Voting age in New Zealand

I was aware that the minimum voting age has been challenged in Canada. That's something I mentioned a while back. However, I only very recently learned of some similar developments in New Zealand.

I gather than their Supreme Court has already ruled that restricting the vote to adults (18+) amounts to age discrimination against 16- and 17-year olds. Nonetheless, according to this article on The Conversation, it seems that proposed legislation to lower the voting age for national elections is unlikely to proceed - although it seems that the age may be lowered for local elections only, partly because this change only requires the support of a simple majority, rather than a 75% super-majority, of MPs. That may also be of interest when I teach about majoritarianism and constitutional entrenchment.

Is economics a social science?

I'm set to teach philosophy of social sciences next year (in the autumn), so I've been on the lookout for things about (social) science. I was struck by the title of this press release: a funding boost for economics and social sciences. 

This seems like rather odd phrasing to me. I would have thought that 'social sciences' already included economics, but separating them in this way suggests otherwise.

Institutionally speaking, the Department of Economics is part of the Faculty of Social Sciences. This may not be decisive, since our Faculty also includes Mathematical Sciences and I wouldn't ordinarily consider mathematicians to be social scientists. However, the inclusion of economics does not seem similarly incongruous. If anything, it's arguably the social science par excellence.

SNP use STV

Since I'm no longer in Scotland, I haven't followed the SNP leadership contest too closely, but this recent article caught my eye. It's mostly about membership numbers and transparency, but the bit I found most interesting was mention - at the very end - that the process uses the single transferable vote system.

This is slightly unusual terminology, since STV is normally used to refer to PR systems. When only one person is being elected, this is usually referred to as the alternative vote system - something I blogged about long ago. 

Nonetheless, it could be a useful example next time I'm teaching about these voting systems. I've previously used Conservative leadership contests as an example, though these aren't ideal in a couple of respects. First, unless there's a 'coronation' without a vote (as happened for May and Sunak), the final vote goes to party members, rather than MPs. This changes the electorate between rounds. Second, as a sort of consequence of this, someone can get over 50% in earlier rounds but not automatically win. This happened in 2019, when Boris Johnson received over 50% in the fourth and fifth rounds.

Base rate fallacy?

Sucked in by the clickbait headline, I read this article about bank fraud. I'm not sure whether I really learned anything about bank fraud, but it is a useful example for research methodology.

The article says that the UK banks most at risk of fraud are Santander, Natwest, Barclays, HSBC, and Halifax. However:

1. This is based on the number of online searches for terms such as '[bank] + fraud number'. It's not clear how reliable an indicator that is of fraud cases. It might be that some banks have this number more easily available from their home page, and that may skew how many people need to search.

2. There's no indication that they take account of how many customers each bank has, but that's surely significant in drawing any conclusions about risk of fraud. For instance, they report that Santander had 11,690 searches, but Natwest 11,480. This is only a small difference at best, but what if Santander had twice as many customers as Natwest? In that case, the odds of fraud (assuming that's what is being measured here) would only be about half...

When is a woman (not) in Iran?

Democracy is rule by the people, but one key question is 'which people?'

If one believes in a principle like 'no taxation without representation' then there's no obvious justification for restricting the franchise to citizens. Immigrants pay taxes, so perhaps they should be enfranchised too. Indeed, it might even be necessary to extend voting rights to non-resident foreigners too, if they are subject to taxes.

Those working on this issue are often interested in laws that claim universal jurisdiction - that is, they are not restricted to the territory of the state in question, but purport to be binding (on citizens or even people generally) wherever they are.

I noticed an interesting example of something like this in this BBC article about Iranian headscarves. According to the article, "Women in Iran are required to wear headscarves in public, even when abroad" but this obviously doesn't make much sense. If an Iranian woman is abroad, then she's not in Iran. Thus, the law doesn't apply only to women in Iran.

I'm assuming this law applies to Iranian citizens, though perhaps it applies to all women ordinarily resident in Iran. In any case, it seems that they can commit an offence outside Iran.

Lightning doesn't strike twice... or does it?

An unusual story from Massachusetts, where Raymond Roberts didn't simply win the lottery once, but rather bought SIX winning tickets. The odds of winning are apparently 1 in 1.8 million. I guess that, if you buy six tickets with the same numbers, then the odds of winning six times aren't actually any higher. An interesting case for probability exercises too.

Publication: How mandatory can we make vaccination? (Public Health Ethics)

Another paper has just been published. This makes two papers published in one month, after this previously announced one, although this newer one is only online so far. I'm not sure when it will be in print. It looks like the journal haven't actually published their November 2022 issue yet, so I suppose it's possible that it will get an official print date of this year - though probably more likely next year.

Here's the abstract:

"The novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic has refocused attention on the issue of mandatory vaccination. Some have suggested that vaccines ought to be mandatory, while others propose more moderate alternatives, such as incentives. This piece surveys a range of possible interventions, ranging from mandates through to education. All may have their place, depending on circumstances. However, it is worth clarifying the options available to policymakers, since there is sometimes confusion over whether a particular policy constitutes a mandate or not. Further, I illustrate a different kind of alternative to mandatory vaccination. Rather than seeking less coercive alternatives to a mandate, we might instead employ an alternative mandate, which requires people to do something less than get vaccinated. For instance, we might merely require people to attend an appointment at a vaccine clinic. Whether this mandatory attendance policy is justified will depend on specific circumstances, but it represents another way to promote vaccination, without mandating it. In some cases, this may represent an appropriate balance between promoting public health goals and respecting individual liberty."

And, as usual, a word cloud illustrating the content:

(I believe this was made by FreeWordCloudGenerator.)

Publication: Why Strike Ballots are Undemocratic (The Political Quarterly)

My latest paper has just been published, with open access, in The Political Quarterly. It's about strike ballots, so rather topical at the moment.

Here's the abstract:

"Since 2016, new legislation governing strike ballots has made it more difficult for trade unions to achieve a mandate for industrial action. Such a mandate now requires that a majority of members vote in the ballot. This article argues that these balloting processes are undemocratic. The turnout requirement means that a mandate for industrial action does not simply depend on its level of popular support amongst union members. This has surprising consequences. Sometimes opponents of action would be better advised to abstain, rather than to vote against it. Thus, it is not always clear how they should vote. Whatever they do, their actions may be counterproductive. Further, even when they do know how best to promote their desired outcome, there may be a conflict between voting strategically and clearly expressing their true preferences. Consequently, there is no guarantee that the outcome of the ballot accurately reflects what people really want."

And here's a word cloud (produced by this handy site):

If you want to know a bit more, without reading the full paper, then it's based on issues that I blogged about earlier in the year, so that post is a kind of summary or preview of the paper.

Truss on freedom

Yesterday, Liz Truss was officially declared the new Conservative leader and, in consequence, Prime Minister. I don't have much comment to pass on this, yet at least, but I noticed an interesting bit in her victory speech, here, where she focuses on freedom. 

Since freedom is the main theme of our 1st year political theory module, I might even use a snippet of this in lectures - though ideally I'd want a shorter edit of the speech.

Should under-18s get to pick the Prime Minister?

One subject that I'll be covering in my Democratic Theory module in the coming semester is the voting age. There's been a long-running debate over votes at 16 and some political theorists have gone even further, suggesting that the voting age should be lowered to 12, to 6, or even abolished altogether. Of course, there are others who think that it should stay where it is, or perhaps even be raised higher.

In this context, I was quite interested to learn that children as young as 15 can vote in the current Conservative Party leadership contest. There's no need to be eligible to vote in general elections in order to participate. (Similarly, one need not be a British citizen either.)

The BBC article, linked to above (first one in the previous paragraph), includes interviews with several young Conservative Party members, most of whom seem to oppose a general lowering of the voting age. One is reported as saying that the fate of the country should not be in the hands of those who don't pay taxes, have mortgages, or support families. However, this ignores at least two things.

First, lowering the voting age to 16 wouldn't put the fate of the country in the hands of 16- and 17-year-olds, since they would still only be a small portion of the electorate. Those over 18 would continue to have a major say. Indeed, the electorate is currently dominated by the relatively elderly (because there are a lot of them and because they are more likely to vote).

Second, many over-18s don't do these things either. If one were to apply this principle consistently, then it would seem that these groups also ought to be excluded. I take it that this would be obviously undemocratic. Perhaps, then, the exclusion of 16-year-olds is also undemocratic.

Politics without ideas?

The 1st year politics module that I regularly teach is about political ideas. I have, in the past, received feedback from students saying that they don't think it's really political. This comment isn't usually developed sufficiently for me to be clear what exactly is meant by this or what might make it seem more political to them. Nonetheless, I have responded by making politics one of the ideas covered. Determining what is and is not political presupposes having some idea of what politics is, which means doing some political theory.

There's an interesting piece in today's Guardian, however, about the decline of ideas in politics. 'Big ideas' from the likes of J. M. Keynes, Milton Friedman, or F. A. Hayek were partly responsible for significant changes in society. Yet, the author claims, today's politicians seem to lack any similar ideas. Perhaps this goes some way to explaining why my current students don't always recognise the relevance of ideas to politics. 

In any case, the author goes on to suggest that this lack of ideas is partly responsible for the rise of identity politics as an alternative, before ending with the snappy remark that "politics without ideas is possible, but not necessarily desirable". Maybe I'll have students discuss this remark, to see what they make of it.

Should we tolerate Big Bang denial?

Catriona McKinnon has a couple of interesting papers on free speech and denial of the Holocaust and climate change. In both cases, the essence of the argument is that denialists are not really historians or scientists, even if they claim to be. (This is not simply saying that they are bad historians or scientists, but rather that they are not even doing proper history or science.) Therefore, there is no need to include their views in academic conferences, journals, etc.

I just came across a possibly parallel case, concerning apparent 'censorship' of papers questioning the Big Bang on arXiv. I say 'possibly' because I simply don't know enough about this case to judge. There's no obviously non-scientific reason, that I'm aware of, for anyone to deny the Big Bang.

I wonder whether this is a case where these papers ought to be allowed - even if they are mistaken (i.e. bad science) - or whether they ought to be excluded on the grounds that they are not really scientific (as, McKinnon argues, climate change denial ought to be).

A hostage to fortune

I've not said much about the current Conservative leadership contest (which is also, of course, a race to be the UK's next prime minister). However, I thought it worth commenting on recent remarks by Liz Truss, as reported here.

She says that the UK is currently heading for recession (something that I assume isn't news to anyone following the economy) but, crucially, claims "that is not inevitable" and can still be avoided.

This strikes me as rather unwise. If she wins the contest, becoming PM, and we end up going in to recession then she's effectively admitted responsibility for that. At the very least, she'd have to backtrack and admit that these remarks were wrong and the recession was inevitable. But perhaps she'd have been better off taking that line now, while the recession can definitely be blamed on others.

Why punctuation matters

Punctuation can make a crucial difference to the meaning of a sentence. There are well-known examples out there, but I just came across a possible example 'in the wild' as it were.

Football commentator Martin Tyler has recently apologised for remarks he made about the Hillsborough disaster in a 1992 interview. He's quoted by the BBC as referring to "Hillsborough and other hooligan-related issues". The problem with this, of course, is that the reference to other hooligan-related issues implies that Hillsborough was also hooligan-related.

However, without having heard the original interview, it's not clear to me whether this is a fair - or charitable - way to interpret his remarks. The spoken word lacks explicit punctuation, but he might have meant "Hillsborough and other, hooligan-related, issues". In this case, he would be saying that there were other issues, besides Hillsborough, and these other issues were hooligan-related, but not being implying that Hillsborough itself was hooligan-related.

An apology may be warranted anyway, since even saying something that could be misconstrued may be insensitive to families of the victims. I don't want to get drawn into the specifics of the case. I just thought this a good example of how commas can change the meaning of a sentence.

Pictures of barriers

When I'm out and about with my camera, I'm often looking for things that might be useful to illustrate lecture slides. I have a number of pictures of fences, fallen trees, and other obstacles that might be useful for lectures on freedom. (I've shared some of these before.)

Unfortunately, I didn't notice that the BBC were inviting pictures with the theme of barriers until I saw a selection of entries published here. I wouldn't use these, if only for copyright reasons. (If I want other people's photos, I tend to go to Pixabay.) There are some nice ones though.

Raising the age of criminal responsibility

It seems that I've had a little series lately concerning cases where the minimum age at which one can engage in certain activities is being raised (or where it has been proposed that it be raised). Just last month, there were examples involving competitive figure skating and smoking. I've just come across another, more significant, example.

The age of criminal responsibility in Australia is currently ten, but it seems that there are moves afoot to raise this to 14. (I discovered this via this piece on The Conversation, which is particularly concerned with First Nations issue, but the age thing seems to be universal.)

This is particularly relevant to my teaching, since one of the articles that I use when teaching child enfranchisement is this piece by Joanne Lau. She argues that the age of political responsibility (and thus voting) should be in line with the age of criminal responsibility, mentioning that this is ten in Australia. This doesn't mean that she supports voting rights for ten-year-olds (though some would go even further than that) - the appeal to symmetry could be met either by lowering the voting age or by raising the age of criminal responsibility (or a bit of both).

It seems that Australia is going for the latter, though there is still some asymmetry, assuming that they're not lowering the voting age to 14. (Even lowering it to 16 is controversial.) But this still means that those aged 14-18 are liable to criminal punishment, while having no say over the laws in question.

UPDATE: There's another Conversation article on this topic here.

Street parties and benefit theory

I guess I'm not the only one who regularly teaches Nozick's argument against the fair play theory of political obligation. His classic example concerns a public address system, which is a bit dated these days. However, I noticed this recent case that can be used to make a similar point.

Someone organised a street party for the platinum jubilee. From the sounds of it, most neighbours chipped in by providing food. Then, after the event, one of the neighbours presented the organiser with a bill for the cakes that she'd baked.

The cakes were a benefit, but presumably she'd provided this benefit without indication that she expected payment in return. Nozick would agree with 'Moral Money' that she has no right to be paid. In fact, 'Moral Money' goes further and suggests that the neighbour herself cannot seriously expect this.

This example illustrates Nozick's point nicely, but doesn't necessarily vindicate his objection to the theory of political obligation. As George Klosko points out, the benefits that the state provides are quite different in kind from those in these examples.

Raising the age of smoking?

I was just talking about one case of raising age limits, and along comes another - at least, a proposal for one. As reported here, the government's Khan review into eradicating smoking has proposed further raising of the age at which one can buy cigarettes.

The proposal is in fact that the age should rise by one year every year, copying an existing policy in New Zealand (which I posted about last year). I've discussed such a possibility with my students before, but only as a theoretical proposal, so it's interesting to see it taken seriously as an actual policy. Such a policy would mean that those currently old enough to buy cigarettes will continue to be able to do so, while those who are too young will forever remain so.

This proposal may seem somewhat unfair, but it could be justifiable if we think it worse to take freedom away from someone who has it than it is merely to continue withholding it from someone who has never had it. This seems plausible in the smoker case, since many smokers are addicted, and so would face particular burdens if their access to cigarettes were to be withdrawn.

However, it's worth noting that this reasoning doesn't so much focus on those who are currently old enough to smoke, but rather on those who do currently smoke. I see little reason, besides perhaps practicality, why someone who is currently 30 and a non-smoker should retain the freedom to start smoking in future that a current 15 year-old will never have.

There may also be a parallel issue with under-age smokers. Someone might have acquired an addiction, though slightly under the current age. Under current policy, they would soon be old enough to purchase cigarettes legally but, if this proposal is implemented, then they may never be able to satisfy their addiction legally, because they will always be just under the necessary age threshold.

Things that you can no longer do at age 16...

 I've posted a few times over the last year or two about the voting age (e.g. here and here). It's an interesting topic, which I regularly discuss with students.

A common argument that comes up in these debates is an analogy between voting and other activities. The argument goes something like this: if you are (not) old enough to do X, then you are (not) old enough to vote. The X can be filled in with various things, such as get a job, pay taxes, have children, etc.

In light of these arguments, it's worth keeping an eye out for changes in various other activities that may fill the place of X. I commented last year on moves to stop 16- and 17-year-olds from marrying. This is one respect in which many other age thresholds are being raised, rather than lowered.

Yesterday, I saw that the minimum age for competing in figure skating is being raised, from 15 to 17. Admittedly, this is not a commonly cited value of X in debates over voting, but it is another example of something that 16-year-olds are no longer permitted to do.

Zouma update

I posted on the Kurt Zouma 'cat-gate' story a few months back. I've just seen news reports that he has admitted two offences under the Animal Welfare Act.