Author Archives: legallysociable

American female legislators are more effective than men

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A new study in the American Journal of Political Science suggests females are better lawmakers than men:

according to a forthcoming study in the American Journal of Political Science—because women also rank as the most effective lawmakers in the land.

The research is the first to compare the performance of male and female politicians nationally, and it finds that female members of the House rout their male counterparts in both pulling pork and shaping policy. Between 1984 and 2004, women won their home districts an average of $49 million more per year than their male counterparts (a finding that held regardless of party, geography, committee position, tenure in office, or margin of victory). The spending jump was found within districts, too, when women moved into seats previously occupied by men, and the cash was for projects across the spectrum, not just “women’s issues.”

A similar performance gap showed up in policy: Women sponsored more bills (an average of three more per Congress), cosponsored more bills (an average of 26 more per Congress), and attracted a greater number of cosponsors than their colleagues who use the other restroom. These new laws driven by women were not only enacted—they were popular.

Two interesting findings. Some might argue these days whether pork is a good measure of “effectiveness” but sponsoring and passing laws seems pretty important.

The next question is why this is the case. Here is what the study concludes:

So are women just innately better politicians? Probably not. More likely, say Berry and Anzia, female politicians are better than men because, as in other fields, they simply have to be. More than 90 years after the first woman was elected to Congress, female politicians still hold less than a fifth of all national seats, and do only slightly better at the state level. In order to overcome lingering bias against women in leadership positions, those women must work that much harder to be seen as equals.

The authors seem to think this effect will go away in coming decades as more women are elected to office. One way to test this idea now that female American legislators have to be better in order to get elected to office is to look at similar measures of effectiveness in national legislatures with greater proportions of women. In countries where the number of men and women are more equal, is there still an effectiveness gap? Did other nations experience a similar pattern as women increased in numbers in the legislature?

It will be interesting to watch the discussion about these findings.

The legal future: climate-change litigation?

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Perhaps climate-change litigation is where lots of money is to be made in the coming decades:

In the past three years, the number of climate-related lawsuits has ballooned, filling the void of political efforts in tackling greenhouse-gas emissions.

Eyeing the money-spinning potential, some major commercial law firms now place climate-change litigation in their Internet shop window…

But legal experts sound a note of caution, warning that this is a new and mist-shrouded area of justice.

Many obstacles lie ahead before a Western court awards a cent in climate damages and even more before the award is upheld on appeal…

Lawsuits in the United States related directly or indirectly almost tripled in 2010 over 2009, reaching 132 filings after 48 a year earlier, according to a Deutsche Bank report.

Elsewhere in the world, the total of lawsuits is far lower than in the US, but nearly doubled between 2008 and 2010, when 32 cases were filed, according to a tally compiled by AFP from specialist sites.

Sounds like it will take some time and some important rulings before this field comes into greater focus.

Two questions:

1. How much money could be at stake in these sorts of lawsuits?

2. Does this mean this will be the subject of the next John Grisham novel?

Fitting a new home into an older neighborhood

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Teardowns are an issue in communities across the United States. In older neighborhoods, particularly in wealthier suburbs, new homes are contentious: their style and size may change the character of a neighborhood as well as impact property values. In this report from the Chicago Tribune, Chicago area architects talk about how they try to alter the design and appearance of these new homes in order to fit in with the existing neighborhood:

Anyone who’s driven around the city or its surrounding suburbs likely has seen plenty of examples of homes that just don’t fit. The modern masterpiece in a subdivision full of stately Colonials. The 7,000-square-foot behemoth casting its shadow over a block of tiny post-war ranches.

Size is often one of the most challenging elements of a new-construction project in an established neighborhood, Lindsay said. Those who build typically want to max out on square footage, requiring a variety of design tricks to make structures appear smaller their more modestly sized, older neighbors, such as placing much of the square footage to the home’s exterior…

Some municipalities aren’t willing to gamble that new construction will be in good taste. In Park Ridge, for example, a five-member appearance commission considers architectural style, size, site plans, as well as renderings of roofs, windows and doorways to judge whether a proposed residence will enhance an existing neighborhood. Though most construction projects get the thumbs-up, the commission helps preserve the community’s character by setting some basic guidelines, said City Planner Jon Branham.

But fitting in needn’t mean choosing cookie-cutter designs or doggedly preserving every existing structure on a block. “Some neighborhoods are outdated,” Lindsay said. “You’re not going to build a shabby house next to an existing shabby house just so it will fit it. You want to capture the best features of a neighborhood and not the worst.”

This is often a tricky situation – one architect suggests in the story that a new home is a sort of “public project.”The idea that private homeowners should inform all their neighbors about an upcoming teardown or major renovation seems to be a popular way to attempt to change perceptions.

Although homeowners have some choice over their own property, communities often have some regulations and nearby neighbors can also make their opinions heard. The community’s thoughts on this issue can make a big difference. Some communities are more conservative politically and economically  and this leads to more leeway for property owners. Others are more open to the thoughts of the neighborhood as opposed to the individual homeowners and have more restrictive regulations. All of this can come through a number of methods, including historic districts or preservation areas, but any of these measures often prompt public debate.

Why some protesters set themselves on fire

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There are a number of ways an individual can try to rally people to a particular cause. The New York Times suggests that one recent technique, seen most recently in Tunisia, is to set oneself on fire. But why people do this or how they get to this point is unclear:

It is often impossible to be sure what really motivates those who burn themselves to death. There is debate, for instance, about how Thich Quang Duc viewed his self-immolation in 1963, a protest that was related to the South Vietnamese government’s treatment of Buddhist monks and may have been at least partly religious in nature. In other cases, politics may be a cover for personal despair or rage against a loved one.

Whatever the motive, suicide sometimes spreads like a disease, especially when heavily covered in the media. David P. Phillips, a sociologist at the University of California at of San Diego, published a 1974 study documenting spikes in the number of suicides after well-publicized cases. He called it “the Werther effect,” after the rash of suicides that followed the 1774 publication of “The Sorrows of Young Werther,” the novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe whose romantic hero kills himself.

“One thing is strongly suggested by the academic studies: People are more likely to copy suicides if they see that they have results, or get wide attention,” Dr. Phillips said.

Tunisia has provided grim evidence for that. And Mr. Bouazizi may yet provoke more fiery deaths across the Middle East if the revolution he helped spark is seen as successful.

Someone must have some data across countries and/or over time that might shed some light on patterns among cases of self-immolation.

I noticed that the examples in this article are primarily from non-Western nations. Is there a history of this in the West? How would society respond if someone in Western Europe or the United States did this?

“The Wire” creator defends depiction of Baltimore

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In response to comments from the Baltimore Police Commissioner that the television show The Wire is going to harm  the city, creator David Simon defended the show:

Others might reasonably argue, however that it is not sixty hours of The Wire that will require decades for our city to overcome, as the commissioner claims. A more lingering problem might be two decades of bad performance by a police agency more obsessed with statistics than substance, with appeasing political leadership rather than seriously addressing the roots of city violence, with shifting blame rather than taking responsibility.  That is the police department we depicted in The Wire, give or take our depiction of some conscientious officers and supervisors. And that is an accurate depiction of the Baltimore department for much of the last twenty years, from the late 1980s, when cocaine hit and the drug corners blossomed, until recently, when Mr. O’Malley became governor and the pressure to clear those corners without regard to legality and to make crime disappear on paper finally gave way to some normalcy and, perhaps, some police work.  Commissioner Bealefeld, who was present for much of that history, knows it as well as anyone associated with The Wire.
We made things up, true.  We have never claimed otherwise.  But respectfully, with regard to our critique, we have slandered no one.  And to the extent you can stand behind a fictional tale, we stand by ours – and more importantly, our purpose in telling that tale.

It would be interesting to consider whether television shows and movies and other fictional works can have a significant impact on what people think about locations (and even further, whether it influences people’s decisions to move to certain places). The Wire was a critically acclaimed show but one with relatively low rating and even with more widespread DVD availability, it is still not a mainstream show.

There certainly is some link. Depictions of the inner city have impacted decades of suburban residents. I’m reminded of the Japanese businessmen who my father worked with when I was younger who knew two things about Chicago: it was the home of Michael Jordan and it was home to gangsters immortalized in film.

Now whether these depictions should reflect reality or some idealized or stereotyped view is another question. Simon defends The Wire on the grounds that the show was intended to showcase a different set of priorities:

But publicly, let me state that The Wire owes no apologies — at least not for its depiction of those portions of Baltimore where we set our story, for its address of economic and political priorities and urban poverty, for its discussion of the drug war and the damage done from that misguided prohibition, or for its attention to the cover-your-ass institutional dynamic that leads, say, big-city police commissioners to perceive a fictional narrative, rather than actual, complex urban problems as a cause for righteous concern. As citizens using a fictional narrative as a means of arguing different priorities or policies, those who created and worked on The Wire have dissented.

And this is a perspective or story that is rarely discussed in much depth.

I would be curious to hear how Simon would want people to view Baltimore after watching the show. Should they identify with the residents? Should they dislike the institutions? And ultimately, what should or could the viewers do to help change the situation?

How to measure happiness (“prosperity”) across countries

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Here is a topic just perfect for a Research Methods class discussion about conceptualization and operationalization: how to measure happiness across countries. Here is a quick summary of how the Legatum Institute measured this and found that Norway is the happiest country in the world:

With this in mind, five years ago researchers at the Legatum Institute, a London-based nonpartisan think tank, set out to rank the happiest countries in the world. But because “happy” carries too much of a touchy-feely connotation, they call it “prosperity.”

Legatum recently completed its 2010 Prosperity Index, which ranks 110 countries, covering 90% of the world’s population.

To build its index Legatum gathers upward of a dozen international surveys done by the likes of the Gallup polling group, the Heritage Foundation and the World Economic Forum. Each country is ranked on 89 variables sorted into eight subsections: economy, entrepreneurship, governance, education, health, safety, personal freedom and social capital.

The core conceit: Prosperity is complex; achieving it relies on a confluence of factors that build on each other in a virtuous circle.

Ultimately how happy you are depends on how happy you’ve been. If you’re already rich, like Scandinavia, then more freedom, security and health would add the most to happiness. For the likes of China and India (ranked 88th), it’s more a case of “show me the money.” What they want most of all? The opportunity to prove to themselves that money doesn’t buy happiness.

Some quick thoughts on this:

1. This is a lot of dimensions and indicators to consider: 89 measures, 8 subcategories.

2. The change from “happiness” to “prosperity” is an interesting one. Happiness is indeed a fuzzy term. But prosperity often refers to material wealth in terms of income or buying power. This prosperity defined more broadly: material wealth plus freedoms plus level of services plus social interactions. The Legatum Website suggests the Index is “the world’s only global assessment of wealth and well-being.”

3. I would be curious to know how comparable the data is across countries and across the organizations that form and ask these survey questions.

4. In this complexity, it is interesting to note that prosperity means different things to countries in different stages.

5. Even with all of these measures, which measures are used and how this Institute weights these particular factors would matter for the outcome. For example, the story at Forbes suggests that improving a nation’s entrepreneurial culture could make a big difference in these rankings. And the United States is ranked #1 in health care because “$5,500 a year in per-capita health spending has resulted in excellent vaccination rates, water quality and sanitation.” The Legatum Institute itself seems to put a big emphasis on business.

6. How come so many of these lists come from Forbes? Beyond the answer that Yahoo has a deal with Forbes for content, this is an interesting way to drive web traffic: top ten lists that catch people’s attention. How useful these sorts of lists are is debatable but they are often interesting and quickly summarize complex areas of life.

Can the NFL over-hype itself?

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As the NFC and AFC title games slowly approach, I wonder: can the NFL over-hype its product?

On one hand, it appears not. NFL television ratings have been excellent this year (regular season stats here). The league has a number of stars that draw a wide range of attention, from the good (Tom Brady, Peyton Manning) to the bad (Brett Favre, Michael Vick’s sage in recent years). Particularly at this time of year, talk about the NFL dominates the airwaves – a number of other sports are mid-season. The final four teams remaining in the playoffs are historic franchises that have passionate fan bases. Even with Bill Simmon’s recent claim that there is “there’s at least one great [NBA] game” each night, other sports can’t match the popularity of the NFL. The NFL even thinks it can sell $200 tickets for a “party plaza” outside of the Super Bowl.

On the other hand, it is A LOT of talk. In the weeks between playoff games, it seems that ESPN can’t stop talking about the next match-ups. In Chicago, everyone has been talking Bears-Packers. The teams already have played twice so how much more is there to discuss? Could it get to the point where fans tune out the week before and are just happy to get the game over with? And interestingly, it only gets worse for the Super Bowl: then we get the infamous “Media Day.” Though the Super Bowl gets tremendous ratings, how often does the game match the hype? In my lifetime of watching Super Bowls, I distinctly remember being disappointed by most of them. (A couple stand out in memory: the Giants-Bills match-up in 1991, Rams and Titans in 2000, the Bears-Colts in 2007, Patriots-Giants in 2008, Steelers-Cardinals in 2009.)

From a broader perspective, there is no guarantee that the popularity of the NFL will be maintained over the years, let alone continue to increase. (Gregg Easterbrook, ESPN’s Tuesday Morning Quarterback, points this out.) The first non-sports comparison that comes to mind are presidential elections. Yesterday, the New York Times reported how President Obama is getting his next campaign in order and plans to formally declare his candidacy in two months. From now until November 2012, this is what we will hear about in the news: who will challenge Obama, how much money will be raised, what are the issues, who has the best image, what do the latest polls say, etc. Don’t voters, at least some of them, get burned out by all of this by the time the actual election takes place? The idea that some countries have of holding more defined election seasons, typically announced by the current leader and lasting for a few months, seems preferable to this endless, over-hyped presidential election season.

I am sure someone has done research on over-hyping. For the NFL, the question is when will it saturate its market. Of course, one way around this is to expand your market and head overseas. (They are trying to do this with games in Toronto, London, and Mexico City in recent years. But the NBA is way ahead of them.) In the meantime, the sporting public will get heavy doses of talk, analysis, and replays. I, for one, will be very happy when it finally gets to 2 PM Sunday afternoon and we can actually see whether the Bears and Packers will win.

The wood-burning fireplace is on the way out, not green enough

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Wood-burning fireplaces are more decoration than heating apparatuses in modern homes. But the New York Times reports that even its decorative or symbolic value may not be enough to counter the arguments against their use:

Hard as it may be to believe, the fireplace — long considered a trophy, particularly in a city like New York — is acquiring a social stigma. Among those who aspire to be environmentally responsible, it is joining the ranks of bottled water and big houses…

Organizations like the American Lung Association are issuing warnings as well: the group recommends that consumers avoid wood fires altogether, citing research that names wood stoves and fireplaces as major contributors to particulate-matter air pollution in much of the United States.

Wood smoke contains some of the same particulates as cigarette smoke, said Dr. Norman H. Edelman, the chief medical officer for the American Lung Association, as well as known carcinogens like aldehydes; it has also been linked to respiratory problems in young children…

Perhaps not coincidentally, sales of wood-burning appliances dropped to 235,000 in 2009 from 800,000 in 1999, according to the Hearth, Patio and Barbecue Association.

Fireplaces are akin to McMansions? I would be curious to know how much effect a wood-burning fireplace has on the average person or how much pollution wood-burning fireplaces across the US release into the air. Then some comparisons could be made between the polluting effect of fireplaces and other objects (like McMansions or bottled water). In addition to the pollution, we could also consider how much wood is burned yearly in fireplaces and where this wood typically comes from.

Beyond the ideas about health and being green, the article fails to discuss several ways to keep a fireplace without burning wood. One option: have a gas fireplace. This may not be too green as well – it does burn gas. But you wouldn’t then have the release of particles into the air. The second option, which seems to be gaining in popularity: purchase an electric heater that looks like a fireplace. I see numerous advertisements for these all the time. Lots of benefits here: you still get the heat, nothing is burning (wood or gas), they are relatively cheap, you don’t have to worry about a chimney and keeping that clean, and you can move the “fireplace” around fairly easily depending on where you want it. There are some electricity costs but you can still retain the decorative or symbolic value without burning wood.

Considering what the “green Loop” might look like

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Amidst talk of eco-cities, a Chicago architectural firm has put together a plan to reduce carbon emissions by 80 percent within Chicago’s Loop. How to accomplish this: retrofit older buildings rather than building a lot of new, green buildings.

The architects break what they call the Central Loop into four types of buildings: heritage buildings (1880-1945), which are clad in heat-absorbing masonry and have operable windows; midcentury modern buildings (1945-75), which hog energy due to their vast expanses of glass and heavy reliance on air conditioning; post-energy-crisis buildings (1975-2000), which show greater energy-efficiency but are burdened by an unanticipated rise in computer use; and energy-conscious buildings (2000-present), which continue to improve efficiency but are in relatively short supply.

That brings us to the heart of the matter: The key to cutting pollution isn’t building new green buildings. There simply aren’t enough of them to make a difference. The only way to lower our carbon footprint is to make the buildings we already have more energy-efficient.

That’s possible, as evidenced by the recent transformation of the Merchandise Mart, the massive yet graceful Art Deco commercial and trade show building along the Chicago River. At 4.2 million gross square feet, it’s one of the world’s largest buildings. By taking a variety of steps — from installing energy-saving water pumps to promoting eco-friendly products to the building’s tenants — the Mart cut its overall energy consumption by 21 percent from 2006 to 2010, executives there say.

I wonder how this plan would be received by businesses and building owners. While they suggest energy costs will decrease in the long run and rents may increase, such retrofitting could be costly in the short-term and there could be some anxiety about doing these things in the middle of a tough real estate and business market.

And how much would the City of Chicago really get behind this? Mayor Daley has drawn plaudits in the past for promoting ideas like rooftop gardens but these are limited in number. The City itself faces significant financial troubles in the coming years and I imagine issues like jobs, pensions, crime and the number of police in the streets, will dominate conversations for a while.

I would enjoy seeing their charts or models to see which particular buildings in the Loop use more or less energy. The picture that leads this report on the plan probably shows carbon emissions or energy use by building.

Places that might be deserted due to a lack of homebuyers

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The issue (amongst many) in the ongoing economic malaise is a lack of homebuyers. To have a hot housing market, such as happened in much of the 1990s and some of the 2000s, you need both sellers and buyers. What happens if this temporary trend of a lack of buyers turns into something less than temporary?

One suggestion is that certain areas will be deserted:

Many economists argue that the housing market may take four or five years to recover. Even if that’s proven to be true, the all-time highs of 2006 may never be reached again.

The devastation in some regions will never be repaired. Parts of Oregon, Georgia and Arizona have become progressively more deserted. Since jobless rates may never recover, there is little reason to hope that the populations in these areas will ever rebound. Some homes will be torn down in these pockets of high foreclosures in the hopes that reducing supplies will boost prices. Whether that idea will work in hard-hit areas such as Flint, Mich., and Yuma, Ariz., remains to be seen.

If this comes to pass, this would be an interesting period in American history. Yes, we do have some instances of population loss: the “ghost towns” of the Old West come to mind as people poured into a region and then seemed to leave just as suddenly. Rust Belt cities like Detroit and Buffalo and Pittsburgh have been experiencing a slow but steady population drain over the last few decades. And I have tried to find evidence of “lost suburbs” – places that would go against the typical narrative of American suburbs continuing to grow in population and sprawl further out from cities.

But this prediction suggests that certain metropolitan regions might not have any hope of recovery. While some of these are Rust Belt places that already had issues (like Flint), others are newer, particularly locations Nevada, Arizona, and California. As a matter of public policy, what should be done? Should we prop up locations with government aid? Should we write certain areas off and let them slowly lose population until the critical population mass is gone? Is contraction worthwhile (something that has been debated now for several years regarding Detroit) or is simply losing a city or region a better option?

In the long run, the only possible solution seems to be to convince people that these areas are desirable places to live. One selling point, and this seems to come up a lot on the front page of Yahoo, is that these places have affordable housing. This may be the case but that won’t be enough to attract people – these areas need jobs, economic engines that will bring stability and profits to hard-hit regions. And which companies might be willing to step up?

Interestingly, Illinois ranks #5 on this list. It looks like this analysis says the main factors are a limited population growth and a severe loss in manufacturing jobs over the recent decades. Certain areas of the Chicago region seem more immune to this than others. DuPage County is populous and wealthy, partly due to the influx of higher-end, technology-related jobs that have entered the county since the 1960s. Because of this, DuPage County has an unemployment rate always multiple points below the national average.