A Shrewdness of Apes

Off to Lima

2011-11-28T19:46:00.002-05:00

This blog is more or less static. It's just been too busy of a year to blog regularly. I've been working hard on papers, have been involved in two iterations of Vote Compass, and have done some teaching. But, I thought I'd drop a note here to direct you to a new riding blog, which is documenting my ride, with Sam and Nate Millar, from Canada to the bottom of South America.

I made a rather fast ride down to Lima in July, and then parked my bike there. Sam and Nate have been winding their way down since the start of November, and will arrive in Lima on the first of December. I'll fly in and join them. Then we'll begin our ride the rest of the way down.

The blog is here. Keep looking ahead.

PS Look out for a perhaps revived blog in the new year.

Stop the verbal abuse at the RCMP!

2011-02-08T21:30:00.003-05:00

Return to more traditional kicks to the face!

William Elliot, the first civilian commissioner of the RCMP, is resigning. One of his former underlings -- apparently cowed by Elliot's gruff stye -- is recommending a return to non-civilian leadership at the RCMP. The biggest shame of this whole fiasco is that the opposition appears to be ready is going to cave and agree. They'll call for another officer be put in charge of the RCMP. And they'll assume that some oversight board can control this person. Ask Commons committees how much oversight they had over the last commissioner.

I'd be happy to eat my words, but I don't expect to.

If you're looking for a laugh, or a reason to cry, check out Don Davies' performance here, starting around 7 minutes. He appears either completely naive or entirely disingenous. Neither is very becoming.

Egypt

2011-01-31T19:49:00.001-05:00

I am not an expert on Egypt, or on democratic emergence, or on Arab politics. So, I shall just share two things. First, this video is remarkable. Second, at the start of our Cairo to Cape Town trip, Sam and I kicked around Alexandria for a week. One of those days was spent with a taxi driver who spoke quite good English. We were trying to gain access to the port at Alexandria, and he was doing his best to free us from the bureaucratic net someone had dropped on us. It was a fool's errand, which at one point involved us in a taxi with him, a harpoon fisherman, a fellow who sold knock-off leather jackets, and one other fellow. I've posted the picture above. He was a man who was very proud to be Egyptian, but very keen to leave. I can still picture the road we were on when he told us "We are good people, but we live in a jail." Maybe, no more.

Susan Millard

2011-01-26T21:08:00.000-05:00

There's much about party politics which I don't much like. Chief among these things are the often blind allegiance to a party's line; the partisan's susceptibility to the narcissism of small differences, leaving one to think that supporters of other parties are somehow fundamentally different and less deserving of favour; and the sometimes unquestioning commitment to leaders, who are usually just as fallible as the rest of us. That I am susceptible to all of these things is probably the chief reason I've not been more engaged in active politics, despite my professional and personal obsessions.

But all citizens are not made alike. The same forces that bring out the worst in some of us bring out the best in others. At it's best, engagement in electoral politics brings you together with passionate, affable, committed people. These people take up politics not because they want power, or office, or privilege, but because they believe in their cause. Just as often they do it because it is fun. Such people make politics as addictive as its less desirable elements.

My only real experience in politics was when I decamped to Nova Scotia in 2005 to help a friend's father try to win the leadership of the NS Tory Party. I believed deeply in the candidate, whatever my reservations with the party. In the course of four months there, I had the great privilege of working with Susan Millard. Susan was, I gathered, a staple of Halifax politics. With good cheer, dependability, and the right balance of idealism and cynicism, she threw herself into our campaign. She personified what was good about politics. She was not, I estimate, given to its excesses. But she was taken by its virtues. It's people like Susan who make competitive politics work in a humane way.

On Monday, Susan was killed by a car while crossing a street in Halifax. The world was better with her, and is now worse without her. Politics is a little worse, too.

Parliamentary democracy in action

2011-01-26T15:02:00.000-05:00

For the third time in as many months, a party leader has been taken down by their caucus. As the story in today's Globe makes clear, Ed Stelmach was staring down a battle with a popular minister and by extension with his caucus. He didn't have the support to fire that minister. He didn't, in short, have the support of his caucus. This is undoubtedly sad for someone who was, by most accounts, a decent and well-intentioned fellow. But it's how parliamentary democracy should work. Rather than being tossed by people who pay $10 to join a party, he was tossed by those elected by the people. This is one more step towards restoring a proper balance in leadership election and deselection.

Tony Proudfoot

2010-12-31T11:19:00.000-05:00

Perhaps courage is in short supply in our times. But the charge cannot be levelled against Tony Proudfoot.

Proudfoot died yesterday from ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease. Diagnosed in 2007, Proudfoot continued with his life at full pace. Most notably, he continued working as a radio broadcaster of Alouettes' football games, despite his impeded speech. And his foundation raised more than a half-million dollars for ALS research.

I should also like to note that in the fall of 2006, when a gunman entered Dawson College and began shooting, Proudfoot left his office in that college (where he'd taught for many years) and administered first aid to a wounded student, despite the obvious and mortal danger.

What courage, and what character.

On altruism and organ donation

2010-12-13T16:23:00.000-05:00

This weekend, the Toronto Star ran a remarkable story about a man who gave an anonymous liver transplant. You can read it here, along with an accompanying video.

By some metrics, this is an act of near pure altruism. This man gives something of himself to save someone else, without any material benefit. Ah, but you say, he receives the benefit of the admiration of his neighbours, his colleagues, and most certainly his wife, with whom he made the decision to give. But once reading the story, one gets the sense that he made the decision to give long before this admiration was due to him. Indeed, it was only after deciding to give and booking in for the procedure that he explained it to his colleagues and friends.

Perhaps he anticipated their praise and admiration, and this compelled him to give. But, there is an equally plausible story in which he felt some urge or impulse to do this act, quite apart from the expected praise. He felt a warm glow. This glow is merely prolonged by the admiration of others. There is, perhaps, a more purely altruistic mechanism at work here than a cynical account would suggest.

That's up for readers to decide, I guess. Either way, it's inspiring stuff.

On homelessness and the ethics of randomized controlled

2010-12-10T01:29:00.001-05:00

The NYT has a very interesting article up on a randomized controlled trial for a homeless program in NY.

A social agency in New York runs a program which helps poor people with housing. The objective of the program is to prevent people from becoming homeless. It competes and works with several other programs to achieve this objective. However, they face a small problem: they have no idea if their program works. So, the organization has decided to randomly assign some people to enter their program, while denying others the right.

You've read that correctly: they randomly chose some people by some lot or another to receive assistance, while others are denied it by virtue of the same draw. Dear reader, your initial reaction is probably that this is terribly cruel. This is certainly the reaction of many in NYC who are now opposing this trial. I'd like to argue that this is the most ethical course of action, in terms of both procedure or means, and ends.

Two arguments recommend my position. First, while we should be concerned that social programs are just in their procedure -- think about the difference between feeding the poor respectfully and throwing them food from the back of a truck -- we should be most concerned that they are effective in their outcomes. Randomized controlled trials tell us more than any other method ever can whether a program has a negative or positive causal effect. This is no small matter. We waste billions of dollars every year on social programs that are meant to make peoples' lives better with virtually no systematic evidence that these programs work. If you believe that policy makers have an obligation to help the citizens who rely on them, then good intentions are not enough. We need to do our best to figure out what programs actually work and which do not. RCTs are the best way to do this.

Second, this program suffers from scarcity, such that not everyone who applies can be accepted, despite their suitability for the program. So, we need some mechanism to decide in a fair manner who is admitted into the program and who is not. In the absence of randomization -- in which everyone has an equal chance -- some other criteria must be used. Now, a policy maker could select on need or suitability, or some other metric, but selecting on this eliminates the ability to figure out whether a program is effective, because you can't be sure that any differences in outcomes between those in the program and those out are a function of the program or the differences on which entrance into the program was granted. Alternately, a policy maker could grant access to someone they simply like more than others. This assuredly happens more often than we'd like to admit. I am sure there are other criteria, but the point remains that these other methods either limit our ability to measure outcomes, or they are arbitrary. In the worst case, they are both of these things. Contrast this with random assignment, in which everyone has equal chances of service. This is many scores more ethically defensible than some arbitrary selection mechanism.

Experiments may seem unfair at first glance. After all, we don't like to think of humans as subjects in an experiment. But better subjects than participants in a series of arbitrarily administered and monitored programs bound for continued failure. That's more cruel than a coin flip.

One more thought on BC

2010-12-07T07:52:00.001-05:00

Given that the leaders of both major parties in BC have been pushed out by factions in their caucus, it appears that elected members are more powerful there than elsewhere. If this is true, how much of it is because of fixed election dates? In the absence of these set elections, one can imagine party leaders holding more sway over risk averse caucus members who fear a snap election under an interim or a new leader. But now, with the election date set, members know how much time they have to elect a new leader if they push out the current head. This is speculation at best, but the hypothesis has some face validity, I think.

A win for caucus authority?

2010-12-06T15:44:00.002-05:00

Carole James has been made to resign as leader of the New Democratic Party of British Columbia. (The Globe has a quick story here).

This is the short story. James has faced serious dissent in her caucus, such that 13 members (out of a caucus of 35), have publicly signalled their wish for her to go. However, two weeks ago she won the support of her party's provincial council, which is some group of its elected and appointed riding executives with some union members thrown in for good measure, I am sure. I suspect Royce Koop knows for certain. Anyways, armed with this endorsement of party members, James' leadership looked secured. However, she met with just one of the 13 dissenters since then. The pressure on her increased when Jenny Kwan, a member of her caucus, released a long statement asking her to resign.

This is not a perfect battle between the authority of some unelected party members and elected members of the legislature, if only because the dissenters among the latter don't represent a majority in their caucus. But, it's close enough for the purposes of noting that a caucus has just turfed its leader for for the second time in BC politics in less than a year. This is a victory for those who think that elected politicians should have more say over who leads them than party members. I can preach it round or preach it straight, but for now it's enough to note that this is good evidence that the supremacy of parliamentary leaders in Canadian politics is not absolute. This is a very good thing.

Altruism and Political Participation

2010-11-11T22:48:00.001-05:00

A little self-promotion is here.

But what's his position on the Gravy Train?

2010-10-27T18:57:00.001-04:00

Rob Ford gives an interview with CBC while running a football practice. This is truly amazing. Listen here.

Jack Layton proposes to subsidize polluters

2010-10-25T16:46:00.001-04:00

Herein Jack Layton proposes to subsidize big polluters. Namely, all of us who heat our homes.

I don't even really have the energy to complain about this, as it's so obviously wrong-headed. I'll leave it to Worthwhile Canadian Initiative.

Suffice it to say that it just reflects how central and serious the NDP's problems are. They prefer policies which will disproportionately benefit the rich while trying to appear to help the poor. It's too bad, really.

H/T: To Calgary Grit, who notes that this reflect the NDP's "always consistent climate change policy."

Russell Williams, Muslim Cartoons, and a question for the Star

2010-10-23T12:04:00.001-04:00

Last week, the Toronto Star pasted a picture of Russell Williams, in female underwear, staring blankly back at readers. It was a picture as haunting as off-putting. The Star justifies its decision here. Whether you believe their arguments or not, it should at least be noted that they are hypocritical.

In 2005, protests and violence flared up across the world in response to a series of 12 cartoons published in a Danish newspaper. As a result of their publication, embassies were burned, journalists and politicians had their lives threatened, the Danish economy was punished by boycotts of their exports, and more than 100 people were killed by police during protests in Muslim countries. This was no small matter.

The Toronto Star was, like other major papers in Canada, unwilling to publish the cartoons that generated this controversy. This is the Star's prerogative, and whether it reflects cowardice or not is for that good paper's editors to consider. Readers can draw their own judgements. But it's clear that it's not an unshakeable principle of the Toronto Star to choose "the harder way for the right reasons."

Bob Probert

2010-07-09T18:06:00.000-04:00

Bob Probert died this weekend. As always, this is a shame for family and friends. It's also a shame for hockey. All of his problems aside, I think Probert was the best enforcer of his generation. First, he was universally feared. But, more importantly, he was also productive offensively. Consider his numbers against four other tough guys. Probert was good for 384 points in 935 NHL games. That's .41 points per game. Tie Domi? 0.24. Joey Kocur? .20. Stu Grimson? .05. George Laraque? .22. Marty McSorley, who played among the greatest offences in the game? .37.

An enforcer who can also put the puck in the net creates havoc for a defense. Is there another pure enforcer with numbers like Probert's? In fact, can you think of a single one who's had three 20 goal seasons? McGinnis? Bodet? Gimme your answers.

Air Canada smashes priceless lute*

2010-06-18T11:57:00.001-04:00

I've had my share of baggage trouble of late, including a bag lost for a month, and a bottle of wine stolen from my luggage. But, if I was travelling with the equivalent of a suitcase full of $300,000, you can be sure I'd be taking up Air Canada on it's offer to buy the suitcase a seat and to carry it on board.

The story is here.

*Despite the headline, the lute does in fact have a price.

Ignatieff's new foreign policy

2010-06-16T17:49:00.001-04:00

Michael Ignatieff has released a new policy paper outlining his party's foreign policy. Among it's recommendations is keeping Canadian troops in Afghanistan after 2011, though in a training capacity. The merits or faults of this aside, it's an immensely important policy.

So, what happens when Canada's largest paper writes an editorial about this? First, it buries this proposal in the last paragraph. And then it tells us that such details matter less than how bold the paper is. Really? What matters more than what a country does is how boldly and loudly it proclaims what it wants to do? Isn't that sort of the problem with our foreign policy in the first place?

War deaths increase local Conservative support

2010-06-03T10:13:00.001-04:00

Daniel Rubenson and I presented the latest version of our paper on war deaths and Conservative candidate support. The basic story is that in 2008, Conservative candidates did better in constituencies that had experienced a war death. The abstract is here:

War comes with terrible costs both in terms of money and lives. Do voters punish incumbents for theses costs? Much of the existing literature on the effects of war deaths on public opinion toward incumbents and their war efforts suggests that the answer is yes. We test this proposition on data from a non-US case: Canada's war in Afghanistan. We estimate models of the effect of local war deaths on government candidate support using both individual level panel data from the 2006 and 2008 Canadian Election Study and aggregate district level data. In none of our models do we find support for the conclusion that war deaths decrease support for candidates of the governing party. Instead we find strong evidence at both the individual and district levels that support for Conservative Party candidates is higher in districts that experienced war deaths.

The paper is here. And a nice article about it in the Toronto Star is here!

Question Period and Television

2010-05-26T09:09:00.001-04:00

Tasha Kheirridin has a nice piece in the Post today about saving Question Period. She makes the common argument that the introduction of television is a principal cause of the decline of Question Period. I think the essence of this article is that the demands of television make for shorter, more sensational questions. The second order effects, I imagine, is that this type of debate and coverage trickles all the way down into other political reporting.

But is this true? However plausible, I've yet to see convincing evidence that the introduction of TV actually changed QP. Moreover, I can imagine equally plausible reasons why QP would have featured poor debate even prior to the introduction of TV. It seems like a great dissertation topic, and one that could pretty convincingly be demonstrated through some modelling and textual analysis. It would be helpful for our own debate over the topic, as well.

Brown outflanks Cameron

2010-05-10T22:35:00.001-04:00

And in one moment looks a little more like Jean Chretien and a little less like Paul Martin.

On my mind

2010-05-09T00:06:00.003-04:00

Death Stands Above Me, Whispering Low

Death stands above me, whispering low

I know not what into my ear:

Of his strange language all I know

Is, there is not a word of fear.

Walter Savage Landor, 1853

Changing Question Period

2010-05-05T16:05:00.001-04:00

Michael Chong has recommended substantial changes to Question Period. His recommendations will soon go before the House and then a Committee. Among his suggested changes are having a dedicated day for PM's question (as in Westminster), having themed days so not all ministers need to be briefed every day, and allowing the Speaker to call out to MPs off the list of questions. Taber has a nice summary here.

This could fail spectacularly. It could work marvellously. Since things can't be much worse than now, it's most certainly worth a try.

You can read the article here.

Ignatieff and the GG: It is very unhelpful and unwise.

2010-05-02T23:04:00.002-04:00

At the same time that Parliament is fighting for its right to be trusted with confidential documents of the most sensitive nature, the Leader of the Official Opposition is behaving as though he cannot be trusted with the most simple of discrete consultations. This is not helpful.

As often, Coyne is right on.

Update: Peter Russell weighs in and pulls no punches: "It is very helpful and unwise."

On tonight's election debate

2010-04-15T14:23:00.000-04:00

Britain will be hosting it's first ever televised leaders' debate this evening. It should be great, if for no other reason than that British politics prizes the parry and thrust so much more than our own.

As for the debate, I point to this old post and repost the abstract of a paper by Blais and Perella on the effects of debates.

Almost an entire generation of election survey data was pooled together from the United States and Canada to assess the systemic effects of televised debates. Four questions were posed: (1) Is there a general tendency for evaluations of candidates to improve or deteriorate after a debate? (2) Do evaluations of one candidate negatively correlate with changes in evaluations of opponents? (3) Do debates disadvantage incumbents? (4) Do debates advantage less popular candidates? Using "feeling thermometer" items to measure voter evaluations, four patterns are revealed. First, candidates generally gain points.The supposed mudslinging that characterizes a debate appears not to feed into any notion of cynicism. Instead, voters appear to gain an appreciation for the debaters. Second, a candidate's gain is not earned at the expense of those deemed to have "lost" the match. Third, a debate does not disadvantage an incumbent. A candidate with a record to defend stands about as much chance of benefiting from a debate as a challenger.And fourth, any evaluation gaps before a debate become narrower following a debate. This final effect, which is particularly true of American presidential debates, may reflect a debate's ability to raise awareness of less popular candidates.

Why private members business matters

2010-04-15T11:30:00.001-04:00

This morning, Ron Bruinooge is holding a press conference about some private members bill he is introducing in regards to what he calls 'coerced abortion.' I'll say nothing on the merits of the bill, other than that Coyne's Contradiction must be noted here.*

That is an aside. The main point is that Bruinooge is introducing a private members bill, which he will no doubt use to raise funds for his next election. Opponents of restrictions on abortion will similarly trumpet this. The media will ask whether Bruinooge has any chance with this bill. The truth is, he does. He sits 79th on the list of consideration. This means 78 members get a crack at introducing bills which will be debated and will actually have a chance at passage. (It's a rather good chance, actually, and nothing like popular account suggest). So, he has some wait before his time. But, as it happens, we're now at that moment. Only James Rajotte sits ahead of Bruinooge on the list. So, this is going to come up for debate, it will be voted on for second reading, and will then possibly be referred to committee. If it makes it through committee, it will be voted on again by the entire house.

This is also a time for me to highlight the importance of this legislation generally. Private members business matters for at least three reasons:

First, it demonstrates that party discipline is not as strict as we like to think. Members regularly introduce legislation which their party leadership would rather they not.

Second, private members business matters for reelection, at least for government members. I have a paper with Koop and Fowler (recently rejected from a top science journal, if you need to know), that shows that the right to propose legislation is worth about 2.5 percentage points to members of the governing party. Ask Rahim Jaffer if he'd take that 2.5 points now!

Third, government members routinely use private members legislation to propose bills of national interest, and to push forward preferred policies. Kelly Blidook has shown, in a rather convincing fashion, that this matters for policy outputs. In a short, overly chatty piece, Koop and I extend this line of thinking.

In short, private members business gives representatives a small sliver of time in which to be legislators. It tells us about their preferences, and it allows them to lobby for the wishes of their constituents. This is what politics are about. Members should be praised when they make the most of these opportunities.

*Coyne's Contradiction goes something like this: we have no law in Canada on abortion, despite the fact that we heavily regulate almost every other aspect of health care. Some will say there is no need for a law, because there is a consensus. If there is a consensus, this should be easily put into law in the Commons. Some of those same people will then say that this cannot be debated in the Commons, because it is too contentious. If it is contentious, there is likely no consensus. If there is no consensus, then how else do we deal with this? Well, it is the stuff of politics and it should be dealt with by our politicians. I note that politicians have shown sufficient courage to deal with other issues of fundamental rights in the Commons, with same sex marriage being but the latest example.

Dear Sports Writers

2010-04-09T08:52:00.001-04:00

I think it's pretty obvious to everyone that the new Nike ad isn't actually Tiger's father speaking to him. He's been dead four years. Move on.

Rahim Jaffer, short term focus, and opposition tactics

2010-03-11T15:57:00.001-05:00

This whole Rahim Jaffer affair is really perplexing. What seems most
likely is that his procedural rights were violated when he was asked
to give a breathalyzer and when he was searched for drugs. Police
occasionally make mistakes and, whether we like it or not, it happens
to be grounds for the dismissal of a lot of charges. For an example of
this, see Margaret Trudeau's exoneration on drunk driving charges a
few years ago.

So, here is what is perplexing and troubling about this to me. First,
why are the Tories not making the most of this to stand up for harsher
penalties and for more rectification of rights violations at the time
of sentencing, rather than at the time of trial? Second, why are
opposition parties, who we should generally think are quite supportive
of individual rights and strict protections against violations by the
state, willing to take such a frenzied and populist position on this?
In other words, why are they willing to ferment doubt about the
administration of justice when they'll likely squander whatever short
term opportunity it gives them? And why are they doing this when their
own general positions on this issue will be undermined if this issue
continues?

More generally, why do parties pursue lines of attack in the short
term which are not generally consistent with their views and/or with
their prior statements, and which may undermine them in the future?
For another example, consider how smart it is for an opposition party
which started the mission in Afghanistan and which has a leader who
has said manipulable things about torture to stake its claims on
prisoner transfers in another country by another government.

Change the national anthem? That's sic!

2010-03-03T21:40:00.000-05:00

I recently joined a Facebook group that wants to protect "Oh (sic) Canada" from having the line about "all thy son's (sic) command" changed.

David Eaves, eat your heart out!

Apparently, it's not the meaning of the line or the title that's sacrosanct; just the gender of whose true patriot love is commanded.

Our Citizenship Primer

2010-03-03T21:36:00.001-05:00

Suppose you were concerned about whether recently arrived Canadians are sufficiently respectful of individual rights and tolerance. Suppose you wished that they received the strongest signal possible about how much we prize individual liberty in Canada. Wouldn't it be most efficient to flag for them the most recent and, by international standards, far reaching demonstration of this. In other words, wouldn't you want them to know that one of the things we value is the right of consenting adults to do as they please? Apparently not. At some point, this all goes from a bee in a bonnet to something else. That's all.

Does a minimum wage increase actually help the poor?

2010-02-22T13:35:00.001-05:00

What Stephen Gordon said.

Do turkeys really vote for Christmas?

2010-02-05T11:15:00.001-05:00

I've had several people forward me this story from the BBC. The short version is that it's puzzling why so many Americans vote for things that are against their own interests. It's essentially a rehash of Thomas Franks' "What's the Matter with Kansas?" (Or America, in the British version of the book). The problem, as Larry Bartels has shown, is that it's just not all that true. (For good measure, Bartels also took no less than Barack Obama to town for thinking the same thing. See his NY Times op ed here).

Now, I suspect that Runciman hasn't read Bartels' responses. But even if he has, and he's still not convinced, he should traipse over to Andrew Gelman's blog and read this. Sometimes there's a man. Today that man is Gelman.

A good dog is not lost

2010-01-24T10:18:00.001-05:00

After two weeks, Lufthansa has found my baggage which they lost en
route to Geneva. As my friend Loren would say, "thanks for doing
what's expected of you."

Thanks, Apple!

2010-01-23T18:54:00.001-05:00

I bought an iPhone a week ago. This morning I dropped it in my
apartment, breaking the home button. This afternoon I strolled into an
Apple Store and they gave me a new phone, no questions asked. That's
nice.

We looked into his confidential records. Nothing is wrong.

2010-01-22T09:40:00.001-05:00

Short story: a UFC champion gets sick in Manitoba. He goes to a hospital and is properly diagnosed, but not given a CT scan. He then hightails it to Bismarck, ND where he is treated and then admitted to the Mayo Clinic. He proceeds to refer to Canadian health care as third world. The CEO of the health authority objects, looks into his case, and tries to correct the record for the press. This is all well and good.

But, shouldn't the CEO of a health authority be a little reluctant to admit that "We have checked this particular health record and were are quite confident that the correct diagnosis was given and the best course of treatment offered"? Can't even a blowhard expect some degree of privacy for his medical records?

The complete Globe story is here.

Tories plunge in the polls... but what's the alternative?

2010-01-21T22:20:00.001-05:00

There's been much made of the Tories' recent decline in the polls. By
most readings, they are more or less tied with the Liberals. This is,
most probably, attributable to their prorogation of Parliament. And
good on Canadians for punishing a Prime Minister who avoids the House.
But does this indicate that the Tories made a mistake? This appears to
be the consensus, both among Liberal politicians and media commentary.

I remain unconvinced, and it's for one reason. We simply don't know
how far down in the polls the Tories would have been had they remained
in the House, had a protracted fight over the release of documents,
and faced several more weeks of embarrassing questions on the handing
of detainees in Afghanistan. I am not convinced they'd be doing worse,
but it is possible.

The point is, unless you are certain that they would not have been
doing worse, then you're on shaky ground dismissing Stephen Harper for
finally overplaying his hand.

Shelly Glover doesn't know who Tom Flanagan is. I'd start with Wikipedia

2010-01-14T18:25:00.002-05:00

I just looked up the wiki on Shelly Glover. She's an MP from Winnipeg. She should do the same for 'Tom Flanagan.' I mean, not only is he a nice guy and interested in my research, but he's also one of the preeminent conservative thinkers in Canada. Oh yeah, he was also Chief of Staff to Harper, manager of the 2004 campaign, and longtime gadfly and pundit. He also helped recruit Stephen Harper into politics and then recruit him back into politics. So, you know, he's more important than a lot of people.

Shelley Glover, if this video can be believed, doesn't know who he is.

One can only conclude two things about Shelley Glover. She's been completely unengaged in debates in her own movement for the last ten to twenty years (and hasn't even been told about them by her staff). Or she's disingenuous. Neither is very becoming.

Update: the full video is here.

Things you don't want to know about Air Canada

2010-01-11T19:38:00.001-05:00

When Air Canada is creating a detailed list of the contents of your
bag for purposes of searching they will not record that you have a
phone in your bag. The reason? Because their ground staff can access
the list and cannot be trusted to not look for the bag with the
intention of stealing said phone. This inspires great confidence.

Michael Ignatieff in (my) classroom

2010-01-10T09:27:00.001-05:00

The Star has a piece today on Ignatieff's university tour, which is set to begin this week. As it happens, he's going to be making two stops in Ontario, one at McMaster and one the University of Toronto-Mississauga. Mostly by virtue of the size of my class, it's subject matter, and it's timing, he'll be hosting his session in my class. This should be interesting, as members of the public join my 300 or so students to ask him questions for two hours. Regardless of your feelings on Ignatieff, it's a great opportunity for students to see and question a politician up close. And it's also good for our democracy to have our politicians talking openly with citizens.

I'll report on how it goes, especially on the tough, great questions I am sure my students will pose!

Three songs I am digging

2010-01-10T08:20:00.001-05:00

1.) Bob Dylan's "Shelter from the Storm" from the Rolling Thunder Review. That's T-Bone Burnett to Dylan's right. This version moves a long a lot harder than the earlier version, and includes some of my preferred verses. I am particularly found of: "I was burned out from exhaustion, buried in the hail/Poisoned in the bushes, and blown out on the trail/Hunted like a crocodile, ravaged by the corn/"Come in", she said, "I'll give you shelter from the storm." It always reminds me of blowing out my suspension on the road from Marsabit to Isiolo. We weren't hunted on that road, but as night fell we might as well have been.

2.) Ron Hyne's "A Good Dog is Lost." Hines tells the story of seeing a lost dog poster in a store. The sign only reads "A good dog is lost." But, what it really says is that the owner cannot believe that a dog they so loved has run away. In the next stanza, he sings "somewhere out there night upon a darkened street, running breathless with a wild beating heart, in all directions on four tiny feet, calling 'Hey there stranger, I can hardly believe, someone that I love so much has forgotten about me." In the end, it's not really about a dog.

3.) Jim Bryson's live version of "Somewhere Else." Listen to him turn up in the middle and end of the second line. It's incredibly well delivered and wistful. Bryson's an absolute treasure.

Snow in Geneva

2010-01-10T04:47:00.002-05:00

I am sitting at a coffeeshop at Geneva's airport. There was six inches of snow last night, so the airport is shut down. People are everywhere. Delays and cancellations are the order of the day. And yet, no one seems too fussed. It's very interesting to see. As for me, I'll be crossing my fingers that I get into Toronto seven hours later than expected. I've had to cancel a dinner for tonight, but things could be much, much worse. I could be a fish on someone's plate, or I could be someone who's never flown to Geneva. It's worth remembering, even if a single espressos cost 4 francs.

Plus that bottle of wine...

2010-01-09T14:02:00.001-05:00

I suppose this is also the time I should note that someone in baggage handling stole a bottle of wine from a bag I checked with Air Canada in September. It was a gift from a friend that he asked I give my parents. It was not a cheap bottle by any means. I called lost baggage and sent an email. I heard nothing. I hope the schmuck enjoyed the bottle.

sent by email

Geneva with no jacket

2010-01-09T08:18:00.000-05:00

I have been in Geneva for the last three days. It's been quite a fun time. I was invited by the Swiss political science association to talk a bit about genopolitics. And I've been working with a great colleague on a new paper. On top of it all, Geneva has been charming the way European cities are in winter. Cars cannot deal with snow here, but the trains go on, everywhere there are people bundled against the snow, and the restaurants are still full of interesting people on the inside and (presumably interesting) smokers on the outside.

The only drawback is that I have been bearing all of this without a coat.

I put my winter jacket in my bag at Pearson. My bag never arrived in Geneva. I suspect it is still in Frankfurt, where I missed my connection and had to catch a plane four hours later.

I received some compensation at the airport, but it was only enough to buy a sweater and shirt and to pay for some of a new pair of jeans. I also bought a scarf and hat. I've avoided buying another jacket, because in the first place I feel that I can bare it in a blazer and, in the second, I really don't need to buy another winter coat. But three days have passed and I am starting to get worried. It's only made worse by the fact that one is given just a phone number with a tracking number that indicates whether the bg is found. There is no other news.

I think there's a lesson for airlines in this. We remember our losses much more starkly than we remember our gains. I've had a great string of positive experiences with Air Canada recently, e.g. the upgrade to business class I have received on my last four flights. But this is quickly forgotten when their partners cannot adequately handle the transfer of bags. The worry I feel about having to replace clothes and a suitcase that I quite like far outweigh the positive affect of upgrades.

In the meantime, I am enjoying Geneva, if not the cold.

posted by email

Shutting down Parliament

2009-12-30T11:19:00.004-05:00

Will the Prime Minister prorogue Parliament today? Inside opinion suggests that he will, though the Star is taking an inquisitive approach in its reporting.

The wiki provides a nice summary of what is prorogation. If you click through, you'll note that prorogation normally occurs at the end of a legislative session. In other words, governments normally prorogue when they've ended their legislative agenda but there is still sitting time left on the calendar. Not in Canada, apparently. Instead, we have a prime minister (potentially) asking the GG to prorogue Parliament for a second time in a year, despite a full legislative calendar and apparently very important unfinished legislative initiatives (i.e. their crime package).

The government will also avoid questions on Afghan detainee transfers, which are currently being examined in committee.

I tend not to get too worked up over constitutional conventions. I think they are guidelines until they're not, and I think they rarely describe actual political behaviour with much precision. On the contrary, I take a rather liberal view of democracy in which voters decide what is appropriate at election time. But this is getting ridiculous. The government has twice in a year stated that they are uninterested in trying to govern in our elected house. I am sorry if it's an inconvenience, but it's where the business of our democracy occurs. Coyne goes a few steps farther and more provocative than me, but not that many. He's worth reading here.

Update/Question: Does Stephen Taylor even know what a prorogation is for? It's not to allow committees to be reset. I think that's his justification, though he doesn't say it all that clearly. It's for a PM to end a legislative session early after its business has been finished. Second, perhaps Stephen Taylor could spend a day in an Afghan jail before he makes fun of the treatment innocent people there may have faced.

Flying to the US just got worse. Again.

2009-12-26T16:09:00.004-05:00

Thanks to a failed terrorist attack, flying to America just got a lot worse. Apparently, one has to arrive three hours before a flight. You'll no longer be allowed to access your carry-on baggage for the last hour of the flight, or to leave your seat. More, you won't be able to hold anything in your lap for that last hour. I presume that extends to dangerous items like pens and paper. Oh, one more thing, someone is going to comb through your bag at the gate. After they've done it at the first clearance area. This is a terrible policy for many reasons.

First, what is so special about the last hour of a flight? Why won't a terrorist then initiate an attack with 70 minutes to go? Second, if you've already looked through my bag then what can I hold in my lap that is a threat? Third, and this is the most important thing, do you think that having bags checked twice makes it more likely to find contraband? You may think yes, but there's a good reason to think it will make us less safe.

If you are a security official looking through a bag and you know that someone else is going to look through the bag again, do you think you will be more or less thorough? At first blush, you're likely more thorough, but imagine that you are facing a large line of passengers and your superiors have encouraged you to get people through the line quickly. In this likely circumstance, you may trust that the other individual checking bags will find any contraband. But what if they assume the same thing and they do a less than thorough job? Do you think we're more or less safe in this circumstance.

Flying is not dangerous. Hijackings are extremely rare. It's time to accept the risk.

Are Canadian philosophy PhDs discriminated against?

2009-12-24T11:54:00.002-05:00

This article won't tell you.

This is incredibly simple and shoddy inference. Groarke and Fenske note that seven-in-ten faculty in (English) Canadian philosophy departments have PhDs from outside of Canada. Of the third that have Canadian PhDs, half are from the UofT. They find that this holds more or less across the country.

From these findings, they infer that there is discrimination against Canadian PhDs. Their inference is unsupported by their data.

Suppose I conducted a study, and I told you the following:

A recent study of hiring by the federal government across all departments for all positions outside of the capital region found that only .1% of hires had a degree from University XYZ. Clearly, this points towards discrimination against graduates of University XYZ. In the words of Groarke and Fenske, they're "educationally handicapped."

Now, what if I told you that University XYZ was the University of Prince Edward Island or Université de Ste-Anne? Given that these universities probably account for .1% of graduates, you'd rightly infer that I was making poor inferences. And you'd be correct.

Groarke and Fenske are doing exactly the same thing. They don't know or do not present data on what percentage of philosophy PhDs are produced by Canadian schools each year. Despite not knowing this, they provide explanations, proffer advice to other philosophers on matters of morality, and make policy recommendations. And they do so without the simplest of convincing evidence. Let's be clear: Groarke and Fenske accuse their colleagues of discrimination and malfeasance without the simplest of credible evidence.

I trust that this kind of inference isn't representative of Canadian philosophers, but if it is then any problems in hiring aren't due to discrimination.

The Rain King Returns

2009-12-23T11:10:00.003-05:00

Michael Schumacher is returning to F1 Racing. The return of the Loewen men to Montreal is now all but assured.

I've said it before and I expect this season to prove it true: Michael Schumacher might be the greatest individual sportsman in history.

I shall be taking bets on his return to the end-of-season top spot.

Lee Sigelman

2009-12-22T16:07:00.002-05:00

Lee Sigelman, one of political science's great citizens, has died. Sigelman's career was, from my standpoint, most impressive.

Sigelman edited various journals in his career, most notably our discipline's flagship, the American Political Science Review.

More recently, he started the Monkey Cage with colleagues at George Washington University. It's a daily stop for me and it's enriched my life.

Finally, Sigelman was an incredibly productive and eclectic scholar. John Sides makes this clear in this latest post.

This is a real loss for our discipline. For those who are confronted most starkly by his loss -- his friends and his family -- take consolation in the admiration of those who know only his work.

Mounties, tasers, and the truth

2009-12-09T17:32:00.004-05:00

Paul Kennedy has released his report on the death of Robert Dziekanski. As Andrew Potter puts it, he found that the Mounties lied. Repeatedly. But this should not be surprising. As individuals and as an institution, the RCMP has lied on matters great and small for years. To quote Potter:

And why wouldn’t they? The RCMP lies about everything. They lied about APEC. They lied about the name a six-year-old gave to a puppy in a contest. And they lied over and over again to Paul Kennedy.

Remember this: our national police force is one that, if you you were in a state of delirium and confusion in a foreign land, would presume the first thing to do is electrocute you. Not tase you, to use that awful non-verb. They would run current through your body before they tried to calm you, before they tried to ascertain the nature of your problem, and before they considered whether you were really a threat. Our national police force is scared of staplers.

And remember this: after killing you, they'd do the disservice of traveling to your home country to sniff around to see if you have a criminal past. Apparently, RCMP officers can smell a criminal. No need for due process here.

Remember this also: if one of the same ran you down in his car drunk he'd make up a story about leaving the scene of the accident to have two shots of vodka before returning. And he'd get away with it, save for a charge of obstructing justice.

This is too much for a civilized society to take. This is not about whether you know a police officer who is a good person and a kind father. You likely do, as I certainly do. It's not about whether police officers are good most of the time. It's about whether it's appropriate for them to behave as they have when they are at their worst. They ought not. Gary Mason is right. It's time to put an end to this.

Dear United Airlines

2009-12-02T14:35:00.001-05:00

When you make me pay for the internet in the SFO lounge, I feel like you don't value me as a customer. When you try to get me to pay for it in SAN where there's free internet throughout the airport it makes me think you think I am stupid. Please stop being soulless schmucks. Ok, thanks.

I'm still here

2009-11-24T01:25:00.001-05:00

Here's a little video from my friend Ben Rusch that I am really enjoying lately.

The Human Nature Group

2009-11-16T19:47:00.002-05:00

Just a quick note that I'll be cross-posting a lot of stuff at the Human Nature Group blog going forward. It's a cool group Fowler started at UCSD for researchers interested in political science work that leverages tools from the natural sciences. It would be great to get something similar started at Toronto. Check it out.

Hey Good Lookin: Does facial competence actually matter for election outcomes?

2009-11-15T22:16:00.002-05:00

Are politicians successful when they are better looking? Todorov and colleagues (here and here) created a stir by demonstrating that election outcomes can be predicted based on very quick evaluations of the “competency” of candidates' faces. Could it be that voters are so superficial that a great share of them are merely persuaded by the attractiveness of candidates?

A recent article in the Quarterly Journal of Political Science takes on this question with a clever study. Atkinson et al. note that previous studies have not accounted for the possibility that candidate selection depends on the competitiveness of a race. They in fact show that challenging parties tend to run better-looking candidates when they have a greater chance of winning.
They demonstrate this in two-steps. First, they develop a survey instrument to estimate the competency of candidates’ faces. The method is clever. They show subjects a randomly drawn pair of papers and ask them to indicate which candidate looks more competent. They then derive a competency score that assumes some transitivity on competence, assumes it is probabilistic and not determinative, and assumes some continuum of competence. They develop their own estimator to score candidates (though using the existing Bradley-Terry method would have been easier!).

Next, they marry these scores to exit poll surveys to estimate the effect of competence on different types of voters, i.e. independents and partisans. They show that there is no competence effect for House races, but small effects in Senate races. These effects are larger for independent voters than for partisans. Finally, they use these estimates to test whether facial competence could have been pivotal in any Senate races. They find it was not.

A few thoughts on this paper and the facial competence literature more generally. First, I quite like that Atkinson et al have noted the selection effects which undermine the bold claims made by earlier papers. There is a general lesson in this: we can elicit large effects in laboratories. We should search for these effects, but we should be sure to test their external validity as close to actual vote choice as possible. What is more, they develop a nice instrument for replicating these findings in other countries. I should hope we could do something similar in Canada and other democracies, though I think a Bradley-Terry estimation could just as easily be used. Second, I don’t quite understand why such studies don’t also test for the effects of whether voters find some faces more “attractive” than others. Or, why not ask voters “Which person looks like they would understand your needs better?” There are any number of qualities we can infer from faces and I see no reason why competence should be the only one, or even chief among them.

Five notes on a Monday morning

2009-11-09T13:44:00.003-05:00

1.) George Smitherman has resigned from cabinet and intends to run for mayor of Toronto. He'll most certainly be a formidable candidate. However, he has said he won't resign his seat in the provincial legislature until March. This is almost certainly a bad move. How will Smitherman gain traction criticizing current councillors for accepting pay raises when he wants to hold onto a job which he has said he no longer wants? He can obviously be an effective MPP for this period, especially given great stores of energy and political ability, which he has more of than 99% of politicians. But, he's inviting serious criticism. He should resign and head this off at the pass.
2.) I am participating in a conference on private members' business (i.e. the legislative initiatives of backbench MPs) in Toronto this week. Royce Koop and I have drafted a short paper on the determinants of legislation type in the last two parliaments. It's here if you're interested in reading it. Comments are, of course, welcome.
3.) This is an extremely interesting paper showing how affiliative cues change the behaviour of very young children. In other words, even with 18 month olds, reminders of connections between people lead them to engage in helping behaviour. It's terribly interesting.
4.) Mount Allison has named Peter Mansbridge its Chancellor. It was also ranked #1 in Maclean's last week, for the thirteenth time. It's terribly easy to be a proud alum of Mount A.
5.) The Berlin Wall fell twenty years ago today. Nothing above matters one epsilon as much as this.

On Tomorrow's Byelections

2009-11-08T19:21:00.003-05:00

Four byelections will be contest tomorrow: one in suburban Vancouver, another near Riviere-de-Loup, a third in Montreal, and a fourth in the Nova Scotia riding of Conservative-turned-independent Bill Casey.

This article by Joan Bryden tips the NDP to win one, the Bloc to win two, and the Cons to regain the NS riding. But it also goes on to outline how party strategists are claiming that these elections are a test of the health of official opposition. Is such a claim credible? Do by-elections act as a test of the popularity of the government and other parties?

Fred Bastien and I have an article forthcoming in the Canadian journal which tests this proposition, among others. You can read it here. We find that while the success of government parties in byelections was linked to the government's national popularity (as measured in national vote intentions) until 1993, there is little evidence that it is anymore. We don't have a strong explanation for this, except that the period since 1993 was characterized by a very fragmented opposition, strong regional variation in support for parties, and the lack of a credible national alternative. Accordingly, we are inclined to think that these elections were more likely to turn on local issues. Now, much has changed in our federal politics in the last five years, so this may no longer be the case. But for the meantime, view with caution any self-serving explanations that these byelections provide some measure of the vitality of parties nationally.

H1N1

2009-11-04T15:33:00.000-05:00

What Coyne said.

Deep partisanship

2009-10-28T11:50:00.002-04:00

I spend a good bit of my academic life thinking about partisanship. What does it mean to be a partisan? How do partisans differ from other partisans and from non-partisans? What are the behavioural consequences of partisanship?

Our understanding of partisanship has changed over time. Beginning in the 1960s, academics understood partisanship to be a deep attachment to a party formed early in life which subsequently acted as a perceptual screen on the political world. Think of it as similar to religious affiliation. Individuals may stray from their familial religious affiliations, but for the most part these act as an anchor throughout the lifecycle and serve to influence how we experience and perceive the world.

This understanding of partisanship was later challenged by a 'running tally' perception in which partisanship was taken to be an active evaluation of the parties on offer, where an individual 'updated' their partisanship as new events unfolded and changed it as their affection for one party increased over another.

I think it's fair to say that the first view has better stood the test of time, both inside American and outside. Principal in the defense of this view is a great book by Green, Schickler, and Palmquist called Partisan Hearts and Minds.

My own work has examined the behavioural and material foundations of partisanship in Canada. For example, I've shown that revealed material concern for the well-being of other partisans explains much of the decision to vote in Canada. I've also shown that material concern for others varies with our own and others partisanship. Finally, I am working on a larger (though still very preliminary project) on whether behavioural differences characterize different partisans. My own contribution is very small.

The most important contribution in recent years, and this is the point of this post, has just been made by Alan Gerber and Gregory Huber in this paper. Here's the story: for a long time, we've had survey evidence that partisans have more positive economic expectations when their preferred party is in power in Washington. In other words, Republican partisans say they expect the economy to perform better when there is a Republican president than when there is a Democratic president. The same applies (in reverse) for Democrats. However, this could merely be an artefact of surveys. If partisanship really matters in a deep way, then what is needed is evidence that partisans behave differently when their preferred party is in office. Gerber and Huber provide evidence of this. They demonstrate that changes in the rate of expenditures at the county level following an election correlate with the partisanship of the county. So, more Democratic counties would increase their rate of spending more than Republican counties (or more accurately, decrease it less quickly, as spending is generally lower in the winter than in the fall) following the election of a Democratic President. The same applies for Republicans.

This is an extremely important finding as it shows that partisanship has deep behavioural consequences. It is not simply a tally of one's preferences, but instead an affiliation which influences how one approaches not only the political but also the commercial world.

Stephenson and Tanguay on electoral reform. Or why you need multiple methods.

2009-10-27T00:49:00.008-04:00

Yesterday afternoon, Dan Rubenson forwarded on to me Laura Stephenson and Brian Tanguay's IRPP research paper on electoral reform in Canada. It's a nice piece in a lot of ways. It charts the path to electoral reform very comprehensively. It draws the link between the decline in turnout and calls for electoral reform (even though the latter will do next to nothing to change the former). And then it presents a series of results on why citizens of Ontario voted against reform 3 to 2.

This is where their piece goes off the rails a little bit.

S and T take a very conventional approach. They survey 1000 Ontarians on a battery of items, including attitudes on things they may have never thought about. In particular, they ask lots of questions about whether citizens value fairness and proportionality, and whether they feel that election results under the current FPTP system are unfair. This is fine as far as it goes. I don't have too much trouble with the idea that citizens can hold more or less sensible opinions on things about which they know nothing and have thought very little. The more damning objection is that they miss a central fact about electoral reform.

Here it is: electoral reform, especially away from a FPTP system, is not about being for proportionality or against proportionality. On principle, I can't imagine many people are against fairness. It's about trade-offs between two largely irreconcilable goals. In the case of PR, the goals are responsiveness and policy that reflects the preferences of as wide a swatch of the population as possible. For plurality systems, like FPTP, it's about effective governance and accountability. It's about being able to effectively identify the rascals and show them the door if you dislike their actions in the years prior. This argument has been made by people a lot smarter than me. Powell, for instance, makes this argument very clearly. Yet mention of him is entirely missing from this piece. Asking about only one aspect of electoral reform largely misses these contours. As a result, S and T's study sheds dim and incomplete light on why electoral reform failed. It doesn't make it wrong, just not as right as it could be.

Now, the shameless self-promotion. Daniel and I ran a couple of studies during the same referendum. We ran them a lot differently than most of our colleagues who rely solely on survey based methods and lots of post-hoc modelling assumptions and simulations. First, we conducted an actual field experiment in which we exposed voters to varying levels of campaign materials from either or both sides of the campaign. You can read a paper about it here. (Of course, you can also send comments). What do we find? So far, we've completed failed to find a persuasion effect. Neither side was much good at convincing voters that their system was better; those who received mail from either side did not hold opinions any different from those who received no mail at all. If you want an exogenous and uncorrupted measure of information, this is a lot better than a quiz on a survey. Second, we found a small mobilization effect, such that those who received more mail from either side were more likely to vote in the referendum. But the effect is very small. Those in the heaviest treatment condition only voted in rates about 1.4 percentage points higher (Table 4). These effects are much smaller than any that would be estimated according to some information coefficient in a regression model. It's just hard to believe that increased information in the referendum would have increased turnout or support for MMP.

Why is it hard to believe? In another paper with Arthur Spirling, Dan and I investigated the power of arguments for and against reform (the paper is under R and R, so it's not public. But I am happy to send it on request). By power, we mean the ability of an argument to illicit agreement with its preferred position in the face of an argument from the other side. To measure the power of arguments, we gave respondents in a survey experiment one of six arguments for FPTP and one of six for MMP. We then asked them which system they supported. We ignored all individual level aspects, and instead focussed on the charactersitics of arguments. Through something called a Bradley-Terry model, we are able to test which arguments are most powerful (or convincing) and why. The picture below demonstrates our key results.

Here's the main story: there is a lot that is convincing about MMP, namely that it provides for much greater proportionality. But, there are two things that hurt it. First, it weakens local representation.* Second, it gives a central role to political parties. Voters like proportionality, but they don't like the other two factors. Unfortunately, you can't argue for MMP without mentioning these other factors. Likewise, you can't invoke proportionality when arguing for FPTP.

The figure below shows the effects of an argument invoking some feature of electoral systems on its probability of winning an argument in our experiment. As can be seen, an argument that invokes fairness experiences an almost 14 point advantage. But as soon as political parties are mentioned, a hit of about 7 points is incurred, cutting the fairness advantage in half.

And what of FPTP? It's advantage came from a small built-in bias for the status quo. All FPTP arguments enjoy about a 7 point kick. And then arguments which invoke local control get a 9-10 point kick. So, FPTP has small but consistent advantages over MMP.

The real story is that both systems have elements which make them attractive but which also draw away from them. If you want to explain why a referendum issue falls, you should take a full account of the dimensions of the choice at hand. And one should think about more than just conducting a survey.

*I know, I can hear howls in some departments that it doesn't, but I think the consensus is that it does. I've got a clever experiment in the works to test this proposition.

Various and sundry, v N.

2009-10-26T11:50:00.005-04:00

It's been some time since I have posted. To those of bated breath, you can now exhale. Here are three unrelated items:

i) I recently completed the first public draft of a paper with my great colleague, Chris Dawes. The paper is titled "The CHRNA6 Gene, Patience, and Voter Turnout." It's a straight-ahead behavioural genetics piece showing the relationship between a gene that regulates impulsivity and voter turnout. We rely on Fowler and Kam's clever observation that voting relies on patience, since you pay a cost today for benefits in the future. We then show that those who have versions of the CHRNA6 gene that are associated with lower impulsivity are more likely to vote. Comments are welcome, of course.

ii) This is not good news for Michael Ignatieff. But it's hardly the end of the world. Turning around the Liberal ship should take time, however talented a leader. Liberals need to focus on fighting an election a year from now and not tomorrow. By my lights, this means avoiding silly gimmicks, building up riding associations (especially the more amateur ones, on which my colleague Royce Koop is doing great academic work), and preparing very convincing post-recession policy. It's not the time for panic, for unnecessary bemoaning of a lack of strategic acumen, or for seemingly reflective interviews.

iii) I recently flew to India for a wedding. Indian weddings are long, and the flights seem longer. But they are, without question, worth every wasted jet-lagged day on return.

Dear Canada Post

2009-10-05T17:55:00.001-04:00

Did you really mean it when you said my package would arrive the next day before noon? Or were you just telling me that? 'Cause it's Monday afternoon. And that was Thursday afternoon. That's more than twenty-four hours, no?

Ok. Thanks.

Brilliant

2009-08-26T12:07:00.002-04:00

Tetlock and others are tracking whether public pundits are correct in their predictions. It's a brilliant idea. And I predict most predictions will be wrong. The site is here.

Blowing my horn and others'

2009-07-07T18:36:00.002-04:00

A touch of self-promotion and some recognition of a couple of friends. First, Andre Blais and I recently converted some of our research into a report for Elections Canada on youth electoral engagement. At the end, we recommended that, among other things, Elections Canada experiment with online registration and voting in a by-election. They appear to be going forward with this advice. It's nice when one's work has some influence!

More importantly, a couple of friends are up to great things. My colleague at UCSD, Chris Dawes, was recently awarded the Peggy Quon Award for the PhD student most likely to contribute to the scientific study of politics. You'd never know that Dawes was a graduate student by looking at his publication record (e.g. Nature, PNAS, APSR, JOP, Economic Letters, QJE, PRQ) but it is true. He does wonderfully interesting research, so he's well deserving of the award. I should like to note that it's been won previously by very notable political scientists, including Jamie Druckman (the first winner) and my colleague Ben Nyblade.

Second, my friend Ben Rusch is about to release an album. He wrote every song and played every instrument. He's incomprehensibly talented and creative. You can watch a first cut of the first video of his album here. It's shot in the wonderful Hampstead Heath near his home.

Pearl versus Rubin on Causation

2009-07-06T09:47:00.002-04:00

Andrew Gelman has a nice post here reviewing a Judea Pearl paper taking on Rubin's causal model. This stuff is probably too heavy before six coffees, but it's a nice and thoughtful review. And it's a nice reminder of how much I still need to learn about causation.

Dave Batters, depression, and the toll of politics

2009-07-05T10:23:00.003-04:00

Dave Batters, a former MP not yet 40, committed suicide last week. Batters had been an honourable member from 2004 until last fall when he announced he would not run again on account of his deep and debilitating anxiety and depression. He was overcome by this last week.

Stephen Harper gave a moving speech at his funeral yesterday. Bourrie presents it in full and speculates, quite reasonably, that Harper has probably struggled with the black dog as well.

We ask a lot of our politicians. We expect them to work hard for us, to fawn over us when we meet them, to live lives free of foibles, and to do all of this under the ignobility of assumed dishonesty and selfishness. It is a terrible burden. We should not be surprised that those lacking self-awareness and not lacking in ego are perhaps overrepresented in our hallowed chambers. But it should also not surprise us that politics often destroys people's lives.

I am not sure it did in the case of Batters, by the way. Quite the opposite, he is likely a testament to how individuals burdened with depression can still achieve greatness, and do so against obstacles more difficult than most can even begin to comprehend. It takes a special strength to struggle against the dark every morning and still make something of one's life. Batters' life, however short, is a testament to this. But also, quite sadly, to how far we have to go in understanding the pervasiveness of depression. Not to mention its treatment and the prevention of its more terrible ends.

At times like this, one hopes more than anything that Batters' family is fully acquainted with the admiration others held for their husband, son and brother.

Apparently, politics as usual...

2009-07-03T18:09:00.002-04:00

...involves finishing jobs one was elected to do. It just keeps getting more silly in Wasilla.

Air Canada and Great Customer Service

2009-06-18T14:41:00.002-04:00

A quick plug for Air Canada. I fly a fair amount, probably a little more than average. And I am rather forgetful. Indeed, I think I got into academia because it is the only profession that rewards this. Anyways, a few weeks ago I had a series of 6 am flights, meaning that I was bleary-eyed and rundown when I was on the plane. On the second of these flights I left my favourite headphones in the seat back. My parents had bought me a great a noise-canceling set for Christmas that immeasurably improved traveling. I immediately called Air Canada and reported them lost. They said they had nothing on record, which lead me to think another customer was probably now enjoying them.

Today, I found the headphones in my mailbox. I note that Air Canada paid $11 postage to mail them to me express. This is great customer service. It is surpassed only by the time I left my iPod in the lounge at Pearson and someone at the desk searched for it, found it, and noted the next time I was flying. Boarding that flight, I was called over by someone at the desk to be reminded to pick it up when I landed in Toronto.

Air Canada is a great airline. It's worth noting.

How to Help the Poor

2009-05-15T20:54:00.001-04:00

Gordon says well a lot of what I think.

Liberty

2009-05-05T01:02:00.001-04:00

Watching South Africa

2009-04-24T20:43:00.003-04:00

South Africa had an election on Wednesday. We are less than a day away from receiving the final results. I've been following these with great interest, not for the least because this is a crucially important election for the country and the region.

Three things make this election so important. First, the presidency is likely to go to a man who will wish to change the constitution to his own ends. And we should be concerned about those ends. It was perhaps inevitable that Mbeki would look like a man in an oversized suit, dressed up and playing pretend, after following Mandela. But what a greater decline is marked by the election of Jacob Zuma. Leave aside his rough ways, his polygamy, and his demagoguery. He is a deeply corrupted man. He may be given to the most unhealthy impulses politically. And he has a past that he has not completely squared against the account of history. It likely includes ordering the torture and summary execution of comrades when he was head of the intelligence for the ANC. This is Guantanamo stuff and more. It should disqualify any man from leadership of a great and democratic nation.

The point should be belaboured. Here, in an article from The Times are some of the things which the Motsuenyane Commission claimed occurred under Zuma's watch.

Detainees were made to crawl through colonies of red ants with pig fat rubbed into their skin. A prisoner had his lips burned by cigarettes and his testicles squeezed with pliers; a detainee was buried up to his neck before being suffocated with a plastic bag; a woman had a guard masturbate over her because she refused to have sex with security officials. A trainee tried to commit suicide after his girlfriend was “taken away”. People were locked up in goods containers, in suffocating conditions. And people simply disappeared.

This election is important because it risks putting the constitution into the hands of a man responsible for such acts. Good democrats and liberals everywhere should hope that his party falls short of a two-thirds majority.

Second, the election is important because it marks the official arrival of COPE, a breakaway party from the ANC, and the confirmation of the Democratic Alliance as the largest opposition grouping in the country. The future of democratic politics in South Africa likely lies in a union between these two parties; between the moderate instincts of COPE and the principled and liberal positions of the DA. Such a coalition would also signal the triumph of non-racialized politics over the crude and unfortunately all-too-familiar chauvinism of the ANC under Zuma.

Third, the DA has won the Western Cape outright and will be able to govern without coalition partners. This is a beauty of federalism: an opposition party will have a jurisdiction in which to prove itself worthy of government. South Africa needs an effective opposition, so we should all hope that Helen Zille, the head of the DA and likely the next premier of the Western Cape, is able to govern effectively.

You should wish for the days of Bob Rae

2009-03-07T22:01:00.003-05:00

The Ontario NDP selected a new leader today. Andrea Horwath has been selected on the third ballot and after a speech in which she spoke out against "theives" and "scabs". I am not quite sure who these people are, but she is undoubtedly striking out a position on the left.

I don't know too many New Democrat activists, but I suspect most of them think that striking out a position on the left is the way forward. Indeed, I think Murray Campbell quite probably captures their thinking well when he notes that Howard Hampton "helped re-establish the party after its devastating defeat in the 1995 election." Of course, he did nothing of the sort.

I've posted a helpful graph. It shows the three-party seat share won by each provincial NDP leader in each election since WW2. It's instructive for two reasons. First, it shows how exceptional Rae's victory in 1995 was. The NDP should not be expecting that kind of performance any time soon. But, second, it also shows how exceptional Rae's average performance was, especially stacked against Hampton's. Contra Campbell and many others, Hampton would have done well to equal Rae's worst performance. And he never did. Horwath should hope for the same.

March 6

2009-03-07T19:21:00.002-05:00

March 6th is among the most important days of any calendar year. This is a fact. Among the events of this day:

In 1912, Roald Amusden returned from the South Pole to announce his successful expedition the prior December.
Joseph Nicephore Niepce, the inventor of photography, was born in 1765.
Townes Van Zandt, the great Texan songwriter -- listen to Colorado Girl if you wish to break your heart -- was born in 1944.
Thomas Aquinas died on this day in 1274.
And, Paul-Emile Victor, the French explorer who traversed Greenland in 1934, died on this day in 1995.

But, most importantly, it was the day Luke Smilek, my third nephew, was brought, kicking, screaming, and solving second-year calculus problems, into the world. Congratulations to my sister and beau frere, and hello Luke.

Last night I dreamt I was a music critic

2009-03-07T13:13:00.001-05:00

By some measure, at least.

Various and Sundry, vN

2009-03-06T17:10:00.002-05:00

Five random thoughts on a terribly nice day in San Diego:

1.) This is terrible news for Zimbabwe. Morgan Tsvangirai has endured imprisonment, beatings, deportation, and a constant threat to his life. He's done so bravely in the face of a thug. And now he has lost his wife. It's a terrible tragedy. Stack another one upon the pile and ask how much more has to happen in Zimbabwe before someone intervenes.

2.) The voters actually are wrong sometimes. Just not this time. None of this is an indictment on John Tory's character. It's only to say that you only get so many chances in politics and his are up. So, what does Flaherty do?

3.) There is some talk of an election in Ottawa. This much is clear to me: the official opposition is within its rights and indeed its responsibilities to ask the federal government to account for all the stimulus money it spends, particularly the constituencies in which it is disbursed. For the government to force an election over this is to show contempt for parliamentary oversight. For the opposition to blink in the face of this is to show disregard for their duties. We all know how this should end. Let's hope it does, for once. Update: The jury is out.

4.) This is a wonderful blog post remembering a great man.

5.) I have been listening to a lot of Leo Kottke lately and trying to play half as well. I particularly recommend Everybody Lies, Buckaroo, and Julie's House. You'll be wiser and wryer.

David Myles...

2009-03-02T21:14:00.002-05:00

...has won an ECMA for best folk recording for his album 'On the Line.' If you don't own it, you should. I've known David for a lot of years and among a really talented roster of friends he stands above the others.

Personally, I am quite glad this album's been recognized as it will long be associated with a great time in my life. David played at a party Sam and I held just before we left for Africa. And everytime I listened to music on the bike, I started with his track "I Don't Wanna Know." Even today, I can remember listening to the album as we dipped down into a pasture in Ethiopia and then into a line of trees where the fog was so thick we had to pull over and make sure we were still on the way to Addis.

So, buy his album and listen to it during something special and it will stay with you for a long time.

Yesterday

2009-02-19T15:48:00.002-05:00

I swam in the ocean. Today, I finally warmed up.

Death and All His Friends...

2009-02-07T15:59:00.002-05:00

Couldn't make this better. Joe Satriani is going to serve Coldplay at the Grammys. And he plans to film it. This is quite a juvenile stunt but I guess it's his right given how clearly they lifted his tune.

Coldplay sans Chris Martin?

2009-02-01T23:36:00.003-05:00

It's being reported that Coldplay are recording tracks without lead singer Chris Martin. This has to be a terrible idea. Without his lyrics -- e.g. "How long must I stand, with my head stuck under the sand? -- what are they besides just another Joe Satriani cover band?

It Knocks On and On

2009-01-29T14:44:00.002-05:00

The Monkey Cage pointed me to this great paper by Nathan Nunn and Leonard Wantchekon (who for my money is probably one of the most important political scientists in the world). Nunn and Wantchekon show how the effects of having family members extracted for the slave trade lingers on in people today in the form of lower trust in neighbours, family, and local government. This is a compelling and important argument. From the abstract:

We investigate the historical origins of mistrust within Africa. Combining contemporary household survey data with historic data on slave shipments by ethnic group, we show that individuals whose ancestors were heavily threatened by the slave trade today exhibit less trust in neighbors, family co-ethnics, and their local government. We confirm that the relationship is causal by instrumenting the historic intensity of the slave trade by the historic distance from the coast of the respondent’s ancestors, controlling for the respondent’s current distance from the coast. We undertake a number of falsification exercises, all of which suggest that the necessary exclusion restrictions are likely satisfied. We then show that much of the relationship between the slave trade and an individual’s level of trust today cannot be explained by the slave trade’s effect on factors external to the individual, such as domestic institutions or the legal environment. Instead, the evidence shows that a significant portion of the effects of the slave trade work through vertically transmitted factors that are internal to the individual, such as cultural norms of behavior, beliefs and values.

You can read the whole paper here. It's a great example of good political science: it is empirically rigorous, takes the question of causation seriously, incorporates elements of culture, and is morally engaged.

Burning down the House

2009-01-13T02:05:00.002-05:00

My old house in Sackville, NB burnt down Sunday. There is a video here. It was a grand old place. I had a room on the side one year and then the big room at the front for two years. We had great guys above us and even better ladies below. And now it's a big pile of ash, I guess. Things come, things go, but this one stings a little.

In other news, I am taking a faculty job at the UofT beginning January 1, 2010.

Basic Elements

2009-01-08T16:34:00.003-05:00

My great friend, Maskull Lasserre, is a noisemaker in this week's Montreal Mirror. You can read about his work here. He is a sculptor who fashions pieces from the simplest elements. He calls them artifacts of some time and place. I've always thought of them as snapshots of, if not his mind, then at least his curiosity. His work is worth a good and long look. And if you're ever looking for a partner in adventure he can handle a canoe and a hatchet like no other.

Working in between heartbeats

2009-01-08T14:23:00.003-05:00

Willard Wigan thinks he may be the most patient man on earth. I agree. Wigan creates sculptures in the eye of a needle. It bears repeating: in the eye of a needle. His work is so small and delicate that he can only work between heartbeats, lest he pulse destroy a creation. You can read about him here and here. Or you can watch the great report here. His interview is absolutely touching.

Arthur Spirling...

2008-12-31T18:14:00.002-05:00

is now one step closer to answering the question of who would win a fight between a bear and a shark, provided he can get some data on fights between bears and lions. All you need to know is here.

A Good and Full Year

2008-12-30T19:55:00.001-05:00

This has been, I am sure, the most full year of my life. I’ve written more, done more, gained and lost more than in any of my previous 29 years.

This was the year that I completed and defended my PhD; the year I rode my motorcycle from the top to the bottom of Africa. The year I began my professional life as an academic and the first year I entered the academic job market with success. It is the year when I took up new collaborations and greatly expanded my academic interests. For all of these things, it marks perhaps the luckiest year in my life.

This is the year when I lost, for the first time, a close family member. It also turned out to be the year that I said goodbye to two good friends, not because of death but because of circumstance, because of matters of the heart, that great “maze of love and fear”, as Josh Ritter has it put.

This year breaks cleanly into four pieces, like a vase dropped square on the edge of its base. Each piece was distinct, with its own rhythms, routines, and logic and joys. The first piece, from January to April, was spent completing my dissertation. I had received a SSHRC post-doctoral fellowship and it required a submission of my dissertation by April 15th. I can rarely claim that I work tirelessly, but I did during this time. I worked well into the night, often working until 2 am so that I could take the late bus back to the Plateau. This routine was broken only to share a meal with my great housemate, to have friends in for drinks, or to meet a friend downtown. These last meetings were something of a chapter-closing, an almost regular observance marking the end of friendship. This friendship remains one of the great prides of my life and its end my great shame. But I like to think it pushed me to work harder, to make my work my prayer, as my mother so often admonishes me. I submitted my dissertation a few days early and celebrated that night at my apartment with champagne and great friends. And then we closed out Pied de Cochon. With this, a great period in my life, and some of the people central to it, seemed to walk off and out of sight.

The next piece of my year was spent at my parents’ home in North Bay. I spent most days in my father’s garage preparing two motorcycles for our trip to Africa, or up at the local university giving a course in European government. I spent many afternoons with my niece and nephew, or enjoying my mother’s company. I spent many of the nights in local bars and restaurants with an old friend, reliving our high school years, enjoying the present, and avoiding talk of the future. All of this happened alongside the same lake I now overlook. This beautiful place was where I privately contemplated my move out West and the journey Sam and I would make across Africa. This chapter closed when I returned to Montreal to defend my dissertation and celebrated with a wonderful dinner with good friends and old professors.

A week after defending my dissertation, Sam and I hosted a send-off party at an old dive of a bar down the street from my old apartment. Our great friend, David Myles, wowed us all. I boarded a plane the next day for London and then Manchester. I attended a great conference and then left for London. I spent a day with friends before boarding a place for Cairo. I met Sam in the Cairo airport a few hours after landing and began the greatest adventure of my life.

I cannot here do justice to the great journey Sam and I took. Ours was not more impressive than the trips of many others, including those we met along the way. But it is enough to say that spending 45 days trying to make it from Cairo to Cape Town, to survive the heat in Sudan, the rains in Ethiopia, the bandits in Kenya, and then the clock to Cape Town, and to do it alongside a great friend, and to come out the other end in one piece is one of the great prides in my life. I shall write more at another time, just as I’ve written a fair bit here.

This third piece ran hard into the fourth. I flew from Cape Town to London on a Monday, and then to Montreal on a Tuesday. I had a dinner that night with old friends. On Wednesday, I flew overnight to Stockholm where I presented some of the research Daniel Rubenson and I completed earlier in the year. That I am routinely given the chance to travel to talk about my academic work is one of the great privileges of my life, even when I do it with a weather-beaten face, a dirty beard, and a tardy arrival. I then flew from Stockholm to Vancouver, spent a jetlagged night in the home of Sam’s parents, and then arrived at UBC the next day to begin the next stage of my life.

The fourth piece of life occurred in Green College, in the department of political science at UBC, in San Diego, and on more flights than I care to remember. I moved into Green, a graduate college, because I wanted to live among other academics, because I wanted to have interesting friends, and because I wanted someone to take care of the parts of my life I let slide when I am working. This has been a success on all accounts. I spent many of my nights in the pleasurable company of these friends, just as I spent many of my days in the department, enjoying the wisdom of older colleagues, the great insight of younger colleagues, and the pleasure of great office mates. That I would also spend a month of this period in San Diego working with James Fowler, most often overlooking the canyon behind his fine house, most nearly completes this great chapter. But there is more. I traveled a lot, giving talks at my alma mater, at McGill, and at Laurer. And I gave job talks in what was a most successful (and I must say fortuitous, lucky, surprising, and on and on) foray onto the academic job market. And, on top of all of this, I made a great friend of unusual kindness and beauty. That I lost her too in that great maze is my only regret of this period. It is a great one, but it stands alone.

It has been a good and full year. And I am a lucky man. I wish only the same for next year, for myself and for you.

Here's a Canadian we can all be proud of...

2008-12-28T12:57:00.001-05:00

Well done, sir. This is one of the few times when trying is just as good as succeeding.

If I were Michael Ignatieff...

2008-12-13T22:11:00.003-05:00

I would be thinking hard about two things:

1.) How I could have an extended honeymoon because the NDP will be loathe to criticize as long as the coalition was still an ongoing concern. This requires that Ignatieff keep the coalition at least breathing. And that he not criticize Jack Layton too much. But it also requires that he find some set of proposals which are publicly popular, anathema to the NDP, and not supported by Stephen Harper. This is difficult, but not impossible. If it can be achieved than Ignatieff can have grounds for arguing that a coalition may be unworkable.

2.) Whether I could form a government alone without giving the NDP any cabinet seats. I suspect this has been considered among his strategists. I will only note that single-party governments have been formed in other countries by parties with less than the 25% of the seats in Parliament. It's tough, but it's doable.

That said, the smartest course of action is likely scrapping this whole coalition idea in January, reaching some compromise with the PM, and rebuilding the party for a year before forcing an election. If the opposition parties are correct that the PM is leading the country to hell in a handbasket then they'll have no problem assuming power in a year.

Perhaps a post later on how I would think about the task of rebuilding. A preview: it's not some 308 seat strategy.

Ten thoughts on a coalition government in Canada

2008-11-28T19:20:00.001-05:00

• One, coalition governments do not last as long as single-party minorities, on average. Controlling for electoral system, population, and degree of democracy, minority coalitions (which this would be as the Bloc would not be in the cabinet), last about 275 days less than single-party minorities. Blais and Ricard and I have a little chapter on this here.
• Two, there is no reason why Dion could not be Prime Minister until a Liberal leadership race concludes. It would be unconventional, but it is not much different then when a leader takes power after running in what is publicly acknowledged as their last election.
• Three, the Tories have survived on Bloc support enough times that they cannot legitimately criticize the Liberals for doing the same.
• Four, coalition governments are extremely rare in Canadian politics. They have never occurred at the national level outside of the wartime. There was a coalition between the Saskatchewan Liberals and NDP in the last ten years. Prior to that, it’s been at least 40 years since a coalition at the provincial level.
• Five, strictly speaking this is only a coalition if the NDP receives cabinet seats.
• Six, what is occurring now is roughly equivalent to the investiture votes that occur in many other countries. Indeed, of the 20 countries considered in Laver and Shepsle’s Multiparty Government, nearly half (9) have investiture votes. In other words, in many other countries it is thought strange to allow a government to propose policy before the house has decided to approve that government.
• Seven, coalitions and occasionally protracted negotiations over government formation are normal in many democracies. That it is abnormal in Canada does not make it undemocratic. It merely makes it exceptional. By my lights the combination of three, six and seven suggests that this is not actually undemocratic. We may not like it, but the government is the cabinet that commands the support of the House. It is not the cabinet made up of members who got the most votes in the last election.
• Eight, it will be very hard for the Tories to now back away from this. More importantly, it will be very tough for the opposition to back away now. They’ve taken one step over the cliff.
• Nine, the Tories have asked for this to a certain degree. You cannot threaten to bankrupt your opponents (however much they may deserve it) and propose economic policy that is out of step with other countries and arguably with what Canadians want/or expect and not expect a challenge. The opposition is merely doing their job. They are mandated with opposing the government and presenting a government in waiting. If the Governor-General decides that they are to have a crack at Government then it is their right. If you don’t like it you can punish them at the time of the next election.
• Ten, if the GG decides to call an election it is her prerogative. And it won’t be a waste of money!

Giving Thanks

2008-11-27T11:16:00.003-05:00

I am in San Diego today celebrating American Thanksgiving. I've been here for most of the last month working with James Fowler, not to mention living at his house and getting to know his great family. It's been a great month in the middle of a great fall. In short, I cannot imagine my professional life going much better than it is right now. I've great reason to be thankful and it's well worth saying.

That is all. Though I will most certainly return soon with a post on changes to campaign finance in Canada.

The election was not a waste of money

2008-10-15T15:08:00.002-04:00

I think people think it's clever to say that this election was a waste of money. Rick Mercer banged on about it last night and Peter Mansbridge even agreed. I remember Joe Clark making a similar claim in the 2000 debates, complaining that Chretien had wasted money on an election because he wanted to stave off Paul Martin.

The idea, as far as I can tell it, is that if an election ends with a Parliament similar to the previous Parliament, then we ought not to have had an election. Or perhaps we should just have delayed it. I am not really sure what advocates of this argument actually propose as an alternative. I suppose it's probable that they don't have one.

For me, I think the election was well worth the money. Think of what we've learned: the Green Party is supported by less than one-in-ten Canadians. Voters are not as keen on Stephane Dion (much to my chagrin, I must say) as his backers assumed. Jack Layton's New Democrats are not in fact more popular than the Liberals, they are not poised for a breakthrough in Quebec, and they are now more effective in Alberta than Dion's Liberals. Finally, you can make any number of overtures towards Quebec, but the Bloc is still a formidable party and will capitalize on small mistakes. These are all things which were less clear before the election.

Perhaps most importantly, we've given a leader a fresh mandate to address the economy, provided he can muster the support of other parties.

What's the alternative to this? To let the government last for another year, listen to the bleating about how the Tories are acting without a mandate, and complain about the need to get rid of them? I suppose for those who don't like the outcome of last night's election that this would be preferable. At least then they could keep up the charade of being democrats. But to complain about the cost of the election because you don't like the outcome -- which is what this seems to be -- is to be either a purveyor of easy jokes, a cynic, or lazy. It certainly doesn't make you a democrat. This election was not a waste of money. They never are.

The Paradox of Voting

2008-10-14T20:32:00.001-04:00

Don Butler has a great article on the paradox of voting in today's Citizen. You could remove my quotes and I'd still think it was awesome! It's great when a journalist really digs in and figures out a debate.

You can read it here.

Compulsory Voting and Voter Knowledge

2008-10-14T16:57:00.004-04:00

My little paper on compulsory voting and knowledge (co-authored with Milner and Hicks) is here. We conducted the experiment in the winter of 2007. That it's in press a year later says a lot about how efficient is the editorial team at the CJPS. It also says something, I should like to think, about the clarity and simplicity of experimental work.

Note: I think the article is gated. Send me an email if you'd like to read it. Here is the abstract:

Does compulsory voting lead to more knowledgeable and engaged citizens? We report the results from a recent experiment measuring such “second-order effects” in a compulsory voting environment. We conducted the experiment during the 2007 Quebec provincial election among 121 students at a Montreal CEGEP. To receive payment, all the students were required to complete two surveys; half were also required to vote. By comparing knowledge and engagement measures between the two groups, we can measure the second-order effects of compulsory voting. We find little or no such effects.

Insiders?

2008-10-06T22:43:00.002-04:00

I am sitting in Old Montreal watching the National with the Cynic in Chief. There must be something in the water here, because I am seeing things. Rick Anderson and David Herle are on a segment called "The Insiders". And David Herle is talking about how the end of a campaign is full of people outside the party -- pseudo insiders -- talking about what is happening in the race and how it could be done better. I can only assume that they are both taking time away from the campaign rooms to do this show.

On the Debate(s)

2008-10-03T13:01:00.002-04:00

I watched last night's debates with some interest. For the Canadian debate I participated in a great community event with a discussion of the debate at the end. The discussion eventually turned to whether the Green Party should actively throw its support behind the Dion Liberals. It was a great discussion about the moral legitimacy and/or imperative of strategic voting. It's a more muddled question for me now than it was before the conversation, which I take as a sign of a great discussion.

As for the debates themselves, I am not keen to pick a winner or a loser, because I think we all see different things. And it's quite possible for every leader to do well among their respective constituencies and thus discussion of who won and who lost is rather fruitless. Indeed, the most significant recent research on debates suggests that debates do just this. To review the findings of Blais and Perella (two colleagues and friends) consider this abstract:

Almost an entire generation of election survey data was pooled together from the United States and Canada to assess the systemic effects of televised debates. Four questions were posed: (1) Is there a general tendency for evaluations of candidates to improve or deteriorate after a debate? (2) Do evaluations of one candidate negatively correlate with changes in evaluations of opponents? (3) Do debates disadvantage incumbents? (4) Do debates advantage less popular candidates? Using "feeling thermometer" items to measure voter evaluations, four patterns are revealed. First, candidates generally gain points.The supposed mudslinging that characterizes a debate appears not to feed into any notion of cynicism. Instead, voters appear to gain an appreciation for the debaters. Second, a candidate's gain is not earned at the expense of those deemed to have "lost" the match. Third, a debate does not disadvantage an incumbent. A candidate with a record to defend stands about as much chance of benefiting from a debate as a challenger.And fourth, any evaluation gaps before a debate become narrower following a debate. This final effect, which is particularly true of American presidential debates, may reflect a debate's ability to raise awareness of less popular candidates.

Think about that before you prognosticate on who "won" the debate.

Al Walker

2008-09-29T11:13:00.001-04:00

My uncle, Al Walker, died Thursday night in Barrie, Ontario. Run through with cancer and unable to go home to die, he instead passed in his sleep. He was 65 years old.

For a small boy, Uncle Al seemed several scores larger than life. He was a towering man with big hands and a huge frame. He was something from an Eisley essay. Into a family of staid customs and Mennonite ancestry came this brandy-drinking, cigarette-smoking, Lincoln-driving salesman. Beneath all this worldliness was a great kindness and generosity.

If I ever knew the story of how he met my Aunt Joan I’ve long forgotten. Indeed, I cannot remember the first time we met. But I remember still their wedding. I remember the moment he waved us into the drive of the cottage where we were staying. The ceremony was held inside another cottage and out of the rain. I remember someone in attendance yelling out for another kiss after their first and everyone applauding the second offering. My mother later told me a story of overhearing Al telling Greg, my cousin and Joan’s son, that he would be the best father to him he could. And so he was.

The obligations of an uncle aren’t clear, so Uncle Al set his own standards. He was kind, giving, and interested. He and my aunt welcomed me into their home for long stays. With great encouragement he listened to my struggle to learn the guitar. And with great patience he listened to me bang on about whatever topic interested me at the time. Indeed, of the great regrets I shall chalk up in my life one is that I did not have occasion -- that I did not make the occasion -- to tell him how much I enjoyed the better part of two summers I spent at his home in my early teenage years. And I shall regret not having the chance to repeat those great visits.

I should hope that my Uncle will exit my life the same way he entered. Not in one instant, but in a series of great memories. That is, that he might continue ghosting around in my memory and thoughts with no clear departure. And that he might remain larger than life.

Sunday Morning Coming Down

2008-09-28T12:48:00.002-04:00

A few thoughts on a beautiful Sunday morning on Point Grey.

1.) The NDP is set to announce a child benefit program worth as much as $400 per month per child. The money will be given directly to parents, will not be taxed, and will continue until children are 18. This is highly significant for two reasons. First, it is clearly more generous than the Tory plan, but also much more generous than the proposed child care plan of the Liberal Party. Layton may well have outplayed Dion by waiting to release this policy. While this is enough to push him into the Official Opposition is clearly in doubt, but it is helpful for at least two reasons. One, it appears pragmatic. Second, Dion is likely to atack Layton for a lack of commitment to creating more child care spaces directly. Layton, of course, will turn around and accuse Dion of holding onto old and failed policies. This makes for another distinction between the Liberals and the NDP and it is to the benefit of the New Democrats. For whatever its merits, the Liberal child care policy of creating spaces was never nearly as popular as its advocates suppose.

The second reason why this announcement is so important is because it marks a sea change in policy away from a large state-directed creation of daycare spaces and towards the direct funding of parents. The merits of either system are debatable, but for what it's worth I was always suspicious about the claims of those who wanted to provide state day care, not because I oppose it in principle but because it sounded highly implausible practically. I guess we won't be finding out for a while anyways.

2.) The debates are this Thursday. It's really a toss-up between the American VP debates and the Canadian English debate. I'll be watching the second as I've been invited to a community event to talk about the debates a bit before hand and then moderate some discussion afterwards. Later this week, I'll post my little spiel explaining what I think they are trying to accomplish.

3.) I am similarly speaking at the Killam Foundation dinner at UBC tomorrow night. I was lucky to win a couple of Killams this year and this dinner is to recognize the UBC winners. I'll be talking about my research and, hopefully, demonstrating how the Killam's contribution to research (and Canada) is so significant.

4.) In between these two events I'll be flying home for a funeral. My Uncle Al died on Thursday night. When I can get through putting my memories of him to paper I shall post them as well. We can't avoid these things for long, even if we preface them with three points of useless front matter. In the meantime, I am off into a Sunday morning hoping I'll find something to take "me back to somethin', That I'd lost somehow, somewhere along the way."

On Luck, a Great Week, and Sleepness Nights

2008-09-23T20:07:00.004-04:00

I am now at the tired end of a great seven days. Last Monday I took the overnight flight from Vancouver to Toronto and then the hour-long shot to North Bay. There is no flight greater than the one that takes you over Lake Simcoe, Muskoka, the west end of Algonquin, and then over Lake Nipissing and the circle of the Manitou Islands and meets the runway where the hill comes up. There's no flight I enjoy more and no airport I look forward to more.

I spent Tuesday and Wednesday at my parents' house. It was a little more housekeeping and bookkeeping than I like as I had to pack a crate which my father built to be sent to Vancouver. But my parents kindly arranged a great and large party for me to celebrate my breathing return from Africa. It was a wonderful night to catch up with a lot of the people who have been instrumental in my life. And to be reminded of growing up in such a great place.

I flew to Moncton on Wednesday night and slept in Sackville. I spent two days at Mount A giving a couple of lectures and a public talk on altruism and spending preferences. I realized there, too, how lucky I was to have had the experience of living in Sackville and being taught by so many great academics. Their influence still runs through my research. As importantly, I spent an evening playing music with Frank Strain and his crew, and then Loren McGinnis and I finished the night with an early morning run to Amherst. Alas, the Big Stop in Aulac (recently of Old Man Luedecke fame and tribute) is no longer 24 hours. This would be the first of a few 5 am nights.

We spent Friday in Halifax with Andrew Black and his crew. Bed time: 5 am.

Saturday was the third jewel of the trip. David Myles and Nina Corfu got married in Petite Riviere, an incredibly beautiful and genuine town. They don't make towns liek this anymore and they rarely make couples as great as David and Nina. Their's is a great love story and everyone was feeling the vibe. What's more, they had an all-star line-up play their wedding ceremony and then had Garrett Mason play the reception in the firehall. He's Canada's best bluesman and he's worth more than a listen. The particular highlight of the performance were these lyrics:

To the girl on the left with the funky dress on
To the girl on the right with the fishnets on
You can dance the funky bossman all night long.

I don't even know what that means, but it's awesome! The wedding ended with a bonfire by the ocean. Bedtime? 5 am.

Loren and I then spent Sunday at Herman's Island with Blackie. We swam in the ocean (it must have been a kilometer to that bouy!), sat in the hottub, contemplated swinging the golf clubs and ate BBQ. We then raced back to Petite Riviere to catch Old Man Luedecke (who also played David's wedding) before driving overnight to the Moncton airport. Bedtime? Unclear.

So, all of this is to say that at the tailend of string of sleepless nights I am reminded of how lucky I was to grow up in such a great place, to attend such a great institution and to meet such great people. May it always be so.

On the ethnic vote

2008-09-18T02:13:00.002-04:00

I note this with great interest. I would also put down a lot of money that the reporter called Blais and he talked to them on background. Someone from the CES must of as there is no cited source for it...

This is what happens...

2008-09-14T13:38:00.001-04:00

I guess this is what happens when Larry Bartels finishes with you.

Four thoughts on the election

2008-09-08T19:59:00.002-04:00

Without further adieu, demand, or interest, here are my four thoughts on the election:

1.) The Conservatives are obviously desiring a majority, though the ability to fashion this majority is slightly more difficult than the media is making it out to be. It almost certainly requires two things: a much better performance in Quebec than in the previous election (which was already a pretty good showing) AND significant gains in Ontario. Assuming that the Tories' majority comes from gains only in Quebec and Ontario, the party needs a net gain of 46 seats out of the 131 up for grabs. This is not an impossible task, but it's not a simple one. And if it occurs it would signal a rather fundamental shift in the Canadian party system and will certainly doom either the Bloc or Stephane Dion, or both.
2.) We must always remember that the Liberals have an inherent advantage in Canadian elections due to their support among ethnic minorities and Catholics. Read Blais' Presidential Address before you say but. If the Conservatives win it will be because they've finally found a way to break into this group. And I am willing then to call all of my political friends who said it was stupid of Harper to bring up same-sex marriage in the last election. It may have been unsavoury, uncivil, unseemly, whatever, but it certainly wasn't stupid. It was most certainly a part of a longer-term plan to convince these key voting groups that the Conservatives are as much on their side as the Liberals. This is a long-term struggle, but the Tories have proven themselves much more forward-looking than the Liberals in recent years.
3.) Dion should quit talking like the Green Shift is not going to effect anyone negatively. It is. But that's ok. We don't pretend that the cost of cigarette and alcohol taxes are evenly distributed throughout the population. And society is willing to accept them as a necessary tool for addressing externalities. In sum, I liked Dion the Straight Talking Professor more than Dion the Politician, and this policy is the latest example. I also think it plays to his weaknesses and not his strengths.
4.) I am unconvinced Elizabeth May should not be included in the debates. But I am not convinced either. In this case, I can't imagine it would hurt, so why not err on the side of inclusion?

My return

2008-08-28T13:00:00.002-04:00

I've returned, to Canada certainly and blogging possibly. Sam and I had a great run from Cairo to Cape Town. It had everything we could have asked for -- incredible scenery, challenging riding, remarkable people -- and then a lot more. You can read about most of it here though some of it must be saved for the book.

I have for a little while been firmly embedded in an office here at the UBC, but not before attending a great conference in Stockholm and spending a night with great friends in Montreal. Now it's down to business on a few projects with other great academics, principal among them Paul Quirk, James Fowler, Dan Rubenson, Arthur Spirling, and Frederick Bastien. I often reflected during the ride on how lucky I am to experience such things. I am equally lucky to work with such great people and I look forward to making the most of it.

I shall get back to it but will blog on the coming election soon.

Various and Sundry

2008-06-29T13:05:00.003-04:00

I now have my PhD. I defended last week. This person is mostly responsible for any success I've had. I am long in his debt.

I booked a flight from London to Manchester yesterday under Dr. Loewen. This, of course, is the principal reason I finished a PhD. Let's hope that I get an upgrade to business class and let's hope that no one has a heart attack.

Blogging will be light for the next little while as I head off to ride a motorcycle from Cairo to Cape Town before taking up at UBC in August. You can follow the trip here. If you are inspired by our trip you can take part by making a donation to Spread the Net, a great charity for which we've been fundraising . We've raised $15,000 so far and hope to raise $50,000 with the trip. You can donate here.

Potter Gold

2008-06-16T18:36:00.004-04:00

Andrew Potter has a nice and counterintuitive column in this week's Maclean's. Potter argues that negative advertising may not be all bad. He has Warren Kinsella and me in his corner. I am not sure how I would match up in bar fight, but I suspect Warren's a good comrade in arms.

Anyways, it's an article I like, first because of the counterintuitions, but also because Potter cites some of my recent research. The paper is under review, so I won't link to it, but if you'd like a copy email me. In the meantime, here's the abstract:

Some citizens differ in their levels of concern for the supporters of various parties. I demonstrate how such concerns can motivate citizens to vote . I ﬁrst present a simple formal model which incorporates concern for others and election beneﬁts to explain the decision to vote. By predicting substantial turnout, this model overcomes the “paradox of participation”. I then verify the model empirically. I utilize a series dictator games in an online survey of more than 2000 Canadians to measure the concern of individuals for other partisans. I show how the preferences revealed in these games can predict the decision to vote in the face of several conventional controls. Taken together, the formal model and empirical results generate a more fulsome and satisfactory account of the decision to vote than an explanation which relies solely on duty.