US Elections 2024: what is the president’s role anyway?

In my previous post in this series I advocated for creating, ahead of elections, scorecards with a moderate number of categories (on which we can almost all agree). Then each voter should (a) weight the categories according to their own preferences, (b) score the candidates according to the information they can reasonably guess, and (c) decide which candidate they most prefer. Step (b) can be difficult, and step (a) will require introspection and is necessarily approximate, but most of the time we are not faced with a large number of candidates whose scores will be very close, so step (c) should be doable in most cases. I started with the 10 categories of presidential performance from the 2021 C-Span survey discussed in my last post,

In this post I want to think in more detail about some of the categories. iIt seems to me that most of them make sense. Most seem fairly easy to interpret: for example, Public Persuasion entails good speechwriters, delivery of speeches, how press briefings are handled, etc. There are two categories that I think need more thought: Economic Management and Moral Authority. Many voters say they use perceptions of the “state of the economy” as a major input to their voting decision (i.e. this category has high weight for them), so it is worth exploring this in more detail.

The White House website has a good summary of what the job of President of the US entails. It is a very substantial role: head of state, responsible for negotiations with foreign governments; head of the executive branch, ultimately responsible for executing the laws passed by Congress and staffing a vast array of federal agencies for that purpose; Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. The role has expanded overall since the time of George Washington, as the federal government has become more influential relative to the states.

Incidentally, many countries have presidents that do only a fraction of the first of the three roles above, and many others have none at all (for example, they have a monarch who is head of state, and head of government is the Prime Minister, who is elected by Parliament/Congress to that role). Although the President is not strictly speaking directly elected, because of the Electoral College, the President is clearly the closest thing in the US system to a representative of all the voters (at the 1787 Constitutional Convention, several other suggestions were advanced by the founders of the republic, and 15 years later the 12th Amendment to the Constitution was needed, to clarify the relation between President and Vice-President).

The President also has some soft power to focus attention on issues and set a political agenda, using their access to the news media and status as representative of the people to try to influence Congress, which is responsible for the legislation that is necessary for lasting change. Major changes usually require the president’s party to control Congress. On the other hand, the President clearly has short-term, but not necessarily long-term influence, through vetoing ro threatening to veto Congressional legislation, issuing executive orders, and taking actions during fast-moving crises (not just wars, although these obviously count). Congress and/or the courts can overturn or limit the effect of such decisions eventually.

The president has relatively little direct influence on macroeconomic indicators. For example, In most countries, monetary policy has a major impact on overall economic performance. The Federal Reserve System was created in 1913 by Congress to oversee the banking industry and keep some control over inflation, unemployment and interest rates. Its role has expanded, and its decisions on, say, interest rates, are independently made (interestingly, although it must report to Congress regularly, it is not even funded by Congressional appropriation, but runs primarily on “interest on government securities that it has acquired through open market operations” – it makes close to $100B annually of which about 98% is returned to the US Treasury after paying for FRB operations). Members of the Board of Governors have 14 year terms. So the President, who does propose board members to the Senate but cannot appoint them anyway, clearly has very limited influence on interest rates in the short term. Fiscal (tax and spending) policy is another main area of influence of government on the economy, and presidents often have plans, but Congress must pass the relevant laws, and in any case it takes considerable time for the effects of law changes to become apparent.

It is widely believed by experts that voters place too much emphasis on macroeconomic indicators in presidential elections (for example, see this NYT article from 2017). Therefore this category should have relatively little weight in our decision-making, or we need a more subtle interpretation of what Economic Management means. The President is responsible for appointing (subject to Congress’s approval) officials such as the Secretary of the Treasury (essentially the CFO of the federal government), and pushing a policy agenda in areas such as health care, education, and infrastructure, but plans in these areas all take a long time to bear fruit (rotten or otherwise). How economic crises are handled may be an area in which the President is important. Interestingly, although the causes are not fully understood, Democratic presidential administrations apparently have been much more successful at economic management than Republicans over many decades, and have had to deal with more crises. This is worth pointing out, because opinion polls often show that voters believe that Republicans are better at economic stewardship.

Moral Authority is an interesting category, and it is also unclear what it should mean. For me, a high score in this category should be associated with a high level of ethics and integrity as applied to the job of President (for example, trying to overturn the result of a legitimate election or demanding that appointees put loyalty to the President above loyalty to the country seem bad practices). Private life should be mostly off limits. The highly partisan reaction to scandals in the private life of Clinton and Trump, for example, shows that overall we find it hard to draw the line (in any case, there is always the argument that someone holding such a position should be seen to be above reproach, to avoid being blackmailed or losing the faith of the public). Given the difficult decisions that must be made by presidents, it is probably asking too much for them to be paragons of virtue (this article is worth reading).

After fleshing out what each of the categories means to us, we will have a good approximate scorecard, complete with approximate weights for the categories. But how will we fill out the scorecard for a given candidate? I will discuss this further soon.

US elections 2024: what makes a good president?

Something that really annoys me about how politics is covered (in my experience) in traditional and social media is that so much effort is wasted because of a lack of agreement on definitions and overall goals. I don’t for a moment think that if we could just all understand each other, there would be no need for argument – it is clear that different people place very different importance on various issues. But not even understanding the main issues, and talking past each other, is really suboptimal, so let’s all stop it. It would be hard enough if we only had to find a way to reconcile our various preferences in a sustainably fair way – adding a lot of noise and unnecessary emotion makes it very, very much harder. This is a topic that will recur throughout these posts.

I start today by noting the current extreme level of disagreement about whether Joe Biden or Donald Trump have done a good job as President of the USA. Some of what I read online is intellectually laughable – it is not credible that each is the devil incarnate with no redeeming features. But even the better quality stuff is guilty of cherry-picking, and focusing on specific points without context. A much better approach, I believe, is to decide beforehand what are the qualities that a good president should have. This is analogous to thoroughly thinking through a job description before it comes to interviews, so as to increase the chance of a good decision that is not overly influenced by biases or a fluke performance by the candidate. It is true that the long presidential campaign weeds out many candidates who are by definition not optimal for presidential campaigning. But it is far from clear that the qualities needed to campaign well are well correlated with those needed to do the job once elected. It falls to the voters, who in this analogy are the hiring committee, to do a better job of evaluation. As a start, I propose a systematic use of scorecards, informed by knowledge gained by presidential historians.

The C-SPAN Presidential Historians Survey has been run several times (see the 2021 results). Whether we agree or not with the scores (which are averages of scores given by around 100 professional observers of presidential history), they have at least tried to list 10 categories, which they weight equally, and then scored each president on each category. The categories (deliberately not defined) are: Public Persuasion, Crisis Leadership, Economic Management, Moral Authority, International Relations, Administrative Skills, Relations with Congress, Vision/Setting an Agenda, Pursued Equal Justice for All and Performance Within the Context of the Times. Let’s start with these, realizing that presidents often get too much credit for things that go well, and too much blame for things that go badly. Of course, it is not always clear how a candidate with no track record as president will perform in each category, but we can make educated guesses in some cases (in 2024 the two main candidates each have a track record in any case).

Trump is ranked near the bottom in most categories, and the scores mostly seem reasonable to me. Treating the categories in descending order of score: Public Persuasion (43.6; he is known to be very persuasive to some people, but is quite polarizing and many do not trust what he says), Economic Management (42.6; the stock market indices were high during his presidency, interest rates were low, but many claimed that his policies were irresponsible and unsustainable – many people would rate him higher), Vision/Setting an Agenda (39.6; I would rate him higher because he did seem to have clear agenda when campaigning but his lack of focus was always clear – for example, what was the plan with North Korea, really?), International Relations (33.3, he alienated many allies and was too transactional for my liking, though some said his unpredictable style would deter aggressors – I thought his approach to Kim Jong Un was worth a try, but execution is important), Relations with Congress (28.6; he didn’t achieve much with majorities for his party in both houses), Performance Within Context of Times (28.3), Pursued Equal Justice for All (27.6, it did not seem to be a priority for him), Crisis Leadership (was way too late in taking COVID seriously and didn’t have a consistent message), Administrative Skills (22.8, many appointees attested to his lack of engagement with details or ability to deal with them; he is rumored to have ADHD, and appears to prefer appointees who agree with him on everything). Overall, his highest ranked category is still only ranked 32nd out of 44.

Turning to Biden (who is obviously not rated in the survey), it seems to me that his lowest scores would probably be in Public Persuasion (he is not a fine orator, and many say that his way of speaking does not inspire confidence, but I would still rate him no worse than George W. Bush, who scored higher than Trump) and Vision/Setting an Agenda (he does seem to have one, but somehow it is not coming across as clearly as it should – but he should be higher than the famously vision-challenged George HW Bush, who scored 48.0). In every other category, it seems pretty clear to me that Biden has performed above average. For example, he has had to deal with COVID, Ukraine and Gaza crises already, has fierce opposition in Congress, and still managed to get substantial legislation passed to support his basic agenda. If one believes that the Mexico/US border is a huge crisis and he has failed, that would lower his score on Crisis Management (my own opinion is that it is a long-running issue with plenty of blame to go around). On International Relations, he has restored relations with NATO and led support for Ukraine, for example, and has a lot of experience in the area. On Economic Management, the macroeconomic trends have been good for a long time now. It will be interesting to see how he is remembered decades from now. I suspect his reputation will continue to improve over time (although I guess if he loses to Trump he will be heavily criticized). If he stopped being president right now, I think history would likely judge him rather favorably based on his record.

As I write on Presidents’ Day 2024, I have just seen results of another survey from late 2023 (Presidential Greatness Project Expert Survey). The respondents were over 100 professional researchers in political science focusing on the presidency, and each submitted a simple rating between 0 and 100, without any category breakdown. Interestingly, respondents self-reported their party affiliation (Republican/Democratic/Independent) and ideological stance (Conservative/Liberal/Moderate). Even more interestingly, Biden was ranked between 13th and 30th by every subgroup, and in the 10 most underrated presidents, whereas Trump was ranked 41st by Republicans, 43rd by Conservatives, and 45th (last) by the other four subgroups.

It seems clear enough that unless a voter has a rather unusual weighting of the criteria discussed above, or rejects the entire premise of the study, or just wants to troll, create chaos or act out emotionally (in which case they should think about the Leopard Eating Faces Party), that they will prefer Biden’s record over Trump’s. For the forthcoming election there is also the issue of what we expect their second term to look like, but that is a multifaceted topic for another post.

US Elections 2024 series, post 0

I am a permanent resident (Green Card holder) of the US, and not yet a citizen. Thus I am ineligible to vote in federal elections. I am also not eligible to vote in state elections in Massachusetts, and not even eligible to vote in town elections (which, given the very large property taxes my wife and I are paying, seems very wrong). As someone interested in politics (in the sense of a research area – making collective decisions and creating institutions that are intended to promote general welfare – and as an interested consumer of news), this is not a pleasant situation. In the US, there are even fairly strong rules (relating to foreign lobbying) about how I can get involved in election-related activities other than voting. Yet I have very strong feelings about the upcoming elections and their consequences for the world. This series of blog posts is my attempt to clarify issues. I hope that by the end, something of value will have been created, and even if no one else reads what i write, I will have gained in understanding. I do hope, however, that others learn from these posts.

Ideally, what one writes will be interpreted charitably and accurately, but experience shows that is not always the case. To forestall any complaints of bias, let me quickly explain my own political background and beliefs. I grew up in New Zealand, which like almost every developed country other than US, has a stronger central government and a more social democratic consensus. In my only “first past the post” election, I voted Labour, have missed only one NZ general election since then, and have voted for the Green Party every time. NZ changed to a proportional German-style “MMP” system in the 1990s. If the voting system had not changed, I would probably not have voted Green every time, but I feel that their viewpoint is important to have in Parliament although I would not trust them with complete control of government. Over 25 years ago I realized that I was tired of being against policies all the time, and tried to articulate what I was for. Briefly (see here for the whole document, which was the best I could do in the time available 25 years ago):

Humans can and should solve their own problems. I am not religious, and am suspicious of the value of religion. No one else will save us.
Human society should be fair. Decision-making by those most affected by the decisions is the ideal.
Science is the key to improvement. The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, by Carl Sagan, says much better than I could why we need it.
Ends do not justify means. Processes, procedures and institutions are very important, and preserving and perfecting them is an end in itself.

It is not surprising then that if I had a choice in recent years, I would probably have voted mostly for Democratic candidates in the US, and certainly not for most Republicans. But this series is definitely not a partisan effort – I have no affiliation with any party, and very likely wouldn’t join one if I could (I was a member of the Alliance Party in 1996, but soon grew disillusioned). I have never been good at submitting to the discipline of standing by joint statements that I don’t agree with, and no party agrees with me on every issue. I am now twice as old as when I wrote the bullet points above, and amazingly (especially to my wife, I am sure) I now feel that I have achieved a reasonable level of wisdom. I am better at regulating my emotions (especially anger) and looking at issues more dispassionately. I have a much better understanding now of the US system of government, having read a lot more about its history in recent years. So I hope that readers (if there are any) will engage with these posts in good faith.

There is also the question of less blatant biases. I have a PhD in mathematics and have worked exclusively in public universities in teaching/research roles. I have a particular age, sex, ethnic background, etc. There is nothing to be done there, but I do try to see the world from other viewpoints, and am getting much better at it. My general idea is that proper design of processes, procedures, norms and institutions is the best way to even out all our biases.

Time is short this year, since I have started some new professional roles. I will try to post regularly and frequently enough to make the overhead of this first post worthwhile. Thanks for reading, and feel free to send your questions and comments.

My manifesto from the mid-late 1990s

I wrote this after realizing that politics is very depressing when one is always against something, and not clear on what one is striving for. I would write it differently now, 25 years later, but most of it still makes sense to me. I am much more like a classical Enlightenment liberal now and much less interested in what Noam Chomsky has to say. In any case, producing this document was a useful exercise that i recommend to everyone aged 25-30.

In the following I have tried to reduce the basis for my political beliefs to a small
number of axioms. This is followed by an elaboration of each axiom
(with suggestions for further discussion).

Important Note: in “Justification” sections I shall refer to my own and others’
observations of “human nature”. There is strong disagreement on what this means
or is. It is clear that humans have certain behavioral tendencies, not all
shared by all animals. Opinions differ on plasticity of these (“nature versus
nurture”). I think that it is clear that there is a wide range of possible human
behavior and that environmental factors can influence it. Beyond this I will not
commit myself now.

I expect plenty of opportunity for argument here. The question then arises as to
how much I could revise these axioms if, say, it was proven that some humans can
never be trained to think logically, or avoid murder. This is a good question. My
feeling right now is that they would not change much. I suspect that I simply
would not believe such a proof! Science in action …

Basic axioms:

0) [Humanism] Humans can and should solve their own problems.
1) [Democracy] Human society should be fair.
2) [Science] Science is the key to improvement.
3) [Ethics] Ends do not justify means.

Elaboration:

0) This form of humanism is agnostic on the question of supernatural beings but
holds that their existence or otherwise is irrelevant. It asserts that it is
possible for large human societies to thrive sustainably (this is not an
empirical observation, but optimism).

Implicit in the axiom is that humans are treated as a single group for political
purposes. It hints at a solidarity at the species level. This has been considered
a radical idea historically, as only certain types of humans have been
considered worthy enough to have political power.

Talking points:

a) Nothing is mentioned here about rights of nonhuman species.

b) How to define humans as above? Do I mean adults, adults within a few standard
deviations of the mean in intelligence, etc? Do foetuses ever count (a touchy
one!)

1) This is a view of democracy which goes well beyond what is normally meant by
that term (in my opinion, common usage is a debasement of the real meaning). It
is best summed up by the Greens’ “appropriate decision-making”. In other words,
individuals should have control over decisions in proportion to how the
consequences of those decisions will affect them. This includes not just those
aspects of behaviour usually covered by the term “human rights”, such as rights
of life and property but also economic decisions on investment and production,
for example.

This view of democracy does not mean merely the formal trappings of electoral
procedure which legitimize decisions taken by an elite managerial class, which
can certainly be allowed in an “oligarchy” or government by an elite
(“well-meaning” or not). It also does not mean “corporatism”, or decision-making
only via membership of a powerful interest group, such as a labour union or
professional organization.

Justification: Observation of history seems to show that humans are particularly
prone to corruption by power. Psychological experiments apparently bear this out.
It is a priority to avoid dictatorships because of the suffering which ensues.
Perhaps nonhumans (like ants) can handle them but I think the evidence is
conclusive that humans simply cannot. Huge concentration of political power is
bad for this reason. In addition (this ties in with axiom 2 also) more diversity
of opinion leads to better thought-out decisions which work out better for
(almost) everyone.

Talking points:

a) Relative equality of outcome, not merely of “opportunity” (even taking into
account “affirmative action”) is required. This is considered rather extreme in
our time and place. I don’t think it acceptable that small changes in performance
should lead to enormous disparities in outcome. A “fair” race where you die if you
come second and live if you win is not acceptable.

b) Individual freedom is strongly stressed. Arbitrary deprivation of freedom is
inherently unfair. The main difference between mine and many more popular
political philosophies is an equal emphasis on the exercising of one’s rights and
the responsibility not to infringe on the rights of others in so doing. This is a
difficult point, of course, which requires careful compromise.

Probably the best fit, using the names of well-known philosophies, is libertarian
socialism or socialist anarchism.

2) “Science” has at least three distinct meanings – a process of enquiry
according to certain rules, the resulting body of theory, and the human cultural
institution formed by the practitioners. Technological fruits of science are
considered separately, but recognized as highly likely to proceed from theory.

The aspect stressed here is the process of enquiry. Key methodological
differences of (properly practised!) science from other ways of knowing are:
nonexistence of authority, tolerance of diverse views, rigorous standards of
evidence and argument, a transparent evaluative process.

This axiom calls for extension of the scientific method to human affairs in
general, to the maximum possible degree.

Justification: Humans, particularly en masse, appear to have strong innate
tendencies to irrational, self-destructive behaviour. In addition we seem to be
ill-equipped by evolution to deal with assessing varying degrees of risk, and
with probability in general. Applying scientific thinking is the best way I know
to avoid particularly egregious errors. I don’t feel I need to elaborate more,
since you all surely believe this.

I am not arguing for a robotic, completely unemotional race of superhumans. I believe
that basic logic, probability and mental hygiene are attainable by almost everybody.

Talking points: The book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, by
Carl Sagan, gives an excellent description of the role of science as a check on human
error. It explains better than I could what I really mean!

3) This argues against the use of (physical) force to resolve political conflict
and in favour of argument. It does not imply pacifism, which asserts that force
is not appropriate even when attacked. It also argues against deception,
evasion, equivocation and just plain lying as a tactical device. Process is more
important than outcome, and the process is itself a goal.

Justification: The main reason is that this is another check on error. Force (probably
for evolutionary reasons) is very seductive and soon becomes an end in itself. Deception
is not only unfair to others but one is very likely to deceive oneself in practising it.

Talking points: The entire public relations industry and most of the advertising
industry routinely violate the lying part of this axiom, and probably all governments violate the
force part, many rather spectacularly. I can envisage situations when I might allow a
bending of this “rule”, but very few.

Major career news

Since moving to the US and giving up my permanent academic position in NZ, I have been increasingly concerned with finding a more suitable job. This academic hiring season I applied to around 70 traditional positions, almost all in mathematics departments and computer science departments. This effort resulted in zero positive response from Math, and a few Zoom interviews with CS, one of which led to an on-campus interview day. However no offers were forthcoming. I put in a lot of work to present myself as a good candidate, which I believe I am. But it seems that the system is not efficient, or I am a much worse candidate than I think, or senior level hiring is really very different from the much more common junior hiring, or … (?)

In any case I felt the need to move forward, or at least sideways. I have, after several twists and turns, been appointed as the incoming Editor-in-Chief of Notices of the American Mathematical Society. This is an important community role that I hope to make my own as I build on the work of predecessors. It is roughly a half-time position (at least that is what the pay says, and I hope the timesheets also reflect that, but I will spend as long as I need to do an excellent job). I already know it will be a lot of work and require me to deal with potentially conflicting opinions and interests. As an independent contractor with the AMS, I will have all the fun of self-employment tax and other IRS requirements.

In order to be working full time, I will also be moving at UMass Amherst from a visiting position in mathematics with no prospect of permanence to a (part-time) teaching faculty position in computer science with some prospect of permanence. The two new roles are not equally exciting (yet) but they are each important in their own way and I hope to contribute strongly in each. I will be teaching something new, namely probability for CS students, a course which I strongly but unsuccessfully advocated for at Auckland.

I will still be seriously looking for a more traditional professor role, but I will be able to focus on a much smaller number of job applications to places that seem a very good fit, assuming that this new situation is as acceptable a lower bound as I predict. Wish me luck!

A new agent symmetry criterion for social choice

It is time to write something longer than a tweet on this research topic, which in my opinion, trying to be as objective as possible, is very promising and conceptually important. I have worked on this with collaborators Jacky Lo, Geoff Pritchard and especially Rupert Freeman.

Let’s start with the model where we first noticed this new concept, namely one-to-one matching under ordinal preferences (“housing allocation”). Each of N agents has strict preferences over a set of N objects and we aim to find an assignment, namely a bijection between agents and objects. The famous mechanism called Serial Dictatorship fixes an order on the agents, and lets them choose in turn their most preferred object from those remaining. On the other hand, Top Trading Cycles starts with a fixed allocation, and gets each agent to point to the most preferred object. There must be at least one cycle, and we redistribute objects along the cycle so everyone in the cycle is satisfied. After removing these agents and objects, we continue with 2nd preferences, etc, until we reach a final assignment. A famous result of Abdulkadiroglu and Sonmez says that if the choosing order for SD is taken uniformly at random (this is called RSD), as is the initial allocation for TTC (which we call TTC-RE), then the probability distribution over assignments for these different-looking mechanisms is the same.

However, imagine yourself as an agent when RSD is used. No matter how you feel before the choosing order is determined, if you turn out to be at the beginning, you know you will always get your first choice object. If you turn out to be at the end, you know that you will have to take whatever is left. There is clear bias toward the front of the choosing order. On the other hand, it seems clear that no agent in TTC-RE will be as systematically advantaged just by virtue of their position in the mechanism.

A standard social choice concept is anonymity, meaning that a mechanism treats agents symmetrically, and the outcomes depend only on the profile of agent preferences, not the identities of the agents. However full anonymity is not possible in this model. RSD is anonymous, but once the choosing order is determined, the resulting SD is not anonymous. Similarly TTC-RE is anonymous but TTC is not. Yet TTC seems more symmetric than SD. It seems there is an elusive criterion involving agent symmetry. The randomization discussed above turns out to be a red herring – we can define it in the deterministic case directly.

Our idea is to define such a criterion using average-case analysis. For a fixed probability distribution P on profiles (e.g. the uniform distribution), we consider the expected rank distribution for each agent, and if this is the same for all agents we call the mechanism order symmetric with respect to P. Some restriction on P is needed, because a point mass concentrated on a unanimous profile will prevent all mechanisms from being order symmetric. We show that provided P has sufficient symmetry between agents and between objects, TTC is order symmetric but SD is very far from being so. In other words, no agent is disadvantaged once the randomness in the mechanism is realized, and before preferences are elicited.

Not only does this definition clarify the difference between SD and TTC, it suggests tweaks to existing mechanisms. Full order symmetry may not be achieved in some situations, but we can try to equalize the bias between agents. The Boston mechanism clearly treats those early in the tiebreaking order much better than those later in the order. A simple idea is to reverse the tiebreaking order after the first round. Simulations show this reduces bias substantially.

I feel that this idea has a bright future, with possible extensions to other social choice models and to practical mechanism design. Now we need a journal or conference to see that – we have had surprising difficulty in getting published. The two types of randomness can be confusing, and many researchers seem to think about fairness in terms of outcomes rather than a procedural criterion of this sort. Some may just not think it is important, but we should first ensure there is no misunderstanding.

Blog hiatus

It seems it is almost 6 months since the last post. The main reason is that the time spent on Twitter takes up all the “social media” time I can spare. If I do have thoughts that can’t be expressed in 280 characters, I will come back here!

If you can’t beat them …

… join them on Twitter, which I have now done (see profile). The sheer number of tweets makes it a little disorienting even if only following tens of people. However it is one more way to advertise one’s work and meet like-minded people, so on balance I will keep trying. Of course I have not yet run into any trolls.

A big change

After 20 years continuous work at the University of Auckland, I am moving with my family to Amherst, Massachusetts, USA (as described here). I will be in the Department of Math & Stat, and also Adjunct in Computer Science. Giving up a tenured position for a limited term visiting one with no guarantee of anything beyond that may be considered foolhardy by many. Moving a family to the USA from our highly locally optimized life in Auckland, especially in the era of Trump, is also challenging. COVID-19 has made job hunting harder. So I am highly incentivized to work hard and make contacts. Wish me luck!

Review of Reassembling Scholarly Communications

I received the offer to review this book with some trepidation. Although active as an Open Access advocate, I have neither a scholarly background as a researcher and student of scholarly communications, nor a background in the humanities, which forms the disciplinary home for most contributors. I feared a long screed of very complicated terminology with little obvious relevance to those, such as myself, having a background in mathematics and natural sciences. Also, I have been suspicious of the motives of those who study ad nauseam issues such as open access without doing anything to change the world for the better.

In summary, I am glad that I accepted the offer. This book makes a distinct contribution, and its structure of short and very varied chapters contains a wealth of interesting content that should be of interest to anyone with even a passing interest in open access and scholarly communications more generally. I cannot envisage many readers going through the entire book in detail – it is more suited to dipping into one chapter at a time, allowing serendipity to do its magic and breaking the reader out of the algorithmically enforced filter bubbles that threaten to isolate us all.

The editors explain their purpose clearly:

… pithy, shorter chapters that would serve as introductions to different perspectives, as gateways to alternative approaches

coupled with a historical approach. They have succeeded admirably. The book has six sections, described under the headings of Colonial Influences, Epistemologies, Publics and Politics, Archives and Preservation, Infrastructures and Platforms, and Global Communities. These sections comprise 25 chapters each by a different authorial team. The introduction by the editors is very good, and contains an elegant and insightful description of the economic difficulties underlying public goods such as scholarly publications, by means of a parable about conference talks. There is an excellent glossary and list of abbreviations and acronyms, unfortunately essential for anyone reading about scholarly communications these days.

The variety of material is impressive and the writing overall clear and interesting, although every reader will find exceptions to that last claim. The historical approach is very useful and will extend the relevance of this book. Almost every chapter contains something new and interesting to me. The chapters that I found most valuable may give an idea of the breadth of topics covered: John Willinsky surveying the history of copyright, back to England in the late 17th century and the Statute of Anne in 1710; Martin Eve discussing the need for digital reading of research outputs when faced with a superabundance of possible articles and books to read, and the relation with open access and research evaluation; Aileen Fyfe on the Royal Society’s history as a publisher, and the little-known fact that for most of its 350 years the philosophy of supporting and subsidizing wide access predominated over the more recent approach of using journal sales to subsidize the Society’s other activities; Abel Packer and Dominique Babini surveying Latin American initiatives such as SciELO and Redalyc; Thomas Herve Mboa Nkoudou discussing the many challenges and yet the necessity of implementing open access in an African context. There are contributions discussing trends in peer review, politically sensitive archives, the history of public libraries, and the relevance of a medieval “how-to” manuscript to modern readers.

No book is perfect, and it is necessary to nitpick no matter how good the book is, in order to retain credibility as a reviewer. I was surprised to find some English errors even in the contributions by the editors (what does “comprise” really mean? what is the simple past tense of “to spring”?). I conjecture that the book took substantially longer to finish than expected (of course, Hofstadter’s Law shows that this must happen), which means that some chapters are, while still relevant, no longer at the cutting edge.

A strong theme of the promise and perils of universal open access to scholarly research runs through the volume. It is easily observed that decision-makers in wealthy countries appear to be obsessed with competition, credentials, and prestige, while in, for example, Latin America, the understanding that open access and open scholarship are justified by arguments from social justice and human rights is higher. This book should be particularly valuable for those in Europe and North America without much exposure to approaches in other parts of the world (and often without much interest in them) – give it as a gift to your relevant administrator today!