I ran across a colorfully titled Mother Jones article which documents “a brief history of men getting credit for women’s accomplishments.” As promised by the subtitle, the article is written to do just that, presenting a series of poignant vignettes from the Paleolithic era to the present.
The entries range from enraging:
1843: Mathematician Ada Lovelace shows how Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine (a theoretical computer) could be induced to perform complex math. Her contribution, considered the first software, was dismissed by many male historians: “It is no exaggeration to say that she was a manic-depressive with the most amazing delusions.”
To frustratingly understandable:
1840s: …Mary Ann Evans later writes Middlemarch as George Eliot, probably to avoid “being treated as ‘just’ a female writer,” one expert notes.
The piece also captures the uniquely terrible discrimination faced by African American women:
1888: Ellen Eglin sells the rights to the clothes wringer she invented to an agent. The invention brings “great financial success” to the buyer, who paid her $18. “If it was known that a negro woman patented the invention, white ladies would not buy the wringer,” she explains.
But while this article does an excellent job of encapsulating the gender discrimination which has gone on since nearly the dawn of time, it doesn’t quite capture the aggregated effects of such discrimination.
Consider Michael Spence’s economic model of gender-based pay disparity: imagine an employee pool in which people have two observable characteristics: sex and education. An employer assigns each employee to a higher or lower wage by inferring the unobserved characteristic of productivity. Assume also that gender and productivity are perfectly uncorrelated.
Intuitively, this should mean that gender and pay will also be uncorrelated, however Spence’s game-theoretic model reveals that after initial rounds of hiring, the employer will begin to associate higher levels of education with higher levels of productivity. More precisely, because an employer’s opinions are conditioned on gender as well as education, “if at some point in time men and women are not investing in education in the same ways, then the returns to education for men and women will be different in the next round.”
In other words, Spence finds that there are numerous system equilibria and, given differing initial investments in education, the pay schedules for men and women will settle into different equilibrium states.
While the correlation between education and productivity presents a simple toy model, the “signaling” generated by actual success would presumably create an even stronger effect.
That is, men taking credit for women’s inventions, insights, and effort is not just damaging to the person whose ideas are stolen – it is damaging more broadly to people who are identified as women. It weakens women’s equilibrium for signaling success – an effect, again, felt even more strongly by women of color.
Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life Postdoctoral Fellowship in Philosophy or Political Theory
Tufts University’s Tisch College, in collaboration with the departments of Philosophy and of Political Science, will award a Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life Postdoctoral Fellowship in the 2017-18 academic year to a junior scholar with a PhD in the field of philosophy or political theory who is not yet tenured. Candidates should submit a research proposal for scholarly work related to civic studies. Civic studies is an emerging interdisciplinary field that develops ideas and ways of thinking helpful to citizens, understood as co-creators of their worlds. Because civic studies emphasizes the agency of people and groups, it combines ethics, empirical work, strategies, and institutions. Tufts will hold a social ontology conference in 2018, and therefore applicants with interests in social ontology or collective agency are particularly encouraged.
Scholars are required to spend the year (September–May) in residence at Tufts University. For the 2017-18 academic year the Fellowship carries a stipend of $55,000, health insurance, and a $3,000 research fund. The Fellow will be expected to support capstone experiences with Tufts undergraduates and to teach one academic course in addition to conducting their research. The fellow will also be expected to deliver a public lecture at Tufts on the topic of their research at some point during the fellowship year.
Qualifications
Junior scholar with a PhD in the field of philosophy or political theory who is not yet tenured. Candidates should submit a research proposal for scholarly work related to civic studies.
Application Instructions
Applications must include: a cover letter, CV, writing sample, two-page research proposal, and three letters of recommendation. Applications should be submitted to: https://apply.interfolio.com/40979
Application deadline: April 15, 2017. Notification of award: May 8, 2017.
Questions about the position should be addressed to Tisch College Associate Dean of Research Peter Levine at Peter.Levine@tufts.edu.
I have been doing some initial work around epistemic networks – conceptual networks which model the way an individual reasons. Considered in this way, deliberation is more than a dyadic exchange between individuals, it is a networked exchange of ideas. The core idea here is that the structure of such networks could have implications for deliberation – potentially affecting whether someone makes a good deliberator or whether two or more people are able to deliberate at all.
I’ve found a lot of interesting overlaps between this work and concepts I am learning in my Network Economics course. To be clear, ‘economics’ is about a lot more than money – some of us would even argue that it isn’t about money at all.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines economics as dealing with “the production, distribution, consumption, and transfer of wealth,” but – critically – the word ‘wealth’ is left undefined here. At it’s broadest, then, economics is fundamentally about how people create and share things which they value.
Hayek argues that the brilliance of the free market is that a market’s equilibrium price is a simple, one-dimensional heuristic which elegantly captures complex interactions between different people’s resources and desires. While one may disagree with his argument on a number of grounds – meeting this market ideal, for example, relies on all participants having perfect knowledge – the very basis of his argument highlights that people have different needs and values. Price, or more generally money, is simply a convenient stand-in for more complex dynamics.
A key problem here is that not all values are remotely comparable. Perhaps price serves as a reasonable moderator for the supply and demand of products, but then how does one leverage this heuristic for things which are ‘priceless;’ for things which ‘money can’t buy?’ Clearly there are other levers of value which aren’t captured in this simple heuristic.
Perhaps, then, to consider deliberation in economics terms, it is worth first asking what worth is produced, distributed, consumed, or transferred through the process of deliberation.
In considering deliberation, one could consider the value individual participants might derive: you learn new things, you meet new people, you obtain pleasure from participating in the democratic process. All of these examples are real products of value which deliberators receive, yet it all sounds a little hand-ravingly optimistic. “People will be good citizens because they’ll enjoy being good citizens” doesn’t strike me as a particularly compelling argument.
One can also argue that a person derives more concretely utilitarian benefits from participating in public deliberation. If you have an opinion on what the community should do about your neighborhood park, there is a direct value in stating that view and rallying others to agreement. This, again, is a real value which deliberation can provide, but it starts to feel a little grimly utilitarian: deliberation as a pathway for manipulation isn’t exactly what I’m going for either.
I could also appeal to the collective benefit of deliberation. Indeed, one the most striking things about deliberation is that it creates a value which was not there before and which could not have come into existence otherwise. Deliberation is a space for “co-creation” for working together in ways which lead to emergent solutions. This is perhaps the highest benefit of deliberation – as diverse perspectives and experiences allow a group to develop better solutions to collective problems than the could have otherwise devised.
Yet, this too, is perhaps not enough value to indicate why a person should participate in deliberation. Given solely this collective framework, it is arguable best to free ride and let others undertake the hard work of find solutions.
Ultimately, I think, the true value of deliberation comes from some combination of the above. It leads to better solutions and outcomes, creating a public good, but it also leads to individual value. And that value isn’t simply the joy of meeting someone new or the utility derived from getting your way.
Deliberation fundamentally changes you.
It changes the way you think and the way you reason in subtle but powerful ways. I sometimes think of learning as a process of sand accumulating on a beach – each new wave brings something with it, but not everything really sticks; some just washes back out to sea. Each new wave also changes the detailed contours of the beach; in ways that are effected by past contours and with repercussions that will last through future contours.
Living is a process of becoming; a processes of continually becoming who you are. Deliberation helps us solve problems and has the potential for tremendous public good; but ultimately the true value derived from deliberation is that we co-create ourselves. We learn who were are in an emergent, evolving way; and that learning isn’t an individualistic, solely-guided experience – it is a process that is fundamentally shaped by the people and context around you.
Without deliberation, without the process of learning, growing and co-creating with others, we would be nothing – just hollow shells, emptily fulfilling utilitarian functions. The value in deliberation is that we truly come to be.
The contrast between Donald Trump the businessman and Hillary Clinton the politician has been underplayed (although not entirely overlooked) as an explanation of the 2016 election. I don’t interpret Americans’ admiration for business leaders as a preference for the market over the government, although that distinction might influence some people. Instead, evidence shows that many people dislike deliberation and compromise in politics. That stance is compatible with admiring a president who expands the government, as long as he acts like a private-sector boss.
In 1998 (when HRC was First Lady), John R. Hibbing and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse* found that most Americans didn’t rate their fellow citizens as informed or intelligent. They didn’t want to participate in government or politics, nor did they prefer a political system with much public involvement. They had few policy preferences, but they strongly disliked the people in charge of the government. They suspected political elites of selfish and greedy behavior. For instance, they thought that elected officials get rich from government service. They believed that the public had consensus on most issues, yet agreement was mysteriously absent in Congress. They interpreted elites’ disagreement as a sign of corruption. A majority of their respondents (about 70%) agreed with two or three of the following propositions, which qualified them as believers in what Hibbing and Theiss-Morse called “Stealth Democracy”:
Fifty percent wanted the government to be run more like a business. There was also considerable support for billionaires and technocratic experts, since neither could profit from their own decisions. In 1992 Harris Poll, 55% of respondents had agreed that Ross Perot wouldn’t be influenced by special interests because he was rich.
In their book, Hibbing and Theiss-Morse used a survey that’s now 19 years old. In 2009, Michael Neblo, Kevin Esterling, Ryan Kennedy, David Lazer, and Anand Sokhey challenged their findings empirically, but in 2015, Hibbing and Theiss-Morse repeated the analysis and connected it to the Trump campaign. Believers in what they called “Stealth Democracy” preferred Trump to Clinton by 38%-13%; people who disagreed with that view narrowly favored Clinton.
Trump is a perfect example of a leader who says he’ll “just take action,” in harmony with the consensus of all real Americans. Hillary Clinton exemplifies a politician who is good at compromise, who acknowledges disagreements and engages in debates–and who has become rich as a result of her political career.
I believe that people learn from experience that disagreement exists and compromise is necessary. They learn those truths by participating in diverse groups that can make consequential decisions. But the proportion of adult Americans who either attend weekly religious services or belong to a union has dropped by 21 points, from a majority of 55 percent in 1970 to a minority of 34 percent in 2012. The proportion of all Americans who serve on any local board had plummeted by 75% since the mid-1900s, due mostly to consolidation of governmental functions plus professionalization. Juries are also much less prevalent: 1 in 40 felony cases now goes to a jury trial, down from 1 in 12 as recently as the 1970s.
People still know how bosses operate in the private sector. But few know what it’s like to be democratic leaders, because few are allowed to play such roles locally. That’s a recipe for a rejection of democratic values.
*Stealth Democracy: Americans’ Beliefs about How Government Should Work (Cambridge University Press, 2002). I draw here from my own 2003 summary.
If the Greek experience of the past two years shows anything, it is that conventional Left politics, even with massive electoral support and control of the government, cannot prevail against finance capital and its international allies. European creditors continue to force Greek citizens to endure the punishing trauma of austerity politics with no credible scenario for economic recovery or social reconstruction in sight. 
After the governing coalition Syriza capitulated to creditors’ draconian demands in 2016, its credibility as a force for political change declined. Despite its best intentions, it could not deliver. The Greek people might understandably ask: Have we reached the limits of what the conventional Left can achieve within “representative democracies” whose sovereignty is so compromised by global capital? Beyond such political questions, citizens might also wonder whether centralized bureaucratic programs in this age of digital networks can ever act swiftly and responsively. Self-organized, bottom-up federations of commoning often produce much better results.
Pummeled by some harsh realities and sobered by the limits of Left politics, many Greeks are now giving the commons a serious look as a political option. This was my impression after a recent visit to Athens where I tried to give some visibility to the recently published Greek translation of my book Think Like a Commoner. In Greek, the book is entitled Κοινά: Μια σύντομη εισαγωγή. Besides a public talk at a bookstore (video here), I spoke at the respected left Nicos Poulantzas Institute (video with Greek translation & English version), which was eager to host a discussion about commons and commoning.
In my talk, I suggested that the Greek state might wish to re-imagine “the economy,” politics and law by considering what commons could accomplish (and are accomplishing), and how state policies might support commoning. Since the left cannot necessarily advance its larger agenda of social justice, fairness and human rights through the state – subservient as it is to neoliberal circuits of global power – it should entertain how the commons might open up some new solution-sets.
To that end, I discussed the promise of relocalized food and agriculture systems; the potential of re-imagining city policies and programs as a commons; the advantages of academic commons to more efficiently generate and share scholarship and scientific knowledge; the power of open source software and open design and manufacturing; the ecological wisdom of traditional agricultural, forestry and fishery commons; and the ways in which law could decriminalize and support commoning, moving beyond many pathologies of bureaucracy.
At the macro-scale, a commons-based economy could also help a country escape the massive inefficiencies, ecological costs, predatory behaviors and corruption associated with the conventional economy -- while generating new forms nonmarket provisioning and socially legitimate political power.
I was told about medical care commons that have sprung up in Athens in recent years. Staffed by volunteers and donated/low-cost supplies, the system is a desperate social improvisation to help people meet basic medical needs at a time when public hospitals turn people away. The system has become a respected alternative system for medical care, engaging people as real human beings and not as mere “clients” or numbers. When patients don’t use all the pills they are given, for example, they return them, so someone else can use them. A kind of social solidarity has emerged. Supplies and personnel are obviously limited, but some aspects of healthcare have been reinvented as flexible modes of human caring, escaping the economic and social logic of conventional healthcare.
Of necessity, Greeks have established other commons as well – for food, housing and fuel. There are active efforts to make Greek academic research and data more available as a commons, going beyond the logic of open platforms. A Greek hacker community, the Libre Space Foundation, has even built the first open source satellite and ground station network – UPSat and SatNOGS -- from readily available and affordable tools.
These are the sorts of initiatives that the traditional left may regard as interesting, but not politically significant. I think that is a huge mistake. In that gap of understanding lies the potential for inventing a new type of climate-friendly, socially just economy and political culture.
At this moment of transition, therefore, when the commons seems to be acquiring new traction and visibility in Greece, I am thrilled that my book Think Like a Commoner is now available there.
I wish to thank George Papanikolaou and Andreas Karitzis for their role in organizing the translation of my book, and Efstathiou Anastasio of Angelus Novus Editions for publishing and promoting the Greek edition. My thanks also to two commons scholars, Antonis Broumas and Stavros Stravrides, for graciously sharing their thoughts on the commons at the bookstore event. A salute, too, to the Nicos Poulantzas Institute for hosting my talk.
For any readers of Greek, here are a few press interviews with me and reviews of my book – in Epohi; in Avgi, a collective blog (and here); in efsyn; and in Left.
Even though it was cold and blustery -- Athens in February! -- I had a great time, including a visit to the Acropolis and Agora. Next time: longer discussions, a day at the National Museum, and a visit to Greek islands.
If the Greek experience of the past two years shows anything, it is that conventional Left politics, even with massive electoral support and control of the government, cannot prevail against finance capital and its international allies. European creditors continue to force Greek citizens to endure the punishing trauma of austerity politics with no credible scenario for economic recovery or social reconstruction in sight. ![](http://bollier.org/sites/default/files/resize/u6/Screen%20Shot%202017-03-01%20at%202.17.08%20PM-400x574.png "Greek edition of "Think Like a Commoner"")
After the governing coalition Syriza capitulated to creditors’ draconian demands in 2016, its credibility as a force for political change declined. Despite its best intentions, it could not deliver. The Greek people might understandably ask: Have we reached the limits of what the conventional Left can achieve within “representative democracies” whose sovereignty is so compromised by global capital? Beyond such political questions, citizens might also wonder whether centralized bureaucratic programs in this age of digital networks can ever act swiftly and responsively. Self-organized, bottom-up federations of commoning often produce much better results.
Pummeled by some harsh realities and sobered by the limits of Left politics, many Greeks are now giving the commons a serious look as a political option. This was my impression after a recent visit to Athens where I tried to give some visibility to the recently published Greek translation of my book Think Like a Commoner. In Greek, the book is entitled Κοινά: Μια σύντομη εισαγωγή. Besides a public talk at a bookstore (video here), I spoke at the respected left Nicos Poulantzas Institute (video with Greek translation & English version), which was eager to host a discussion about commons and commoning.
The gap between the outcomes of D&D processes and real power to implement them is one that our field has struggled with for years. What could be possible if the well-considered recommendations and outcomes of deliberative democracy processes were given the legal power of decisions made through direct democracy? That’s the question that the team at Public Agenda – an NCDD member org – asked recently in on their blog (spoiler alert: they think it would look like PB), and we think their reflections are valuable for us to consider. We encourage you to read their piece below or find the original version here.
Following the Brexit vote in mid-2016, many U.K. voters who elected to exit the European Union expressed remorse at their decision. Immediately following the vote, websites explaining its potential consequences received record traffic. Though the decision has yet to play out, the results of Brexit may have profound and long-lasting ill effects on the U.K. economy.
The Brexit vote was an example of direct democracy. Direct democracy enables the public to decide on policy decisions without a proxy, typically through ballot measures or referenda. California is well-known for its use of direct democracy in its many ballot propositions, a practice that started in 1911.
The counterpart to direct democracy is called deliberative democracy. In deliberative democracy, people discuss issues but usually do not make public decisions directly. In contrast, while people do make decisions in direct democracy, they usually don’t discuss those decisions first.
Each form of public engagement has its pros and cons. As we see in the case of the Brexit vote, direct democracy may not necessarily lead to well-considered decisions that benefit the common good and inspire public confidence. Meanwhile, deliberative democracy can and has led to informed recommendations based on common ground from citizens. However, in many instances those recommendations did not affect policy or other decisions. These experiences can leave citizens frustrated and even more distrustful of government.
Could a combination of direct and deliberative democracy better meet the (rightful) demand of the people tohave a greater say in the decisions that affect them? Could it rebuild trust and reduce alienation between the public and its leaders? Could it lead to common ground on decisions that benefit the public good?
These are questions that the present political moment, and its accompanying anxiety, demand that we explore. Luckily, there is a testing ground available for it right now.
Participatory budgeting (PB), a process that enables residents to have a say in how local tax money is spent, is the fastest-growing public engagement process in the U.S. While processes differ from community to community, PB has incorporated both direct and deliberative democratic practices to varying degrees.
As Matt Leighninger points out in a white paper we published in December, the steering committee meetings and neighborhood assemblies that occur at the beginning of the PB cycle, the delegate meetings that take place during the proposal development phase, and the idea expos held before the final vote can be (but are not always) deliberative. Meanwhile, the vote on the proposed ideas at the end of the cycle exemplifies direct democracy.
Can PB improve democracy? Can a combination of direct and deliberative practices achieve a balance that is both well-considered and actionable? To determine those questions, we need a critical mass of communities employing PB in a way that uses both deliberative and direct practices. We also need research that explores these questions specifically.
In the meantime, Matt, who is our vice president of public engagement, starts the conversation in the above-mentioned white paper, “Power to the People! (And Settings for Using It Wisely?)” “Power to the People” examines the extent to which North American PB processes are applying deliberative principles and practices, explores the tensions and challenges in making PB more deliberative, suggests questions for further research and offers recommendations for public officials and practitioners for improving their PB processes.
As Matt writes, “Through the creative exchange between people who care about public participation and approach it with different tools, assumptions and areas of expertise, we may gain the next wave of much-needed democratic reforms.”
To learn more about the extent to which PB employs deliberative principles and processes, click here.
You can find the original version of this Public Agenda blog piece at www.publicagenda.org/blogs/deliberative-direct-better-democracy.