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I agree, there is more policy based evidence making (or interpreting) than evidence based policy making. But I'd also argue that this problem (policies are sim
by uniqueuid 5y ago
I agree, there is more policy based evidence making (or interpreting) than evidence based policy making.
But I'd also argue that this problem (policies are similar no matter what party rues) is not one of the trivial ones.
It's one of the hard ones, because it is sometimes true (especially in dual party systems like the US). And in other - very important - cases, it's suddenly not true.
In other words, the limits of politics are mostly very narrow, but sometimes frighteningly wide. Covid is a prime example.
We (society, citizens, politicians, scientists) need to do a better job understanding the state transitions from narrow to wide; but it's a hard question because there are so incredibly many factors and very small N (few observations, cannot easily transfer insights from one leader to another due to biography, for example).
- ContrarianBrit 5y agoOn Covid, I suspect that partisan differences have been quite small, at least among mainstream parties! But of course, politics matters desperately in some circumstances. For example, the 2019 UK election and 2020 US election were extremely consequential, reflecting the issues at stake and profile of some of the candidates.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- thinkingemote 5y agoI'd agree with the idea of the article and I would extend this to say that both elections were inconsequential, as they usually are. It's just that we are too close to them in time to see this. Assuming that the areas that matter are not tribal politics, then give it decade or 3 and we will see that Biden and Trump were not so different in the areas that matter. Now, theres a good argument to make that tribal politics is ALL that matters..... which we see demonstrated all the time on social media and in these comments.... but political scientists should know better!
- scarface74 5y agoI don’t know how Covid vaccines became political. The mainstream Republican leaders all the way up to Trump and most Senators and governors are trying to convince people to get vaccinated.
- chmod600 5y agoBecause vaccination is a proxy for your views on authority.
- notahacker 5y agoA lot of right wing media commentators have decided the engagement and the cash come from leaning the other way, even when they've all been vaccinated according to their outlet's internal vaccine mandate policy. Many mainstream Republicans did jump on the "don't listen to the medical profession" bandwagon for various reasons, and it's not that easy to get everybody else off it, especially not if their shouting about the evils of vaccine mandates (out of genuine principle or not) is still louder than their insistence that vaccines are actually good. The irony is I think a lot of the shouting down the medical establishment came when they were trying to convince people that the worst effects of COVID could easily be prevented when it couldn't, and now the whole thing's flipped over...
- scarface74 5y agoAnd it’s the red states that are suffering the most..
- uniqueuid 5y agoWithin some countries, partisan differences may have been small. But across countries, there is a wide range of measures implemented (or not). Some countries starting with fairly similar political systems and traditions ended up with very different covid regimes. So I'd count that as an indicator of the potential variation.