Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst
Paper by Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page :”Who governs? Who really rules? To what extent is the broad body of U.S. citizens sovereign, semi-sovereign, or largely powerless? These questions have animated much important work in the study of American politics.
While this body of research is rich and variegated, it can loosely be divided into four families of theories: Majoritarian Electoral Democracy, Economic Elite Domination, and two types of interest group pluralism –Majoritarian Pluralism, in which the interests of all citizens are more or less equally represented, and Biased Pluralism, in which corporations, business associations, and professional groups predominate) Each of these perspectives makes different predictions about the independent influence upon U.S. policy making of four sets of actors: the Average Citizen or “median voter,” Economic Elites, and Mass-based or Business-oriented Interest Groups or industries.
Each of these theoretical traditions has given rise to a large body of literature. Each is supported by a great deal of empirical evidence – some of it quantitative, some historical, some observational – concerning the importance of various sets of actors (or, all too often, a single set of actors) in U.S. policy making. This literature has made important contributions to our understanding of how American politics works and has helped illuminate how democratic or undemocratic (in various senses) our policy making process actually is. Until very recently, however, it has been impossible to test the diffe ring predictions of these theories against each other within a single statistical model that permits one to analyze
the independent effects of each set of actors upon policy outcomes.
Here – in a tentative and preliminary way – we offer such test, bringing a unique data set to bear on the problem. Our measures are far from
perfect, but we hope that this first step will help inspire further research into what we see as some of the most fundamental questions about American politics…”

Five Reasons for Choice-Preserving Approaches

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Cass Sunstein at Nudges vs Shoves: “Psychologists and behavioral economists have identified many sources of human errors, including self-control problems, “present bias,” unrealistic optimism, and limited attention.  Building on these underlying findings, a great deal of work has explored the possibility of enlisting libertarian paternalism, or nudges, to make people’s lives go better.  Nudges preserve freedom of choice and thus allow people to go their own way.  But in light of behavioral findings, there has also been increasing interest in asking whether mandates and bans have a fresh justification.1  The motivation for that question is clear: If we know that people’s choices lead them in the wrong direction, why should we insist on, or adopt a precommitment to, approaches that preserve freedom of choice?  Some skeptics, notably Professors Ryan Bubb and Richard Pildes, object that behavioral economists have “trimmed their sails” by adopting an unjustified presumption in favor of choice-preserving approaches.2

It should be agreed that if a mandate would increase social welfare, suitably defined, there is a strong argument on its behalf.  No one believes that nudges are a sufficient approach to violent crime.  In the face of a standard market failure, coercion has a standard justification; consider the problem of air pollution.  We know that there are “behavioral market failures” as well.  If people suffer from unrealistic optimism, limited attention, or a problem of self-control, and if the result is a serious welfare loss, there is an argument for some kind of public response.  We could certainly imagine cases in which the best approach is a mandate or a ban, because that response is preferable, from the standpoint of social welfare, to any alternative, including nudges.
Nonetheless, there are many reasons to think that if improving social welfare is the goal, nudges have significant advantages and are often the best approach.  They may well have high benefits without high costs, and in any case their net benefits may be higher than those of alternative approaches.  Five points are especially important.
First, choice-preserving approaches make sense in the face of heterogeneity.  By allowing people to go their own way, they reduce the high costs potentially associated with one-size-fits-all solutions, which mandates often impose.  Second, those who favor nudges are alert to the important fact that public officials have limited information and may themselves err.  If nudges are based on mistakes, the damage is likely to be less severe than in the case of mandates, because nudges can be ignored or dismissed.  Third, nudges respond to the fact that public officials may be improperly affected by the influence of well-organized private groups (the public choice problem).  If so, the fact that people can go their own way provides an important safeguard, at least when compared with mandates.  Fourth, nudges have the advantage of avoiding the welfare loss that people experience when they are deprived of the ability to choose.  In some cases, that loss might be severe.  Fifth, nudges recognize that freedom of choice can be seen, and often is seen, as an intrinsic good, which government should respect if it is to treat people with dignity….”

Digital Humanitarians

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

New book by Patrick Meier on how big data is changing humanitarian response: “The overflow of information generated during disasters can be as paralyzing to humanitarian response as the lack of information. This flash flood of information when amplified by social media and satellite imagery is increasingly referred to as Big Data—or Big Crisis Data. Making sense of Big Crisis Data during disasters is proving an impossible challenge for traditional humanitarian organizations, which explains why they’re increasingly turning to Digital Humanitarians.
Who exactly are these Digital Humanitarians? They’re you, me, all of us. Digital Humanitarians are volunteers and professionals from the world over and from all walks of life. What do they share in common? The desire to make a difference, and they do that by rapidly mobilizing online in collaboration with international humanitarian organizations. They make sense of vast volumes of social media and satellite imagery in virtually real-time to support relief efforts worldwide. How? They craft and leverage ingenious crowdsourcing solutions with trail-blazing insights from artificial intelligence.
In sum, this book charts the sudden and spectacular rise of Digital Humanitarians by sharing their remarkable, real-life stories, highlighting how their humanity coupled with innovative solutions to Big Data is changing humanitarian response forever. Digital Humanitarians will make you think differently about what it means to be humanitarian and will invite you to join the journey online.
Clicker here to be notified when the book becomes available. For speaking requests, please email [email protected].”

New York Police Twitter Strategy Has Unforeseen Consequences

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

J. David Goodman in The New York Times: “The New York Police Department has long seen its crime-fighting strategies emulated across the country and around the world.

So when a departmental Twitter campaign, meant to elicit smiling snapshots, instead attracted tens of thousands of less flattering images of officers, it did not take long for the hashtag #myNYPD to spread far beyond the five boroughs.

By Wednesday, the public relations situation in New York City had sparked imitators from Los Angeles (#myLAPD) to Mexico (#MiPolicíaMexicana) and over the ocean to Greece (#myELAS), Germany (#DankePolizei) and France (#maPolice).

The images, including circles of police officers, in riot gear poised to strike a man on a bench, or hosing down protesters, closely resembled those posted on Tuesday by critics of the Police Department in New York, in which many of the most infamous moments in recent police history had been dredged up by Twitter users….”

Open Dialogue on Improving How to Do Business with the Federal Government

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst
CIO Council: “We are looking for ideas on how to streamline and make other improvements in the way businesses of all sizes work for and with the U.S. Federal government.
(Deadline for participation – May 5, 2014.)

The purpose of the dialogue is to discuss improvements to the Federal contracting process. Through this platform, we will gather ideas and proposed improvements that can be accomplished through executive (regulatory, administrative, or management) action, as well as potential legislative proposals (new laws). The open dialogue is focused around three topics (campaigns). Each campaign is a unique aspect of the Federal contracting process for which we welcome your insight, ideas, and feedback.
Please remember to check back frequently to comment on or share thoughts on emerging ideas and identify those you believe to be most impactful.

  • Currently, the Federal Government requires businesses to fill out a lot of complicated paperwork to do business with us. We know we can do better. We want to know what you are seeing – where can we reengineer paperwork and systems, eliminate duplicative reporting, reduce the frequency of reporting, and/or change outdated requirements?

  • We know entities doing business in the private sector have best practices and we’re anxious to learn about and replicate in the Federal Government wherever possible. We want to hear about innovative approaches to contracting that align with your business practices.

  • We know many businesses lack the resources and expertise to participate in the Federal marketplace. We welcome feedback – especially by entities that are not participating in Federal contracting – to understand what steps we can take to make your participation possible.”

UK Department of Health: Citizen Space

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

at the UK Department of Health: “We recently ran a survey of our internal DH Citizen Space users. Citizen Space is the digital tool that DH and a number of other local and central Government Departments use to run their consultations.
Overall, our survey results were positive with staff reporting they had found the tool relatively easy to use and access. The survey did flag some internal issues eg. visibility of the tool in the Department, minor technical issues etc, which we’re planning to address through better promotion of Citizen Space and training, but on the whole our internal user experience seemed to be good.
However, there was one area where internal users did seem to be experiencing problems, and ironically it wasn’t with the tool itself. Many of our survey respondents seemed to be struggling with the analysis of their consultation responses, with some teams even questioning the usefulness of the data they were amassing from their digital consultations.
Some common mistakes
To help us get to the bottom of what was going on, we contacted some of our respondents and met with some consultation teams to talk about how they design, run and analyse the responses from their digital consultations. We found some common mistakes:

  • Not thinking ‘digital first’ – not designing consultations with a digital audience and digital responses in mind. Eg. writing consultations for print and then trying to shoehorn them into a digital tool
  • Not identifying what ‘real’ success means for a consultation before launching it or not putting in place the metrics needed to measure for success. Eg. not setting benchmarks, not measuring qualitative data or not identifying key target audiences and how to reach them.
  • Not thinking about the type and/or amount of data that will be returned and planning resources and tools accordingly. Eg. asking lots of free-text questions and then drowning in responses

As a team, we are trying to address many of these issues by improving the way the Department approaches and designs its digital consultations. The next iteration of our Digital policymaking toolkit, which will combine a new set of Policy Standards with our digital tools, techniques and advice for policymakers, should help. Alongside other work our team is doing to build up digital capability in the department and to produce analytical tools for data mining and sentiment analysis that will help teams with free-text analysis.
…how to use or build a consultation in Citizen Space, you can find one of those in the Citizen Space User Guide and further guides and user forums on the Citizen Space Knowledge Base website.

The Right Colors Make Data Easier To Read

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Sharon Lin And Jeffrey Heer at HBR Blog: “What is the color of money? Of love? Of the ocean? In the United States, most people respond that money is green, love is red and the ocean is blue. Many concepts evoke related colors — whether due to physical appearance, common metaphors, or cultural conventions. When colors are paired with the concepts that evoke them, we call these “semantically resonant color choices.”
Artists and designers regularly use semantically resonant colors in their work. And in the research we conducted with Julie Fortuna, Chinmay Kulkarni, and Maureen Stone, we found they can be remarkably important to data visualization.
Consider these charts of (fictional) fruit sales:
fruitcharts
The only difference between the charts is the color assignment. The left-hand chart uses colors from a default palette. The right-hand chart has been assigned semantically resonant colors. (In this case, the assignment was computed automatically using an algorithm that analyzes the colors in relevant images retrieved from Google Image Search using queries for each data category name.)
Now, try answering some questions about the data in each of these charts. Which fruit had higher sales: blueberries or tangerines? How about peaches versus apples? Which chart do you find easier to read?…
To make effective visualization color choices, you need to take a number of factors into consideration. To name just two: All the colors need to be suitably different from one another, for instance, so that readers can tell them apart – what’s called “discriminability.” You also need to consider what the colors look like to the color blind — roughly 8% of the U.S. male population! Could the colors be distinguished from one another if they were reprinted in black and white?
One easy way to assign semantically resonant colors is to use colors from an existing color palette that has been carefully designed for visualization applications (ColorBrewer offers some options) but assign the colors to data values in a way that best matches concept color associations. This is the basis of our own algorithm, which acquires images for each concept and then analyzes them to learn concept color associations. However, keep in mind that color associations may vary across cultures. For example, in the United States and many western cultures, luck is often associated with green (four-leaf clovers), while red can be considered a color of danger. However, in China, luck is traditionally symbolized with the color red.
…
Semantically resonant colors can reinforce perception of a wide range of data categories. We believe similar gains would likely be seen for other forms of visualizations like maps, scatterplots, and line charts. So when designing visualizations for presentation or analysis, consider color choice and ask yourself how well the colors resonate with the underlying data.”

Twenty-one European Cities Advance in Bloomberg Philanthropies' Mayors Challenge Competition to Create Innovative Solutions to Urban Challenges

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Press Release: “Bloomberg Philanthropies today revealed the 21 European cities that have emerged as final contenders in its 2013-2014 Mayors Challenge, a competition to inspire cities to generate innovative ideas that solve major challenges and improve city life, and that ultimately can spread to other cities. One grand prize winner will receive €5 million for the most creative and transferable idea. Four additional cities will be awarded €1 million, and all will be announced in the fall. The finalists’ proposed solutions address some of Europe’s most critical issue areas: youth unemployment, aging populations, civic engagement, economic development, environment and energy concerns, public health and safety, and making government more efficient…
James Anderson, the head of government innovation for Bloomberg Philanthropies, said: “While the ideas are very diverse, we identified key themes. The ideas tended toward networked, distributed solutions as opposed to costly centralized ones. There was a lot of interest in citizen engagement as both a means and end. Technology that concretely and positively affects the lives of individual citizens – from the blind person in Warsaw to the unemployed youth in Amsterdam to the homeowner in Schaerbeek — also played a significant role.”
Bloomberg Philanthropies staff and an independent selection committee of 12 members from across Europe closely considered each application over multiple rounds of review, culminating in feedback and selection earlier this month, resulting in 21 cities’ ideas moving forward for further development. The submissions will be judged on four critieria: vision, potential for impact, implementation plan, and potential to spread to other cities. The finalists and their ideas are:

  1. AMSTERDAM, Netherlands – Youth Unemployment: Tackling widespread youth unemployment by equipping young people with 21st century skills and connecting them with jobs and apprenticeships across Europe through an online game
  2. ATHENS, Greece – Civic Engagement: Empowering citizens with a new online platform to address the large number of small-scale urban challenges accelerated by the Greek economic crisis
  3. BARCELONA, Spain – Aging: Improving quality of life and limiting social isolation by establishing a network of public and private support – including family, friends, social workers, and volunteers – for each elderly citizen
  4. BOLOGNA, Italy – Youth Unemployment: Building an urban scale model of informal education labs and civic engagement to prevent youth unemployment by teaching children aged 6-16 entrepreneurship and 21st century skills
  5. BRISTOL, United Kingdom – Health/Anti-obesity: Tackling obesity and unemployment by creating a new economic system that increases access to locally grown, healthy foods
  6. BRNO, Czech Republic – Public Safety/Civic Engagement: Engaging citizens in keeping their own communities safe to build social cohesion and reduce crime
  7. CARDIFF, United Kingdom – Economic Development: Increasing productivity little by little in residents’ personal and professional lives, so that a series of small improvements add up to a much more productive city
  8. FLORENCE, Italy – Economic Development: Combatting unemployment with a new economic development model that combines technology and social innovation, targeting the city’s historic artisan and maker community
  9. GDAŃSK, Poland – Civic Engagement: Re-instilling faith in local democracy by mandating that city government formally debate local issues put forward by citizens
  10. KIRKLEES, United Kingdom – Social Capital: Pooling the city and community’s idle assets – from vehicles to unused spaces to citizens’ untapped time and expertise – to help the area make the most of what it has and do more with less
  11. KRAKOW, Poland – Transportation: Implementing smart, personalized transportation incentives and a seamless and unified public transit payment system to convince residents to opt for greener modes of transportation
  12. LISBON, Portugal – Energy: Transforming wasted kinetic energy generated by the city’s commuting traffic into electricity, reducing the carbon footprint and increasing environmental sustainability
  13. LONDON, United Kingdom – Public Health: Empowering citizens to monitor and improve their own health through a coordinated, multi-stakeholder platform and new technologies that dramatically improve quality of life and reduce health care costs
  14. MADRID, Spain – Energy: Diversifying its renewable energy options by finding and funding the best ways to harvest underground power, such as wasted heat generated by the city’s below-ground infrastructure
  15. SCHAERBEEK, Belgium – Energy: Using proven flyover and 3D geothermal mapping technology to provide each homeowner and tenant with a personalized energy audit and incentives to invest in energy-saving strategies
  16. SOFIA, Bulgaria – Civic Engagement: Transforming public spaces by deploying mobile art units to work side-by-side with local residents, re-envisioning and rejuvenating underused spaces and increasing civic engagement
  17. STARA ZAGORA, Bulgaria – Economic Development: Reversing the brain-drain of the city’s best and brightest by helping young entrepreneurs turn promising ideas into local high-tech businesses
  18. STOCKHOLM, Sweden – Environment: Combatting climate change by engaging citizens to produce biochar, an organic material that increases tree growth, sequesters carbon, and purifies storm runoff
  19. THE HAGUE, Netherlands – Civic Engagement: Enabling citizens to allocate a portion of their own tax money to support the local projects they most believe in
  20. WARSAW, Poland – Transportation/Accessibility: Enabling the blind and visually impaired to navigate the city as easily as their sighted peers by providing high-tech auditory alerts which will save them travel time and increase their independence
  21. YORK, United Kingdom – Government Systems: Revolutionizing the way citizens, businesses, and others can propose new ideas to solve top city problems, providing a more intelligent way to acquire or develop the best solutions, thus enabling greater civic participation and saving the city both time and money

Further detail and related elements for this year’s Mayors Challenge can be found via: http://mayorschallenge.bloomberg.org/”

In Belgium, speed camera locations are crowdsourced from citizens

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Springwise: “As much as local authorities try to, they aren’t able to stop every single civic infraction because they only have a limited number of eyes on the street. However, smartphones have already enabled councils to crowdsource details of law breaches, through apps such as Parking Mobility that let users log when a driver is using a disabled parking bay without a licence. Now the ikflitsmee campaign in Belgium has encouraged citizens to send in locations where they believe speeding is a problem in order for the police to invest in safety measures.
Open until April 10, anyone could log onto the ikflitsmee website to nominate locations such as schools, playgrounds or sharp turns in the road where speeding is a particular problem. The initiative spanned the whole country, involving both local and Federal police forces. After receiving more than 50,000 suggestions, those forces were then invited to check the pinned locations near to them to see if a speed camera would be a feasible solution. The website gets residents to flag up the areas they know to be dangerous and helps authorities by creating an instant data resource to plan future audits.
By asking residents to show them where potential speeders are, local authorities can curb accidents and deliver more fines to culprits, boosting their revenue. At the same time, citizens feel empowered and involved in the improvement of road safety in the country. Are there other ways to tap citizens’ smartphones for more rapid gathering of data that can help councils improve their service to the community?
Website: www.ikflitsmee.be”

Finland opens new portal launched to support transparency and interaction

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Epractice:” The Ministry of Justice (of Finland) has launched a new portal, demokratia.fi, which gathers together information from various democracy-related sites and news in the field of political decision-making. The site thereby makes it easier for citizens to find the best channels for participation and influence, and increases government transparency and interaction.
Demokratia.fi summarises the eDemocracy web services maintained by the Ministry of Justice, namely otakantaa.fi, kansalaisaloite.fi and kuntalaisaloite.fi. Later in spring 2014, a fourth site will be added, lausuntopalvelu.fi, which is intended to streamline the consultation procedures and make it transparent and open to the public. The service will digitise the current consultation process.
The administration is acting in accordance with the principles of the Finnish action plan for open government, to strengthen citizens’ rights to information and participation in the development of common solutions and services. Matters that are under preparation should be reported at an early stage of preparations so that citizens have genuine opportunities to influence the process.
Demokrati.fi also contains links to other public authorities’ websites with information on current matters that are being planned or prepared. In addition, it highlights the latest news from, for example, the parliament and the government.”