Is the issue highly polarized/politicized in Germany? Say, do you expect some people to engage less with your work as a result of “choosing sides”?
In EA Israel we tend to take more politically neutral approaches when engaging publicly, including in relation to the current war or to the large “pro-democratic” public protests (wiki). I’m curious about your attitude to reputational risks and the potential problem of “painting EA with leftist colors”.
Germany so far is probably less polarized than other countries (e.g. the US). Currently there is only one far right party with significant reach (AFD) currently polling around 19% nationally.
The main conservative party (CDU) and the conservative leaning economically liberal party (FDP) are currently clearly and credibly distancing themselves from the AFD. We even embedded an interview from one of the most prominent FDP members (Gerhart Baum) in one of our blog posts about how we think about defending democracy.
So while we still might risk our reputation with up to 20% of the electorate I assume that it’s far less than 20% of the people we might ever reach with the idea of effective giving anyway (especially in cause areas other than global health and development).
On the other side I hope this endeavor will help us introduce many new people to effective giving who would not otherwise have heard about it (because we will show up on the radar of additional journalists, some donors will more actively share our website etc.).
Two considerations: 1. does protecting democracy have to be “painting with leftist colors”? 2. even if it was, does the ROI justify it?
On the first, as noted in this EAGxVirtual lightning talk I gave on the US context, the design of the political system is a big upstream cause of authoritarian voter bases and to a larger extent authoritarian politicians. Many of the reforms to the US political system that would in the short to long term reduce the antidemocratic threat are “bi-populist,” as I like to call it.
Left- and Right-wing populists are generally for campaign finance reform, preventing politicians from becoming lobbyists, having a districting and voting system that enables third parties, etc. There are some notable ver partisan exceptions like moving from the electoral college to national popular vote and making the Senate less minoritarian.
In the US context, I think disciplined and skilled advocates can keep political system reform as populist/anti-establishment issue and avoid culture war framing. I’m not sure how this generalizes to Europe or Germany. While I don’t think it generalizes 100%, I suspect it generalizes at least a little.
On the second, I think the ROI from this issue is uniquely higher than other political issues. small-L liberal democracies (e.g. Germany, United States, Italy, etc) falling into something other than liberal democracies (Hungary is a good example of this) strikes me as patently super bad for suffering of humans/animals, the longterm future, EA agenda, and any other issues that we might care about. I think this is uniquely true of the United States because it is the world superpower and leading place for emerging technologies. However, the stakes are high even in places like Germany. How much would be lost alone by an authoritarian nativist government coming to power and eliminating all German foreign aid?
In short, if the Great Powers stop being liberal democracies, a lot of our agenda becomes moot because we will now have bigger problems. Instead of working to make German aid more effective, we will be working to get the govt to give any aid at all and ensure an authoritarian govt doesn’t manipulate the political process to never relinquish power. Instead of working to get the United States Government to approach international AI coordination in a way that doesn’t lead to an international arms race in capabilities, we will be fighting to keep a strongman from disrupting the global world order that that coordination is underpinned by.
Is the issue highly polarized/politicized in Germany? Say, do you expect some people to engage less with your work as a result of “choosing sides”?
In EA Israel we tend to take more politically neutral approaches when engaging publicly, including in relation to the current war or to the large “pro-democratic” public protests (wiki). I’m curious about your attitude to reputational risks and the potential problem of “painting EA with leftist colors”.
Germany so far is probably less polarized than other countries (e.g. the US). Currently there is only one far right party with significant reach (AFD) currently polling around 19% nationally.
The main conservative party (CDU) and the conservative leaning economically liberal party (FDP) are currently clearly and credibly distancing themselves from the AFD. We even embedded an interview from one of the most prominent FDP members (Gerhart Baum) in one of our blog posts about how we think about defending democracy.
So while we still might risk our reputation with up to 20% of the electorate I assume that it’s far less than 20% of the people we might ever reach with the idea of effective giving anyway (especially in cause areas other than global health and development).
On the other side I hope this endeavor will help us introduce many new people to effective giving who would not otherwise have heard about it (because we will show up on the radar of additional journalists, some donors will more actively share our website etc.).
Two considerations:
1. does protecting democracy have to be “painting with leftist colors”?
2. even if it was, does the ROI justify it?
On the first, as noted in this EAGxVirtual lightning talk I gave on the US context, the design of the political system is a big upstream cause of authoritarian voter bases and to a larger extent authoritarian politicians. Many of the reforms to the US political system that would in the short to long term reduce the antidemocratic threat are “bi-populist,” as I like to call it.
Left- and Right-wing populists are generally for campaign finance reform, preventing politicians from becoming lobbyists, having a districting and voting system that enables third parties, etc. There are some notable ver partisan exceptions like moving from the electoral college to national popular vote and making the Senate less minoritarian.
In the US context, I think disciplined and skilled advocates can keep political system reform as populist/anti-establishment issue and avoid culture war framing. I’m not sure how this generalizes to Europe or Germany. While I don’t think it generalizes 100%, I suspect it generalizes at least a little.
On the second, I think the ROI from this issue is uniquely higher than other political issues. small-L liberal democracies (e.g. Germany, United States, Italy, etc) falling into something other than liberal democracies (Hungary is a good example of this) strikes me as patently super bad for suffering of humans/animals, the longterm future, EA agenda, and any other issues that we might care about. I think this is uniquely true of the United States because it is the world superpower and leading place for emerging technologies. However, the stakes are high even in places like Germany. How much would be lost alone by an authoritarian nativist government coming to power and eliminating all German foreign aid?
In short, if the Great Powers stop being liberal democracies, a lot of our agenda becomes moot because we will now have bigger problems. Instead of working to make German aid more effective, we will be working to get the govt to give any aid at all and ensure an authoritarian govt doesn’t manipulate the political process to never relinquish power. Instead of working to get the United States Government to approach international AI coordination in a way that doesn’t lead to an international arms race in capabilities, we will be fighting to keep a strongman from disrupting the global world order that that coordination is underpinned by.