The Constitution of Knowledge: Trolling v. Deliberation

Jonathan Rauch at National Affairs:

Though nowhere encoded in law, the constitution of knowledge has its own equivalents of checks and balances (peer review and replication), separation of powers (specialization), governing institutions (scientific societies and professional bodies), voting (citations and confirmations), and civic virtues (submit your beliefs for checking if you want to be taken seriously). The members of the community that supports and upholds the constitution of knowledge do not have to agree on facts; the whole point, indeed, is to manage their disagreements. But they do need to agree on some rules.

One rule is that any hypothesis can be floated. That's free speech. But another rule is that a hypothesis can join reality only insofar as it persuades people after withstanding vigorous questioning and criticism. That's social testing. Only those propositions that are broadly agreed to have withstood testing over time qualify as knowledge, and even they stand only unless and until debunked.
...
The results have been spectacular, in three ways above all. First, by organizing millions of minds to tackle billions of problems, the epistemic constitution disseminates knowledge at a staggering rate. Every day, probably before breakfast, it adds more to the canon of knowledge than was accumulated in the 200,000 years of human history prior to Galileo's time. Second, by insisting on validating truths through a decentralized, non-coercive process that forces us to convince each other with evidence and argument, it ends the practice of killing ideas by killing their proponents. What is often called the marketplace of ideas would be more accurately described as a marketplace of persuasion, because the only way to establish knowledge is to convince others you are right. Third, by placing reality under the control of no one in particular, it dethrones intellectual authoritarianism and commits liberal society foundationally to intellectual pluralism and freedom of thought.
...
The constitution of knowledge makes a very strong claim: a claim to supremacy in organizing social decision-making about what is and is not reality (much as the U.S. Constitution claims supremacy in organizing political decision-making). Of course, it's a free country, and anyone can say he has knowledge. But the constitution of knowledge is defined by a social pact: In return for the freedom and peace and knowledge the system confers, we ignore alternative claims on reality where social decision-making is concerned. We let alt-truth talk, but we don't let it write textbooks, receive tenure, bypass peer review, set the research agenda, dominate the front pages, give expert testimony, or dictate the flow of public dollars. That is why we don't mail Elvis a Social Security check, no matter how many people think he is alive.

Notice the delicate balance here. To protect the wide end of the funnel, we disallow censorship. We say: Alt-truth is never criminalized. At the same time, to protect the narrow end of the funnel, we regulate influence. We say: Alt-truth is always ignored. You can believe and say whatever you want. But if your beliefs don't check out, or if you don't submit them for checking, you can't expect anyone else to publish, care about, or even notice what you think. Striking this balance is difficult, and maintaining it involves a lot of implicit social cooperation. The constitution of knowledge requires high degrees of both toleration and discipline, neither of which is easy to come by.

With that in mind, the implications of troll epistemology come into sharper focus. By insisting that all the fact checkers and hypothesis testers out there are phonies, trolls discredit the very possibility of a socially validated reality, and open the door to tribal knowledge, personal knowledge, partisan knowledge, and other manifestations of epistemic anarchy. By spreading lies and disinformation on an industrial scale, they sow confusion about what might or might not be true, and about who can be relied on to discern the difference, and about whether there is any difference. By being willing to say anything, they exploit shock and outrage to seize attention and hijack the public conversation.

Citizenship, Knowledge, and Political Science

In a paper at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Robert Maranto and Dirk C. van Raemdonck of the University of Arkansas argue that political scientists should help citizens become more deliberative. An excerpt (full text here):

There is widespread agreement, backed by no small empirical support, that the American people do not know as much as is desirable to assure good decisions about what policies to support and what candidates to vote for... Civic education typically focuses on the structures of American government, matters such as the separation of powers and the Bill of Rights. These are very important, and there is evidence that colleges do a very poor job imparting this basic knowledge. Surveys indicate that at many elite colleges, first year students have greater civic knowledge than seniors (Intercollegiate Studies Association 2010). Yet we argue that basic knowledge about such matters as where public resources come from and go to, and what government can and cannot do, are even more important.

Accordingly, we propose that APSA begin a dialogue with former policy-makers to divine what they feel American voters need to know. In the absence of such data, we propose that to be good citizens students have three broad sets of knowledge about how government officials operate:

1. Where public resources go (chiefly to middle class entitlement spending).

2. How government actors make decisions in highly constrained, limited

information environments, and accordingly why with the best of intentions, they often make mistakes.

3. How elite and popular interpretations of past historical periods and events (the Depression, World War II, the Cold War, Vietnam) guide the language and thought of policy-makers (e.g., Jervis 1976).

Without this background knowledge, citizens cannot understand how their government (mostly) works. As it happens, our field is well positioned to teach undergraduates this basic knowledge they need to make good decisions about public life.

Evolution, the Big Bang, and Public Knowledge

A report from the National Science Foundation adds some nuance to our understanding about public opinion on evolution:

The GSS survey includes two additional true-or-false science questions that are not included in the index calculation because Americans’ responses appear to reflect factors beyond unfamiliarity with basic elements of science. One of these questions addresses evolution, and the other addresses the origins of the universe. To better understand Americans’ responses, the 2012 GSS replicated an experiment first conducted in 2004 (NSB 2006). Half of the survey respondents were randomly assigned to receive questions focused on information about the natural world (“human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals” and “the universe began with a big explosion”). The other half were asked the questions with a preface that focused on conclusions that the scientific community has drawn about the natural world (“according to the theory of evolution, human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals” and “according to astronomers, the universe began with a big explosion”).

In 2012, respondents were much more likely to answer both questions correctly if the questions were framed as being about scientific theories or ideas rather than about natural world facts. For evolution, 48% of Americans answered “true” when presented with the statement that human beings evolved from earlier species with no preface, whereas 72% of those who received the preface said “true,” a 24 percentage point difference.14 These results replicate the pattern from 2004, when the percentage answering “true” went from 42% to 74%, a 32 percentage point difference (NSB 2008). For the big bang question, the pattern was very similar: in 2012, 39% of Americans answered “true” when presented with the statement about the origin of the universe without the preface, whereas 60% of those who heard the statement with the preface answered “true.” This represents a 21 percentage point difference. The 2004 experiment found that including the preface increased the percentage who answered correctly from 33% to 62%, a 29 percentage point difference (NSB 2008). Residents of other countries have been more likely than Americans to answer “true” to the evolution question.15

14. Survey items that test factual knowledge sometimes use easily comprehensible language at the cost of scientific precision. This may prompt some highly knowledgeable respondents to believe that the items blur or neglect important distinctions, and in a few cases may lead respondents to answer questions incorrectly. In addition, the items do not reflect the ways that established scientific knowledge evolves as scientists accumulate new evidence. Although the text of the factual knowledge questions may suggest a fixed body of knowledge, it is more accurate to see scientists as making continual, often subtle modifications in how they understand existing data in light of new evidence. When the answer to a factual knowledge question is categorized as “correct,” it means that the answer accords with the current consensusamong knowledgeable scientists and that the weight of scientific evidence clearly supports the answer.15. Although the data clearly show a difference in how respondents answer to different question types, these data do not provide guidance as to what caused the difference. A range of explanations are possible. 

Science, Policy, and Deliberation

M. Anthony Mills at AEI:

Scientific evidence is indeed vital to public policy. The pandemic has made this undeniable, if it was not already obvious enough. But science does not offer a repository of neutral evidence that arrives, ready-made, onto the political scene. On the contrary, scientific knowledge is an achievement, the result of a complex process in which the judgment of scientific experts — call it expert judgment — plays a decisive role. Utilizing such knowledge to make policy decisions is even more complex, requiring not only expert judgment but also the judgment of those non-experts — call it non-expert judgment — whose experience, knowledge, or know-how is also needed to deliberate well about the best course of action. It follows that judgment and deliberation are not secondary, lesser processes, that we must rely on when integrating scientific evidence into the policymaking process. Rather, judgment and deliberation are essential to this process, in part because they are essential to science itself. Failure to appreciate this fact risks engendering unrealistic expectations about what scientific knowledge can accomplish in practical decision-making, thus inviting not only disappointment, distrust, and skepticism, but also bad policy.

In what follows, I will make a case for this alternative account of scientific knowledge by examining the role that expert judgment plays in scientific reasoning. I will then consider what implications this account has for how we understand practical decision-making informed by scientific knowledge. I conclude by suggesting that integrating scientific evidence into public policy is by nature deliberative, a reciprocal process in which both expert and non-expert judgments must play roles, and which requires that both experts and non-experts act with prudence.

 Full paper here: "The Role of Judgment and Deliberation in Science-Based Policy," by M. Anthony Mills CSAS Working Paper 21-16

Civic Education and Civic Virtue

 Albert Cheng and Jay Greene at National Affairs:

Civic education does not occur merely within the life of the school; it also occurs in homes, neighborhoods, the marketplace, religious institutions, and any other voluntary association in which individuals gather with others to unite around a common purpose. It is within the context of these communities that people learn to seek the interest of others instead of their own and to work together for their mutual flourishing. It is where they practice virtues like showing kindness, hospitality, and charity to others. It is also where they practice having the courage to defend their convictions or compromising to build coalitions with those whose views may not fully align with their own. These and other "habits of the heart," as the late sociologist Robert Bellah and his colleagues articulated nearly 40 years ago, are cultivated in all spheres of civil society. Schools are but one of the many institutions where this kind of formation happens.

Civic education, then, requires a kind of knowledge. But not merely civic knowledge, narrowly understood as knowledge of history and government institutions; it also requires knowledge of ultimate things — of truth, goodness, and beauty — so that a flourishing polis can be discerned.

Civic education likewise requires training in a kind of skill. But not merely civic skill, narrowly understood as possessing competencies in democratic procedures like voting, petitioning, assembling, or staying informed; it also requires cultivation of habits that give rise to the practices of good citizens. In sum, civic education requires the cultivation of civic virtue for making sense of civic knowledge and guiding the application of civic skills.

Knowledge of Government

From the Annenberg Public Policy Center:

After two years of considerable improvement, Americans’ knowledge of some basic facts about their government has fallen to earlier levels, with less than half of those surveyed able to name the three branches of government for the 2022 Annenberg Constitution Day Civics Survey.

The Annenberg Public Policy Center’s annual, nationally representative survey showed notable increases in 2020 and 2021 after tumultuous years that put the role of government and the three branches under a media spotlight. In those two years, the survey was run amid a pandemic and government health restrictions, two impeachment inquiries, a presidential election, an attempt to disrupt congressional certification of the electoral vote, criminal trials of the individuals charged in the assault on the U.S. Capitol, and waves of social justice protests, among other events.

The current survey, released for Constitution Day (Sept. 17), found the first drop in six years among those who could identify all three branches of government, and declines among those who could name the First Amendment rights, though knowledge remained high on some other questions. Additional findings on the Supreme Court will be released next month.

“When it comes to civics, knowledge is power,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. “It’s troubling that so few know what rights we’re guaranteed by the First Amendment. We are unlikely to cherish, protect, and exercise rights if we don’t know that we have them.”
Highlights

• Less than half of U.S. adults (47%) could name all three branches of government, down from 56% in 2021 and the first decline on this question since 2016.
• The number of respondents who could, unprompted, name each of the five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment also declined, sharply in some cases. For example, less than 1 in 4 people (24%) could name freedom of religion, down from 56% in 2021.
• Over half of Americans (51%) continue to assert incorrectly that Facebook is required to let all Americans express themselves freely on its platform under the First Amendment.
• But large numbers recognize other rights in the Bill of Rights and the veto process.

The Annenberg Constitution Day Civics Survey is a nationally representative survey conducted annually in advance of Constitution Day by the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) of the University of Pennsylvania. This year’s survey of 1,113 U.S. adults was conducted by phone for APPC by independent research company SSRS on August 2-13, 2022. It has a margin of error of ± 3.6 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. The year-to-year changes reported here are statistically significant unless noted otherwise. For the questions and additional data, see the appendix and the methodology statement.

Knowledge, Interest, and the Supreme Court

Pew finds that relatively few Americans followed the McCutcheon decision:

Just 13% of American adults say they followed the campaign finance story “very closely” last week, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Roughly half (49%) say they followed the story “not at all closely,” which is the category in the survey that represents the lowest level of interest.

Indeed campaign-finance decisions tend to get less attention than other kinds of decisions:

 

And Americans generally do not know that much about the Court:

By some measures, the workings of the Supreme Court remain opaque to the public. Over the years, Pew Research has conducted several surveys about the public’s knowledge of the Supreme Court. In a Pew Research survey conducted last August, online respondents were asked to select the justice who had most often been the swing vote in closely divided court cases recently. When shown the pictures and names of four different justices, only 28% correctly chose Anthony Kennedy as the swing vote.

Likewise, just 34% correctly identified John Roberts as Chief Justice out of a list of four names in August 2012. However, looking back at perhaps the most famous case in modern Supreme Court history, 1973’s Roe v. Wade, a 62% majority of Americans knew that the case dealt with abortion, according to our survey conducted in Jan. 2013. Predictably, knowledge of all these questions has correlated strongly with education.

After the high-profile rulings last June on same-sex marriage and the Voting Rights Act, the public showed different degrees of knowledge about what the rulings meant. Two-thirds (67%) knew that the court ruled states could determine whether same-sex couples could marry. But when it came to the voting rights decision, just one-third correctly stated that the court had overturned parts of the Voting Rights Act. The year before, 55% of the public correctly said the Supreme Court upheld most of the provisions of the Affordable Care Act.

State of the Congress

In Is Congress Broken? The Virtues and Defects of Partisanship and Gridlock, we make the case for improving the deliberative abilities of the legislative branch.  Those abilities have taken a hit in recent years.

From the Congressional Management Foundation:

"State of the Congress: Staff Perspectives on Institutional Capacity in the House and Senate" reveals that senior congressional staff have deep concerns about important aspects of congressional operations and performance.

Using survey data collected from senior staffers as a framework, author Kathy Goldschmidt coalesces disparate research and schools of thought under a single theme:

"Americans widely believe that Congress is not working because it does not want to work. Conventional wisdom holds that the blame for any democratic dysfunction lies primarily with current occupants of Capitol Hill. The Congressional Management Foundation (CMF) offers an alternative perspective. Congress may not be working well because it does not currently have the capacity to work well."

Key Findings

1. Congress needs to improve staff knowledge, skills and abilities. In response to the statement, "Staff knowledge, skills and abilities are adequate to support Members' official duties," 83% of staff surveyed noted this aspect was very important, while 15% were very satisfied (gap of 68 percentage points). Congress is one of the most important, complex, and information-rich knowledge-based workplaces in the world. Both Congress and the public should be concerned that the human resources on Capitol Hill may be inadequate to support Senators' and Representatives' official duties.
2. Senators and Representatives lack the necessary time and resources to understand, consider and deliberate public policy and legislation. In response to the statement, "Members have adequate time and resources to understand, consider and deliberate policy and legislation," 67% of staff surveyed noted this was very important, while 6% were very satisfied (gap of 61 percentage points). In the past few decades, under both parties, House and Senate leadership have implemented strategies or allowed conditions to evolve that diminish the ability of individual legislators to deeply consider and influence public policy. This is the core function of a legislature, and we must question whether democracy is working if legislators cannot adequately perform this foundational role.
3. Congress needs to improve Member and staff access to high quality, nonpartisan policy expertise within the Legislative Branch. In response to the statement, "Members and staff have access to high-quality, nonpartisan, policy expertise within the legislative branch," 81% of staff surveyed noted this was very important, while 24% were very satisfied (gap of 57 percentage points). Over the past few decades, Congress has made considerable cuts to staffing in committees, the Congressional Research Service and the General Accountability Office and eliminated the Office of Technology Assessment. This has occurred while the Executive Branch and the private sector have added considerable policy heft and expertise. Senior staffers are concerned whether the Legislative Branch has the intellectual infrastructure necessary to study, deliberate and decide serious questions of public policy.
4. Congress needs to improve its technological infrastructure. In response to the statement, "The technological infrastructure is adequate to support Members' official duties," 60% of staff surveyed noted this was very important, while 6% were very satisfied (gap of 54 percentage points). Technology in Congress has not kept pace with the expectations of Members, staffers and citizens. Many of the challenges to improving technology lie in tradition, procedure, rules, budgeting practices, cybersecurity, and politics. Congress is under extraordinary simultaneous pressures to create the most transparent institution in the world while being subjected to unprecedented hacking attempts and increasing demands from constituents. Resolving these competing forces will require both political will and resource investment.
5. Congress should re-examine its capacity to perform its role in democracy. In response to the statement, "The chamber has adequate capacity and support (staff, research capability, infrastructure, etc.) to perform its role in democracy," 62% of staff surveyed noted this was very important, while 11% were very satisfied (gap of 51 percentage points). Senior staffers are fairly comfortable that Members and staff understand their role in democracy, but they question whether their chamber has the resources it needs to perform its role. As discussed above, respondents have deep concerns about staff skills and technology. The root of these concerns may lie in the fact that congressional budgets and staffing levels in key Legislative Branch organizations have declined over the past few decades. Congress may not have the resources it needs to be effective.

Download "State of the Congress: Staff Perspectives on Institutional Capacity in the House and Senate" (2.95 MB)

Knowledge of Congress

In our chapters on public opinion and Congress, we suggest that many Americans have only a hazy knowledge of congressional leadership and procedure. A survey by the Pew Research Center confirms this point. Most people do not know that it takes 60 votes to break a filibuster and that no GOP senators voted for the Senate version of the health bill. Knowledge varies by demographic characteristic

The Skills Gap

Many workers will lose their jobs to automation or offshoring. Meanwhile, many jobs requiring technical skills will go unfilled.

Reid Wilson at The Hill:

About 108 million workers hold jobs that require moderate or high digital knowledge, according to a Brookings Institution report published in December, and jobs are increasingly likely to require higher levels of technical knowledge.

“There’s this broad need for more digital experience, whether it be a full-time high-end IT worker or to simply carry on in the rest of the economy,” said Mark Muro, director of policy at the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program and a co-author of the 2017 report.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates the economy will need as many as 100,000 new information technology workers per year over the next decade. Right now, only about 60,000 of these workers enter the workforce each year.

Retiring baby boomers are exacerbating the problem.

The Pew Research Center estimates that as many as 10,000 Boomers reach retirement age every day, leaving behind jobs that require more technical knowledge.

Retirements and new growth mean 3.5 million new manufacturing jobs will need to be filled by 2025, said Carolyn Lee, executive director of The Manufacturing Institute at the National Association of Manufacturers. If present trends hold, as many as 2 million of those jobs are expected to go unfilled.

“We are definitely not producing enough workers to fill those jobs,” Lee said.

Madison and Deliberative Democracy

Rebecca Burgess writes at The Weekly Standard:

We are marvelously up-to-date but hardly well-informed. This is especially true when it comes to our particular constitutional form of government: knowing the branches of government (legislative, executive, judicial), by whom their powers are to be exercised, and, crucially, how they are to be exercised.

Madison, in company with other statesmen of his generation, thought it particularly important—vital, actually—that a self-governing people be conversant in this kind of political talk. He famously summed this up in an 1822 letter to W. T. Barry:

A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

Mere information about government (what now is often reduced to cries for "transparency!") was only the baseline of what Madison had in mind. His intellectual dance around the issue of a bill of rights displays better how Madison connected popular opinion, political knowledge, and self-government premised on the preservation of rights (the first purpose of government, according to the Declaration of Independence).

Age and Knowledge about Parties

Our chapter on public opinion talks at length about what Americans know of politics. The Pew Research Center reports on a new survey of knowledge about political parties:

Although previous Pew Research surveys of political knowledge have found young people to be less knowledgeable than older people, the pattern in this poll is more mixed.

People younger than 30 are much less likely than older Americans to be able to correctly associate several political leaders with their parties. Fewer than half of those younger than 30 correctly identify Nancy Pelosi and Franklin Roosevelt as Democrats (43% each). By contrast, three quarters of those 65 and older know that Pelosi and Roosevelt are Democrats. The gap between young and old is nearly as large on the item about John F. Kennedy’s party (28 points).

But young people are relatively well informed about the parties’ positions on most issues. In fact, people younger than 30 are more likely than those 65 and older to know that the Democrats are more supportive of expanding gay rights (72% vs. 56%) and creating a way for illegal immigrants to become citizens (74% vs. 59%).

Youth and the 2012 Election

Though we tend to think that young people participate in politics primarily as volunteers, they can donate money, too.  Dan Glaun writes at Open Secrets:

After effectively rallying the youth vote in 2008, President Barack Obama has raised just one-third as much money from students so far for his re-election bid compared to the same point four years ago, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

The Obama campaign had brought in nearly $2.4 million in itemized contributions from individuals who classify themselves as students from the beginning of the 2008 election cycle through the end of June. However, students account for less than $850,000 of the president's total fundraising haul during the same period in 2012.

Mitt Romney, on the other hand, has been slightly more successful in raising funds from students than his GOP presidential nominee predecessor, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). As of June 30, 2008, the McCain campaign had collected about $518,000 from students, while Team Romney has taken in nearly $603,000 this time around.

Overall, Obama's camp has seen the advantage over their main Republican challenger in itemized student contributions shrink from a $1.87 million gap to just $246,000 in four years.
Students are not nearly as financially active with the super PACs supporting the presidential candidates. The pro-Romney Restore Our Future has received one $2,500 check from student Nathaniel Walton of Marblehead, MA, but the Obama-backing Priorities USA has not raised a cent from any students this election cycle.

The Pew Research Center reports on the results of a 10-item knowledge poll:

In general, older voters are better informed about the election than are voters under the age of 35. This is consistent with the findings of previous knowledge surveys, but the gap between young and old voters is much more modest than the one seen across educational levels. Young voters are about as likely as older voters to know that Mitt Romney is pro-life and that he opposes gay marriage; 80% can correctly identify Joe Biden as the current vice president. Young voters trail older voters when it comes to questions such as the state Obama represented in the Senate and which candidate supports taxing income over $250,000. Nonetheless, half or more of voters under age 35 are able to answer eight of the 12 questions correctly.

The actual knowledge gap is probably greater than these numbers suggest, because they only involve voters.  Young people are much less likely to vote than older people.  If Pew were to compare all younger and older people -- nonvoters included -- it would probably find a wider gap on most itmes.

Civic Knowledge 2020

 From the Annenberg Public Policy Center:

In a period defined by an impeachment inquiry, a pandemic, nationwide protests over racial injustice, and a contentious presidential campaign, Americans’ knowledge of their First Amendment rights and their ability to name all three branches of the federal government have markedly increased, according to the 2020 Annenberg Constitution Day Civics Survey.

Among the highlights of the annual survey, released for Constitution Day (Sept. 17):

• Americans are much more aware of all five rights protected by the First Amendment when asked unprompted to name them;
• Nearly three-quarters of Americans (73%) correctly named freedom of speech as one of the rights guaranteed under the First Amendment, up from 48% in 2017;
• More than half of those surveyed (51%) accurately named all three branches of the federal government, up from 39% last year, the prior high point in this survey.

The civics knowledge survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) of the University of Pennsylvania was conducted among 1,009 U.S. adults from August 4-9, 2020, prior to the political conventions. It has a margin of error of ± 3.6%.

“Divided government, the impeachment process, and the number of times political leaders have turned to the courts probably deserve credit for increasing awareness of the three branches, while controversies over the right to peaceably assemble, freedom of religion, and freedom of speech may have done the same for the First Amendment,” said Annenberg Public Policy Center Director Kathleen Hall Jamieson.

MORE HERE 

Brain Drain on the Hill

New report from New America:

Congressional Brain Drain

Legislative Capacity in the 21st Century

By: Alexander C. Furnas, Timothy M. LaPira

Executive Summary

This research report comprehensively investigates congressional capacity and governance using publicly available data on long-term trends in legislative branch expenditures and data Furnas and LaPira collected in the 2017 and 2019 Congressional Capacity Surveys (CCS).1 When combined, the CCS is the most comprehensive time-series cross-sectional survey of congressional staffers’ professional backgrounds, career paths, policy views, technical knowledge, substantive expertise, and job experiences ever conducted. We document how the decline in legislative capacity has changed during the era of rising polarization and increasing political party competition. As a consequence, legislative staff in Washington are asked to do more and more, with less and less.

1. Congress is a funnel to lucrative jobs in lobbying. Between 40−45 percent see the private sector as their next career step. Roughly half of staff aiming to enter the private sector after serving on the Hill want to become lobbyists. For the most part, working on the Hill is viewed as an entry-level position for K Street, rather than a stepping stone for a career in public service.
2. Staff resources have shifted to the district. The share of total staffer full-time equivalents dedicated to Washington, D.C. offices has fallen from more than 70 percent in the 1970s to 50 percent in recent years.
3. There are fewer resources to pay staff. In the House of Representatives, the budget allocated for office staff hires fell by 10 percent from 2013 to 2017.
4. Staff pay is declining. Salaries fell among communications, legislative, and administrative staff following the 110th Congress (2007-2008). The decline cannot alone be attributed to the member pay freeze and austerity measures resulting from the Great Recession because the decline in resources allocated for legislative staff started well before 2007.
5. Congressional staffers in important roles are largely inexperienced. Most staff who manage policy portfolios in Congress have only one or two years of Hill experience. That is, roughly one-third of legislative staffers have not yet served the duration of a single Congress. Conversely, staffers in both chambers who have spent more time working in Congress are measurably more knowledgeable about institutional procedures and important policy topics.
6. Capitol Hill is staffed primarily by Millennials. Roughly 60 percent of the congressional staffer population is under the age of 35, and 75 percent under 40 years old.
7. Turnover among congressional staff is exceedingly high. The average tenure for staff on Capitol Hill is 3.1 years. About 65 percent of staffers plan to leave Congress within five years. Even more strikingly, 43 percent plan to depart by the end of the Congress in which they are employed.
8. Most do not see working in Congress as a long-term career option. Even among those who would like to continue careers in the public sector, more than half (55 percent) plan to leave Congress.
9. Staffers work extremely long hours, and are spread thin. More than 65 percent of staff work 50+ hours a week, and 20 percent of staff work 60+ hours. Of senior staffers, 65 percent work 60+ hours a week. The average legislative staffer works on two to six issue areas every single day.
10. Staff like working for their boss, but not so much for Congress. Seventy-six percent report a very strong or strong sense of belonging in their employing office, but only 61 percent feel similarly about Congress as a whole. This institutional deficit is greater for women and staffers who are Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC).
11. In Congress, experience yields knowledge, but is not rewarded. Staffers that have spent more time working in Congress are measurably more knowledgeable about institutional procedures and important policy topics. This is true across both chambers, and is unrelated to actual work assignments. Yet, turnover is so high and retention rates so low that members fail to keep that knowledge in house, so must rely more and more on K Street.
12. Staffers are highly partisan and highly ideological. Sixty-five percent of staffers identify as strong partisans, and almost no staffers identify as true independents. Staffers are well-sorted ideologically, such that there is little ideological overlap between Democratic and Republican offices.

Jefferson, Adams, Citizenship, Friendship

Alexander Khan at National Review:

Citizenship in America is in a troubling state. In 2015, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni conducted a survey of college graduates which found that only 28.4 percent could name James Madison as the father of the Constitution. Thirty-nine percent did not know that Congress had the war power, and roughly 45 percent did not know the length of congressional terms. In 2017, the Annenberg Public Policy Center found that 37 percent of Americans could not name any of the rights in the First Amendment, and that only 26 percent could name all three branches of government. Gallup poll results from 2018 reveal that young Americans’ views of capitalism and socialism have switched since 2010, with only 45 percent of respondents now professing a positive view of the capitalist system. A November 2018 YouGov poll revealed that Americans’ patriotism and knowledge of civics was troublingly low. More recently, in January 2019, Gallup released survey results which showed that 30 percent of younger Americans, a record high, would like to permanently leave the U.S. Unfortunately, these results are not shocking. Each new poll extends the long line of depressing findings.

...
 While liberal education will never be a cure-all for the disgraceful state of civic life and historical knowledge in America, its renewal in a spirit of friendship is essential if we seek to tackle our citizenship deficit. Students educated in such an environment will not only deeply understand the ideas and principles of the Founders and of Americans throughout history, but they will also come to understand their own connection to those ideas. They will feel invested in the future of their country and in the principles that form its foundation. This educational environment will also affect the concern and interest students have in what government does, how it acts, and the way in which they see their rights and duties. Robust engagement in the classroom naturally translates to the open marketplace of ideas and the active world of citizenship. These students will serve as examples to their fellow citizens, expanding the education of the classroom to the entire country. In the fight to restore civic life and knowledge in America, the rebuilding of liberal education in the spirit of Jefferson and Adams’s friendship is an essential component.

Knowledge and Polarization

Many posts have discussed polarization and public knowledge.  A new study reports:

Do one’s political leanings blind people to the facts? Judging from decades of polling, the answer is sometimes yes—partisanship appears to lead some people to claim as facts things that aren’t particularly factual.

For example, national surveys have found that Democrats are more likely to say that inflation rose under Ronald Reagan while Republicans say that the deficit rose during the Clinton administration. Some 81% of Democrats but 33% of Republicans in an April 2011 New York Times/CBS News poll said Obama was born in the U.S.

What explains these partisan gaps? Political scientists from Yale University and the University of California-San Diego think they may know. Their working paper released last month by the National Bureau of Economic Research found significant numbers of Democrats and Republicans actually know the correct answer to these questions—or know that they don’t know—but choose to give pollsters the incorrect response in order to cast their party in a favorable light or stick it to the opposition.

In fact, the researchers found that they could cut the partisan gap by more than half if they offered survey respondents a chance at a monetary reward for answering questions correctly. And when they gave respondents incentives to acknowledge that they don’t know the right answer, the partisan knowledge gap nearly disappeared.

Citizenship and Civic Engagement

At The Atlantic, Eric Liu offers a thought experiment about citizenship:

As it stands now, those of us who are lucky enough to be citizens by birth don't have to do much. Very little is asked of us. But let's imagine what the content of our citizenship might look like ifeveryone had to earn it.

Service. Under current law, undocumented Americans and nonresident noncitizens can earn citizenship if they enter the armed services - sometimes immediately upon completion of basic training. If service can justify citizenship, then perhaps citizenship should require service, whether military or civilian. National service as a prerequisite to citizenship would make the status more meaningful, and the country more cohesive.

Knowledge. One of the prime reasons for the Voting Rights Act of 1964 was the sordid history of Jim Crow literacy tests used by whites at the ballot box to screen out and intimidate black voters. (Even worse, those tests often required would-be voters to read aloud from the Constitution.) As shameful and discriminatory as those tests were, just imagine now if there were a sincere and universal requirement of civic knowledge in order to vote. Think how few non-immigrants would pass.

Today, public understanding of our past and our system of government is pitifully low: As Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has archly observed, far more Americans can name a judge on American Idol than a justice of the Supreme Court. Only a third can name all three branches of government. One simple remedy would be to update the citizenship test now given to naturalizing immigrants - and administer it to everyone. That would boost knowledge in a hurry.

Net Contribution. In the United Kingdom and a few other countries today, there is a point system for immigrants who want to become citizens, and points are awarded on basis of contribution to society. Why not institute a point system here -- for everyone? Do you give more than five percent of your adjusted gross income to charity? Points. Haven't done volunteer work in the community in a decade? Demerits. Indeed, we could have a scale of progressive contribution: The more wealth you have, the more you should be expected to contribute to the commonwealth - not through taxes only but also through time and deeds.

Periodic Renewal. As those who would end birthright citizenship might note, a date of birth is an arbitrary point at which to assume that someone is worthy of lifetime tenure as a citizen. But then, by this logic, so is the date that a person first earns citizenship. So to keep citizens from coasting, we should change the default setting and make the status revocable and renewable every ten years only by merit. If you don't qualify -- well, it's time to self-deport.

Knowledge of Languages

Our chapter on foreign policy and national security discusses gaps in the American public's knowledge of other countries.  Language is a barrier. Americans are less likely than people in other developed countries to know a second language.  Gallup reports:

Thirty-four percent of Americans say they know a second language well enough to hold a conversation. Knowledge of a second language is higher among Hispanics, those with higher education levels, younger Americans, and those living in the East and West.

Hispanics are nearly twice as likely as whites or blacks to say they know a second language.

Seventy-four percent of Hispanics interviewed in English said they know a second language, almost all of whom identified that second language as Spanish. A much smaller proportion of Hispanics interviewed in Spanish, 23%, said they know a second language. Almost all of those respondents identified the second language as English.

Overall, Americans who speak a second language overwhelmingly identify Spanish as their second language, at 60%, followed by French (18%) and German (12%). At least 1% of Americans claim to know each of 13 other languages.

While it is not surprising that a majority of U.S. Hispanics who know a second language say they can speak Spanish, a majority of bilingual whites and blacks also say they can speak Spanish. After Spanish, French is the next-most-common second language among blacks and whites, while it is English for Hispanics. Whites are a lot more likely than blacks or Hispanics to speak German.

Civic Duty and Civic Education

Yesterday's post inlcuded an AP poll showing a decline in civic duty, Despite such data, Rebecca Burgess writes at AEI, there are signs of hope:

Few would contest that the majority of Americans’ dissatisfaction with the direction of government has become something of a national pastime in recent years. Fewer still would deny that the national discourse about proposed solutions for our political woes resembles anything but a discourse. But the seemingly stark political landscape has caused a welcome budding of interest in the role that long-neglected notions of civics and civic education courses play in the nation’s short- and long-term health. After 40-plus years of having to wander in the education agenda desert, civics in 2014 began to be welcomed back into the classroom, everywhere from Massachusetts to Florida to California.

Coalitions in seven states have launched a movement to require students to pass the US Citizenship exam as a requirement for graduation, and the movement is gaining traction. By 2017, legislatures in all 50 states will consider the identical issue, if the national campaign mounted by the Civics Education Initiative succeeds. Meanwhile, Massachusetts went one step farther, when its Board of Higher Education adopted the policy (the first in the nation) to make civics a part of every undergraduate degree at state community colleges and public four-year colleges and universities, beginning in the fall 2014 semester.

Considering that only 24% of high school seniors were “proficient” in civics skills and knowledge in 2010 according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, and considering that just this September, 35% of Americans at large couldn’t name even one branch of the US government according to an Annenburg Public Policy Center survey, the action on the civics education front is excellent news. As research published by AEI’s own Program on American Citizenship has shown, relevant data definitely shows that consequential civics assessments—tests required for graduation—do increase the civic knowledge of students, most especially of Hispanic and minority students. And surely, a national discourse is more likely to be fruitful when all participants have a working knowledge of the basic structure of government.