The Political Economy of Hatred - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

The Political Economy of Hatred

Edward

Glaeser

The Quarterly Journal of Economics

2005

Traviss Cassidy and Salama Freed

June 14, 2011Slide2

Outline of Discussion

Introduction

Basic Tenets of Hatred

The

Hatred Model:

Basic Sequence

The Hatred Model: Expected Benefits

The Hatred Model: Stage 2

The Hatred Model: Stages 1 and 3

Examples:

Racism in the American South United States

Anti-Semitism in 19

th

Century Europe

Islamic Hatred of AmericansSlide3

Basic Tenets of Hatred

“People say they hate because the object of their hatred is evil.”(

Glaeser

, 2005)

Hatred “stems from seeing oneself under attack” (

Baumeister

, 1995)

Hatred is often a characteristic of an entire group, not just those who are actually guilty of the crimes from which the hatred stems.

Glaeser

argues in this paper that the spread of hatred is successful when voters have little incentive to investigate and dispute a false signal. Slide4

The Hatred Model

The Basic Sequence

Politicians spread hatred when their policies will harm a particular group in an effort to create desire to exclude or deprive the particular group.

There are four periods of the model:

Politician decide to spread hate filled message about particular group (“out-group”) to those not a member of that group (“in-group”).

In-group members receive signal, decide on a series of two actions

Whether the allegation deserves investigation, and

If credible, whether to protect themselves against out-group.

Members of both groups vote, and the winning politician gets their way

Out-group members may harm in-group members as a result of policies implementedSlide5

The Hatred Model

Expected Benefits

Three main constituents seek to maximize what is important to them:

Politicians maximize expected support minus the total cost of their campaign.

The in-group maximizes expected utility through all actions in the game where

Utility= Net Income +Expected harm from out-group – investigation costs – self-protection costs

The out-group maximizes their net income.

Note they are passive in the basic model (in that they are not receiving additional benefits) but are given an opportunity to become active in the future. Slide6

The Hatred Model

The Basic Sequence

Stage 2

Politician sends false signal to in-group

of harmful nature of out-group

Out-group is harmful with probability one or

θ

/(

θ

+

φ

(1-

θ

)) based on distribution

Out-group is harmless

In-group receives signal of out-group danger

In-group chooses to protect themselves

Do nothing

Investigate

Don’t Investigate

Out-group is harmfulSlide7

The Hatred Model

Stage 2: The Response to Potential Harm

After receiving a signal, the in-group:

Decides whether to spend

S

to investigate the signal, then

Chooses whether to spend

R

to protect themselves from potential harm or reduce damages from said harm (by a factor of

δ

<1)

Note the

benefit they will receive from protecting themselves outweighs the

amount spent for in-group to protect themselves, so self-protection is optimalProp 1: Investigating and learning the truth of a story is only optimal iff the cost of the search is less than the gains from the investigation.The cost of investigating the signal varies among the in-group, based on prior knowledge, frequent contact, or education, as well as other factors.

Less educated people will tend to dismiss false stories (and will likely have means to search for truth)People who have frequent contact with the out-group will dismiss false stories as well.Slide8

The Hatred Model

Stage 2: The Response to Potential Harm

The expected costs of the in-group protecting themselves are based on their decision to investigate:

If they choose not to investigate , expected cost is cost of self-protection plus reduced damage due to self protection (regardless of whether group is harmful).

If they choose to investigate:

If the story is false, expected cost from self-protection and damage is zero

If the story is true, expected cost is the cost of self-protection plus the reduced cost of damage after self-protection.

Total expected cost of protection is

Where

is the damage to the in-group’s net income,

is the probability an out-grou

p is harmful, and

is probability a politician will spread a false message.

 Slide9

The Hatred Model

Stage 2: The Response to Potential Harm

When the out-group is harmful, politicians do nothing because the message will be transmitted without their additional help and at no cost to them.

The portion of the in-group who has chosen to investigate believes that the out-group is harmful with probability one.

The portion of the in-group who has not chosen to investigate believes that the out-group is harmful with probability

Note that the probability of success by politicians to spread negative messages adversely affects the in-group’s ability to discern a truly harmful group from a harmless one who has been negatively targeted.

If the out-group is harmless and the politician sends a false message:

A share who has chosen not to investigate believes the group is harmful with probability

.

The share who has chosen to investigate finds that the message is false and believes the group is harmful with probability zero.

We will focus on the spread of negative messages and hatred of a harmless group.

 Slide10

The Hatred Model

Stage 1: The Supply of Hatred

Politicians can spread hatred among in-group members at cost

K

.

K

differs across politicians based on their abilities to effectively spread hate and the ability to distort the truth.

Voters do not know the value of

K

, but do know that

K

is drawn from a distribution.

Assuming two politicians with the fixed government policies of redistribution based on income:

Income of both the in-group and out-group is characterized by a continuous distribution

The mean income of the in-group minus mean income of the out-group is

, where

p

is the proportion of the population that belongs to the out-group

 Slide11

The Hatred Model

Stage 1: The Supply of Hatred

Our two candidates propose a tax level

τ

on their income

People whose income is below the average receives a transfer in the amount of

.

The two candidates propose two different tax levels,

(

The candidate who is against redistribution proposes tax level

The candidate who is in favor of redistribution proposes tax level

Those who support the anti-redistribution candidate:

Receive a financial gain of

-

.

Effectively reduce the income of the out-group by a factor of

-

it is beneficial for those who hate the out-group to reduce that group’s resources.

Support the hatred spread against the poor out-group

Are generally the very rich.

 Slide12

The Hatred Model

Stage 1: The Supply of Hatred

The pro-redistribution candidate is supported :

By the out-group or those within the in-group who believe the out-group is harmless only

iff

-

By haters only if the amount gained from redistribution less the cost of potential harm done by the out-group after redistribution is net positive.

Prop. 2: The pro-redistribution candidate benefits from hate

iff

, i.e. if the mean income of the in-group is less than that of the out-group.

How do we choose to support a candidate?

The very poor will always support the pro-redistribution candidate.

The very rich will always support the anti-redistribution candidate.

The actions of the middle-income group members will vary , as they will choose to support the anti-distribution candidate when they hate the out-group.

 Slide13

The Hatred Model

Stage 1: The Supply of Hatred

Now assume

>0 (in-group wealthier than out-group)

Only the

anti-redistribution

candidate spreads hatred

Prop. 3: There is a maximum cost

K

* that the

anti-redistribution

candidate is willing to incur to spread hatred

K* is rising with

K* falls with the out-group’s proportion (

) of the electorate

K* is rising with (the non-stochastic component of)

s

Share of

anti-redistribution

candidates that spread hatred is falling with (the non-stochastic component of)

K

 Slide14

The Hatred Model

Stage 1: The Supply of Hatred

= G(K*) in equilibrium

In-group voter’s subjective probability that the politician will send false signal is endogenous

Notice the opposing effects of increased information technology

Technology that lowers the cost of communication lowers

s

and

K

Lower

s

means more people will choose to investigate the veracity of a story

Hatred-creating stories less effective

Lower

K means it is easier for politicians to spread hatred-creating storiesLevel of hatred increases

 Slide15

The Hatred Model

Stage

1

:

Antiminority

Policies

on out-group members

Support for the

anti-redistribution

candidate will rise with the level of hatred

iff

s/he is less generous to out-group:

Prop. 4: (Given that a mathematical condition [p

. 63]

holds)

K*

is rising with

and falling with

Anti-minority

policies increase supply of hatred when proposed by

anti-redistribution

candidate and decrease supply of hatred when proposed by

pro-redistribution

candidate.

What matters is whether anti-minority

policies increase or reduce the differences in how candidates treat out-groups

 Slide16

The Hatred Model

Stage

1

: H8ing the H8erz

If

anti-redistribution

candidate spreads hatred, at cost

A

+

α

the

pro-redistribution

candidate can spread hatred against the

anti-redistribution

candidate

Out-group members and in-group members who searched will believe

anti-redistribution

candidate will impose costs of

ω

> 0. Prop. 5: There is a value α*

such that A + α* is the maximum amount the

pro-redistribution candidate is willing to pay to villianize the anti-redistribution candidate.

Given two mathematical conditions [p. 64], α* is falling and K* is rising with A

and , and

α* is rising with the proportion of voters who search

 Slide17

The Hatred Model

Noneconomic Issues, Multiple Issue Elections, and Exclusionary Policies

:

non-income variable

)

: net tax payment

Support for the

pro-redistribution

candidate (p. 65)

The high tax candidate will support hatred if out-group is well endowed in

, and the low tax candidate will support hatred if out-group is poorly endowed in

.

All the previous results still apply

 Slide18

Supporting Historical Examples

Anti-Semitism in 19

th

-Century Europe

Anti-Americanism in the Muslim world