Participants have been recruited through the political party organizations (at least I was), and appear to only have the option of buying or selling “stock” in our own party and/or government coalition. I assume part of the reason why we are restricted to our own party is the need for keeping the results secret to avoid incentives for strategic attempts at driving up the predicted value.

Unlike the Iowa experiments, this experiment is not conducted with “real money”. Each participant is given a number of virtual credits, and as far as I know there is no winning prize. This does of course give weak incentives towards predicting results accurately. If the  result wasn’t being kept secret until election day, we might even have a serious adverse incentive to manipulate the predicted result to give our party “wind in the sails” towards the election. Such secrecy seems to be maintained, though, also to the extent of not letting us know the predictions made on other parties.

It seems highly likely to me, though, that the weak incentives for “winning” will cause party member participants to systematically overvalue their own party’s election result, especially when unable to also “invest” in other parties. The only alternative to holding “stock” in your own party is not holding stock…. i.e. having inert credits.

Of course it would possibly be likely that such a bias is so systematically distributed that it can be predicted and controlled for trhough discounting by some factor. Still I can’t help but think that there would be a chance for better predictions if we were either allowed to “invest” in all parties or had actual economic incentives to “win”.

In any case it’s interesting to see new methods of prediction getting tested. The Iowa results look rather good.

I start off with posting the last rewrite of the outline of my thesis:

Thesis outline

I start out with a belief that deliberation is important to democracy and that our current systems of democracy are in several ways detrimental to good deliberation. I believe that this affects the quality and outcome of political decisions without actually empowering the people in the way supposed by much of current thought.

I do however realize that my beliefs are not very important to anyone but myself. My beliefs have no relevance to scientific debate if I cannot transform them from beliefs into complete scientific arguments. I am furthermore of the impression that current thought on deliberation, although far advanced, suffers a lack of credence in the social sciences because of weak empirical underpinnings.

This has led me to single out three research topics, each of which will be devoted a separate section of this thesis. The topics are separate and will be handled with different methodical approaches, but will hopefully constitute a meaningful totality. My main goal is to effectively argue that deliberation is important to democracy and to contribute in the search of effective ways to strengthen that idea through empirical research.

I) Why deliberation is important in representative democracy

The first research question is the simplest, but also easily the most controversial. But it is my opinion that one cannot start a theoretical debate without first asking “why?” What makes this a relevant topic of research? That is what I will try to answer in the first part of my paper.

I will not try to argue that deliberative democracy is a completely different type of democracy, one that is superior to and inconsistent with the current trend of liberal representative democracy. Quite the contrary, I will try to argue that deliberation is neither inconsistent with liberalism nor the ideals of representative democracy, but are in fact necessary parts of any working system of democracy. Following this I will not argue for the overthrow of the modern style of democracy, rather just to highlight some potential problems so that they may in the future be properly addressed, and some of the potential harmful effects remedied.

This section will mostly be a theoretical argument, drawing upon the classics of democratic thought, the major liberal thinkers and the recent day theorists concerned with deliberation.

II) How some aspects of our current institutions serve to discourage deliberation

Although I will not argue the overthrow of the current institutions of democracy, I will try to show how the current system doesn’t facilitate good deliberation, but in some instances actually discourages it. In particular I will examine the formation and power of political parties, and how we can expect these to have a particularly detrimental effect on deliberation within the political system.

This section will also to a large degree be theoretical in focus. I will however try to supplement theory with existing empirical research to the degree this is available.

III) How deliberation may be studied empirically

Studies of deliberation, despite having spawned a rather rich theoretical literature over the last few decades seem to have had a disproprtionally weak impact on the mainstream of political science. I attribute much of this to a view of deliberation as a utopian concept that has so far belonged mostly to the realm of philosophy with too little empirical research. In particular, its perceived non-quantitative nature seems to be at odds with the dominant naturalistic methodoligcal paradigm of current political science. This thesis aims to remedy some of that through exploring possibilities for empirical studies of deliberation.

Using two Norwegian student political bodies as the basis, I will apply a method developed by Jürg Steiner et al. in their book Deliberative politics in action, the most promising method yet to see extensive empirical testing. This comparative study will be used as a basis for evaluating the effectiveness of this method for testing the effect of political parties on deliberation as well as its general applicability to studies of deliberation.

This radio program about research in social science really interested me. It features interesting topics and interviews with leading social scientists and thinkers. Political science seems to have a pretty good presence among them. I’ve listened to the broadcasts for the past three weeks – of particular interest in those were a discussion with Michail Rykin on Russian democracy and the rehabilitation of Stalin, with Anthony Giddens on the politics of climate change and with Kevin Doogan on “New Capitalism”. A pretty impressive lineup.

As a program from perhaps the most established public broacasting institution in the world, we expect the technical quality and the host to be of top notch quality, and they are. There isn’t anything to put my finger on there. The host, Laurie Taylor, isn’t a scientist himself, but he seems to have enough insight paired with being a good radio host. It all makes for interesting radio.

The professional radio format is however also the program’s biggest weakness. It isn’t made for political science nerds like me, but for a general audience. Because of this, interesting topics are compressed into smaller sound bytes than I’d like to see. For the most part they’re not deep, lengthy analyses, but quick interviews and science teasers. For example I was very frustrated when the extremely interesting insights by Michail Rykin were cut short after just 10 minutes. I’m used to people getting to speak for one or two times 45 minutes. Still, I’m really happy I got to hear it, and it spurred my interest into looking up those perspectives on my own.

One last little annoyance also needs to be mentioned. For some reason, the podcast feed seems to include only the last program at any given time, unlike most podcasts that include a backlog of several episodes. If you wait for more than a week between updating your podcasts that means you’ll lose an episode. Luckily it’s possible to get old episodes from the website, but it’s a bit annoying that they’re not in the podcast stream itself.

The blog Anne is a Man also has reviewed this podcast.

[...]so I am not in favour of protectionism, as I just said, I am just in favour of European measures – measures decided at the European level – that would prove to our citizens that we are taking into account their fears and worries and that we are trying to protect our European economy, that we are trying to protect our industries. This is a very difficult balance we have to find, but this is not protectionism. Protectionism means today that the UK would take some very concrete measures just to protect one of its plants, in New Hampshire for example, or London. Or that France would take some very national measures just to protect one of its industries or one of its plants in Normandie or the south of France without taking into account the interest of the UK and Germany and Spain and Italy. That’s the difference between the two ways of protectin industries and protecting our economies[...]

I just give a concrete example. The concrete example that is to me the best example of what we need today, si the automotive industry. If we don’t take any kind of measure to support the automotive industry in France, the UK, and also in Italy with Fiat, the automotive industry in Europe will disappear in a few months, or let’s say in two years. Just because the US on their side, has decided to give more than twenty-five billion dollars to General Motors, in direct help to General Motors: Twenty-five billion dollars. If we just say that’s a problem with the US. They should not give twenty-five billion dollars to the GM, that’s unacceptable and I’m not happy with that measure. If we just say this, letting our automotive industry die in a few months, I can assure you we run the risk of having very big political troubles in a few months or a few weeks.

That is why we need to support our automotive industry, even if it is not allowed by the Commission to day, we have to find the right balance, but we have to support our automotive industry. That is really the line we need to draw between saving our industries, doing our best so that no industry disappears in the coming months and doing things that would only mean that we are attached, and that we are in favour of protectionism.

I know the difference is very hard to see and that the line is very hard to draw, but this is the difference between protectionism as such and defending our industry.

You are quite right, Mr. Le Mair. The difference is difficult to see. In fact, what you’re describing sounds like the definition of a trade war. Or was the difference that measures to protect EU industries from US competition is not protectionism since it allows intra-EU competition? A trade war over automobiles between the EU and the US is for some reason not the same as a trade war between the US and France?

Domestic political pressures seems to have politicians grasping at straws and scrambling towards protectionist measures. That doesn’t seem like a good way for the world economy to pull itself out of the pinch it’s in.

This all points to a more basic issue: Is there only one correct, philosophically defensible way to do social science? Some scholars believe that only an approach aimed at causal explanation is valid. B&K take the opposite side but adhere to an equivalent exclusiveness. The implication of their position seems quite clear: only one kind of social science will pass muster.

If I interpret LFC correctly, we both agree that both major philosophical ideas of social science has their merit and have contributed to social science as a whole. His post made me interested in reading the entire piece, which in a way surprised me and made me think even if I for the most part disagree with it.

On page 25, Bevir and Kedar state their mission as:

Before we turn to Sartori and Collier, however, we wish to reiterate that our critique of them is a philosophical one. Our critique attempts to unearth the philosophical assumptions in their methodology, showing them to be naturalistic and hence, given the foregoing arguments, inappropriate for political analysis. We seek thereby to shift the debate from the practical advantages of methodological strategies to their underlying philosophical assumptions. Given our philosophical agenda, there is no need for us to examine the soundness or quality of the substantive outcomes of Collier and Sartori’s approaches to concept formation. Rather, our critical task will have been fulfilled once we manage to demonstrate that those scholars’ methodologies are marked by a discredited naturalism.

They appear to be going on a crusade against current qualitative methodology on the grounds that it has accepted too much of the philosophy of science of naturalism and has thus undermined its own philosophical foundation. In their view, this makes current social science irrelevant.

In my opinion – and this is in large part what makes social science interesting – the acceptance of naturalist methodology, if not a strict naturalist philosophy of science, is a pragmatic way of accepting something less than complete knowledge as something that might still be useful. For me, the essence of social science is the ability to combine philosophical ideals and humanist concepts of understanding and intentionality with naturalistic conceptions of empiricism and causation to create better, if not complete, understanding of phenomena.

It appears to me that it is such perversions of the search for ultimate enlightenment that Bevir and Kedar are crusading against. And this is where I think they are moving beyond the realm of social science altogether.

The line they try to draw between themselves and the ‘naturalists’ (which is really more of a great gulf than a line) depends in larte part on the latter’s inattentiveness to the “holistic nature of meaning”. This concept – rather elusively defined in their article – appears to imply that intentionality is the only relevant aspect of human action, that study of outcomes is unimportant for understanding. They are opposed to social scientists reducing “meaning” to a variable in a larger picture. In their words (p. 30):

This atomization of concepts forecloses the possibility of holistic explanations that would open out on to the whole web of beliefs of social actors. Here too we thus find the naturalist elision of meaningfulness.

…and thus we get to their conclusion, and the essence of their work. I’m not familiar enough with Sartori and Collier to assess whether or not their analysis of these two authors make sense, so I stick with the general conclusions:

We began this essay by showing that there has arisen a widespread agreement (among philosophers if not in the unreflective practice of many social scientists) that anti-naturalist premises are the most appropriate for social science, where anti-naturalism highlights the meaningful and contingent nature of social life, the situatedness of the scholar, and so the dialogical nature of social science.

It still appears to me like what they are trying to do is discard social science as a whole, which is pragmatic by nature, and return to the realm of philosophy.

Still, their thoughts are interesting to read and discuss. I thank LFC for giving me (yet another) interesting few hours of distraction from my thesis work that will surely make me a better and more reflected social scientist, but not necessarily one with good grades to show for it.

We underscore the critical importance of rejecting protectionism and not turning inward in times of financial uncertainty. In this regard, within the next 12 months, we will refrain from raising new barriers to investment or to trade in goods and services, imposing new export restrictions, or implementing World Trade Organization (WTO) inconsistent measures to stimulate exports.

The report states that the developed economies resort to subsidizing of export industries, while the developing use a number of different measures, among them imposing tariffs. According to the World Bank, this is testimony of the superior financial strength of the developed economies. The generated deficits might however increase pressure to “wall off” the economy, by which I assume they mean increasing trade tariffs.

When the rich countries of the world resort to direct subsidies for business, as is the case with the American car industry subsidies, the poorer countries should have reason to fear. Neither rich nor poor countries can afford to stop trading, but the fact that the richer countries have access to subsidies and the poor countries must wall off trade might prove very bad news for the poorer countries in the long run.

Find the rather short and easily read report here:

http://siteresources.worldbank.org/NEWS/Resources/Trade_Note_37.pdf

The standards document seems to be very basic, but still lay down some important ground rules for minimum requirements for the credibility of a poll. I’d like to see it go into some more detail also on what is required of the questions, but that would of course have to be less concrete and authorative.

10 points to the NYT for a good start.

A tip of the hat to Bård Vegard Solhjell for bringing this to my attention.

The spectacular collapse of some of the post-communist tiger economies led to demands at an EU summit in Brussels for a rescue fund of €190 billion (£170 billion) to stop social collapse in the Eastern nations spilling over into the rest of Europe.

The plea, led by Hungary, was rejected in a bad-tempered meeting of the 27 European leaders, dominated by fears that Western EU countries would rather prop up their own large industries and jobs at the expense of the East.

Ferenc Gyurcsany, the Hungarian leader, openly raised the spectre of collapse in Eastern Europe and the creation of a new Iron Curtain.

“Central Europe’s refinancing needs in 2009 could total €300 billion, 30 per cent of the region’s GDP,” he said in a paper calling for a fund of €160 billion to €190 billion to be set up by the richer EU members.

“A significant crisis in Eastern Europe would trigger political tensions and immigration pressures. With a Central and Eastern European population of 350 million, of which 100 million are in the EU, a 10 per cent increase in unemployment would lead to at least five million unemployed people within the EU.” (timesonline.co.uk)

Yahoo! News doesn’t have quite the same bleak outlook:

However, EU leaders opted instead for a case-by-case approach to helping troubled countries in the region “on the basis of all available instruments,” according to a statement issued after the summit.

“This idea of dividing up into old member state countries, eurozone countries, non-eurozone countries, north against south, or east against west, that is clearly an approach we rejected,” said.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said it was the eastern European countries that had said “they do not want a programme just for them.” as “there is a great diversity of situations.” (news.yahoo.com)

So, the EU family has either let its poor eastern brothers out to dry, or it is just about to implement case-by-case help packages. If no action is taken at all, it could become a massive problem for the EU as the crisis is likely to spill over into the political sphere. Not only should we expect to see much less public support for the union, but also, as Professor Nouriel Robini writes:

Deeply unpopular austerity measures, including slashed public wages, tax hikes and curbs on social spending will keep fanning public discontent in the Baltic states, Hungary and Romania. Dissatisfaction linked to the economic woes will be amplified in the countries where governments have been weakened by high-profile corruption and fraud scandals (Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria).

The political forces most likely to benefit from public disaffection are those running on populist platforms, which could disrupt efforts to battle the effects of the economic crisis. Latvia could be a case in point, as there are growing concerns that the coming election campaign might suspend the fiscal austerity measures required by the IMF bail-out package. Two other political hot spots that are at risk of early elections are Romania and Estonia, while Bulgarian national elections are due in mid-2009.

In sum, the crisis could put the E.U.’s free market rules under pressure. A big rise in support for populist and radical parties in the region could put social, structural and environmental reforms on hold and even call into question the economic and political model Eastern European countries have followed since the 1990s. (Forbes.com)

And should this come true, the EU is in great trouble. I have been a EU sceptic for quite a while, at least as far as Norwegian membership is concerned. But as much as I might dislike some aspects of the EU, I don’t want to see a massive economic downturn spreading all over Europe.

Fremskrittspartiet has always been a party critical to immigration and foreign cultural influence. It may not be quite fair to compare them with Jörg Haider in Austria or Gert Wilders in the Netherlands, but to a certain degree they play on some of the same fears.

In a project paper I previously posted on this blog, one of the few clearly significant correlations I could find in the occasionally rather contradictory voter mass of this party was between the propensity to vote for FrP and a scepticial attitude to foreign culture. In previous elections they have gained much whenever immigration and scepticism to foreign cultures has been allowed to become a dominant topic in the election campaigns

At the moment, foreign influence on Norwegian culture is one of the hot topics in Norwegian politics. But the election is still many months off, and it will take hard work, skill and some luck for Fremskrittspartiet to be able to keep this topic alive all the way until September, but if they manage it they might actually be able to make their ambitions for government power somewhat more credible than they are today.

And with so much to gain, I suspect that Fremskrittspartiet will give it a go. Besides the general comments about islamization, party leader Siv Jensen has also recently launched (verbal) attacks at a university college for allowing an imam that denies Holocaust to speak to students and the government for letting international agreements get in the way of expelling suspected Iraqi terrorist-supporter Mullah Krekar.

We may be looking at a season of political debate that might become very ugly indeed…

Further reading:

• This blog: “Who votes for Fremskrittspartiet?“
• Dagbladet.no [in Norwegian]: “- Kampen mot radikal islam er vår tids viktigste“
• NRK.no [in Norwegian]: “-Sivs beskrivelse er langt fra sann“
• Dabladet.no [in Norwegian]: “Siv Jensen advarer mot snikislamisering“
• Daniel Pipes blog: “How many islamists?“

This was picked up by Norwegian media when Norwegian parliamentarians met with Swedish counterparts and presented under the heading “Met by laughter in Sweden”. What the Swedes were laughing at was the level of micromanagement in road building that the Norwegian parliament is involved in. In Norway, every road builiding project is a parliament issue, and Helland and Sørensen have proved that this leads to non-optimal distributions of road construction money.

Norwegian Secretary of Transportation Liv Signe Navarsete doesn’t get the most important point:

- These are scientists that think the country can be planned with a calculator and that obviously find it profitable to close down local communities. There are numerous considerations to be made regarding housing distribution, industry and tourism. We need to develop business and work all over the country, not just in central areas. (Aftenposten, my translation)

The virtues of cost-benefit analysis can of course be debated, and there is a long standing Norwegian tradition of valuing distributed settlement of a lot higher than what is done in economic models. I think politicians might have been over-valuing it, but that isn’t the most important point here.

The most disturbing point isn’t that the distribution of money is non-optimal from a cost-benefit perspective. That’s the nature of politics. The big problem is that there is a skewed distribution as a result of election strategy concerns. That is the point that should be debated, and which Secretary Navarsete is drawing attention away from. Valuing decentralized communities highly is acceptable from a democratic point of view. Consistently bribing swing voters with public money isn’t.

Sources:

• Helland and Sørensen (2008) [Requires subscription] “Geographical Redistribution with disproportional representation: a politico-economic model of Norwegian road projects.” Public Choice, October 2008
• Helland and Sørensen (2008) [Open access] “Geographical Redistribution with disproportional representation: a politico-economic model of Norwegian road projects.” Open access working document, Oslo:BI
• Are Slettan [in Norwegian]: “Navarsete ler av forskere“