But should we make people want pro-growth policies? I’m rather sceptic that there is a positive expected outcome from influencing certain politics. In the end, founding a think tank that lobbies in favor of development policies is, in a way, to believe we know better than development country voters themselves what is best for them (assuming we’re talking about functional democracies).
Although that line of argument may be attractive for a few reasons already mentioned on the forum (because people don’t trust institutions, because they lack basic education, because their education is leftist-biased etc), I’d argue that’s a very strong and probably wrong caveat.
Given that growth economics is a controversial subject, for the sake of argument let’s assume that, after thorough research, we could be 80% sure that Party X would be better for GDP growth than Party Y. Are we really sure that voters don’t know what’s best for them with an 80% confidence interval?
Even if that were true, I’m not sure a pro-growth think tank would be the best course of action. Maybe voters were “wrong” because of malfunctioning elections or low voter turnout. In that case, I think it would be best to advocate in favor of better-functioning elections and increasing voter turnout.
In my opinion, if we disagree with voters about what’s best for them, it’s far more likely that we’re wrong. In a sense, that’s also the argument behind providing cash transfers—should be oblige people to spend money on what we think is right for them or simply give them the cash and trust they’ll know its best use?
This may be interpreted as a general critique of Politicisation, but I don’t think that applies to some of the other topics the EA community has been involved (animals can’t vote and I would argue this critique doesn’t apply to trade liberalization as well, but this isn’t the forum).
I was with you until the very end, then I got confused. Do you think it is fair to say that people don’t know what’s best for them when it comes to trade liberalization? (I do.)
I have way fewer qualms about saying that voters don’t know what’s best for them. Take, for example, South Africa. They use a pretty darn good voting system—single-ballot closed-list proportional representation with half the seats coming from province-level lists and the other half from nationwide lists—and I think the conduct of the elections themselves is decently well-organized; turnout has been dropping recently, but it was a whopping 89.3% in 1999.
I (cherry-)picked that one election because it brought Thabo Mbeki to the Presidency. He didn’t believe HIV caused AIDS; he thought AIDS is caused by vitamin deficiencies. He oriented the country’s policy based on that belief. Southern Africa is one of the areas with the highest incidence of the disease in the world. So, yeah, in that particular case the 66.5% of South Africans who voted for him clearly did not know what was best for them.
Also, it could be that we know with only 80% confidence what the best policies are, but we know with a much higher certainty that some policies (like subsidizing gas until it costs less than USD 0.05 a liter, like Hugo Chavez did) are completely wrong. Yet people still vote for them.
So yes, I am fairly confident that by and large people here in poor countries do not want growth, or that they do not want to avoid the policies that we know are harmful to growth.
You could point out that I cherry picked that one election, and that is true. But I think that, generally speaking, elections at least here in Latin America are broadly representative of people’s will, or as much as is possible in a presidential system (I think parliamentarianism is stricly better). AFAIK most countries use proportional representation rather than single-member districts, which are a big cause of dysfunctional-ness in e.g. US politics. Basically, we’re not stuck in the same inadequate equilibria as the US is. And turnout in, say, Brazil is pretty high, because voting is mandatory.
So, for democracies here in Latin America, I’d be fairly confident on “people don’t get pro-growth policies because they choose not to” over “people would want pro-growth policies but fail to get them because of poor election methods or low turnout”. (The low turnout hypothesis would also be fishy in that it would suggest a correlation between turning out to vote and being against growth; I’d find that correlation surprising if it existed. If there was any meaningful correlation, I’d expect it to go in the other direction.)
I’m way less confident in African elections. Some countries, like Ghana and South Africa, conduct their elections pretty well, I believe, but that’s probably not the norm in the continent. Most countries have very little experience with democracy (the 1999 election I mentioned was only the second one). Then again, some cultures in Africa have traits like:
the belief that albino body parts are somehow good for disease;
female genital mutilation;
insistence on contact with bodies of Ebola victims.
Things like this, as well as political views that are clearly a majority in the continent (e.g. non-acceptance of homosexuality, which is still illegal in nearly 2⁄3 of African countries) give me substantial confidence that yeah, they don’t know what’s best for their countries.
(I’m not saying should try to make them want growth; what I am saying is that, if the article is right that that’s what EAs should focus on, then we need to keep that in mind.)
But should we make people want pro-growth policies? I’m rather sceptic that there is a positive expected outcome from influencing certain politics. In the end, founding a think tank that lobbies in favor of development policies is, in a way, to believe we know better than development country voters themselves what is best for them (assuming we’re talking about functional democracies).
Although that line of argument may be attractive for a few reasons already mentioned on the forum (because people don’t trust institutions, because they lack basic education, because their education is leftist-biased etc), I’d argue that’s a very strong and probably wrong caveat.
Given that growth economics is a controversial subject, for the sake of argument let’s assume that, after thorough research, we could be 80% sure that Party X would be better for GDP growth than Party Y. Are we really sure that voters don’t know what’s best for them with an 80% confidence interval?
Even if that were true, I’m not sure a pro-growth think tank would be the best course of action. Maybe voters were “wrong” because of malfunctioning elections or low voter turnout. In that case, I think it would be best to advocate in favor of better-functioning elections and increasing voter turnout.
In my opinion, if we disagree with voters about what’s best for them, it’s far more likely that we’re wrong. In a sense, that’s also the argument behind providing cash transfers—should be oblige people to spend money on what we think is right for them or simply give them the cash and trust they’ll know its best use?
This may be interpreted as a general critique of Politicisation, but I don’t think that applies to some of the other topics the EA community has been involved (animals can’t vote and I would argue this critique doesn’t apply to trade liberalization as well, but this isn’t the forum).
I was with you until the very end, then I got confused. Do you think it is fair to say that people don’t know what’s best for them when it comes to trade liberalization? (I do.)
I have way fewer qualms about saying that voters don’t know what’s best for them. Take, for example, South Africa. They use a pretty darn good voting system—single-ballot closed-list proportional representation with half the seats coming from province-level lists and the other half from nationwide lists—and I think the conduct of the elections themselves is decently well-organized; turnout has been dropping recently, but it was a whopping 89.3% in 1999.
I (cherry-)picked that one election because it brought Thabo Mbeki to the Presidency. He didn’t believe HIV caused AIDS; he thought AIDS is caused by vitamin deficiencies. He oriented the country’s policy based on that belief. Southern Africa is one of the areas with the highest incidence of the disease in the world. So, yeah, in that particular case the 66.5% of South Africans who voted for him clearly did not know what was best for them.
Also, it could be that we know with only 80% confidence what the best policies are, but we know with a much higher certainty that some policies (like subsidizing gas until it costs less than USD 0.05 a liter, like Hugo Chavez did) are completely wrong. Yet people still vote for them.
So yes, I am fairly confident that by and large people here in poor countries do not want growth, or that they do not want to avoid the policies that we know are harmful to growth.
You could point out that I cherry picked that one election, and that is true. But I think that, generally speaking, elections at least here in Latin America are broadly representative of people’s will, or as much as is possible in a presidential system (I think parliamentarianism is stricly better). AFAIK most countries use proportional representation rather than single-member districts, which are a big cause of dysfunctional-ness in e.g. US politics. Basically, we’re not stuck in the same inadequate equilibria as the US is. And turnout in, say, Brazil is pretty high, because voting is mandatory.
So, for democracies here in Latin America, I’d be fairly confident on “people don’t get pro-growth policies because they choose not to” over “people would want pro-growth policies but fail to get them because of poor election methods or low turnout”. (The low turnout hypothesis would also be fishy in that it would suggest a correlation between turning out to vote and being against growth; I’d find that correlation surprising if it existed. If there was any meaningful correlation, I’d expect it to go in the other direction.)
I’m way less confident in African elections. Some countries, like Ghana and South Africa, conduct their elections pretty well, I believe, but that’s probably not the norm in the continent. Most countries have very little experience with democracy (the 1999 election I mentioned was only the second one). Then again, some cultures in Africa have traits like:
the belief that albino body parts are somehow good for disease;
female genital mutilation;
insistence on contact with bodies of Ebola victims.
Things like this, as well as political views that are clearly a majority in the continent (e.g. non-acceptance of homosexuality, which is still illegal in nearly 2⁄3 of African countries) give me substantial confidence that yeah, they don’t know what’s best for their countries.
(I’m not saying should try to make them want growth; what I am saying is that, if the article is right that that’s what EAs should focus on, then we need to keep that in mind.)