Monthly Archives: September 2018

the pivotal youth vote in Ayanna Pressley’s election

Early this month, Boston City Councilor Ayanna Pressley defeated incumbent Rep. Mike Capuano in the Democratic primary. CIRCLE’s analysis shows that Pressley performed best in precincts where young adults or people of color are most numerous. Those precincts also saw the biggest turnout increases compared to the most comparable recent election. “For example, Boston’s Ward 21, Precinct 2—home to Boston University’s Student Village—saw 400 percent more votes cast in this primary compared to four years ago, which dwarfed the median increase of 166 percent across all precincts.”

It’s true that precincts with lots of youth or people of color tend to be located in the City of Boston, where Pressley has been a councilor. So it could be that she performed best within her own jurisdiction. (She is a respected veteran elected official, even though she is sometimes portrayed simply as an insurgent.) However, she also won precincts outside of Boston that have favorable demographics.

I find it interesting that age and race/ethnicity separately predicted support for her. Or, to put it another way, she did well in student precincts that are predominantly white and upper-income as well as in low-income neighborhoods.

the Massachusetts Citizens’ Initiative Review

[Press Release] – A 20-person panel of voters convened by the Massachusetts Citizens’ Initiative Review (CIR) pilot project has released its Citizens’ Statement on Question 1, the ballot question on nurse staffing limits.

The Citizens’ Statement is intended to assist voters by providing them with the results of their fellow citizens’ four-day deliberation on the ballot question. It sets out the panel’s key findings as well as the strongest and most reliable reasons to support or oppose Question 1.The Citizens’ Statement is available online.

The Massachusetts Citizens’ Initiative Review deliberations were held from September 12-15 at the Watertown Free Public Library. The campaigns for and against Question 1 both appeared before the citizen panel three times to present their arguments and answer questions.

The citizen panelists also heard from seven neutral experts in fields relevant to nursing, patient safety, and healthcare. Trained facilitators guided the deliberations that resulted in the Citizens’ Statement.

The Massachusetts CIR pilot project was organized by State Representative Jonathan Hecht in partnership with Tufts University’s Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life and Healthy Democracy, the organization that pioneered CIR in Oregon and others states. Experience in Oregon, where CIR has been part of the official election process since 2011, has shown it to be a highly effective and well-received way to inform voters about complicated ballot measures.

This is the second time Massachusetts Citizens’ Initiative Review has been used in Massachusetts.

In 2016, 77% of voters who saw the Citizens’ Statement on marijuana legalization (Question 4) said it was helpful in making their decision. On major factual issues, voters who read the Citizens’ Statement were better informed and more confident in their knowledge than those who only read the official voter guide. John Gastil, Professor of Communications at Penn State and one of the nation’s leading CIR researchers, will conduct surveys to determine how helpful the 2018 Citizens’ Statement proves for Massachusetts voters.

The 20-member citizen panel was selected from respondents to a mailer sent to 15,000 randomly-selected Massachusetts voters.

how Brexit is unlike Trump (and what to do about it)

When they think about Brexit, most of my American friends equate it with the election of Donald Trump. Both events are seen as manifestations of xenophobia, paranoia toward elites, and even Russian propaganda.

You can tell that this analogy is weak from the stance of Labour, which is meeting right now for its conference in Liverpool and debating a huge range of motions on Brexit. Yesterday, the Guardian reported:

Consensus appeared to break out as Jeremy Corbyn insisted he would follow the democratic will of his party if delegates voted for a second referendum on the final Brexit deal. But trouble could still be brewing. The Labour leader refused to say which way he would vote. The Unite chief, Len McCluskey, added his tuppence worth, suggesting it would be wrong for any new vote to include the option of staying in the EU. Remainers will be unimpressed.

Last night, after 5.5 hours of negotiation, party leaders emerged with a draft statement that criticizes “the Tories’ chaotic approach to the Brexit negotiations,” calls for a general election, and fudges everything else. Corbyn himself voted against Brexit, but he also voted against the key European treaties of 1975, 1992, and 2008; he has little positive to say about the current EU; and he has frequently pledged to “respect the referendum” that passed Brexit.

Imagine if Bernie Sanders won control of the Democratic Party and refused to say which way he would vote on Trump’s Wall or the refugee ban, while expressing respect for the policy implications of an election held several years ago. That would be plausible if Brexit were like Trump–but it isn’t.

I can’t overstate my own disappointment with the Brexit vote. My commitment to European integration goes back to the 1970s, when I was a child in a London primary school with a literal WWII bomb site next door. The European Economic Community was forming in those days, and we studied each member country in turn–in order to become peaceful, pluralist, democratic Europeans. (By the way, this was a Christian socialist state primary school run on progressive lines.) I’m proudly a citizen of the USA but have remained deeply invested in the ideal of European unity.

However, it is a matter for debate and reasonable disagreement whether the current form of the EU merits membership. One doesn’t have to be a bigot or a fool to want to leave. If you approach politics from the left, you will see both pros and cons to exit.

For Labour politicians, ambiguity is attractive, because they can hope to win votes from both sides on Brexit while blaming the inevitable fiasco on chaotic Tory management.

I happen to believe in what Bill Galston once called “the obligation to play hardball,” and I think a Labour policy of deferring on Brexit until the outcome crushes the Conservatives is possibly a good hardball play (to use a baseball metaphor for the land of cricket).

But it also has risks, even from a Labour perspective:

  1. Constitutional risks: there is now a widespread sentiment in Britain that respecting a referendum is the best way to honor democracy. (And holding a second referendum would somehow undermine the people’s will.) The traditional view was that the British people were best represented by Parliament, which they choose to exercise sovereignty between elections. That is a better political theory, because government should be deliberative and flexible. Parliamentary sovereignty would return if Labour took a clear position against Brexit. No one would doubt that Parliament could overrule the referendum once voters gave Labour a mandate to do so. It would then be equally clear that Britain is heading toward Brexit because the Tories are in the government. Hence there is only one reason that parliamentary sovereignty is at risk: the opposition refuses to take a position on the most pressing issue of the day.
  2. Risks to the European left: many have noted that if Labour takes over and Britain gains the same status as Norway (all the rules without a vote in Brussels), then Europe will lose the strongest potential voice of the left–Corbyn, as the leader of the second-biggest EU economy. The best way for a Labour voter to try to influence all of Europe is to stay in the EU.
  3. Risks to the United Kingdom: the most obvious danger is the collapse of Irish peace due to a hard border. But you can also see pro-European Scotland constantly looking to leave Britain if the UK leaves the EU. There are arguments for Scottish independence, but if you’re a Labour voter (either north or south of the border), you should definitely want to keep all those leftish Scots in the country.
  4. Risks to Labour: I can believe that Britain will sustain a terrible shock from Brexit and that voters will long blame the Tories for it. But will they respect Labour if Labour didn’t oppose Brexit while it had a chance? On the other hand, if the exit goes reasonably well, the Tories will benefit. Thus ambiguity presents electoral risks, not just as benefits, for Labour.

self help: a short story

Political prisoner K. was sentenced to solitary, with only cement walls, a cot, a stinking bucket, and a food slot for company.

One day, on his way back from interrogation, he saw a tattered paperback on the floor. The guard let him take it with him. It turned out to be Letting Your Inner Boss Shout by Dr. Bradford P. Bradley, PhD.

K. was enraged at first by its solecisms, trivialities, cliches and lexical trespasses. Anything would be better than this! After reading it several times without finding any value in its Six Winning Strategies for Asserting Your True Needs in an Office Context, he began selecting fragments from the pages. The rule was to leave chosen words in place but hide the rest. For instance:

Another game: rearranging all the words of a sentence to say something better:

The Six remember. Strategies, always.

True, winners: their real minds speak.

These activities engaged K’s. attention for several days, but something kept intruding. Or rather, someone. Dr Bradley, PhD.–Brad Bradley–just Brad. Was he raggedly bearded and balding, with spots on his head and long speeches to give? Or a young guy, bored out of his mind, looking for new life though writing? A pseudonymous woman, quiet observer of her office culture? An ironist, chuckling as he typed?

K. couldn’t quite tell. Alternatives multiplied into a whole community of Brads.

The real author, whoever it might be, seemed to deserve the respect of attention. Maybe Brad really had only five strategies in mind, but the book was too short and he’d wracked his poor brain until he came up with a sixth to pad the pages. Or maybe Brad knew that eleven strategies were necessary for achieving your life goals, but the cheapskate publisher forced him to cut five of them, and now he was worried to death about his misinformed readers.

It was good, in any case, to have a companion. The six strategies had been meant as gifts; perhaps it would be better to accept them as such. With thanks, even.

Prisoner K. and Dr. B. Just the two of them, in solitary but not solitary. Shouting their inner bosses. Hearing the other’s shouts. Having someone to walk with blindfolded to the final wall.

(Chicago, Sept. 20)

why learn game theory? (a lesson plan that includes a game)

You may or may not be interested in games: playing them, designing them, or analyzing them with the tools of game theory. It is certainly understandable if games are not your thing. However, I believe that everyone should develop the skill of understanding interpersonal situations in terms of the choices and consequences that confront every actor, which is the essence of game theory.

This is a way of detecting problems that you might be able to fix. It is also a way to be more fair. Too often, we analyze situations in terms of the choices that confront us and the results that will befall us if we make any choice. We see other people as doing the right or the wrong thing, from our perspective. It is important to step away from that first-person view and assess the choices–and the costs and benefits–that confront everyone. Then their behavior may seem more reasonable, and the root of the problem may lie in the situation, not in the other people’s values.

When used as models of real life, games simplify and abstract. That is both a limitation and a huge advantage: a model can clarify important problems and patterns that may be hidden in the real world’s complexity.

Games do not presume that the players are selfish; in fact, altruists can get tangled up with coordination problems that games model well. Nor do games assume that people have full information or act rationally; uncertainty, randomness, and error can be built in.

Games do model situations in which people or other entities (e.g., animals, companies, nations) make separate choices, and the outcome results from the interaction of their decisions. Games are not very helpful for modeling other kinds of situations. One important form of civic action that they do not model well is a discussion about what is right (and why). Exchanging opinions and reasons isn’t well illuminated by a game. Therefore, I do not think that civic actors should only learn from games, yet game theory is a useful skill.

One way to introduce game theory is to play a game and reflect on how it works as a model.

Almost identical lesson plans can be found all over the Internet for a classroom game that models the Tragedy of the Commons using Goldfish crackers. I’m not sure who deserves the authorial credit for designing this lesson in the first place, but I have adopted it for several different classes and will share my current design.

Materials: goldfish crackers (“fish”); plastic bowls (“lakes”); and forks (as tools for fishing).

Each group of four people should sit in a circle around its lake, which contains nine fish to start. Players “fish” by removing the goldfish from the bowl with a fork. All groups fish for 15 seconds while the instructor keeps time. Then students put down their forks and the fish “reproduce”: each fish left in the lake produces two offspring, up to a total population of 16, which is the carrying capacity of the lake. Then you repeat fishing for another season until either the seasons are over or the fish run out.

I do not explain the goal or what counts as winning, because that will vary in interesting ways.

Each round has different rules.

  1. We play three seasons without talking at all.
  2. We play three seasons and may talk before the game begins and during it.
  3. Each group plays an unannounced number of seasons before I stop them. They may talk.
  4. We play three seasons silently, and each group rotates one fisher at a time. That person may spend as little or as much time as she likes. As long as she holds her fork, the others must wait.
  5. We play using game 2 rules, except students may take fish from any table.

I keep track of the largest number of fish collected by any individual in each game and the number of fish left in the whole room at the end of each game.

Below are the results from yesterday’s game, with 52 Tufts undergrads. Note that 68 fish were left when the number of seasons was unknown and students could talk. That is more than seven times more fish than survived in the first game, with a known number of seasons and no ability to communicate orally.

Questions for discussion:

  • Did we observe “tragedies,” or not?
  • When we did not, why not? What solutions did groups come up with?
  • What were individuals trying to achieve? (Responses will likely vary: obtaining the most fish, trying to be fair, trying to look like nice people, learning by experimenting with different tactics.)
  • Were your objectives affected by your perception of what other players were trying to achieve? (A norm can be understood as a shared sense of the goal.)
  • What is the optimal solution? (Students should consider: maximizing the number of fish consumed, or the number of fish preserved at the end, and/or equity among the players. Other proposals may also emerge.)
  • What parameters are included in the game? (Responses should include: attributes of the physical world; attributes of the community; official rules; and rules-in-use.)
  • How realistic is the scenario? What is it a realistic model of?
  • What assumptions does it make? How might those differ in reality? For instance, what if we played with $100 bills instead of Goldfish crackers?
  • Why did everyone follow the instructor’s rules? Why not just grab the Goldfish?
  • To what extent did additional rules emerge in practice? Is it realistic that people followed rules?
  • In general, is it helpful to model a society using games? What assumptions does a game model make? (Selfishness?) What might a game not model well?

See also: evolution, game theory, and the morality of modern human beingsthoughts about game theory; and game theory and the fiscal cliff (ii).