I’m flying to Los Angeles today and staying for most of the week. Because I expect my Internet access to be sporadic, I’m planning not to blog until July 24. That’s probably a good thing, anyway. By the end of August, I owe a book manuscript about youth and the future of democracy. If I can spend a week without the distractions of email and blogging, I think I can get close to finishing the book. Besides, it’s hard to think about any topic of public importance right now other than the conflagration that seems to have engulfed most of the region from Mumbai to Gaza. On that topic, I have no insight, no expertise, no special knowledge–nothing but the Aristotelian response to tragedy: pity and fear.
Author Archives: Peter Levine
what will happen to youth turnout in ’06?
This is a question that we’re being asked with increasing frequency at CIRCLE. [One person who has asked is Zachary Goldfarb, who published a good story on the topic in the Sunday Washington Post.]
Clearly, youth turnout will be lower than it was in 2004, a presidential election year during which participation of the whole population returned to a level last seen in 1968. Youth contributed more than their share to that increase, but will surely vote at a lower rate in the upcoming congressional elections. After all, many live in completely uncompetitive House districts in states with no Senate races. Thus the relevant comparison is not to 2004 but to the last congressional election (2002) or the last election that followed a big surge in youth turnout (1994).
The comparison to 1994 is interesting because that election was viewed as a test of us Gen-Xers. My generation had turned out in the Bush-Clinton-Perot race of 1992. Would we respond to the call of celebrities like Madonna (who, wrapped only in an American flag, told us, “If you don’t vote, you?re going to get a spankie?), or would we prove to be slackers? We were slackers, voting at a 22% rate in the momentous election that gave Republicans control of the House. For the Millennials, 2004 was a banner year like 1992; and 2006, like 1994, will be viewed as something of a test.
What will happen next November depends on why there was a big surge in 2004. The reasons may include:
1. Generational replacement. The Millennials are different from X-ers in some basic and attractive ways; for example, they are more engaged in their communities, more optimistic, and more trustful of major institutions (other than the press). These qualities might explain higher turnout in ’04 and would help again in ’06.
2. Mobilization: Anecdotal evidence suggests that the parties and interest groups invested a lot of money in 2004 in techniques that work for young voters (such as face-to-face canvassing). They also specifically targeted youth. The level of mobilization will be lower this year, but probably at least as high as it was in 2002. An additional piece of good news is that mobilization in one election still motivates people in the next–as shown by careful experimental studies.
Partisanship: Although young voters skew toward moderates and independents and are still forming their political identities, they are increasingly hostile to the incumbent party. That anger was a motivator in 2004 and might again turn out the youth vote in ’06. However, Republican youth may not turn out unless the GOP works to mobilize them. The net result if Republicans stay home will be a bad year for youth turnout.
Attentiveness: Following the news is a leading indicator, because you must know what’s going on before you can vote. Young people’s news consumption rose sharply after 9/11/01. I see no evidence that it has increased since 2002. In fact, I would guess that it has fallen off.
international law and the current mideast conflict
I think that Hamas, Hezbollah, and Israel are all in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, Art. 33-34: “No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited. … Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited. … The taking of hostages is prohibited.”
Hamas and Hezbollah took hostages, not just prisoners, if they captured soldiers for the purpose of exchanging them for Israeli prisoners. But Israel admits that its response is a form of collective punishment. For instance, “Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert held Lebanon directly responsible for the ambush and promised a ‘painful and far-reaching response.'” The pain, evidently, is to be suffered by the Lebanese collectively, not just by Hezbollah as a military organization.
The Fourth Geneva Convention clearly binds Israel and Lebanon, which are signatories. When the PLO was responsible for the occupied territories, it filed a letter expressing a desire to sign as well. (The Swiss Federal Council replied “that it was not in a position to decide whether the letter constituted an instrument of accession, ‘due to the uncertainty within the international community as to the existence or non-existence of a State of Palestine.'”) In 1977, some countries–including the US but not Israel–accepted an addendum that would even more clearly render illegal some of the recent actions taken by Israel. I think the addendum is morally appropriate, although one could debate whether Hamas fits the description in Article 1 of “peoples fighting against colonial domination and alien occupation and against racist regimes in the exercise of their right of self-determination”.
The text of the addendum is below the fold. [I see that Chris Bertram on Crooked Timber has a similar take.]
box score political reporting
One of the standard clich?s of journalism is the treatment of political news as if it were a sport. Each event is described as a victory or a defeat for a particular politician. For instance, here’s how the two papers that I read over breakfast this morning reported the latest Administration policy on prisoners:
The New York Times: The new policy “reverses a position the White House had held since shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, and it represents a victory for those within the administration who argued that the United States’ refusal to extend Geneva protections to Qaeda prisoners was harming the country’s standing abroad.”
The Washington Post: “The developments underscored how the administration has been forced to retreat from its long-standing position.”
The Administration’s change of position was a defeat: that’s a fact. And it’s undeniable (almost tautological) that the shift was a “victory” for those who opposed the status quo. But reporters could choose many other facts to provide: for example, information about what has been done to various prisoners. The reliance on political wins and losses has the following serious drawbacks:
1) It encourages laziness. You don’t have to do any actual reporting to figure out that an event is good or bad for a politician.
2) It reinforces the notion that politics is a spectator sport, in which the important question is “Who’s winning?” (not, “What’s happening?”).
3) It adds to the political cost that incumbents incur when they change course for good reasons. When George Bush found out that Abu Zubaydah, whom he had described as Al-Qaeda’s chief of operations, was mentally ill and of no consequence, he supposedly told CIA Director George Tenet, “I said he was important. You’re not going to let me lose face on this, are you?” If that’s true, it’s evidence of almost criminal irresponsibility. But Bush also knew that if he changed his position, the press would report that as a sign of weakness–a “setback” or “defeat”–instead of allowing the president to take credit for learning. Reporting politics as a box-score only increases the odds that leaders will act like Bush.
(In fairness, I should note that after I read this morning’s papers and decided to write this post, I looked around for other examples of box-score journalism on the prisoner issue. The AP, Reuters, and L.A. Times stories really did not use that frame.)
democratic skills for professionals
What does an aspiring urban public school teacher need to know? Before she starts teaching, she should learn the material she is supposed to cover, something about pedagogy and assessment, some instructional techniques–and the ability to address fundamental problems in the system in which she will work. She cannot solve educational problems inside her own classroom, because senior managers and big bureaucratic structures create too many hurdles. She cannot take on managers and bureaucracies alone. In my experience, unions are unreliable. Thus she needs to work with other teachers, parents, kids, and community-members, often quite different from herself, to address common problems together.
Democratic skills (listening, deliberating, organizing, petitioning) are essential for teachers, as they are for many other professionals. For a good teacher, “civic engagement” is not a voluntary after-work activity, but the heart of her professional life. Therefore, it is exciting to watch Minneapolis Community College’s Urban Teacher Program embrace “advocacy and activism.” Specifically, their Associate’s Degree students lead urban students in Public Achievement projects. In Public Achievement, kids choose, define, and address community issues–a genuinely open-ended, non-ideological form of politics that will serve teachers well.