A Shrewdness of Apes

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!