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How should we think about the basic principles that should govern a society?

There’s a stereotypical hero in any number of movies and books, who is standing alone against the big project that is going to ruin the environment, ruin the community, or both. (In a slightly alternative version, the big project has already started to ruin the environment or the neighborhood.) If the hero is not already a … Continue reading Zoning: Tradeoffs of Localized and Centralized Decision-Making
The post Zoning: Tradeoffs of Localized and Centralized Decision-Making first appeared on Conversable Economist.

Folks who know me as a facilitator know that one of my first and favorite questions in planning a meeting is "who's deciding?" It's a question that can be counter-cultural for groups that are unaccustomed to clearly defining the decision-making process. And yet, leaving the question unanswered or unclear is one of the fastest ways... Read More
The post The fastest way to kill collaboration? Obscure decision making. appeared first on Interaction Institute for Social Change.

Who loves the latest shiny thing? Children maybe? Depends on the kid. Cats and dogs perhaps? Again, probably depends. What about funders, publishers, and researchers? Now that is an easier question to answer. Whether in talks provided by the tax-exempt 'cult of TED', or in open letters calling for a moratorium, the attention digital technologies receive today is extensive, especially those that are labelled 'artificial intelligence'. This noise comes with calls for a new ad hoc human right against being subject to automated decision-making (ADM). While there is merit in adopting new laws dedicated to so-called AI, the procedural mechanisms that can implement existing law require strengthening. The perceived need for new substantive rules to govern new technology is questionable at best, and distracting at worst. Here we would like to emphasise the importance of implementing existing law more effectively in order to better regulate ADM. Improving procedural capacities across the legal frameworks on data protection, non-discrimination, and human rights is imperative in this regard.

Ingvild Reymert Two newly published papers investigate variation in professorial recruitment both across countries and disciplines but also within these processes which must be understood as sequential decision-making processes. Academic recruitments are crucial decision-making processes for universities where those hired are responsible for carrying out the universities’ two key missions: teaching and research. Academic recruitments […]
The post Professorial recruitment – sequential decision-making processes differing across countries and disciplines appeared first on Europe of Knowledge.

AI and algorithmic decision-making tools already influence many aspects of our lives and are likely to become increasingly embedded within businesses and governments. Drawing on recent research and examples from across the social sciences, Frederic Gerdon and Frauke Kreuter outline where and how social science is vital to the ethical use of algorithmic decision-making systems. … Continued

On the day the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution demanding a ceasefire in Gaza, U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller deflected press questions about whether the U.S. would compel Israel to comply by saying that the resolution was "non-binding."He went on to say that "it's nonbinding in that it does not impose any new obligations on the parties, but we do believe it should be respected, that it carries weight, and that it should be implemented, as has always been our belief when it comes to UN Security Council resolutions."Contrary to the U.S. position, U.N. ambassadors from China and Mozambique, as well as the UK's former U.N. envoy, have publicly stated that it is binding, along with U.N. Secretary General spokesperson Farhan Haq, who said "all the resolutions of the Security Council are international law, so to that extent, they are as binding as international law is."The resolution, which passed last week with 14 votes in favor and one abstention from the U.S., primarily demands an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan, the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages, and guaranteed humanitarian access to address their medical and other humanitarian needs.Resolutions are formal expressions of the will of the Security Council and are backed by the power of international law. Experts who spoke with RS counter the U.S. position, saying that implicit in the resolution is an obligation for the parties involved to comply. Meanwhile, they say it is understood that member states, collectively or on their own, can take measures that will compel parties to comply. More importantly, experts complain that Washington appears to be selectively interpreting international law to favor its political objectives — in this case to protect Israel — an action that could have consequences for its legitimacy in the eyes of the rest of the world moving forward. International law scholar and Yale Law School professor Asli Bâli said Article 25 of the U.N. Charter suggests that all the council's decisions are to be deemed binding. It states that U.N. members "agree to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council in accordance with the present Charter." Some argue that this passage only applies to resolutions that reference Chapter 7 of the charter, which outlines the powers the council has to respond to security threats. Bâli disagrees, citing a 1970 decision from the International Court of Justice in which the justices agreed with the broader reading of the U.N. charter.Another dispute over what constitutes a binding resolution has to do with what language is being used. Eran Sthoeger, a lawyer and adviser on international law, says that along with clear reference to Chapter 7 and Article 39 of the charter, which empowers the Security Council to assess threats to international peace and security, the Security Council uses the term "decides'' when it wants to be clear that a resolution is binding. Since none of these elements are present in the ceasefire resolution, it should not be considered binding on members, Sthoeger argues. However, international law scholar and Washburn University Professor Craig Martin told RS that, while this resolution does not use the exact word "decide," the language of making a "demand" similarly creates an obligation on member states."It's hard to understand how anyone could suggest there is any ambiguity or uncertainty of the obligation this creates," he said.Bâli cites previous resolutions passed by the council that demonstrate that the use of the word "decide" is not needed for a resolution to be treated as binding and enforceable. One example is Resolution 678, passed in 1990 in order to provide Iraq with a final chance to withdraw forces from Kuwait, in which the council "demand[ed] that Iraq comply fully with resolution 660 (1990) and all subsequent relevant resolutions." Iraq's failure to comply with that resolution triggered military action from member states, led by the U.S.Ian Hurd, a professor at Northwestern University who focuses on international law, said retroactive disputes over whether the resolution is binding are reflective of the U.S. attempting to interpret international law in a way that advances its interests."The U.S. is trying to split the difference between its friends and its enemies and find its own advantageous path," Hurd told RS. Bâli adds that the U.S. claiming the resolution is non-binding means that it can defend supplying arms to Israel. The U.S. position is not without potential consequences. Washington's insistence that this resolution is non-binding in the face of well-established interpretation of charter provisions and Security Council precedent "is once again eroding the normative power of the international legal system," Martin said, adding that it contributes to a growing perception that international law is an instrument of political power for the U.S. and its allies.By abstaining on the ceasefire vote, Hurd says, the U.S. nonetheless increased its pressure on Israel to protect civilians and to follow humanitarian law in Gaza. How the U.S. responds if Israel does not comply with this resolution will reveal whether Washington intends to take a firmer stance on this issue, or not.

The decision this term that has the largest potential for a legal "jolt" was Mallory.

There's much less to the eye regarding the ultimate
impact of the decision
recently rendered in Nairne
v. Landry than the possibility this case eventually could upend reapportionment
jurisprudence very much in the opposite direction of the ruling.

The case involves reapportionment of Louisiana's
legislative districts after the 2020 census, involving plaintiffs similar to
those in the winding-down case regarding reapportionment
of its congressional districts. In that other case, the same Middle
District of Louisiana Judge Shelly Dick ruled an expansive reading of Title 2
of the Voting Rights Act that gives race (given certain circumstances) preference
over other traditional principles of reapportionment (absent compelling
circumstances), essentially sidestepping the text of the law that says it does
not normally confer proportional representation of racial minorities in a state.

In ruling that the state had to draw a map with
two of six black majority-minority districts because about a third of the
population identified as black, which impelled the Legislature to do precisely
that although its product almost certainly is constitutionally defective because
in order to do that race took on a dominant role in making the map, Dick
applied the same rubric to legislative districts. The legal backing for this
she derived from a U.S. Supreme Court decision last year that affirmed custom
over the past six decades and an expanded view of the VRA language as developed
through past court cases allowed for elevating the place of race.

The Legislature was given no deadline to swap in a
new map, where it is implied that at least two more Senate and six more House
seats became M/M. (Keep in mind, however, that no case ever has been decided on
the merits validating the proportional argument, much less ended up being
applied by a government by court order.) Practically speaking, this doesn't become
an issue until at latest the start of 2027 for fall elections that year.

While some observers without a comprehensive
understanding of the issues blithely assume the
Legislature will do this, chance are much greater it never will come that.
(Actually, given the greater tolerances courts permit for malapportionment and
for adhering to other principles of reapportionment when it comes to offices
other than Congress, the partisan balance would change little as both chambers
could draw new maps that essentially swap out elected white Democrats with
black Democrats.) That's because the case has at least one time bomb included
that could blow up the current interpretation of the VRA Section 2 and
guarantees when plaintiffs plea for a remedy (at
present, special elections with a new map later this year) the state will appeal
and many motions later serve it up to the Court. Nothing politically will
happen for some time to come.

There's actually another aspect that could cause
this: a split between federal appellate court circuits on whether private
parties can bring suits under that law, which guarantees eventual Supreme Court
intervention. However, existing
jurisprudence suggests that the Court will reject the argument no private
right of action exists, which for Nairne is irrelevant anyway because
the Fifth Circuit holds that view.

The state as defendant articulated that defense,
but Dick rejected it precisely because the Circuit had done so. But while the main
land mine of questioning over the current interpretation of the VRA Section 2 she
could dodge for now, ultimately she can't make go away.

That results from the Assoc. Justice Brett Kavanaugh
concurrence
in the case that granted race its new privileged place. In it, he questioned
whether that privileging had become timebound, as the nature of society about
race has changed substantially in the decades since, but didn't adjudicate that
because that other case didn't bring it up.

But Louisiana unambiguously did forward that
argument in a filing in Nairne. Dick addressed the issue in her ruling
as minimally as she dared in dismissing it, which isn't unusual (as well allows
her decision to reflect her own political preferences). Lower court judges are
extremely reluctant to base rulings on any Court opinions not the majority,
leaving that up to the Court itself.

However, that avoidance doesn't make the issue go
away. Undoubtedly the state will appeal and it's inconceivable that the Court at
some point wouldn't take up the case on those constitutional grounds (as well
as perhaps others dealing with the statute) – unless another case elsewhere (for
example) gets there first. And the tone from the previous case suggests the
Court would strike down the expansive reading of Section 2 as timebound.

Chances are excellent even with the inevitable string
of appeals this reversal will happen before 2027. In the final analysis, the Nairne
ruling changes little, and expect Louisiana to do little in response to it
except continue to fight the case up to the Supreme Court.

The Louisiana Legislature made history in the 2023 Veto
Session, in the process giving some Republicans a chance to display their
middle fingers to Louisianans and some Democrats to gamble on fooling enough
voter to gain successful reelection.

Louisiana's most remarkable legislative passage ever occurred when HB 648 by
Republican state Rep. Gabe Firment
crossed the finish line. This was a bill rogue GOP state Sen. Fred Mills (aided by some
stupid planning by Sen. Pres. Page
Cortez) killed
in committee, only to
have it resurrected through rarely-used parliamentary procedures, killed
again by Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards,
only to have the veto
session reanimate it into law, representing the first time ever a regular
session bill had its veto successfully overridden.

The bill prohibits medical interventions, whether
chemical or surgical, to alter a minor's sex. It simply became a litmus test
that even the most shallow Republicans and Democrats endangered for reelection
had to support because it so self-evidently was needed. In their remarks
carrying the bill in their respective chambers, Firment and Republican state
Sen. Jay Morris demolished
the evidence-free and weak argumentation of opponents to establish that children
didn't have the maturity to make such an irreversible decision, that many who in
their haste did later regretted it, that such procedures often addressed a
symptom of an underlying disorder and wasn't the disorder, that these didn't
stop suicidal ideation for many, and that worldwide (within the last year country
after country has placed similar bans on these actions) medical opinion
supported such bans while further research occurred.

Thus, no Republican dared vote to
sustain – although one prior vote for it, Paula Davis,
didn't show up for the session, and another who played hooky, Joe Stagni, had
been the only member of the party to vote against it – and Democrats Roy Daryl Adams,
Chad Brown,
Robby Carter,
Mack Cormier,
Travis Johnson,
Dustin Miller, and
Pat Moore
joined in overriding. Reelection chances for Adams, Brown, Cormier, and to a
lesser extent Carter would have been seriously endangered had they not voted to
override.

The three most vulnerable, plus Moore, also
protected their reelection hopes with votes to override vetoes on HB 466, which
would have prevented school employees from psychological coaching of students
about their gender identity in ways inconsistent with state instructional
standards and protect school employees and students from confusion over pronoun
use of students, and on HB 81 which would
have covered pronoun usage like HB 466. Yet the latter received only 68 votes
and the former 69.

Part of that had to do with the strategic absences
of Stagni and Davis, which dropped the 71 Republicans to one below threshold.
But it was the actions of other Republicans, specifically Mary DuBuisson,
Barbara
Freiberg, Stephanie
Hilferty, gubernatorial candidate Richard Nelson,
and Speaker Pro Tem Tanner Magee,
who torpedoed the will of the vast majority of their party to override by
voting to sustain, while at the same time providing political cover to members
of the other party on these issues.

But beyond that, vulnerable Democrats decided to
take their chances on a number of other bills opposition to which is less toxic
to more terms. HB
182, which would have prohibited requiring Wuhan coronavirus vaccinations
to attend educational institutions; HB 646 which
would have provided greater scrutiny of electoral rolls; and HB 188 which
would have tightened parole requirements for dangerous offenders, among others,
all narrowly missed the two-thirds threshold to succeed. Again, the curiously-timed
absences of Davis and Stagni kept the margins below threshold, allowing
Democrats with uniformity to sustain.

Note that the GOP votes to sustain often were
traitorous or sandbagging. Various combinations of DuBuisson, Freiberg,
Hilferty, Magee, and Nelson on HB 81 and HB 466 either went from yea to nay or
had not voted on original concurrence with the Senate and then to sustain.

Two other measures did get passed along to the
Senate. HB 125,
which would have prohibited ownership of farm land by nationals of countries
designated as foreign adversaries, picked up the support of Adams, Cormier, and
Moore (Brown was absent), and HB 399, which
would have required school communications about vaccinations to include information
about state law allowing opting out, was passed along only because Democrat Tammy Phelps
vote to override.

As choreographed among certain Democrats, the GOP
House leadership, and a few Republicans the voting patterns appeared in the
House, the collusion in the Senate perhaps even exceeded that. The few Senate
vetoed bills simply were shoved aside with no attempt to allow them to leave.
That's perhaps because when HB 125 and HB 399 arrived,
Republicans Louie Bernard,
Fred Mills, and Rogers Pope
voted against overriding, while the GOP's Patrick Connick opted out of voting
for the former and joined them in voting on the latter. These RINOs probably
let it be known they wouldn't vote for any overrides except for HB 648 (not including
Mills).

This fall, constituents of Davis, DuBuisson,
Freiberg, Hilferty, Magee, Nelson (running for governor), Stagni, and Connick
(Bernard, Mills, and Pope aren't running again) need to understand how these
elected officials gave them the middle-fingered salute on a number of good
bills that led to the defeat of these quality instruments. And those of Adams,
Brown, Robby Carter, and Cormier need to realize how their representatives are
trying to con them into making voters think they have an agenda that they don't.
Then, voters need to push buttons accordingly.

Algorithms increasingly make decisions for humans or support human decision-making (Sunstein 2023). To address cases of discrimination regulatory efforts for Artificial Intelligence (AI) have recently...

Finance has become the driving force behind most decision-making. We seem to have unlearned politics.

A new open data platform will accelerate robust and comprehensive research in the agricultural sectorThis post was written by Jenna Fahle (CEGA), Radhika Goyal (UCSD), Vinny Armentano (UCSD), and Craig McIntosh (UCSD).Introduction to the ATAI Data PortalSince 2009, the Agricultural Technology Adoption Initiative (ATAI), co-managed by the Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA) and the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), has generated robust evidence of the impacts of agricultural technologies, such as stress-tolerant rice or mobile-phone based agricultural extension, on small-scale farmer welfare. Today, ATAI launched a new open data platform to bring together the best evidence from ATAI-funded research in a single portal, making it easily accessible to researchers and policymakers alike. The initiative aims to foster collaboration and evidence-informed decision-making in the agricultural sector, ultimately contributing to the advancement of the most effective agricultural practices and improving farmer welfare.Why make data open?Access to high-quality data has long been recognized as a significant obstacle in social science research. To address this issue, data repositories like the J-PAL Dataverse have emerged, making it easier for researchers, policymakers, and others to access and utilize data from completed research studies. In recent times, the effectiveness of these data repositories has been bolstered by data sharing policies put into place by funders, journals, and research organizations. UC Berkeley's Initiative for Transparency in the Social Sciences (BITSS) — incubated at CEGA — champions these and other open data approaches as a standard practice that promotes transparency and reproducibility of evidence, strengthening the scientific ecosystem and bolstering the credibility of research findings.The ATAI Data Portal goes beyond the principles of open data by incorporating data harmonization. Data harmonization involves the collection of data from various sources or, in the case of ATAI, a research portfolio, in a manner that ensures users have a comprehensive and comparable view of the information.Harmonized data holds tremendous value for researchers aiming to extract insights from multiple studies. In the past, researchers had to collect datasets from various sources, investing valuable time in cleaning and integrating the data. Often, the unavailability of raw data hindered such comparisons, and the resulting publicly available data lacked sufficient information for meaningful analyses. However, researchers now have a powerful tool at their disposal. With the ATAI Data Portal, they can access harmonized data, enabling them to conduct meta-analyses and explore the external validity and generalizability of research results more efficiently and effectively. This transformative platform opens up new avenues for robust and comprehensive research in the agricultural sector.The ATAI Data Portal also improves the richness and quality of datasets from ATAI-funded projects in several ways. For instance, a number of ATAI-funded studies contain georeferencing, or latitude and longitude coordinates for agricultural fields, households, or study administrative boundaries. When geographic coordinates are available, the ATAI Data Portal overlays the project dataset with environmental variables — such as temperature, precipitation, night lights, and forest cover –- to expand the richness and utility of the data. (Many predictive models rely on this kind of information as ground truth data.)To maintain the anonymity of the surveyed population, the data linkage employs industry-standard geo-masking techniques. By implementing these measures, the ATAI Data portal ensures that the privacy and confidentiality of the participants are preserved while providing valuable insights into the relationships between agricultural practices and environmental factors.During the data harmonization process, meticulous data cleaning is carried out to ensure data integrity. This includes harmonizing units, eliminating negative values, and removing duplicate records as part of the harmonization effort. These measures contribute to the overall reliability and consistency of the data made available through the ATAI Data portal, fostering more robust and trustworthy research outcomes.Thus, the ATAI Data Portal offers a novel approach in that it features high-quality, harmonized data integrated with environmental variables in an open and accessible format."This portal is a first step in an effort to allow datasets from randomized controlled trials to be put to a broader set of uses. By harmonizing core agricultural variables to the fullest extent possible as well as providing broad access to raw data, the portal will allow the research community to aggregate across studies and geographies in a way not possible in any single study." — Craig McIntosh, ATAI Co-Chair and Professor of Economics at UCSDATAI-data.org launched with seventeen datasets based in Bangladesh, Ghana, Ethiopia, India, Kenya, Mozambique, Uganda, and Zambia. The portal will continue to grow as more research teams complete and submit their datasets to ATAI.What comes next?The ATAI Data Portal is a public good that will increase in volume and value over time as more open datasets from ATAI become available and more researchers make use of it. The ATAI Data Portal is open-source and freely available.ATAI has seized an opportunity to institutionalize harmonized, open data and further standardize data collection for agricultural randomized evaluations — making every research step count. We hope that this model is an encouraging approach and tool for researchers working to evaluate the effectiveness of agricultural development programs.For more information and for portal documentation, please visit atai-data.org.Making every research step count: Introducing the ATAI Data Portal was originally published in CEGA on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The discussion aimed to mitigate deepening media polarization in support of voters' informed decision-making in Georgia and V4 states

In this panel discussion, we examine current decision-making on the U.S. Supreme Court, how it has affected policymaking dynamics in the U.S. and what the policy consequences of similar decisions may be in the future.