The tyranny of moral intuition?

Liberals don’t understand conservative values. And they can’t recognize this failing, because they’re so convinced of their rationality, open-mindedness and enlightenment.

From Willian Saletan’s review of a new book by psychologist Jonathan Haidt.

Haidt’s previous book, The Happiness Hypothesis, was a fantastic introduction to the psychology of behavior and morality. And I think the basic message of the new book rings true. So I am inclined to recommend it.

My impression from the last book: Haidt has a very slight tendency to hyperbole, and it’s a shame he doesn’t distinguish between the weak and strong evidence. He’s a skilful writer and his own research looks clever, and so I think he could fix this without making his books boring.

I’m curious, though. Readers who actually know something about cognitive psychology: what’s Haidt’s street cred?

Defunct economists, academic scribblers, and other people we should be examining more carefully

My favorite discovery of past weeks are Yale’s open courses, for video or podcast.

Right now I’m about a third of my way through Steven Smith’s Introduction to political philosophy and Ian Shapiro’s Moral Foundations of Politics. Highly, highly recommended.

Political philosophy never entered my undergrad education, and I never found the time to read it afterwards. When I made the switch from economics department to political science, it was hard to understand what the political theorists were writing about. What use was revisiting 2000-year-old tomes? Surely it was important stuff to teach, and surely one could squeeze a few original papers out of them. But an entire discipline of new research?

I have since reconsidered. Take these courses for instance. They tackle the first and most fundamental questions in politics: What makes a state legitimate? What makes a good life? What is a responsible citizen to do? What are our obligations towards others?

Every course of new book on development, whether it seeks “why people are poor” or “why nations fail”, and every public policy or Millennium Development Goal–all of these implicitly have an answer to these deeper questions. The answer, though, is almost never explicit, even sometimes to the authors themselves.

I’m reminded of one of my favorite Keynes quotes: “Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.”

As I listen to these lectures, I can’t help but look at half of my own sub-discipline in a new light. More on this in coming weeks as I have a few new books I want to discuss.

The promise of blogging also has its perils

I arrived back to the US and opened my inbox to a surprising number of sympathy emails/tweets over my upbraiding at Freakonomics.

Many thanks to readers for the sympathy, but it’s not completely deserved. It’s pretty simple: I made a mistake. Stephen called me on it. I had a chance to apologize and clarify. And Stephen needed a chance to publicly respond and have his say.

His points are more or less fair. One thing I will say: I think my blogging history points away from a tendency to attack to score points and seek traffic. But there’s little way a newcomer to the blog could know that. Credibility is earned in this world, not given.

Why bring this up? One reason is that owning up to mistakes and giving air to one’s critics is good medicine, even if it tastes bad.

Another is an opportunity to reflect on what I’ve learned after four years of blogging, in the event it’s useful to budding writers, scholars and bloggers. Most of these, in fact, make pretty good general life lessons.

Blogging is risky. Blogs are more interesting to read when you write like you talk. Plainly. Off the cuff. In my experience, if you edit and fine tune your post it begins to sound like a tiresome op-ed, and no one reads beyond the first paragraph. If you assiduously research your posts you either slow down or burn out, and the blog dies.

I don’t know what it’s like to be a pro blogger at a magazine or newspaper. My sense is that these people have editors and fact-checkers to fine tune their posts without losing the common touch, or draining all their time. And hence stop them from saying something truly stupid.

Without the same resources, the academic needs to tread a middle ground between off-the-cuff thoughts and responsible writing. This takes discipline, luck, and a willingness to screw up once in a while.

Since I have limited luck, hate screwing up, and don’t want the blog to die of exhaustion after a couple of years, I instead focus on a few disciplines I try my best to follow.

Don’t write in an angry tone. Most irate writing simply sounds mean-spirited. Most of us are not talented enough writers to pull it off. The only thing harder is snarky humor. Attempt with caution.

Arrogance does not win the argument. Even if another’s argument is worth open disdain, don’t hang it, but rather let it hang itself. A humbler pose is more persuasive.

Be careful: Unfamiliarity breeds contempt. It is altogether too easy to denigrate someone distant from you, especially one above you in the media stratosphere. Callous remarks result. I’m not sure why. It may be the assumption (often wrong, I have learned) that they will never see the post. Or (also wrong) that people largest in the public eye don’t have the same sensitivities the rest of us do. The reality, if you ask me, is that the opposite is true: most of us who write or blog for a living are oversensitive egocentric dandies. I am no exception. Handle us carefully.

Use your “I” words. “You are offensive” is different from “I feel offended”. In theory we all learn this in grade four, but it bears repeating and remembering.

Don’t escalate. The more hostile a comment, the more measured you make your response. Escalation leads in a predictable and disastrous direction.

Don’t try to “score points” in subtle ways. Usually they are not as subtle as you think, and you simply sound passive aggressive.

Don’t go too negative. I critique and disagree with others regularly, but I try to do so in as evenhanded a manner as possible, and with a civil tone.

Finally, if you feel must attack, pause. Go through the above list mentally and revise. If you find yourself forgetting these dictums, you can do worse than to channel your inner Yoda: “Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”

Most of these lessons I learned the hard way, which means I haven’t manage to live up to my ideals every day. But more often than not I think I succeed.

You can weigh in with your opinion here. Or offer your own blog/writing advice below. Andy Gelman also gets a drubbing, and he gives a spirited, though not mean-sprited, response here.

Come hear another way we can fight Kony’s legacy

There are two upcoming events in New York and DC. You are invited, provided you RSVP.

We’re finishing a 3-year study of a women’s economic recovery and empowerment program, run by AVSI Uganda with some of the areas and individuals most heavily hit by the 20 years of Kony’s war.

By experimentally cross-hatching different approaches to aid, we’re able to answer some important questions:

  • What are the returns to business skills training and capital among some of the world’s poorest women, and what does this tell us about humanitarian aid more broadly?
  • What are the social and psychological consequences of rising incomes and employment?
  • Does costly advising and monitoring by the NGO result in women making better investment decisions? Is it worth the cost?
  • Are unsupportive husbands a barrier to business success and empowerment, and what mitigates that risk? Programs that bind women into support groups?  Programs that include and empower the males as well?

The results are exciting and surprising. Please attend if you are in the area. I will present in New York event, where my wife Jeannie will also present results from a similar program in Burundi. My co-authors Eric Green and Julian Jamison are presenting our results in DC.

For those who cannot attend: We are writing up the results and will have something to share on the blog shortly. In the meantime, you can also see my studies on the impacts of the northern Ugandan war on youth people, and the effects of a post-conflict cash transfer programs, ex-combatant reintegration, and conflict resolution programs.

Now, the events:

New York, Friday March 23, 1:00-3:00 PM:
The International Rescue Committee, 122 East 42nd Street, New York
RSVP by email. Please include your name, organization and position.

Washington, Monday March 26, 4:30-6:30pm:
Johns Hopkins University SAIS, Room 500, Bernstein‐Offit Building 1717 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
RSVP online. Please include your name, organization and position.

Ugandan underworld bleg

I’m just a couple of days from a return to the US, regular Internet, and blogging. In the meantime, a shot in the dark.

My main research assistant had her bag snatched off her lap by a passing motorbike while riding a taxi to the airport in Uganda. Along with a laptop, she lost a passport and US work visa. All are replaceable, but sometimes these things are also… retrievable.

If this were Liberia, I would have a good idea where to go to make inquiries about how to buy back my passport and computer. This is mainly because my main project works with the guys who steal things for a living. I am not well acquainted with Uganda’s seedier side.

Comments or emails at blattman (at) gmail wlecome.

Update: It seems Uganda has gentleman robbers. All documents and personal items were deposited in an envelope outside the US Embassy, including (and this is my favorite bit) all the travel receipts organized. Sadly the laptop was not retrieved.

My thoughts on KONY 2012 (and a defense of Invisible Children?)

As if I could resist.

What you are about to get is a collection of hasty thoughts, and then I am going to return to my last day of vacation in Hanoi (ironically, the only place busier and more stressful than my Manhattan home).

For starters, my faith in humanity and the media has been partly restored today. The big story has shifted from viral video to the oversimplification of complicated issues, the accuracy of advocacy, and the white savior complex in aid. Really. Newspapers are taking a nuanced view of aid and advocacy. This is big.

Most of the discussion has been excellent. See Grant Oyston’s now famous site for a round-up of Western critiques, and (of all places) Boing Boing for African voices. I have said my piece before.

The essence of my critique: successful advocacy often tells a simple story; simple stories usually lead to simple solutions; and simple solutions can do more harm than help. If you want to help, your first duty is to make sure you don’t make things worse.

My discomfort with Invisible Children, as with many advocacy organizations, has been the worry they don’t take this duty seriously enough. There is a long-winded explanation behind this statement, with caveats and provisos and elaborations required. One day I’ll write that up, but not today.

To give credit where it is due, scratch beneath the surface, and Invisible Children take a more nuanced view than they get credit for (or showcase). Their self-defense is here, and it’s a reasonable one. Also, my (admittedly limited) experience with their programs on the ground is that they are better than the average non-profit in northern Uganda. The bracelets are silly, but you could do worse than to support their field programs.

But let’s suppose for a moment that, on balance, everyone conforms to their worst stereotypes: the badvocacy organization is simplistic, self-aggrandizing, and adolescent; and the academics are so busy being nuanced and obscure that they are useless. (These are not hard things to suppose.)

Could, in spite of it all, the KONY 2012 campaign still lead to the right solution? I think the answer might be yes.

Suppose you believe (as I do) that capturing or killing Kony is the best of a bunch of bad options. And suppose you also believe (as I do) that, to capture or kill the man, Central African governments will need advanced military, intelligence, and special forces support.

This viral video, whatever its weaknesses, may get you closer to that objective than any other action I can think of.

You may not share my two premises. Or you may share them but mistrust (as you should) the West’s ability to intervene intelligently and effectively in Central Africa. You may also worry (as you should) that an ineffective military response will result in a rash of LRA raping and killing. Or perhaps you pause (as you ought to) as you realize that getting Kony probably means going through a wall of children, guns a-blazing.

I would feel more comfortable with Invisible Children if I saw them, somewhere, expressing some of these risks and costs and concerns. If I’ve missed it, help me out.

In the end I don’t think it matters. Central African militaries are incapable of bringing Kony in, and the West is unlikely to give serious help. I would like to be wrong on this, but  I fear Seal Team Six is not gearing up to go.

Sadly, Kony will kill again and again, and in 2013 Invisible Children will have yet another over-sensational campaign. When the news organizations came calling this week, I flirted with the idea of just giving them a single quote: The two are like herpes: once you have them, you can never get rid of them.

That’s unduly cynical and trivializing. For all its weaknesses, Invisible Children has been more effective than any of us at raising awareness, and they may get us closest to the least worst action we can take. They can get better, and I hope this time they do.

What’s new and amazing is that, with the direction that coverage has taken, the average high school activist, donor and Congressman might just understand a little better what separates advocacy from badvocacy, and demand better in future. And that makes me hopeful.

I go offline for one week, and…

…KONY 2012 happens.

I only realized this by accident, when I peeked into my email Inbox for one measly second (I am still on vacation, dammit) and notice a gazillion comments and pingbacks on a post I wrote three years ago about Invisible Children. In the past three days, that post received roughly as much traffic as the entire blog in 2012.

As it happens, I have no desire to watch the new video or comment at the moment. I count myself fortunate that for the past three days I was bobbing on a small junk in the South China Sea, cut off from all Internets.

For wisdom on what the world ought to do about Kony, I can do no better than point you here.

Meanwhile, to all newcomers to the blog: welcome. For the most part, this blog is about why some places are poor, violent, and unequal, and what (if anything) the West can do about it. If that interests you, please tune in.

I’ve spent many years in northern Uganda studying the LRA and the impacts of war on children. You’ll find some of my work here. Probably the most readable summaries are on why the LRA recruits children and what’s the impact of child soldiering?

If you are interested, here is a northern Uganda reading list. There is also this new book on the LRA, which includes my “why child soldiers” piece as a chapter.

I would look more closely for readable summaries, or have more to say, but I’m still on vacation for a couple more days and this is the limit of my online interest. Farewell for now.

P.S. Hanoi area recommendations?

Will be in the environs for 9 days. In addition to food and city recommendations, any three-day recommendations trip for parents-leaving-one-year-old-with-grandparents-for-first-time-away-from-child welcomed.

All quiet on the electronic front

Once a year I take a week or so offline. Tomorrow and for the next 10 days I will be visiting family and vacationing in Vietnam, and will be email, blog, twitter and (maybe) even iPad silent.

The week after I will be in Liberia, where Internet speeds make 1992 dial-up look like lightning. So I may be silent then as well.

See you all in the spring, literally.

Are there only bad choices in Syria?

Throughout the crisis, the regime has proven more sectarian, unaccountable and vicious than ever. Obsessed with the challenge posed by peaceful protests, its mukhabarat security services — almost none of whose members have been put on trial as promised — have hunted non-violent progressive activists, often with more zeal than shown toward criminal gangs and armed groups. The mukhabarat have recruited thugs and criminals — the more extreme, venal and subservient elements of society — into an army of proxies known across the country as shabbiha. It has tried to intimidate protesters through gruesome tactics. …Assad has gradually shed all pretense of being a national leader, speaking instead as the head of one camp determined to vanquish the other.

For its part, the Syrian National Council (SNC), the main opposition group that is composed mostly of exiles, has failed to offer an inspiring alternative since it was formed in September 2011. Its mainly unknown and inexperienced members have done little to counteract the regime’s propaganda. Unable to agree on any positive political platform, the SNC has refused any negotiation with the regime and called for “international intervention” that is conveniently left undefined, leaving to their anxieties the many Syrians who simultaneously loathe the regime, dread foreign interference and panic at the idea of a high-risk transition. It has estranged, among others, Kurdish factions, who fear a Turkish agenda, and petrified Syrians distrustful of Qatari and Saudi influence. It has most notably failed to reach out to the ‘Alawis, many of whom are poor and disgruntled but afraid to change sides lest they suffer a backlash due to their association with the security forces and army units responsible for much of the violence. By abandoning all these people to their dark forebodings, the SNC’s members have missed an opportunity to hasten the decline of the regime and ward off civil strife in the event of Bashar’s fall. On the international level, the SNC has displayed political naïveté by putting all its energy into lobbying for support from Turkey, the Gulf monarchies and the West, all of whom are already sympathetic, while ignoring and alienating the regime’s allies.

An intriguing article by Peter Harling and Sarah Birke, who have spent much time in Syria.

The rest of the article does not conform to stereotype and finish with a new hope and path to peace. It presents less terrible options, at best.

Frank and bleak and quite worth reading.

Nice guys get their votes bought

vote-buying is sustained, in part, by individuals’ feelings of intrinsic reciprocity. Voters who are offered money or material goods in exchange for their votes reciprocate because they experience pleasure in increasing the material payoffs of the politician who has helped them.

…In Paraguay, politicians hire respected community leaders in each village to interact with voters in order to promote their candidacy and offer them money and other forms of aid in exchange for the promise of their vote.

…we conduct a survey with the actual middlemen who broker the vote-buying exchanges between voters and politicians. We find that middlemen are much more likely to target reciprocal individuals. A one standard deviation increase in reciprocity increases the likelihood of experiencing vote-buying by 44 percent.

A new paper by Fred Finan and Laura Schechter.

RSS problems fixed, I hope

Some of you reported RSS problems, which means you might not have received my feed by email or RSS reader since mid-Feb.

Turns out there I made some weird doohickey mistake that my now award-winning-blog-designer just fixed. He also designed the Acemoglu and Robinson blog. A good go-to guy for aspiring bloggers.

I would say “Tell me if the RSS is still not working for you,” but, well, by definition you wouldn’t hear me. Oh the paradox.

Why our hype can harm: Congo edition

Simple stories make for very effective advocacy. The problem with simple narratives, arise, however, when they drive simple-headed policy.

Severine Autesserre takes aim at the Enough project and other activists in a thoughtful new paper:

The dominant narratives have oriented international programmes on the ground toward three main goals – regulating trade of minerals, providing care to victims of sexual violence, and helping the state extend its authority – at the expense of all the other necessary measures, such as resolving land conflict, promoting inter-community reconciliation, jump-starting economic development, ensuring that state authorities respect human rights, and fighting corruption.

Even worse, because of these exclusive focuses, the international efforts have exacerbated the problems that they aimed to combat: the attempts to control the exploitation of resources have enabled armed groups to strengthen their control over mines; the disproportionate attention to sexual violence has raised the status of sexual abuse to an effective bargaining tool for combatants; and the state reconstruction programmes have boosted the capacity of an authoritarian regime to oppress its population.

This is the problem with pushing advocacy agendas. If you are really good, and really lucky, you can get the UN or US to do one thing this year. That’s a big opportunity cost. Surely one had better make sure it’s the right thing?

After years of hoping the big development and political economists would start blogging, I get my wish

Part of Uzbekistan is also ideal for growing tea. Interspan, a US company, invested heavily. But by 2006, Karimov’s daughter, Harvard graduate and international jet setter, Gulnora Karimova, had taken an interest in this market.

…Gulnora’s interest meant taking over Interspan’s assets and business. And this was not going to be by making an attractive offer. The company reports that men with machine guns, allegedly working for the Uzbek intelligence services, entered its offices and warehouses, and seized its assets and inventory. Its personnel were arrested and tortured. By August 2006, the company pulled out of Uzbekistan, and tea was now a Karimov family monopoly.

…Like almost all nations that are poor, Uzbekistan fails because its people operate under extractive economic institutions, which provide few incentives for investment or technological ingenuity, and force people to engage in activities that they do not wish or are not well-suited to

That from famed academics Daron Acemoglu and Jim Robinson on Day 2 of their new blog. Possibly the heaviest social science hitting power to hit the blogosphere in many years. They are also tweeting.

My only worry: The trouble with posting substantive stuff daily is that the regimen is hard to maintain. Most academic bloggers burn out after a couple of years of this.

I am on year four. My secret to longevity? Six days out of seven I cut and paste peculiar drivel I that catches my interest on the web. Sometimes I even read part of the papers I reference. Once in a while I re-read a draft before hitting “Publish”. And on the seventh day, I rant. The secret is out!

Their blog supports their new book, Why Nations Fail. I plan to read soon and report back. But I do not think you can go wrong with reading it.

 

 

How to reconcile press coverage of the “close” Republican contest when the Intrade probability of a Santorum win is down to 6%?

Intrade predictions here.

My guess: the people betting on the race have done the delegate math (and added the SuperPAC $), while the press have not.

One has an incentive for a good story, the other has the incentive to be correct.

The 6% represents the expected probability that there will be an upset on Super Tuesday, as there was a couple of weeks back, which would change the race.

My hunch: The race is over. The remainder of the nomination contest will be self-inflicting wounds.

Thoughts?

“Thank you very much. That makes up for the strip-search.”

The best Oscar acceptance speech ever. From Woody Allen, of course.

I was surprised and delighted this week to win the favor of development blog readers and twitterers. If you like what I do, you should be following the others as well. Links here.

Blogging has been unexpectedly rewarding. Here are my experiences, two scholars on why academics should blog, and John Sides’ take.

Thanks to everyone who voted. But most of all, I’d like to thank my academic papers. Without you, I would never have launched this exercise in procrastination.

 

More on peaceable anarchy in Somalia

The comments on the “Free market anarchy for Somalia” post were excellent. See them here.

Several voiced support for letting Somalia try out new models of governance, and that political leaders from the outside are pushing a national or federal system for the wrong reasons. Here are my hasty thoughts.

It’s possible that international political leaders are constrained by a failure of imagination, but they also have a stake, and possibly a legal obligation, to promote a nation state system. So I agree we should not be surprised by their actions.

But more than just imagination and self-interest constrain foreign experts, intellectuals, and organizations. Finding institutions that provide a stable political equilibrium is very, very hard. The nation-state system is the go-to option because it has provided stability better than most of the alternatives so far. Maybe more importantly, it is the default, and thus a focal point and a norm. That status provides added stability independent of whether it is actually the right or the wrong model.

Phooey, you might say, failing and failed states need to experiment with new models. That innovation is the key to success. I say: easy to say if you don’t bear the risk. Experimenting with new models of government, as de Waal suggests, is exceptionally risky, maybe more risky than promoting an ill-fitting federal system and national government.

The last thing a private sector wants, moreover, is political instability. A clan-based or fragmented system might serve the short term business interests of the established businessmen, but does a merchant state leave a sense of policy stability, a long horizon of peace, and a possibility for peaceful political evolution? If the answer is “maybe, but maybe not” then the conditions are not present for domestic or foreign investment, for innovation, for creative destruction–all the things that actually drive growth and development.

The anarchic merchant state strikes me as the foundation for a stagnant oligarchy.

But that’s not my main worry. A stagnant merchant oligarchy could be pleasant compared to the present. It’s the uncertainty and risk that any of these stable outcomes will prevail that worries me.

In this, de Waal’s proposal for Somalia has echoes of Paul Romer’s push for charter cities, or Jeff Herbst’s suggestion that international enforcement of borders and sovereignty in central Africa should end–for instance, letting eastern Congo operate autonomously, or even letting Rwanda annex it. (See my charter city discussions here, and on Herbst here.)

de Waal and Romer and Herbst have my admiration. They may very well be right. But even if in expectation these are better proposals–in that the average expected outcome is better than the alternatives–these proposals come with huge amounts of uncertainty. Things can get worse, or stay just as bad.

Who is willing to bear that risk? Who will underwrite it? And who has the right to decide on behalf of the people who will bear the brunt of any failure?

You may disagree, but  in my mind the burden of proof is on the new model. Otherwise, give the one with some degree of success the time it usually needs (in historical perspective) to work: decades, not years.

If you insist we still ought to experiment with new models of the state, so be it. But we should pause before we use as our laboratory the homes of the poorest and most vulnerable people on the planet. Their ability to hear and understand their options, and exercise voice in the matter, is almost nonexistent.