NYC EVENT: Restoring Opportunity: The Role of Education
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Join a Confab Call on Brain Science in D&D THIS Thursday!
As we announced last month, NCDD is hosting another one of our ever-popular Confab Calls this Thursday, October 15th from 2 – 3pm Eastern. This call is titled Planning from the Inside Out: How Brain Science Supports Constructive Dialogue and Deliberation and will feature the insights of two of our long-time NCDD members on how lessons from brain science can help us plan D&D processes that use emotions skillfully to help groups find common ground while helping us as practitioners be better prepared to play our roles. 
Make sure you register today to save your spot!
Our presenters, Mary V. Gelinas of Gelinas James, Inc. and Susan Stuart Clark of Common Knowledge, both apply the principles and teachings of brain science regularly as part of their D&D practices, and in this interactive discussion, they will share how a better understanding of key brain science topics can help us understand what’s going on “in our heads” when we participate in public meetings so that we can design better processes. The call will cover:
- Triune brain theory;
- What emotions are, along with why and how they get evoked in meetings;
- Some key lessons from brain science for designing and conducting effective group processes;
- How brain science can increase our ability to be instruments of change
Mary and Susan will share examples of the brain science they use in their work to provide a starting point for call participants to ask questions and share their own insights and experiences, so come with your questions and stories!
This Confab Call promises to be both interesting and highly applicable, so you don’t want to miss it! Make sure to register today, and invite a friend who might be interested! We look forward to talking with you all on Thursday!
New Yorkers Don’t Resent the Wealthy, But…
A State Divided Against Itself, Mississippi
Mississippi offers a clear example of Plato’s worry about disunity. One of the four virtues that he clarifies in The Republic is moderation, which is important for avoiding the extremes of behavior or of belief. What is most famous about Plato is his conclusion that the good city needs philosopher-kings, that leadership most fundamentally must be guided by wisdom. While that is true, it misses what Plato’s Socrates calls the greatest good for the city, the absence of which yields the greatest evil.
Plato’s Socrates asks “Is there any greater evil we can mention for the city than that which tears it apart and makes it many instead of one? Or any greater good than that which binds it together and makes it one?” Yes, wisdom is the most important virtue in one sense, for Plato, but when it comes to the public good, wisdom should be most concerned about division, and most fervently and wisely striving for unity. Without the latter, a state, divided against itself, only falls apart or fails at its aims.
I am looking forward to visiting the Clinton School for Public Service at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock on October 19th (if you’re in the area, mark your calendar). For those interested, I believe you’ll be able to watch the talk I give there via live Web stream. I should also be able to link to the video of it afterwards. And, as I’ve noted, I’ll give an interview on the Little Rock affiliate of NPR program, the “Clinton School Presents.”
In preparation for that trip and while talking with students, I’ve wondered about Alabama’s quick removal of its Confederate Battle Flags from public spaces. On the one hand, it was no surprise, given how atrocious the Charleston murders were. On the other, places like Alabama and Mississippi have been home to some of the most stubborn unwillingness to change. As places in which land is cheap and taxes are low, Alabama and Mississippi nevertheless struggle with economic development in part because of our troubled histories and the continued division and dysfunction that come from disunity.
The same day in Alabama, however, the Governor announced the removal of the Confederate Battle Flag and the commitment from Google to build a $600 million facility in the state. According to the Alabama Media Group, “The decision to take the flags down had nothing to do with the Google announcement, but the governor said economic development was part of the reason to avoid a fight.” The denial of a relationship between the two announcements sounds about as plausible as Nixon’s declaration that he’s not a crook.
As one of my students asked me this week, “How much has Mississippi missed out on because of our stubbornness?” Good question. More importantly, however, is the meaning of Mississippi’s recalcitrance. It means that people have yet to feel the pangs that they should in their hearts. We remain a state divided against itself, and we continue to suffer the consequences of the evil that tears us apart.
I’m glad to say that civil rights activist Myrlie Evers-Williams has joined the rally to change Mississippi’s flag, which features an emblem of the Confederate Battle Flag in its canton. There are those who have said that taking the flag down won’t change their hearts (1, 2, 3). To them, I say two things. First, it is alright for some people to be a lost cause, when so many other people are not. In a lovely garden, there are still unpleasant things living under a rock. That doesn’t mean we cannot enjoy the garden’s beauty, appreciating all that warrants sunlight. Second, Aristotle explained that one’s virtue, the state of one’s character, is a result of what we repeatedly do. Our habits matter. Public spaces are a visible place that inspires habits and maintains them. Changing those habits will only slowly bring about a change. It is also no guarantee. But, it is a wise step in the right direction towards healing, virtue, and unity.
As I finished my latest book, thinking about the possible titles for it, the most pressing challenge and opportunity for the state jumped out clearly. The difficulty for Mississippi, and, if resolved, the incredible opportunity for the state, would come from unity. No greater good could come to Mississippi than from that which will make it one, instead of many. There is therefore no greater cause I can see for the state than of Uniting Mississippi.
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What Do Residents of the Greater New York Metro Area Worry About Most?
Listen to the related stroy on WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show.
Our primary purpose in surveying residents of the greater New York metro area was to understand what issues most concerned them. It turns out, regardless of where people live, affordability is something they worry about the most.
We asked people about 19 different public issues, from housing costs, to crime, to parks and recreation. We wanted to know whether people thought each issue was problem or not in their cities and towns. Everyone, whether they lived in New York City or the suburbs, regardless of age and income, identified these four issues as the most serious problems where they live:
- High cost of living
- High cost of housing
- High taxes
- High cost of college
Residents also worry about the lack of well-paying and secure jobs and the lack of affordable health care. Again, these concerns cut across demographics and geography, though lower income residents throughout the region and residents of New York City proper are most acutely worried about rising costs and economic instability:*
What's more, 73 percent of residents say that the middle class is facing more insecurity than ever before and nearly half (49 percent) say they worry a great deal that wages are staying flat.
Overall, the research paints a picture of an increasingly unaffordable metropolitan area where economic insecurity is threatening people's ability to make ends meet.
We heard similar sentiments in focus groups we held prior to the survey as well. For example, one focus group participant told us:
I think it's just getting ridiculous, not only for people who are living below the poverty line, but the so-called middle class. I see this every day. My friends, people who have good jobs, but there's that cost of rent, it's ridiculous... I hate to see people being pushed out of their neighborhoods and then actually moving out of the city because it's no longer affordable for them."
Are you feeling squeezed by rising costs and decreasing opportunity where you live? What would make things better? Tell us your story in the comments below.
* We also asked area residents about the following issues (the numbers in parentheses refer to the percentage of people who said the issue was a serious problem):
Small businesses closing down (64%)
Lack of affordable health care (58%)
Badly maintained roads, bridges or tunnels (55%)
Threat of terrorism (49%)
People lacking a good work ethic (49%)
High rate of crime (44%)
Lack of good public schools (42%)
Too much government regulation of business (42%)
Negative relations between different racial or ethnic groups (41%)
Negative relations between the community and the police (40%)
Threat of storms and floods (39%)
Costly or unreliable public transportation (38%)
Lack of parks or green spaces (27%)
Reflections on a Month in Grad School
I’ve officially been a doctoral student for a month now and I’m starting to settle in.
I’ve met a bunch of new people and can even remember most of their names. I know what my class schedule is and no longer have to actively navigate trying to find the classrooms. I’m getting a sense of the culture, the expectations, and how to manage my time. I have organized my desk.
I am having so much fun.
People keep telling me to hold on to that feeling: that flush from the first year of grad school where everything is exciting, commitments are minimal, and I just feel so privileged that this is how I get to spend my time.
I imagine someday I’ll be the one advising first year students to hold on to that feeling, but for now I’m just savoring every moment.
I couldn’t sleep last night, so at 2am I got up and worked a bit on my homework. It was so much fun. Even when it’s hard its fun.
But the little things are remarkably disorienting. This week I had a different commute every day – different buses, different trains – all varying by where I needed to be and when. On more than one occasion, I got momentarily “lost” on commutes I’ve done many times. Where am I? Where am I going? The answer is not always clear.
It’s hard to compare the pace of school to the pace to work. From work, I’m used to long days, working all the time, and constantly having to put out fires. In school, I have long days and work all the time, but the overall stakes seem much lower (for the moment!). I haven’t had to deal with a single crisis. There’s something amazingly luxurious about that. I’m savoring that for sure.
But at work, I knew what I needed to do. I could put out fires because after 8 years I’d developed the skill I needed, the connections I needed, and the knowledge and experience to troubleshoot effectively. The pace was intense and the hours were long, but I could accomplish an amazing amount in a relatively short amount of time.
School is very different. I’m still developing the skills, knowledge, network, and experience – in fact, developing those is precisely why I’m here. The pace is slower, but it’s by necessity – each task takes significantly longer. I have to figure out what I am trying to do before I can figure out how to try to do it.
I have been particularly tired for the last month. Tired in a specific way that is different from usual. Interestingly, it’s the kind of tired I felt the whole time I was living in Japan. At first, I’d thought it was the jet lag, but after six months I was still just tired. I was tired then because I was constantly processing – mentally translating Japanese into words I could more familiarly understand, learning new cultural skills, and continually inundated by unfamiliar input.
So I guess that’s kind of what grad school has been like. There’s been a lot of new sensory input. I am learning a lot, but there is always more to process. It’s like I can feel my neural pathways forming.
It’s a slow, deliberate and incredibly exciting experience.
Hold on to that feeling.
Ask citizens where public money should go: the results might surprise you
picture by MyTudut on flickr
(NB: article originally published in Capital Finance International)
As citizen engagement gains traction in the development agenda, identifying the extent to which it produces tangible results is essential. Participatory budgeting, a process in which citizens decide upon and monitor budget allocation, offers promising results, including increased local government revenues and reduced infant mortality.
Promoting citizen engagement in the development community: a quest for evidence
In recent years there has been a growing interest in citizen engagement as a means to promote better development outcomes. The Open Government Partnership (OGP), for instance, is a multilateral platform where governments from 66 countries commit, among other things, to promote governments that are more open, participatory and accountable to their citizens. Similarly, Making all Voices Count is an international initiative supported by private donors and development agencies that provides funding to projects that promote “citizen engagement and open, responsive government.”
The rationale behind this renewed enthusiasm for civic engagement is seemingly simple: citizens know best what their needs are and how to address them. Or, as spelled out in the OGP declaration, public engagement “increases the effectiveness of governments, which benefit from people’s knowledge, ideas and ability to provide oversight.” Yet, the evidence on the benefits of citizen engagement often seems fuzzy, scattered and – sometimes – contradictory. However, a clearer picture emerges when we examine some particular practices that fall under the general “citizen engagement” umbrella, of which participatory budgeting is one. Originating from the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre in 1989, participatory budgeting (PB) can be broadly defined as the participation of citizens in the decision-making process of budget allocation and in the monitoring of public spending. Experts estimate that up to 2,500 local governments around the world have implemented PB, from major cities such as New York, Paris, Seville, and Lima, to small and medium cities in countries as diverse as Poland, South-Korea, India, Bangladesh, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Over the years, PB has attracted significant attention from scholars and development professionals. As it reaches over a quarter-century of existence, it is generating a substantial amount of evidence of the benefits of involving citizens in budgeting decisions. Here, we briefly examine some of this evidence.
Some argue – and there is growing evidence – that citizen participation increases government tax revenues
At the beginning of the 2000s, researchers studying participatory budgeting began to see an unexpected result, with some municipalities reporting substantive increases in their tax revenues. In 2004, for instance, a comparative study [PDF] of 25 municipalities in Latin America and Europe found a significant reduction in levels of tax delinquency after the adoption of participatory budgeting. But, in reality, how surprising were these findings?
Mostly unknown even among seasoned public engagement advocates, a growing body of evidence in the field of “tax morale” suggests a relationship between citizen participation and tax compliance. The argument, in an oversimplified manner, is as follows: citizens are more willing to pay taxes when they perceive that their preferences are properly taken into account by public institutions. This argument finds ever-growing empirical support. For instance, a number of studies in Switzerland – notably those by the economists Bruno Frey and Benno Torgler – show that Swiss cantons with higher levels of democratic participation present lower tax evasion rates, even when controlling for other factors. Suggesting that this is not simply a Swiss exception, a cross-national study by Friedrich Schneider and Désirée Teobaldelli found that “the effect of direct democratic institutions on the shadow economy is negative and quantitatively important.” These observational findings are increasingly supported by a growing number of controlled experiments across a variety of cultural settings. At odds with conventional economic reasoning, some evidence in the field of “tax morale” suggests that participation may be even more effective at curbing tax evasion than traditional and commonly adopted deterrence measures, such as fines and controls.
In the specific case of participatory budgeting, more robust data is also emerging. For example, a recent working paper by the Inter-American Development Bank presents similar effects of participatory budgeting on revenues in a randomized controlled trial in Russia. As noted by the authors, Diether Beuermann and Maria Amelina, these results are by no means negligible:
Implementing the planning cycle of participatory budgeting increased local revenues per capita by US$30.22 in regions without previous decentralized experience and by US$37.34 in regions with previous decentralized experience […] These are sizeable effects as they represent differences of around 70 percent with respect to the control group mean.
So participatory budgeting is good for tax revenues, but how good is it for citizens themselves?
Participatory budgeting promotes pro-poor spending, better access to services and may even reduce infant mortality
The available evidence suggests that participatory budgeting leads to significant shifts in priorities and policies, towards expenditures that directly benefit the poor. A 2008 World Bank report demonstrated that participatory budgeting has a statistically significant impact on a number of social indicators. Among others, the report highlights that PB is positively and strongly associated with improvements in poverty rates and access to water services.
Despite producing evidence of its effectiveness on a number of fronts over the years, only 25 years after its initial implementation in Brazil do we start to see systematic evidence of sound development outcomes. This is mainly due to two recently released, major studies of participatory budgeting in Brazil. The first, published by Sonia Gonçalves in World Development, finds that municipalities that adopted participatory budgeting in Brazil “favoured an allocation of public expenditures that closely matched the popular preferences and channeled a larger fraction of their total budget to key investments in sanitation and health services.” As a consequence, the author also finds that this change in the allocation of public expenditures “is associated with a pronounced reduction in the infant mortality rates for municipalities which adopted participatory budgeting.” Barely a year later, a study by Michael Touchton and Brian Wampler in Comparative Political Studies generated similar findings, demonstrating that the adoption of participatory budgeting in Brazil is strongly associated with increases in health care spending and decreases in infant mortality rates.
These studies also highlight another important takeaway for those working with development and public sector reform: the need to consider the fact that participatory institutions may take time to produce noticeable effects. As shown by Touchton and Wampler, for instance, the effects of PB adoption become significantly more visible after the fourth year of implementation.
As citizen engagement draws increasing interest in the development agenda, staying focused on which types of processes work and which do not will become particularly relevant. Participatory budgeting offers some promising evidence for policy reformers who want to see tangible impact on the ground, but it might take more than enthusiasm to get there. Determination, and a certain amount of patience, remain essential ingredients when it comes to delivering results.
creative options for the next House Speaker
Turmoil in the US House has provoked a remarkable variety of creative proposals, which I’ll list in descending order of likelihood. In reviewing this list, keep in mind that the Speaker is elected by the entire House and need not be a US representative. The links are to articles making the case for these various scenarios.
John Boehner: Whether he wants to or not, the current Speaker could stay on as the Speaker. He is the only person in the world who does not have to win an election; he would just announce that he is staying on. He might be prevailed upon to do so if the alternative is a disaster. Or–conceivably–this was the outcome he foresaw all along.
Paul Ryan: The Wisconsin Rep. has broad support across the GOP caucus, so they might decide to vote for him unanimously and make him the Speaker. The main obstacle seems to be that he is steadfastly against running. (“Was the crown offered him thrice?” / “Ay, marry, was’t, and he put it by thrice, every / time gentler than other, and at every putting-by / mine honest neighbours shouted.” … But look what happened to Caesar.)
Reps. Daniel Webster (sic) or Jason Chaffetz. They are running. But they don’t seem to have enough support in the GOP caucus to win, unless the Republicans face a protracted struggle and decide they’d just better pick someone who is seeking the seat.
Mitt Romney: The House GOP could select him if they wanted to (and if he accepted). Ezra Klein notes that they almost all endorsed him for president, so maybe he could unify their caucus. And they would get a prominent, effective leader from Capitol Hill.
“Colin Powell”: I use this name as an example of someone who might fit the following profile: popular and respected, with at least some GOP credibility and yet appeal to some Democrats. In the latest US poll of most admired humans, Powell gets zero percent, but so does everyone except a small group of people who are either disqualified (Pope Francis, Vladimir Putin, the current POTUS) or politically unacceptable to the House (Bill Clinton, George W. Bush). In any case, the scenario is that the House GOP decides they can look good by picking a popular figure and they replace the defectors on their side by drawing in quite a few Democrats who feel they’d be better off under Speaker Powell than under a House GOP leader. In fact, this idea could come from the Democratic side. (Speaker Buffett?)
Nancy Pelosi: She could get all the Democrats to support her, and if 29 moderate Republicans decided to join them, she would be elected. But those moderate Republicans stand far from Pelosi on the issues and would pay a price politically for supporting a Democrat. Moreover, if she compromised too much to get the 29 Republican votes, she could lose some Democrats or just decide herself that it wasn’t worth the candle.
See also why can’t a centrist coalition form in the US House? (Sept. 2013)
Highly Recommended: Capra & Mattei’s “The Ecology of Law”
An important new book offering a vision of commons-based law has just arrived! The Ecology of Law: Toward a Legal System in Tune with Nature and Community, argues that we need to reconceptualize law itself and formally recognize commoning if we are going to address our many environmental problems.
The book is the work of two of the more venturesome minds in science and law – Fritjof Capra and Ugo Mattei, respectively. Capra is a physicist and systems thinker who first gained international attention in 1975 with his book The Tao of Physics, which drew linkages between modern physics and Eastern mysticism. Mattei is a well-known legal theorist of the commons, international law scholar and commons activist in Italy who teaches at Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, and at the University of Turin. He is also deputy mayor of Chieri in the northern region of Italy.
The Law of Ecology is an ambitious, big-picture account of the history of law as an artifact of the scientific, mechanical worldview – a legacy that we must transcend if we are to overcome many contemporary problems, particularly ecological disaster. The book argues that modernity as a template of thought is a serious root problem in today’s world. Among other things, it privileges the individual as supreme agent despite the harm to the collective good and ecological stability. Modernity also sees the world as governed by simplistic, observable cause-and-effect, mechanical relationships, ignoring the more subtle dimensions of life such as subjectivity, caring and meaning.
As a corrective, Capra and Mattei propose a new body of commons-based institutions recognized by law (which itself will have a different character than conventional state law).
It’s quite a treat to watch two sophisticated dissenters outline their vision of a world based on commoning and protected by a new species of “ecolaw.” Capra and Mattei start their story by sketching important parallels between natural science and jurisprudence over the course of history. Both science and law, for example, reflect shared conceptualizations of humans and nature. We still live in the cosmological world articulated by John Locke, Francis Bacon, Rene Descartes, Hugo Grotius and Thomas Hobbes, all of whom saw the world as a rational, empirically knowable order governed by atomistic individuals and mechanical principles. This worldview continues to prevail in economics, social sciences, public policy and law.
Are gun suicides gun deaths?
After the President asked news organizations to compare deaths by firearms with deaths from terrorism, many did. It’s pretty striking, here’s the chart from CNN:
But not all of the charts looked the same. Vox’s chart excluded suicides, and thus came to a much smaller (though still striking) result:
And this raises an important question. Should we include suicides with a gun in our calculations of gun deaths? Asked that way, the answer seems obvious: of course they should count, a gun death is a gun death. But I think there are important reasons to exclude them. Suicides make up 2/3 of all firearms deaths, but those deaths are probably not preventable by restricting access to guns.
Here’s the argument in outline: people commit suicide with guns because that’s the dominant image of suicide in our culture. Serious restrictions on gun control would change the dominant image of suicide in our culture, and potential suicides would choose different methods.
And yet there’s plenty of evidence to the contrary, so it’s important to think that evidence through. In many cultures, targeting the means of suicide led to major reductions in suicide. We know that when we interview survivors, we find that 70% spend less than an hour planning, so they’re mostly using ready-to-hand methods. Britain reduced its suicide rate by changing the kinds of gas they used to power their ovens. San Francisco hopes to prevent suicides at the Golden Gate Bridge with a steel net.
And yet there are many differences between survivors and successful suicides. Successful suicides plan more carefully, and for longer, choosing deadlier methods. Successful suicides are generally older and maler than survivors. In short, successful suicides seem to mean it more than unsuccessful ones, they make determined choices based on social facts rather than psychological whims. So they won’t be deterred if forced to change methods; we need to change the social facts instead!
The National Academies of Science concluded much the same thing when last they evaluated these questions: “Some gun control policies may reduce the number of gun suicides, but they have not yet been shown to reduce the overall risk of suicide in any population.” The difference is between micro-reductions (fewer deaths at the Golden Gate bridge) and macro-reductions (fewer deaths per 100,000 people.) We can make lots of changes at the margin without touching the infra-marginal causes of suicide, which are likely not tied to method.
This is an example of Simpson’s Paradox: you can reduce the marginal propensity to commit suicide, even make small, local reductions in those numbers, but without affecting the overall rate of suicides. And the same thing goes in the opposite direction: increasing access to guns might lead to short-term and local effects on suicide, but we compensate in various ways. Otherwise, it would be hard to make sense of the fact that our suicide rate is quite low while we have more guns than anyone in the world. We’re in the middle of the pack for the OECD, and France, Finland, and Japan all beat us:
Why is the US suicide rate so low, given the overwhelming number of guns we have? Guns seem to massively increase our homicide rate but not our suicide rate, so what’s going on there? For the largest group of suicides: people basically understand the lethality of the method they choose, and they use less-lethal methods if they don’t want to succeed. So suicide success mostly tracks desire, not access.
Around the world suicides use different methods:
“Poisoning by pesticide was common in many Asian countries and in Latin America; poisoning by drugs was common in both Nordic countries and the United Kingdom. Hanging was the preferred method of suicide in eastern Europe, as was firearm suicide in the United States and jumping from a high place in cities and urban societies such as Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China.”
So while of course, there’s some feasibility to reducing access to pesticides and firearms, there’s little hope of eliminating access to drugs, high places, or potential nooses. Britain removed a major non-violent method, and saw serious reductions. We can do the same by targeting non-violent suicide methods. But the big group of suicides have a high transition rate among violent methods (hanging, firearms, jumping) while the smaller group of suicides have low transition rates among non-violent methods (ovens, drug/pesticide poisoning.)
So you can best reduce suicide by regulating access to pesticides and drugs, but regulating access to firearms leads to substitute violent methods. There’s even the risk that though relatively few people will transition from non-violent to violent methods, they’ll do so at a much higher success rate. Britain avoided that fate with its coal gas oven transition, but further targeting prescription drug poisoning might yield different results.
There’s nothing wrong with trying to make suicide more difficult; I endorse strategies that might force rethinking, like waiting periods. But I’m not convinced it’s possible to deter the determined. So in that sense, we should probably treat gun suicides more as suicides and less as gun deaths. The best evidence is that policies designed to reduce our (already low) suicide rate will target social facts, about masculinity, bonding social capital, mental health and self-worth, while the policies best tailored to reduce our (quite high) homicide rates should target a single variable: access to firearms.