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Bi-Weekly Discussion - Political Science & Political Myths

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Hosted By
Brian B. and Chaim K.
Bi-Weekly Discussion - Political Science & Political Myths

Details

We're currently hosting our discussions at Café Walnut, not too far from our summer meeting spot in Washington Square Park. The cafe is near the corner of 7th & Walnut in Olde City. The cafe's entrance is below street level down some stairs, which can be confusing if it's your first time. Our group meets in the large room upstairs.

Since we're using the cafe's space, they ask that each person attending the meetup at least purchase a drink or snack. Please don't bring any food or drinks from outside. If you're hungry enough to eat a meal, they have more substantial fare such as salads, soups & sandwiches which are pretty good and their prices are reasonable.

The cafe is fairly easy to get to if you're using public transit. With SEPTA, take the Market-Frankford Line & get off at the 5th Street Station (corner of 5th & Market), and walk 2 blocks south on 5th and then turn right on Walnut Street and walk 2 blocks west. With PATCO, just get off at the 9th-10th & Locust stop and walk 3 blocks east & 1 block north. For those who are driving, parking in the neighborhood can be tough to find. If you can't find a spot on the street, I'd suggest parking in the Washington Square parking deck at 249 S 6th Street which is just a half block away.

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POLITICAL SCIENCE & POLITICAL MYTHS

This meetup will try to establish how "scientific" political science is, as well as which issues political scientists have reached a rough consensus on and which are still open for debate. We'll also address some common beliefs about politics that now appear to be empirically false - i.e. "political myths" - as well as beliefs based on kernels of truth that got embellished with a lot of exaggerations & falsehoods - what we might call "political legends" - and beliefs that sound plausible but are unsubstantiated & perhaps unfalsifiable (the "just-so stories" of politics).

Previously, we've hosted meetups that covered the expert consensus in other fields that bear upon politics. My hope is that over time we can try to establish a comprehensive list of issues on which subject matter experts have reached a relatively high degree of consensus. I don't think that we should go so far as to treat that list as a "holy text", but it could be useful as a series of null hypotheses & it would also establish where the burden of proof should lie in our political debates. For reference, here's the links to the earlier discussion outlines on the expert consensus in economics & international relations:

"Expert Consensus & Economics" (Nov. 27, 2016)
https://www.meetup.com/Philadelphia-Political-Agnostics/events/234098615/

"IR Scholars & The Foreign Policy Consensus" (Sept. 3, 2017)
https://www.meetup.com/Philadelphia-Political-Agnostics/events/240811945/

Unfortunately, I was not able to find polls of the political science profession as I did with economists & IR scholars. However, I did find a widely-shared article by the political scientist Hans Noel, "Ten Things Political Scientists Know That You Don't" (2010), that gave a succinct list of issues on which he claims political scientists have reached a relatively high degree of consensus, many of which run contrary to the average layperson's beliefs about politics. We'll review his list, and then we'll discuss 3 of those issues: (1) election forecasting & whether "fundamentals" matter more than campaigns, (2) the effects of campaign finance & lobbying, and (3) whether voters follow their economic self-interest or are often misled, specifically white working class voters.

DIRECTIONS ON HOW TO PREPARE FOR OUR DISCUSSION:

The videos & articles you see linked below are intended to give you a basic overview of the major points of agreement among political scientists that the average layperson would probably find surprising. As usual, I certainly don't expect you to read all the articles & watch all the videos prior to attending our discussion. The easiest way to prepare for our discussion is to just read the Hans Noel essay in Section I and watch the numbered videos linked under each section - the videos come to about 40 minutes total. The articles marked with asterisks are just there to supply additional details. You can browse and look at whichever ones you want, but don't worry - we'll cover the stuff you missed in our discussion.

In terms of the discussion format, my general idea is that we'll address the topics in the order presented here. I figure we'll spend about 30 minutes on each section.

I. "DEMOCRACY FOR REALISTS" & #PSFRUSTRATION:

  • IN LIEU OF POLLS OF THE PROFESSION, ARE WIDELY SHARED PAPERS & DISCUSSIONS AMONG POLITICAL SCIENTISTS A GOOD WAY TO ESTIMATE THE EXPERT CONSENSUS?
  • IF NOT, SHOULD WE BE AGNOSTIC ABOUT THESE ISSUES UNTIL WE CAN FIND EXPERT POLLS (OR META-ANALYSES), OR SHOULD WE GO WITH OUR INTUITION & WHATEVER PUNDITS WE CAN FIND THAT HAPPEN TO AGREE WITH OUR INITIAL VIEW?
  • WHY DO YOU THINK THE FINDINGS OF POLITICAL SCIENCE RUN CONTRARY TO SO MANY "FOLK THEORIES" ABOUT POLITICS? IS THE REALITY JUST TOO DEPRESSING, OR IS THERE A DIFFERENCE IN VALUES BETWEEN THE PUBLIC & POLITICAL SCIENTISTS?
  • EVEN ASSUMING THE POLITICAL SCIENTISTS ARE CORRECT AND THE IDEALISTIC VIEW OF DEMOCRACY ISN'T ACCURATE, SHOULDN'T WE STILL BE CAUTIOUSLY OPTIMISTIC GIVEN THE TRENDS STEVEN PINKER OUTLINED IN "THE BETTER ANGELS OF OUR NATURE"? OR DO THE FINDINGS OF POLITICAL SCIENCE SUGGEST NICHOLAS NASSIM TALEB IS RIGHT & THESE TRENDS ARE MORE FRAGILE THAN PINKER THINKS?

1a) Hans Noel, "Ten Things Political Scientists Know that You Don’t" (article)
http://faculty.georgetown.edu/hcn4/Downloads/Noel_Forum.PDF

Noel's paper is interesting because it's been shared & talked about a lot online and appears on a lot of syllabi for undergrad political science classes, and it appears that experts on both the libertarian right & center-left agree with its major points. Specifically, I've seen Noel's paper linked online & praised by the following 10 scholars & political journalists:

  • Trevor Burrus, a libertarian Cato Institute scholar with a JD & PhD in philosophy;
  • Jason Brennan, a libertarian political philosopher & political scientist at Brown University;
  • Brendan Nyhan, a centrist political scientist at Dartmouth who's been openly critical of both major parties, co-director at Bright Line Watch;
  • Seth Masket, a political scientist at University of Denver & liberal contributor to Vox & FiveThirtyEight;
  • Jonathan Bernstein, a former political scientist at UTSA & DePauw, who currently works as a liberal political columnist for Bloomberg, Salon & The American Prospect;
  • Jennifer N. Victor, a political scientist at GMU & liberal contributor to Vox;,
  • Michael Clemens, a development economist & fellow at the Center for Global Development;
  • Ezra Klein, a liberal political journalist & founder/editor of Vox;
  • Nick Baumann, a liberal editor at Huffpost & former editor at Mother Jones;
  • Jamelle Bouie, a liberal political journalist for Slate, American Prospect & The Atlantic.
    To me, that looks like a fairly impressive & bipartisan list. Note that I also tried & failed to find any political scientists criticizing Noel's essay, declaring it a distortion of the consensus in the field. This is why I think Noel's essay, in the absence of polls of the political science profession, is probably the best source to get a relatively unbiased look at widely shared beliefs of political scientists.

Here's my summary of Noel's points:

#1. It’s The Fundamentals, Not The Campaigns, That Determine Elections

The most exciting and visible part of politics is the political campaign, but it probably does not matter all that much - at least not as much as the political environment matters. Presidential elections can be forecast with surprising accuracy well before the campaign really begins. In fact, if all you know is the state of the economy, you know pretty well how the incumbent party (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incumbent#Incumbency_advantage) will do. If you account for a little bit more, like whether the country is at war, how long the president’s party has held the office, and which candidate is more ideologically moderate - per the Median Voter Theorem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_voter_theorem) - you can do even better.

Something similar is true for congressional elections, even midterm elections, although the relationships are not as strong, and the evidence is more mixed. Individual races are hard to predict. But in the aggregate, the fundamentals matter again. In midterms, the public’s perception of the president has a huge impact. And note that the president’s party almost always loses seats in midterm elections. In a down economy, a lot of loss should be expected, even without any reference to the specific policies of the incumbent - this is known as the "anti-incumbency factor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incumbent#Anti-incumbency)".

Campaigns can matter in the way they connect to the fundamentals. Campaigns also remind voters much about their own partisan attachments and inform them about the fundamentals. And of course, both parties are campaigning. If one stopped, maybe the other would have an effect. But even the most incompetent campaign does not seem to overwhelm the basic role of the fundamentals in elections, especially in national elections. Certainly campaign stunts and clever sound bites will not do it.

#2. The "Will of the People" is Incredibly Hard To Assess, Since Most People Don't Have Strong Policy Views

Public opinion surveys are incredibly imperfect tools, often interpreted by people who do not know or do not care about how they work. Respondents are influenced by all sorts of artifacts, from question wording and question order to the race and gender of the interviewer. They are also influenced by the political environment in which their answers are given, including the fundamentals (see Item #1). And they are very influenced by political elites. And when it comes to policy positions, most people just do not give good answers, often because they are not asked good questions. Simply put, surveys are not simple. Instead, years of research on public opinion has led us to a number of conclusions about how to interpret them: (1) Most people are not very ideological (although this may be changing, as the political parties become more ideologically distinct); (2) Most people do not have strong policy opinions; (3) Most people take cues from political parties and political leaders; (4) Individual polls don't tell us a lot (although aggregating polls can wash out some of the uncertainty).

#3. The "Will of The People" Is Virtually Impossible To Aggregate Let's assume “the American people” do have preferences, even if it's hard to measure them with surveys. We need to aggregate those preferences somehow. We need to let the American people participate in democracy and get collective decisions that are reasonable. That might not be possible. A mathematically derived principle in political science, "Arrow's Impossibility Theorem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem)", states that when voters have three or more distinct alternatives, no voting system can convert the ranked preferences of individuals into a community-wide ranking while also meeting the criteria we'd want out of an ideal democracy: unrestricted domain, non-dictatorship, unanimity, Pareto efficiency, and independence of irrelevant alternatives.

#4. An Election Victory Does Not Generate A Clear "Mandate"

Take items #1, #2, and #3 together, and it is hard to interpret elections the way that politicians and pundits want us to. Fundamentals guide voters who might not have well-defined attitudes to vote in a system that cannot satisfy all the demands of democratic decision-making. This is not a formula for sending a clear message to anyone. Yes, in a narrow sense, winning the election gives a politician a “mandate" in the sense that he or she is now legally empowered to exercise authority. But after every election, pundits will declare a more complex “mandate.” They will tell you not simply who won, but what that victory means. The winners won because they promised X and voters wanted Y and were afraid of Z. These narratives are created after the fact by people who want you to think one thing or another. Talk of "mandates" is best regarded as merely a rhetorical strategy.

#5. Duverger's Law Means A Two-Party System Is Almost Inevitable In A FPTP System; Third Parties & A No Party System Have Little to No Chance

Social scientists are notoriously unwilling to declare anything with certainty, but a possible exception within political science is Duverger’s Law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law): “The simple-majority single-ballot system favours the two-party system.” That is, with a "first past the post (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting)" (FPTP) electoral system like ours, we are likely to get a two-party system. Relatedly, Duverger's Law notes that proportional representation systems tend to support many more parties. As a scientific "law", Duverger’s claim is clearly false, since his predictions fail in many countries. Canada and India have multiparty systems, and Great Britain just elected a hung parliament. But the general tendency does hold up, for two reasons: (1) First, from the point of view of party leaders: Politicians, knowing about the problems with voting mentioned in item #3, do not want a minority opinion to win. They will bow out if they will be spoilers. Even if they believe their party or candidate is best, they might be better off merging with a larger party. (2) Second, from the point of view of voters: If your first choice does not have a chance to win, you might want to vote for a second or third choice who might win. You might otherwise feel like you are wasting your vote, and in a real way, you would be.

Noel explains in his podcast interview with Trevor Burrus that in addition to being angry that the FPTP system discourages third parties, many people are also angry that the FPTP system encourages parties & partisanship at all. They refuse to believe that the dynamics of collective action naturally lead to the formation of parties, and think that if only politicians were less selfish & more civic-minded they'd all be independents (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-partisan_democracy). Under Point #8, Noel explains this sentiment dates back to the Founders, many of whom worried extensively about the threats of “faction,” by which they meant both parties & special interests. But James Madison understood that this was a natural feature of politics: “Liberty is to faction what air is to fire." Rather than insisting that no politician ever bend to the will of a faction, Madison advocated a system in which factions were set against each other. His hope was that, in a large & diverse republic with separation of powers and checks & balances, no one faction could control all of government.

#6. Nonpartisanship Won't Work - Political Parties & A Certain Degree of Political Polarization Is Essential

Many people fantasize about a benevolent politician coming to Washington and putting partisanship aside to simply do what's best for the American people, but partisanship & political parties are essential for democracy to work for two major reasons:

(1) There are rarely "common sense solutions", in the sense of being value-neutral. Policy disagreements happen because liberals & conservatives disagree about the fundamental goals a government should have. It's true that politicians also want to win, and scoring political points is a part of that. But this winning is in service to policy goals that are divergent. Some compromises are just incoherent, and the wish for "compromise" is often one-sided. Discussing Point #7, Noel says that research by Laurel Harbridge & Neil Malhotra suggests that when people are asked, “What do you want in terms of a compromise?” it mostly boils down to they’d like the other side to stop being so intransigent and to move towards their position.

(2) "Political polarization" isn't necessarily bad. Some people who decry "political polarization" hark back to the relatively low political polarization America had in the mid 20th century, but a commission put together by the American Political Science Association concluded that lack of ideological distinction in the between the two parties prevented the parties from acting responsibly. From this criticism developed the notion of “Responsible Party Government.” The idea is simple: The major parties campaign on distinct platforms. Once elected, they enact those platforms. Then the voters can see what life is like under those platforms. If things go well, they can re-elect that party. But when what the parties stand for is muddled, it is hard to assign credit & blame. And so, even though no elected official has a "mandate" (see item #4), they should all enact the policies on which they campaigned. In fact, they should enact them whether they won in a landslide or not.

There are a lot of problems with the current American version of "Responsible Party Government". Partisan obstruction can prevent majorities from enacting their programs, and parties can capitalize on or be punished for things they had nothing to do with. And parties focused on winning elections are not necessarily motivated to achieve policy goals, just to appear as if they are. Nevertheless, "Responsible Party Government" is a reasonable standard, and that means we have to embrace political parties, not resist them. [Note: As I explain below, Achen & Bartels agree that voters tend to hold the incumbent candidate responsible for what happened in their term (specifically the last year), but they disagree that this is done rationally or that it encourages parties to act responsibly.]

#7. Most Independents Are Closet Partisans

It is true that if you ask a survey respondent if they identify with a major party or are “independent,” a growing number over the last several decades will say they are independent. The problem is that a majority of those independents act like partisans when it comes time to vote or take positions on issues. The American National Election Study divides political party members into "strong partisans" and "weak partisans" based on how often they say they vote the party line, and divides self-identified "independents"into "leaners" and "true independents" based on whether they say they gravitate more towards one party or another. And pretty much all of the recent growth in independents is among these “leaners” and increase in leaners comes at the expense of weak partisans. Strong partisans, on the other hand, would seem to be on the upswing, at least in the last few elections. All of these patterns are even more pronounced if we restrict our analysis to respondents who say they voted in the last election. That brings us to another important point about independents...

The "true independent" is supposed to be a careful citizen who evaluates the candidates and the issues, above the political mudslinging, making an informed choice. There are surely some people like that, but most independents are actually less engaged in politics. This makes sense, of course. If you do not care about politics, you are not going to choose sides. On the other hand, those who do care about politics generally do choose sides.

#8. The Dividing Line Between "Special Interests" And The General "Public Interest" Is Largely Fictitious

A "special interest" is generally thought of as an interest opposed to the “general interest” or collective will, but see items #2 and #3 above: There ain’t no such thing. Everyone in a democracy could be considered a loose member of several special interest groups, and it is hard to think of any political outcome that does not satisfy some interests and oppose others. Political scientists rarely talk about special interests. We used to use language like “interest-group pluralism” to describe the resulting political environment. The most important distinction in this world is not between special and general interests, but between organized interests (like unions, religious groups, and the NRA) and unorganized interests (like the unemployed or homeless). Today, many find “interest-group pluralism” to be an incomplete picture, because it does not capture the important role of political parties in managing these various groups. Yet the point remains: interests are just interests. They are not so special.

#9. The Dividing Line Between "Grass Roots" Organizations And "Astroturf" Is Mostly Fictitious

If a movement is "astroturf" if some outside force is organizing it, then all movements are astroturf. People do not spontaneously wake up and go to rallies - someone hosts the rally and invites them to come. Researchers on social movements and political protests know that movements require organization. Such organization is often decentralized, and it is often open to ordinary citizens rather than powerful elected officials. And yet, elected officials and other powerful figures are also deeply involved, so there is always a question about how much the leaders represent the people who are protesting, or how well the interests of the protestors mesh with the interests of the leaders of the movement. Who mobilizes matters, both for legitimacy and tactics, so transparency matters. If the groups behind the movement are secretive, that is a very different situation. But the mere fact that someone is doing the organizing is neither surprising nor damning.

#10 Things Political Scientists Do Not Know That Many People Take As A Given

Among the things that many people believe about polit, but that political scientists have found at best mixed evidence for:

  1. Money supposedly buys the votes of the general public through campaign ads. (Maybe savvy donors just donate to candidates who will win in the hopes of influencing them.)
  2. Money supposedly buys the votes of elected legislators. (Maybe savvy donors just donate to candidates who will vote the way they would like, and not to those who would not.)
  3. Parties supposedly influence the votes of elected legislators. (Maybe politicians just sort themselves into the parties they agree with in the first place.)
  4. Some candidates are supposedly just better campaigners than others.
  5. Democracy supposedly leads to economic growth. (Maybe economic growth enables democracy. Or maybe they are spuriously related.)
  6. Autocracy supposedly leads to economic growth. (Maybe economic performance enables dictators to hold onto power.)
  7. The media is supposedly biased. (Maybe they are just trying to tell us what they think we want to hear.)
  8. Voters supposedly make choices based on their own self-interest. (Maybe they rationalize their choices in this way.)
  9. Voters supposedly choose the candidate that is closer to their own preferences.
  10. People are supposedly more likely to vote when they think the election will be close.

To be sure, the fact that political scientists haven't been able to prove any of these things doesn't mean they aren't true. They haven't disproved them, either. But it does mean that the evidence isn't as strong and the case isn't as clear as we commonly assume.

Around the time Hans Noel's essay came out, Klein attended the American Political Science Association's convention in D.C. and asked the assembled political scientists what they wished politicians knew about politics. Here's what they said, all of which generally fits with Noel's points above:

(1) Presidential speeches don't make a big difference in terms of swaying public opinion. [This shouldn't be too surprising if, as Noel claims, entire political campaigns filled with speeches & debates don't appear to make much difference.]

(2) Term-limited "citizen-legislators" (as opposed to "career politicians") empower the very special interests they're meant to fight because their lack of knowledge would make them utterly reliant on the permanent fixtures of DC: staffers & lobbyists.

(3) Lobbyists don't run the show. The best predictor of legislative action isn't the money spent or the lobbyists involved, it's the politicians. Action becomes more likely when major players decided they wanted to act or suddenly were given the power to act.

(4) Politicians running for office should consult political scientists more to help them identify underlying political trends, and pay less attention to the 24-hour news cycle. Voters are driven primarily by the economy, and campaigns barely move the needle.

Brennan reiterates many of the 10 points in the last section of Noel's essay, and he points out that many laypeople, including pundits, often refuse to believe the findings of political science research when it conflicts with their intuition. He says they often go onto to attach political science, sayin something like: “The social sciences suck! They lack proper experiments and controls! [Insert various strawman criticisms.] Therefore, I am free to believe whatever I wish about politics, and I will continue to believe whatever causal claims best support the ideology I developed without any evidence at age 15.” But as Brennan points out, even if all your criticisms of the social sciences were correct, what this justifies is agnosticism, not folk theories.

1b) Christopher Achen & Larry Bartels, "The Key Takeaways from Democracy for Realists" (video - 1:05 min.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTkcV3UbJZ0

The political scientists Christopher Achen & Larry Bartels published a book, Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government in 2016 that echoed many of the same points Hans Noel made 6 years earlier. However, while Noel says he thinks "Responsible Party Government" theory is flawed but still a reasonably close to reality (see Point #6), Achen & Bartels completely reject it because they see voters as too irrational.

The key takeaways in the conclusion of their book (listed in the video above) are as follows, with additional material from their lectures added in brackets:

  1. Folk theories of democracy [incorrectly] assume that voters have preferences about policy, and express them when they cast their votes.

  2. Voters have little political knowledge and often lack coherent policy preferences. [Instead, most voters are attracted to charismatic public figures & politicians, and tend to adopt whatever policies that person advocates. As their allegiance switches from one leader to another, voters' stated policy preferences will fluctuate.]

  3. Ballot initiatives [and proportional representation] are incorrectly believed to increase democratic control and thereby lead to better policy outcomes. [But a more democratic government will often be more prone to making bad policies. For example, when voters can choose whether or not to pay for vital public services (e.g. fire fighters), they will often decide to cut funding so they can pay less taxes but this leads to worse outcomes in the long run (e.g. worse fires).]

  4. Voters are incapable of systematically holding politicians retrospectively accountable for the economy or general well-being. [This is partly due to voter's myopia - i.e. people tend to focus on conditions in the last year, not the politician's whole term. It's also due to voters' poor ability to attribute causation - i.e. politicians get praised or blamed for things they had no control over. Achen & Bartels show how shark attacks at the Jersey shore in the summer of 1916 hurt tourism & their local economy, and this appears to have caused a 10% drop in turnout among Democratic voters for Wilson in NJ in the 1916 election.]

  5. Electoral responses to short-term crises can have long-term effects. [Unfortunately, overreactions to crises often have untended consequences that prove to be negative.]

  6. People vote [and join political movements & parties] based on group identities. [The most salient group identity for a person is not always what you might expect. For example, when white Southerners began to gradually shift from the Democratic to the Republican party in the 1960s-80s, both pro- & anti-integration white Southerners joined at about the same rate. It was apparently their identity as Southerners, not as anti-integration racists, that was most salient & influential for them.]

  7. People generally do not choose group identities based on their opinions; rather, partisanship & group identity shape opinion. [To the extent that people retain opinions that aren't the norm for their party, they tend to rationalize this away by assuming their party is actually closer to their opinion that it really is.]

  8. In a democracy, the alternation of power between political elites is valuable. [This is not because the "Responsible Party Government" theory is accurate & irresponsible parties are punished for bad policies, but rather because alternation of power tends to prevent any one faction from accumulating too much power, which could lead to tyranny. However, we pay the price in terms of inefficient & erratic policymaking, which most voters dislike and leads to low government approval ratings.]

In his review of Democracy for Realists, Mann notes that most political scientists would agree that voters do not follow the expectations of idealistic models of democracy, but draws attention to competing theories that are far less damning to voters’ rationality. In particular, the research of Paul Sniderman (presented in Democratic Faith) & Arthur Lupia (presented in Uninformed) suggests that voters are more capable than Achen & Bartels would assert. In their view, voters have enough rationality and information to ensure a well-functioning democracy. As Mann summarizes the arguments: Achen & Bartels believe that citizens and elections are held to impossible, idealistic standards in the folk theory of democracy, which works against government responsiveness. Sniderman & Lupia, on the other hand, are offended by those who dismiss citizens as ignorant & incompetent; they seek to defend voters’ dignity and demonstrate the rationality & efficacy of their behavior in American democracy.

In the spring of 2015, the political scientist Jonathan Bernstein complained about laypeople refusing to believe political scientists and started a viral hashtag, #PSFrustration, on Twitter which led to a bunch of political scientists chiming in and listing well-supported theories that their students would often reject. Julia Azari lists several possible reasons for this disconnect:

(1) Empirical Issues: Political scientists have learned to assess whether a hypothesized connection is really there, or about whether an apparent connection is actually causal. This make scholars more cautious than the average layperson about asserting the specific impacts of things like campaign donations, gerrymandering or campaigns. But the underlying normative ideas don't reveal too much difference, necessarily, between political scientists and concerned citizens - there's widespread agreement that representation is good and bribery is bad.

(2) Normative Issues: Outside political science circles, parties & career politicians are widely viewed as problematic for democracy. Conversely, political scientists tend to think that politicians following reelection interest, "career politicians" who serve multiple terms, and parties that represent different points of view are not responsible very harmful and may even be desirable.

(3) View of Human Behavior: A lot of folk theories about democracy are rooted in a belief that people are infinitely complex and unique, and there's often an idealism about how third parties or independent candidates can change politics. But social science often finds that people behave in ways that are predictable and responsive to incentives. Those beliefs about how people behave inform political scientists' sense of what matters - institutions, rules, fundamentals - and lead them to these things favorably, for example, as useful ways of aligning predictable patterns of self-interested behavior with the collective goals of politics.

(4) View of the Status Quo & Its Alternatives: Political scientists often fear the alternative to the existing norms & institutions is Hobbes' state of nature - i.e. sectarian violence, civil war, or state collapse. Conversely, many laypeople seem to view the alternative to the status quo as a utopia that's both highly individualized and yet also driven by consensus & unity.

II. ELECTION FORECASTING, CAMPAIGNS & FUNDAMENTALS:

  • ARE POLITICAL SCIENTISTS ARGUING THAT CAMPAIGN SPENDING DOESN'T MATTER MUCH IN DETERMINING ELECTIONS, OR JUST NOT AT THE MARGIN?
  • DO THE WAYS IN WHICH CAMPAIGNS SPEND THEIR MONEY MATTER MORE THAN THE TOTAL AMOUNT?
  • IF CAMPAIGN ADS, SPEECHES & DEBATES CAN'T SWAY MANY "INDEPENDENTS" (BECAUSE THEY'RE CLOSET PARTISANS), CAN THEY SWAY THE FEW "UNDECIDED" & "SWING VOTERS"? DO THEY JUST BUILD NAME RECOGNITION & MOBILIZE EXISTING PARTY MEMBERS, OR NOT EVEN THAT?
  • HOW CAN POLITICAL SCIENTISTS CLAIM THAT "FUNDAMENTALS" MATTER MORE THAN CAMPAIGNS WHEN THEY CAN'T EVEN CONSISTENTLY PREDICT ELECTION OUTCOMES?
  • DOES LOW ACCURACY IN ELECTION FORECASTING MEAN POLITICAL SCIENCE IS NOT "SCIENTIFIC"?

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/DJja7iKX-vS0XVam40-OzjqafTk=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8609705/democracy_chart1.jpg

2a) Jules Suzdaltsev, "Do Presidential Debates Sway Voters?" (video - 3:37 min.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vecw6H3AaM

2b) Aaron Black, "The end of political campaigns as we know them? A new study suggests we’re doing it all wrong" (video - 5:45 min, start at 0:17)
https://youtu.be/fY2kHV-02g4?t=17

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/09/26/the-end-of-political-campaigns-as-we-know-them-a-new-study-suggests-were-doing-it-all-wrong/

III. "AFFLUENCE & INFLUENCE" AND THE "MONEY-IN-POLITICS MYTH":

  • TOTAL CAMPAIGN SPENDING FOR THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL RACE (INCL. PRIMARIES) WAS $2.4 BILLION, WHICH IS VERY CLOSE TO WHAT NIKE & PEPSI EACH SPEND ANNUALLY ON ADVERTISING (WORLDWIDE) - WHAT DOES THAT TELL US?
  • IF CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS DON'T BUY POLITICIANS' VOTES, WHY DO SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS EVEN BOTHER DONATING?
  • DOES THE GREATER SUMS SPENT ON LOBBYING INDICATE THAT IT SWAYS MORE POLITICIANS' VOTES THAN CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS? IF SO, WHY DO LOBBYISTS CONCENTRATE MORE ON POLITICIANS THAT ALREADY AGREE WITH THEM?
  • HOW CAN WE EXPLAIN THE TENDENCY (NOTED BY MARTIN GILENS IN "AFFLUENCE & INFLUENCE") FOR THE WEALTHY & WELL-CONNECTED TO GET THEIR WAY IN TERMS OF LEGISLATION, IF NOT THROUGH MONEY?

3a) Represent.Us, "Corruption Is Legal In America" (video - 5:50 min., based on Martin Gilens' 2012 book Affluence and Influence)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig

3b) NerveAMVMaker, "The Truth About Money in Politics. Why Sanders and Progressives are Wrong on Campaign Finance Reform" (video - 17:57 min.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFhcHt0u-uw

IV. WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH "WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH KANSAS":

  • WHY DO MANY POLITICAL SCIENTISTS & DATA JOURNALISTS DOUBT THOMAS FRANK'S THEORY THAT THE REPUBLICAN PARTY GETS THE WHITE WORKING CLASS TO VOTE AGAINST THEIR ECONOMIC SELF-INTEREST THROUGH "CULTURE WAR" RHETORIC?
  • IS FRANK RIGHT THAT DEMOCRATS HAD CONTROL OF THE HOUSE FOR 60 YEARS (SINCE FDR) UNTIL CLINTON EMBRACED NAFTA, DEREGULATED WALL STREET, "REFORMED" WELFARE, AND THEREBY ALIENATED THE WHITE WORKING CLASS?
  • HOW MUCH OF THIS DISPUTE IS BASED ON DIFFERENT DEFINITIONS OF "WORKING CLASS", I.E. POOR VS BLUE COLLAR?
  • HOW MUCH OF THIS DISPUTE IS BASED ON DIFFERENT DEFINITIONS OF "ECONOMIC SELF-INTEREST", I.E. DISPOSABLE INCOME VS SOCIAL SERVICES?
  • IS FRANK RIGHT THAT HIS ETHNOGRAPHIC APPROACH TO THE WHITE WORKING CLASS CATCHES THINGS THAT ANALYSES BASED ON SURVEY DATA MISS, OR DOES IT LEAD TO CONFIRMATION BIAS & JUST-SO STORIES?

4a) Thomas Frank, "It's Clinton Who Wrecked the Democratic Party" (video - 7:10 min, start at 1:00)
https://youtu.be/pmCibWptzZQ?t=60

*Andrew Gelman, "Why do people write news stories against their own interests" (blog post)
http://andrewgelman.com/2010/02/04/why_do_people_w/

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