The Theory of Democracy #1: Why Voter Apathy and Special Interest Groups are Inevitable

I recently stumbled on the Wikipedia page on Public Choice Theory and found the discussion fascinating. Basically, economists come up with models for democracy, apply economic theories (or game theory) to those models, and come up with interesting theorems to make predictions about how a democracy will evolve.

So, we end up with theorems that answers questions like this:

Why is there widespread apathy in a democracy?

Each voter is faced with a tiny probability that his vote will change the result of the elections, whereas gathering the relevant information necessary for a well-informed voting decision requires substantial time and effort. Therefore, the rational decision for each voter is to be generally ignorant of politics and perhaps even abstain from voting. Rational choice theorists claim that this explains the gross ignorance of most citizens in modern democracies as well as low voter turnout.

By the way, this is called Rational Ignorance which can be found in a number of different areas, not just elections.

How come special interests / minorities are given so much importance by the political parties?

Basically, whenever a government favors a special interest group in some way, it usually results in a sub-optimal allocation of resources. i.e. favors for special interests usually are not something that the majority in the democracy really want. So why does this happen in all democracies?

The reason is that the few people of the special interest group benefit hugely from the favor, and hence they have a huge incentive to fight hard to get that favor, whereas the cost is spread out over the whole populace and each individual is only slightly affected. Hence, there is not enough incentive for the general populace to put in a lot of effort to fight the special interest.

Here is a full example:

Although a majority of the voters want “good government”, there are many special interest groups that have strong incentives for lobbying the government to implement specific policies that would benefit them, potentially at the expense of the general public. For example, lobbying by the sugar manufacturers might result in an inefficient subsidy for the production of sugar, either direct or by protectionist measures. The costs of such inefficient policies are dispersed over all citizens, and therefore unnoticeable to each individual. On the other hand, the benefits are shared by the sugar manufacturers, who also have a strong incentive to continue the policy by further lobbying. Due to rational ignorance, the vast majority of voters will be unaware of the lobbying going on; in fact, even if voters become be aware of special-interest lobbying efforts, this will simply result in creation of policies which are even more complex, and harder for the general public to understand. And, even if the public were able to understand the policy proposals, they would find it impractical to engage in collective action in order to defend their diffuse interest. Therefore, theorists expect that numerous special interests will be able to successfully lobby for various inefficient policies.

For this and more fascinating insights on the economics of constitutional democracy, read the full wikipedia page on Public Choice

Beating Computer Programmer Stereotypes: most early programmers were women

There is an interesting article about a Stanford Researcher who points out how “Computer Geeks” replaced “Computer Girls” in the 1960s.

Today, computer programming is a male-dominated profession, and there is a powerful stereotype of a computer programmer as someone who is badly dressed, dislikes people, and has poor social skills.

It may be surprising, then, to learn that the earliest computer programmers were women and that the programming field was once stereotyped as female.

the field of computer programming started in the 40s and was female dominated for a long time:

as late as the 1960s many people perceived computer programming as a natural career choice for savvy young women. Even the trend-spotters at Cosmopolitan Magazine urged their fashionable female readership to consider careers in programming.

That’s right – the place to advertise for computer programmers was Cosmo!

Why is that?

In the early 1940s, the University of Pennsylvania hired six women to work on its ENIAC machine, which was one of the world’s first electronic computers. These six women, known by contemporaries as the “ENIAC girls,” were charged with “setting up” the ENIAC to perform computation tasks. They are widely celebrated as the world’s first computer programmers.

because initially, programming was mistakenly considered a clerical/secretarial job:

Rather, managers hired women because they expected programming to be a low-skill clerical function, akin to filing, typing, or telephone switching. Assuming that the real “brain work” in electronic computing would be limited to the hardware side, managers reserved these tasks for male engineers.

It took a while for people to realize that programming is hard:

The idea that the development of software was less important (and less masculine), than the development of hardware persisted for many years and women continued to work as computer programmers. Employers, says Ensmenger, were in for a surprise when they discovered a truth that we now take for granted: “Programming,” he says with a smile, “is hard.” The women involved in the ENIAC project distinguished themselves by engaging in complex problem-solving tasks and by advising their male colleagues on hardware improvements. For example, Betty Holbertson convinced skeptical engineers to include a “stop instruction” in order to guard against human error.

Around the 60s, as it became apparent that they needed to hire smart people for programming, they started using aptitude tests in the hiring process, and this started favoring males instead:

At the same time, new hiring tools—including tools that were seemingly objective—had the unintended result of making the programming profession harder for women to enter.  Eager to identify talented individuals to train as computer programmers, employers relied on aptitude tests to make hiring decisions. With their focus on mathematical puzzle-solving, the tests may have favored men, who were more likely to take math classes in school. More critically, the tests were widely compromised and their answers were available for study through all-male networks such as college fraternities and Elks lodges.

And now we come to the reason why programmers are nerds:

According to Ensmenger, a second type of test, the personality profile, was even more slanted to male applicants. Based on a series of preference questions, these tests sought to indentify job applicants who were the ideal programming “type.” According to test developers, successful programmers had most of the same personality traits as other white-collar professionals. The important distinction, however, was that programmers displayed “disinterest in people” and that they disliked “activities involving close personal interaction.” It is these personality profiles, says Ensmenger, that originated our modern stereotype of the anti-social computer geek.

This is all interesting history, but is this useful?

The fact that stereotypes embedded in advertisements and hiring practices had such a profound effect on masculinizing this profession, says Ensmenger, also sheds light on what can be done to reverse the trend, making programming and other computer professions more open to women.

Read the full article

How India defeated Polio

A blog on the New York Times has an interesting article on how India eradicated polio which makes for interesting reading.

The method in which India went about getting 95% coverage for the polio vaccine is impressive, and can serve as a blueprint for other campaigns and other countries.

Multiple agencies – governmental and non-governmental – worked together, with well defined distinct roles to make this happen:

The Global Polio Eradication Initiative began in 1988 as a huge partnership among Unicef, the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Rotary International. Each organization took on a different job and this continues today as the focus broadens from just polio to all routine immunizations. Unicef handles communications, makes posters and banners, and ensures that the “word” spreads about the campaign, even if it’s through old-school techniques like hauling loudspeakers on a rickshaw through the city center.

The W.H.O. is the data machine, responsible for tracking the virus, collecting stool samples of possible cases and studying the data for any gaps. Rotary International has a Delhi-based team, the National PolioPlus Office, with regional and city-level tentacles to execute polio vaccinations four times a year during National Immunization Days (more days for high-risk areas). Globally, Rotary has been the cheerleader of the campaign, raising funds and keeping the issue in the spotlight.

And it needed a lot of very low level, very localized effort to ensure that nobody got missed:

Health workers, usually women, stand at the booths for eight hours to ensure that every child in the neighborhood is vaccinated. The vaccinated children are marked on the nail of their pinky with black ink. The following day, the health workers search for missed children by going door-to-door, carrying the vaccine in an icebox.

Just having people going around running the vaccination booths is not good enough. The system does not work unless there is measurement that completes the feedback loop, identifies gaps, and fixes them.

The government had elaborate machinery to do this:

Dr. Vishwakarma’s job is tiring, illustrating the depth and breadth of the polio surveillance effort. Based in Agra, he travels daily across Western Uttar Pradesh; he monitors 12 districts of the state, which cover a distance of about 125 miles from Delhi to Agra. His days begin at 5 a.m. and he retires at 10 p.m., after endless cups of tea with local officials, shadowing health workers, combing through stacks of data and overseeing surveillance efforts at regional offices.

“I cannot miss any details,” he says. “That’s where the solution lies. That’s why I’m constantly on the move.”

Overall, missing a single person would result in the whole campaign being set back by years:

The philosophy for the polio campaign was, Dr. Bahl says, “Who have we missed? Why have we missed them? Why did they not take the vaccine? And we constantly looked at the data to help us.”

In a country the size of India, just getting the message across to everybody, without it getting twisted in the process, was a big job with unique challenges. Here is one example:

Communication — Unicef’s job — is the last key pillar of the polio campaign. It goes beyond just fliers, banners and announcements. Previously, when Muslim communities refused the vaccine — on the grounds that the vaccine was designed to make their children sterile — communication became critical. “At the local level, we had to work with the ulema [Muslim clerics], to correct this message,” said Dr. Bahl. By collaborating with local leaders, Unicef found a new venue to preach the message of good health: the mosque. And it was the health workers who took that message further, by carrying letters, written and signed by local Muslim clerics, urging families to have their children inoculated.

Where do we go from here? India is getting ready to use this success and go after the next big challenge – routine child immunizations.

India’s routine immunization rates — for measles, rubella hepatitis B, TB and the like — were last recorded in 2009 at 61 percent nationally. India accounts for a third of the world’s measles deaths. Public health is dismal, and India’s per-capita spending on health care is among the lowest in the world. Yet with polio, India achieved 95 percent coverage.
The success of India’s polio effort has turned it into a blueprint for large-scale health campaigns. Now India is using what it did with polio to boost rates of routine vaccinations.

Read the full article