Why We Elect Bad and Incompetent Rulers?

People hire others to take care of tasks they themselves can’t do or don’t want to do. 

Selecting a suitable person for any job is a very complex task with very stringent criteria for selecting and requires trained and experienced staff. Not only should the selectors be aware of all the factors that affect the process of securing a “job-person match”, but they should also select the candidate without breaking any antidiscrimination laws and guidelines in force. Considering all this, what kind of criteria are utilised to recruit people?

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Flippant Criteria to elect People to Rule Us

We use such stringent criteria to recruit people who work for us but use flippant criteria to elect our rulers. When asked about their choice of candidate in elections, many people give the following reasons:

• He looks so handsome
• She is a celebrity who believes in equal opportunities
• He believes that the government should do more for equality
• The party believes that global warming is a major threat to our way of life etc.

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“A key characteristic of democracy is the responsiveness of the government to the preferences of its citizens” Robert Dahl (1971) guided us how to measure the effectiveness of voter choices. Yet, in all political systems, ranging from constitutional monarchy to representative democracy, we use such flippant criteria for “selecting” our rulers. Why?

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We know that the North Koreans don’t have much choice in electing their rulers. Citizens also do not get to elect constitutional monarchs, as they are chosen from among the earlier monarch’s eligible offspring. But how about incumbent rulers like George Bush, being re-elected after one of the most dismal track records in US history? All over the world, we have lots and lots of our rulers who are utterly incompetent, and according to Paul Krugman’s NewYork Times blog, excel in not seeing their incompetence. 

But what does it say about the people who vote the incompetent ones to power?

Stringent Criteria for Recruiting People to Work

In every workplace, selection criteria are usually developed from four main areas:

1. Qualifications
2. Attributes
3. Knowledge
4. Skills and abilities 

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These all are clearly outlined in the job analysis and explicitly defined in the job description. Further, there is the concept of demonstrated ability. This usually means placing a huge weighting on experience and previous job performance. Interviewers like to hear what the candidate has achieved elsewhere, so they can imagine what the candidate would likely do for the job s/he is being recruited into.

Qualification: This usually means a formal recognition that the candidate has, under formal supervision and guidance, acquired expertise in the field. Here are some typical examples of qualification requirements:

• Preferred 4 years prior Information Technology experience required. Minimum: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related field
• A research doctorate or equivalent in hydrology
• A Certificate level qualification with a minimum of 3 years worth practical experience of working in a child care centre

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Attributes: Attributes are behaviours, which are required in the desired job e.g., flexibility, attention to detail, service orientation, independence and initiative etc. In a job interview, the candidate might be asked to give examples of “a situation in your previous job where you demonstrated independence and initiative”.

Knowledge: How much the candidate knows about the field, the subject matter necessary to do the job well and it is usually measured by:

• A thorough understanding of e.g. current issues in teaching planning in higher education, including national policy settings
• Specific knowledge of e.g. flux cored arc welding
• Demonstrated knowledge coupled with practical skills for e.g. handling immigrant parents and guardians of teenaged school children in public schools

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Skills: Skills can range from so called transferrable skills like Negotiation skills, Project Management Skills or Leadership Skills to highly job-specific skills like “Certification for Cloud Computing Infrastructure management” or “Certification for flux cored arc welding, oxy-acetylene welding, metal inert gas (MIG) welding, tungsten inert gas (TIG) welding and manual metal arc (MMA) welding”.

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Criteria Used to Elect Rulers Totally Useless in Job Requirements

If we were to apply the criteria we use to recruit people who work for us to “select” people who currently rule us, almost 90% of our rulers should be kicked out as utterly incompetent!

In a constitutional monarchy, being born in that particular family is about the only criteria for being chosen as the monarch. Even being mad is good enough for the job e.g., Caligula of Rome, Fyodor I and Ivan V and VI of Russia, Charles II of Spain, Alfonso VI of Portugal, Charles VI of France, Ludwig II of Bavaria, Henry VI and George III of UK. When the heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Ferdinand and his wife, Countess Sophie Chotek, were assassinated in Sarajevo, the Emperor Franz Jospeh “breathed a sigh of relief” that the unsuitable Sophie was removed (King and Woolmans, 2013).

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In modern Western democracies, most of our “rulers” are professional politicians who believe they have the required expertise, skills, aptitudes and attributes but rarely give any proof that they have achieved anything similar in their earlier endeavours. 

Why do voters put up with this kind of belief with no evidence of achievement?

The spatial theory of voting (Downs, 1957) claims that voters have a most preferred policy or “bliss point” and measures alternative candidates/policies by judging how “close” they are to that ideal. However, research has shown that this ideological “position” may not be always so clear (Degan and Merlo, 2009).

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In high-profile single candidate elections e.g. US Presidential elections, personal characteristics of the candidate are very important along with party label (Marsh, 2005).

Criteria Guidelines for Choosing Rulers

The criteria to judge a politician candidate, there are lots of them: Lets’ take two examples. 

The first one is the comprehensive guideline from the League of Women Voters: 

1. Decide what you are looking for in a candidate.
2. Find out about the candidates
3. Gather materials about the candidates
4. Evaluate candidates' stands on issues
5. Learn about the candidates' leadership abilities
6. Learn how other people view the candidate
7. Sorting it all out

These are very good guidelines. But, how many voters actually go to all that trouble? Further, significantly missing from this list is the proof of previous achievement, which answers the question “How do we know that you can really do what you say you will do?”

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The second example of a set of criteria is from the 2016 US Presidential Candidate Selector: 

The 18 questions lets the voter find how her/his own position aligns to the candidate’s answer on issues such as Gun Control, Minimum Wage, Immigration Law, Marijuana Laws, Abortion etc. But, here also there is no way to check how the candidate will demonstrate the mix of qualifications, attributes, skills and competence demonstrated in past performance. If the candidate says that she believes that marijuana should be legalised, there is no explanation of how is she going to get it done.

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Rather often in parliamentary elections, voters may choose candidates as long as they are within the party of the voter’s choice (Mair, 1987:92) e.g., Conservative and Unionist Party or Labour Party in UK. But few people actually ask the candidates to demonstrate capability for promised actions on the basis of past performance as recruiters do in job interviews. 

The Rolling Stone magazine had an interesting article “The Ten Worst Members of the Worst Congress Ever”, where significantly almost each example personally benefitted much more from being in the US Congress than in their business attempts before that.

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Studies have shown that “Narcissistic People are Most Likely to Emerge as Leaders”. Narcissism makes people utterly self-centred, who lack any empathy for others and habitually exaggerate their talents and abilities”. People around them also tend to see them as leaders who can “really lead them”.

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If we are honest, we would notice that in most countries things are good not because of the leaders but inspite of them. Isn’t it time to start upgrading political leader selection methods all over the world?

Democracy 2,0, where are you?

Sources:

• Degan, Arianna, Merlo Antonio. (2009). Do Voters vote ideologically? Science Direct. Journal of Economic Theory 144 (2009) 1868-1894.
• Dahl, Robert A. 1971. Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
• Downs, A. (1957). An Economic Theory of Democracy, Harper and Row, New York, NY,
• King, Greg., and Woolmans, Sue, 2013. ‘The Assassination of the Archduke: Sarajevo 1914 and the Romance That Changed the World’.
• Mair, Peter and Michael Marsh (2004) ‘Political Parties in Electoral Markets in Postwar Ireland’, in Peter Mair, Wolfgang Muller and Fritz Plasser, eds. Political Parties and Electoral Change: Party Responses to Electoral Markets, pp. 234-63. London: Sage.
• Marsh, Michael (2005). Candidates or parties? Objects of electoral choice in Ireland. Department of Political Science Trinity College, Dublin, Republic of Ireland. http://www.tcd.ie/Political_Science/Staff/Michael.Marsh

Why Parents Move Their Children Away From Schools With Immigrants?

There are bad parents and "monsters", of course, among all parents.

But most parents always want the best for their children. Parents act according to their belief systems and ideologies, and this shapes their efforts to help and guide their offspring. Only in extremely rare instances parents willingly choose not to give the best reasonable option to their children.

In many countries, parents go to a lot of trouble to put their children to a ‘better’ school. Usually it also means avoiding a school with lots of immigrants, or choosing a school with only a few immigrants. A 2007 government report in Dublin, Ireland found that ‘since 2003, more than half of students were leaving Dublin 15 schools before reaching age 12, when they would normally transfer to secondary schools in the district’ presumably due to the high percentage of immigrants in the schools.

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Researchers in Copenhagen, Denmark have even found a quantifiable limit of immigrant population (35%), for parent’s choice of schools. If the proportion of immigrants is lower, the parents may consider keeping their children there. Significantly, immigrants who speak fluent Danish at home and have assimilated rather well, also exhibit similar behaviour (Rangvid, 2009).

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Too Much Maths is Bad For Some Children

Geeky kids from Asian backgrounds excel in maths, while others don’t – this is a common stereotype in USA.

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Parents (from non-Asian backgrounds) in California’s Silicon Valley move their kids away from high schools because they think that the schools are “too academically driven and too narrowly invested in subjects such as maths and science at the expense of liberal arts and extracurricular activities like sports and other personal interests” (Hwang, Suein. 2005).

Are Schools With More Immigrants Bad Schools?

Parents who take their children away from schools with many immigrants believe they are. Are the parents wrong?

How do we know if a school is good or bad?

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Formally, schools are assessed differently in different countries. Whether countries test samples of students at selected points or over time or take part in international assessment systems such as PISA, the effectiveness of learning outcomes is a common factor of school evaluation. The OECD Review of Evaluation and Assessment Frameworks for Improving Schools gives five challenges in evaluating schools:

1. Governance and Implementation
2. Student Assessment
3. Teacher Evaluation
4. School Evaluation
5. System Evaluation.

Parents, of course, cannot use such sophisticated methods, but usually rely on reputation of school, how students get places in higher education, rumours and anecdotes from other parents. One factor in such discussions may be the unquestioned perception that a high number of immigrants overburden teachers and school administration resulting in a deterioration of overall school performance.

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All over the world, immigrant children are found more in large urban areas than in villages. The Urban Institute of USA claimed that in 2000, 68% of the total number of immigrant children lived in urban areas in six ‘major destination’ states.  

It is widely assumed that children of immigrants, as they have not ‘assimilated’ well enough and as their social and economic environment is not on the same level as the natives, are more at risk of failing in school and becoming delinquents.

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Research has proved this assumption wrong. According to Brown University, USA researchers Evelyn Hu-DeHart and Cynthia Garcia Coll many children of first generation immigrants outperform natives and even second and third generation immigrants in school performance and significantly rate higher in attitudes and ‘out-of-school positive behaviors’. This immigrant paradox is a very contested phenomenon and seems to apply to some age groups and settings better (Crosnoe, 2011).

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But, this issue is infinitely more complicated with too many incipient factors to draw any simple conclusions. Consider the following findings:

• Maths scores of Mexican-heritage children in USA decline from the first to the third generation, though their English skills increase (Hernandez, 1999).
• Violence and substance abuse increased from first to third generation for Mexican-Heritage children but not for children of Chinese descent (Zehr, 2009, p.12).

Immigrant children acculturate and learn better English in USA, some (not all) “buy into the notion of minorities here that even if you work hard and play hard discrimination is going to get at you (and presumably discourage you from trying harder) and even start learning from peers who are gang members” (Zehr, 2009, p.12).

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So, perception of school quality and how children benefit from school depends on many factors. Schools with more immigrants are not automatically bad schools.

Do immigrant children lower the quality of native education?

• “Poorly educated immigrants’ kids drag everyone else down.”
• “Oh you know, their parents can’t assimilate here and are not good role models and they learn all the bad things and our kids also become bad.”
• “What can the poor teachers do to control those unruly children of immigrants who are disadvantaged and don’t fit in? Our kids suffer from this kind of bad role models.”

These are some not-politically correct opinions I have heard. 

Is it true that immigrants’ children drag native children down?

The answer depends on whom you ask. Research by OECD (2012), Schnepf (2007) and Dustmann et al. (2011) claim large performance gaps between native and immigrant students.

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In schools with large number of immigrants and natives in the same classes, some teachers may slow the pace of instruction so that no one falls behind due to language or previous education handicaps and teachers may also lower expectations for all the students. There is some research evidence from Texas, USA (Chin et al., 2012) to support this.

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So, rather than something being inherently wrong about immigrants’ ethnicities, factors causing immigrant disadvantage, according to (Dronkers et al., 2012), can be:

• Language problems
• The characteristics of origin and host countries’ educational systems and cultural differences

What about the opposite evidence that immigrants do not affect native’s school performance negatively?

Geay et al, (2013) have found that in the UK, findings rule out any negative effects of non-native speakers of English in the classroom and on pupil performance. This difference in educational achievement carries onto later life as well. The share of the foreign born population with tertiary education exceeds that of the native-borns by a whopping 16.1 percentage points in the UK (Dustmann and Glitz, 2011).

Do Immigrant Children Actually Have an Advantage Over Non-Immigrant Kids?

Yes, sometimes. Lingxin Hao and Han S. Woo of Johns Hopkins University (2012) suggest the following factors that provide advantage for Hispanic 1.5 generation (people who immigrate to a new country before or during their early teens) children in USA over natives. So, what gives immigrant children an edge?

1. Family
2. Tight-knit interaction within immigrant communities
3. Ability to benefit from ‘dual-culture’ heritage by combining the best of both cultures

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Data from the Labor Department’s American Time Use Surveys from 2003 to 2010 shows that teenagers whose parents were immigrants spent an average of 26 minutes more per day on education-related activities than their counterparts with native-born parents.

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If native children ‘suffer’ from immigrants, does it tell more about them and their abilities than about the immigrants?

Research from Italy shows that natives from low socio-economic background may ‘suffer’ more from a large number of immigrant children but children from a higher socio-economic background do not suffer and even seem to benefit.

Though I teach adults and not children, I appreciate immigrants or visiting non-native students in my teaching situations. Why? They tend to be more curious and ask questions. This always generates more learning than silent absorption. Many people consider education as fact- or knowledge gathering. This assumption of mind being an empty vessel is a poor man’s (or woman’s) paradigm. Plutarch (Roman historian, 46-120 AD) was cutting edge modern when he said, “The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.”

  

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Bibliography:

• Chin, Aimee, N Meltem Daysal and Scott A Imberman (2012), “Impact of Bilingual Education Programs on Limited English Proficient Students and Their Peers: Regression Discontinuity Evidence from Texas”, IZA Discussion Paper, 6694.
• Contini, Dalit. Immigrant background peer effect in Italian schools. Social Science Research. Volume 42, Issue 4, July 2013, Pages 1122-1142.
• Crosnoe, Robert. “Diversity in the Immigrant Paradox in the Mexican-Origin Population,” in The Immigrant Paradox in Children and Adolescents: Is Becoming an American a Development Risk? Eds. Cynthia Garcia-Coll and Amy Marks. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2011: 61-76.
• Dronkers, J.M., de Heus M., Levels M. 2012. “Immigrant Pupils’ Scientific Performance: the Influence of Educational System Features of Countries of Origin and Destination”. European University Institute Working Paper
• Dustmann, C., Frattini T., Lanzara G. 2011. “Educational Achievement of Second Generation Immigrants: An International Comparison.” Centro Studi Luca D’Agliano Development Studies WP, 314.
• Dustmann, Christian & Glitz, Albrecht. 2011. “Migration and Education,” Norface Discussion Paper Series 2011011, Norface Research Programme on Migration, Department of Economics, University College London.
• Geay, Charlotte, McNally Sandra and Shqiponja Telhaj (2013), ”Non-native Speakers of English in the Classroom: What are the Effects on Pupil Performance?”, Economic Journal, August 2013.
• Rangvid, B. S. (2009). “School Choice, Universal Vouchers and Native Flight from Local Schools”. European Sociological Review 26 (3): 319–335.
• Hernandez, Donald J. and Katherine Darke (1999), “Socioeconomic and Demographic Risk Factors and Resources among Children in Immigrant and Native-Born Families: 1910, 1960, and 1990”. Pp. 19-125 in Donald J. Hernandez (ed.), Children of Immigrants: Health, Adjustment, and Public Assistance, Washington, DC: National Academy Press
• Hwang, Suein (November 19, 2005). “The New White Flight”. The Wall Street Journal. (subscription required) (or, see http://www.learntoquestion.com/resources/database/archives/001430.html
• Mary Ann Zehr, “Scholars Mull the ‘Paradox’ of Immigrants: Academic Success Declines From 1^st to 3^rd Generation,” Education Week, vol. 28, no. 25, March 18, 2009, pp. 1 and 12.
• OECD. 2012. “Untapped Skills. Realizing the potential of immigrant students”, OECD
• Schnepf, S. V. 2007. “Immigrants’ Educational Disadvantage: an Examination across Ten Countries and Three Surveys.” Journal of Population Economics 20:527-545