On war, rally effects and foresight: Scholarly and literary observations, via Octavia Butler (and a little Frank Herbert)
I had intended to do Part III of my Virtue & virtue-signaling in science fiction series today, but as with any blogging endeavor, events intervene. However, part of the point of the shift to In Tenure Veritas is to not just do a news of the week commentary, so I'll go about this in an odd way.
What will happen with Iran? I don't know. There is, though, a well established finding in political science called the "rally 'round the flag effect." In times of national crisis, especially national security crises, the president's approval rating tends to go up. Richard Brody wrote most informatively about this, and if you want a book, try Assessing the President. The rally effect is not an automatic thing, though.
Detour to Octavia Butler. I have actually made a few references to her in what I have been writing on Sundays anyway, so I may as well. I am currently reading one of her lesser-known sets-- the Earthseed series. I just hadn't gotten around to it until now. Funny story... ha ha... the books are set in a world under economic, social and environmental collapse, and in the second book, the country elects a guy for president-- Andrew Steele Jarret. Jarret is an over-the-top racist demagogue who preaches a version of christianity that is basically Jonathan Edwards mixed with Father Coughlin. He blames the decline of America on the abandonment of christian values, and his campaign slogan is... "make America great again." Parable of the Talents was published in 1998.
1998.
Octavia Butler died ten years before the 2016 election, and the Earthseed books are not her most famous books, but this kind of thing is not uncommon. I'll refer you to my post on why strange times call for us to refer to literature. The Earthseed books have their flaws, and if I'm going to point you to some Octavia Butler, that's not where you should start, but it's a simple, coincidental point.
And yet, sometimes foresight has little political impact. Those who fail to learn from the history of accurate political predictions are condemned to live out those political predictions. Eat that, Santayana!
The rally effect, though. I was getting to that. How much military escalation will there be with Iran? I don't know. If there is significant escalation, what happens? According to Brody's political science analysis and the work following from him, presidential approval tends to go up, but conditionally. Conditional on what? Conditional on elite consensus. We can find examples of national crises with and without rally effects, with the distinction being elite consensus. When consensus emerges that the country should rally around the president, it does, via signaling. A good reference here is everyone's standard text on public opinion-- John Zaller's The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion. (If I can reference John Zaller and Octavia Butler in one blog post, I feel good about what I'm doing here.) When elite consensus fails to emerge, there is no rally effect.
So, what if there is a belief that the military action is intended to create a rally effect? That is the central question that has emerged in light of the impeachment (the Wag the Dog question) and Trump's old tweets about Obama attacking Iran in the lead-up to the 2012 election.
If there had been a prediction that Trump would try to create a rally effect, would that prevent it from working?
The political science here suggests that it would be conditional on the behavior of "elites." Well, who the hell are they? Cue-givers. Whoever has a loud voice, a platform, etc. Editorial commentators, lower-level politicians, people like that. And... it's sort of a collective thing. If they collectively back the president, a rally happens. The more partisan the signals remain, the less likely a rally is.
In the case of the rally, then, the forecast of a military escalation has a potential "causal mechanism," in social science jargon, for preventing a rally effect, but it still depends on the extent to which individual politicians and opinion-leaders think they might be punished or ostracized for not backing military escalation. Like I said, it is a weird sort of collective process.
And sometimes foresight doesn't change anything.
In the second Dune book, Dune Messiah, Paul Muad'Dib Atreides faces an assassination attempt that burns out his eyes. However, he is prescient because of his use of the spice melange. Also, he is the kwisatz haderach. So, he uses his prescience in lieu of normal vision. He becomes so dependent on prescience that he winds up locking himself, and in fact, humanity, into a specific future, and not a good one. His son, Leto II finds a solution, and it is very, very ugly.
What will happen with Iran? I don't know. There is, though, a well established finding in political science called the "rally 'round the flag effect." In times of national crisis, especially national security crises, the president's approval rating tends to go up. Richard Brody wrote most informatively about this, and if you want a book, try Assessing the President. The rally effect is not an automatic thing, though.
Detour to Octavia Butler. I have actually made a few references to her in what I have been writing on Sundays anyway, so I may as well. I am currently reading one of her lesser-known sets-- the Earthseed series. I just hadn't gotten around to it until now. Funny story... ha ha... the books are set in a world under economic, social and environmental collapse, and in the second book, the country elects a guy for president-- Andrew Steele Jarret. Jarret is an over-the-top racist demagogue who preaches a version of christianity that is basically Jonathan Edwards mixed with Father Coughlin. He blames the decline of America on the abandonment of christian values, and his campaign slogan is... "make America great again." Parable of the Talents was published in 1998.
1998.
Octavia Butler died ten years before the 2016 election, and the Earthseed books are not her most famous books, but this kind of thing is not uncommon. I'll refer you to my post on why strange times call for us to refer to literature. The Earthseed books have their flaws, and if I'm going to point you to some Octavia Butler, that's not where you should start, but it's a simple, coincidental point.
And yet, sometimes foresight has little political impact. Those who fail to learn from the history of accurate political predictions are condemned to live out those political predictions. Eat that, Santayana!
The rally effect, though. I was getting to that. How much military escalation will there be with Iran? I don't know. If there is significant escalation, what happens? According to Brody's political science analysis and the work following from him, presidential approval tends to go up, but conditionally. Conditional on what? Conditional on elite consensus. We can find examples of national crises with and without rally effects, with the distinction being elite consensus. When consensus emerges that the country should rally around the president, it does, via signaling. A good reference here is everyone's standard text on public opinion-- John Zaller's The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion. (If I can reference John Zaller and Octavia Butler in one blog post, I feel good about what I'm doing here.) When elite consensus fails to emerge, there is no rally effect.
So, what if there is a belief that the military action is intended to create a rally effect? That is the central question that has emerged in light of the impeachment (the Wag the Dog question) and Trump's old tweets about Obama attacking Iran in the lead-up to the 2012 election.
If there had been a prediction that Trump would try to create a rally effect, would that prevent it from working?
The political science here suggests that it would be conditional on the behavior of "elites." Well, who the hell are they? Cue-givers. Whoever has a loud voice, a platform, etc. Editorial commentators, lower-level politicians, people like that. And... it's sort of a collective thing. If they collectively back the president, a rally happens. The more partisan the signals remain, the less likely a rally is.
In the case of the rally, then, the forecast of a military escalation has a potential "causal mechanism," in social science jargon, for preventing a rally effect, but it still depends on the extent to which individual politicians and opinion-leaders think they might be punished or ostracized for not backing military escalation. Like I said, it is a weird sort of collective process.
And sometimes foresight doesn't change anything.
In the second Dune book, Dune Messiah, Paul Muad'Dib Atreides faces an assassination attempt that burns out his eyes. However, he is prescient because of his use of the spice melange. Also, he is the kwisatz haderach. So, he uses his prescience in lieu of normal vision. He becomes so dependent on prescience that he winds up locking himself, and in fact, humanity, into a specific future, and not a good one. His son, Leto II finds a solution, and it is very, very ugly.
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