Political ideology and blogging

Steve Randy Waldman has a post defending ideology -- by which I think he means morally-driven political economic theorizing -- in policy-oriented writing. (He is responding to Krugman, Yglesias comments here.) Waldman's points are, first, that ideology has more effect on policy and politics and empiricism.

In the course of my lifetime, we have gone from a polity in which President Nixon publicly flirted with guaranteed income proposals to a polity in which there is a bipartisan tidal wave to bail out bankers but redistribution is beyond the pale. Throughout the period, every Democratic presidency has been technocratically superior to any Republican presidency, in terms of its reliance on expertise rather than, um, ideology in policymaking. Yet both parties have moved inexorably rightward, so that the center right of 1970 would be viewed as Communist today.

True enough. Furthermore, policy choices always reflect both data and morals and values in ways that can't be cleanly separated. Also true.

So what's the point of striving to be empirical? One way to see it is to ask how we should choose our moral and ideological views. Waldman urges us "to do our best to explore the full space of potentially achievable ideologies and consider which are likely to promote good outcomes." And how do we explore that space, and determine what promotes good outcomes. Thinking seriously about that will, again, involve data and science.

Does any one doubt that our comprehensive moral and ideological views should cohere with science?  I don't imagine for a moment that you can determine your ideological views using science. But you should do the work to determine whether your views can be reconciled with the best current accounts of the facts. So if you find that your fundamental beliefs and affiliations put you in tension with, say, Darwinism, then you need to rethink those beliefs and affiliations. You should be looking for reflective equilibrium between values and facts.

So I have plenty of ideology. But I am better at analyzing data. And I think I can be of more use to you, and others, by providing data points for you to think about and, if you accept them, to shape your ideas around.

Comments

[brad j shannon]

"I don't imagine for a moment that you can determine your ideological views using science."

See: Moral Psychology

http://yourmorals.org

[Bill Gardner]

Brad, thanks.

I do think you can scientifically measure your ideological views, which is what this interesting site seems to do. What I meant was something like "science alone will not provide sufficient grounds for a choice of ideological views."