 2006 would represent only 3.4 percent of the House of Representatives.

One reason for the lack of competition is that districts have been drawn with increasing sophistication to favor one party over the other. But communities have also become more politically homogeneous. No one redraws county lines to benefit politicians, yet the segregation of Democrats and Republicans at the county level increased by 47 percent during the last quarter of the 20th century. This is a bad sign for the next generation of citizens.

how to respond to the terror risk

A diverse range of people are arguing that we have overreacted to terror threats after 9/11. Their arguments include the following:

  • The statistical risk of being killed by a terrorist is very low. As John Mueller writes in a paper for the libertarian Cato Institute (pdf), “Even with the September 11 attacks included in the count, the number of Americans killed by international terrorism since the late 1960s (which is when the State Department began counting) is about the same as the number of Americans killed over the same period by lightning, accident-causing deer, or severe allergic reaction to peanuts.”
  • Responses to terror, however, can be very costly. Consider the price and inconvenience of airport screening procedures. Or the deaths caused when people drive instead fly because they are afraid of terror. Or public support for the Iraq war.
  • Acting terrified of terror encourages terrorists. It means that they can damage America simply by talking about plots. There is an emerging “we-are-not-afraid” movement that argues we ought to react to terrorist threats in a calm and unruffled manner.
  • The alleged British bombing plot probably shows a desire to blow up airplanes, but the conspirators may have been far from being able to pull off the terror of which they dreamed. (Phronesisaical has links.)
  • Fear of terror steers public resources to certain agencies and companies that have an incentive to stoke the fear further.
  • Irrational fear of terror distorts public opinion, to the advantage of incumbent politicians. Some see evidence of Machiavellian manipulation; but Mueller draws a more cautious conclusion: “There is no reason to suspect that President Bush’s concern about terrorism is anything but genuine. However, his approval rating did receive the greatest boost for any president in history in September 2001, and it would be politically unnatural for

    him not to notice. … This process is hardly new. The preoccupation of the media and of Jimmy Carter?s presidency with the hostages taken by Iran in 1979 to the exclusion of almost everything else may look foolish in retrospect. … But it doubtless appeared to be good politics at the time–Carter’s dismal approval rating soared when the hostages were seized.”

    • I think these are good points, but there is another side to consider. It’s unreasonable to adopt a strictly utilitarian calculus that treats all deaths as equally significant. Every human being counts the same, yet we are entitled to care especially about some tragic events. If deaths were fungible, then none would really matter; they would all be mere statistics.

    In particular, as a nation, we are entitled to care more about the 2,700 killed on 9/11 than about the roughly similar number of deaths to tonsil cancer in 2001. Pure utilitarianism would tell us that 9/11 happened in the past; thus it’s irrational to do anything about it, other than to try to prevent a similar disaster in the future. And it’s irrational to put resources into preventing a terrorist attack if we could prevent more deaths by putting the same money and energy into seat belts or cancer prevention. However, the attack on 9/11 was a story of hatred against the United States, premeditated murder, acute suffering, and heroic response. Unless we can pay special attention to moving stories, there is no reason to care about life itself.

    In my view, we can rationally respond to 9/11 by bringing the perpetrators to justice, even at substantial cost, and even if they pose no threat. That violates the utilitarian reasoning that underlies Mueller’s argument. However, note that the Bush administration has not brought Bin Laden to justice. Also note that the 9/11 story may justify vengeance, but it does not justify excessive fear about similar attacks.

    Finally, we must think carefully about responsibility. On a pure utilitarian calculus, we might be better off with virtually no airport security. A tiny percentage of people would be killed by bombers, because there aren’t very many terrorists with the will and the means to kill. By getting rid of airport screenings, we would save billions of dollars and vast amounts of time, and possibly even save lives by encouraging more people to fly instead of drive. But this reasoning doesn’t work. If a government cancelled airport screening procedures, some people would die, and it would not be irrational to pin the responsibility for those deaths on the government.

    Thus no government can dismiss the terror threat, because people understandably hold the national security apparatus responsible for protecting them against terror. In contrast, protection against tonsil cancer is not seen as a state responsibility. I like the following passage by Senator McCain (quoted in Mueller), but I’m not sure that any administration could get away with using it as an anti-terror policy:

    Get on the damn elevator! Fly on the damn plane! Calculate the odds of being harmed by a terrorist! It?s still about as likely as being swept out to sea by a tidal wave. Suck it up, for crying out loud. You?re almost certainly going to be okay. And in the unlikely event you?re not, do you really want to spend your last days cowering behind plastic sheets and duct tape? That?s not a life worth living, is it?

    citizen news projects

    People frequently send me links to websites on which citizens (not professional journalists) present local news. Two recent examples from my inbox:

    Corpus Beat is an impressive site from Corpus Christi, TX, with news articles, blogs, photo competitions, and organizational charts of local government, among other features. Much of the content seems to be created by local kids. I especially liked a series of interviews of local officials and a feature called “Brain Gain,” about how to prevent college-educated young people from leaving the area. All the articles for “Brain Gain” were written by students. In keeping with classic public journalism experiments from the 1990s, Corpus Beat convened a forum on the brain drain problem and reported the results–thereby prompting public deliberation and covering it as news.

    Much closer to (my) home, College Park, MD now has a well-written, independent blog about local issues. Rethink College Park has two staffers but is open to adding more.

    two dates to save

    OCTOBER 3: CIRCLE TO RELEASE NEW COMPREHENSIVE SURVEY OF YOUTH CIVIC ENGAGEMENT

    At the National Press Club in Washington, DC on October 3, from 9:30-11 am, CIRCLE will release findings from a major survey that includes numerous indicators of youth engagement as well as information about youth attitudes toward various social and political issues. This survey will update and expand the Civic and Political Health of the Nation Report, published in 2002.

    Following the press conference, which is open to the public, CIRCLE will hold a first-ever “Practitioners’ Forum” from 11-2:30 to discuss practical implications of the new findings. There will be small group discussions on topics such as:

  • Youth Political Engagement and Trust in Government
  • The Civic Engagement of Immigrant Youth
  • Youth Community Service and Volunteerism
  • Tolerance and the Youth Generation

    • This will be an opportunity to influence how youth civic engagement is measured in the future and to inform CIRCLE’s efforts to connect research and practice.

    The Practitioners’ Forum will include a lunch, and there will be limited space available. Please RSVP by September 22nd to Abby Kiesa, Youth Coordinator at CIRCLE, at akiesa@umd.edu.

    SEPTEMBER 18: NATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CITIZENSHIP (NCoC) TO RELEASE ‘CIVIC HEALTH INDEX’ REPORT

    CIRCLE provided data, graphs, and analysis for an ambitious NCoC report that explores 40 key indicators of civic engagement over time. These indicators include political activity, civic knowledge, volunteering, trust, and philanthropy, among others. The report also looks separately at various segments of the US population, including youth.

    The release will take place on Monday, September 18, 2006 from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. at the Marriott at Metro Center in Washington, DC. Prominent speakers (Robert Putnam, Harris Wofford, and others) will address various aspects of civic engagement.

    There is no charge for the event and lunch will be served. Registration is required.

    Iraq: the next tragedy

    Daniel Byman and Kenneth Pollack’s editorial in Sunday’s Washington Post prompts some questions that I have not seen discussed elsewhere. Why have we not seen the long columns of refugees in Iraq that are typical of civil conflicts? What would it take to cause massive flows of refugees? In particular, would the removal of US forces cause Iraqis to throw some possessions in suitcases and start walking for the border? Who would move, and where would they try to go? What would be the consequences if hundreds of thousands or millions of civilians attempted to walk into Iran, Turkey, Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, or Kuwait?

    I realize that there have been population shifts already, with Iraqis moving into more homogeneous neighborhoods and some middle class folks emigrating. Byman and Pollack estimate that about half a million Iraqis have migrated in those ways. But we haven’t seen the equivalent of Kosovo (72 percent of the population displaced), or Congo (7.1 percent of the population killed). Anyone–Democrat or Republican–who wants to be part of governing the United States had better figure out how to prevent mass migrations in Iraq and what to do if they begin.