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Category: Normative political theory

What’s a demockracy?

– What’s a democracy? – Democracy means that people rule and the government respects the opinions of the citizens. – So the government should do what the people want? – In principle, yes, but… – Can a majority of the people decide to abolish the parliament? – No, the basic institutions of the state are usually set in the Constitution and constitutional rules are not to be changed like that. Everything that is in the constitution is off limits. – OK, I can see why. Can the people decide different groups deserve different pay for the same job? – No, even if this is not outlawed by the Constitution, there is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and fundamental human rights are not be changed by democratic majorities. – Makes sense. Can the people decide on gay marriage? That’s not in the Declaration. – Well, there are certain human rights that are not yet in constitutions and universal declaration, but we now recognize them as essential so they are also not subject to majorities. – OK, so in democracies the government does what the people want, but not when it comes to constitutional issues, recognized fundamental human rights, and other very important norms. – Yes. – So can the people decide to change the interest rate? – Oh, no! Not even politicians can do that. Monetary policy is delegated to independent central banks. – But people can decide on regulating tel… – Nope, regulation is basically all delegated to independent…

The Discursive Dilemma and Research Project Evaluation

tl; dr When we collectively evaluate research proposals, we can reach the opposite verdict depending on how we aggregate the individual evaluations, and that’s a problem, and nobody seems to care or provide guidance how to proceed. Imagine that three judges need to reach a verdict together using majority rule. To do that, the judges have to decide independently if each of two factual propositions related to the suspected crime is true. (And they all agree that if and only if both propositions are true, the defendant is guilty). The distribution of the judges’ beliefs is given in the table below. Judge 1 believes that both propositions are true, and as a result, considers the conclusion (defendant is guilty) true as well. Judges 2 and 3 consider that only one of the propositions is true and, as a result, reach a conclusion of ‘not guilty’. When the judges vote in accordance with their conclusions, a majority finds the defendant ‘not guilty’.   Proposition 1 Proposition 2 Conclusion Judge 1 true true true (guilty) Judge 2 false true false (not guilty) Judge 3 true false false (not guilty) Majority decision TRUE TRUE FALSE (not guilty) However, there is a majority that finds each of the two propositions true (see the last line in the table)! Therefore, if the judges vote on each proposition separately rather than directly on the conclusion, they will have to find the defendant ‘guilty’. That is, the judges will reach the opposite conclusion, even though nothing changes about their beliefs, they still agree that both…

Torture and game theory

The latest issue of Political Research Quarterly has an interesting and important exchange about the use of game theory to understand the effectiveness of torture for eliciting truthful information. In this post I summarize the discussion, which is quite instructive for illustrating the prejudices and misunderstandings people have about the role and utility of game theory as a tool to gain insights into the social world. In the original article, Schiemann builds a strategic incomplete-information game between a detainee (who can either posses valuable information or not, and be either ‘strong’ or ‘weak’) and a state which can be either ‘pragmatic’ (using torture only for valuable information) or ‘sadistic’ (torturing in all circumstances). There are two additional parameters capturing uncertainty about the value and completeness of the information provided by the detainee, and two styles of interrogation (providing leading evidence or not). The article then proceeds to identify the equilibria of the game, which turn out to be quite a few (six), and quite different – in some, truthful information is provided while in others, not; in some, torture is applied while in others, not; etc…. At this point you will be excused for wondering what’s the point of the formal modeling if it only shows that, depending on the parameters, different things are possible. Schiemann, however, makes a brilliant move by comparing each of these equilibria to some minimal normative standards that proponents of torture claim to uphold – namely, that torture should not be used on detainees who have provided all their information, that transmitted information should be generally reliable, and that in all cases only…