With only a few months remaining before the 2004 elections, national party committees continue to demonstrate financial strength and noteworthy success in adapting to the more stringent fundraising rules imposed by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA). A number of factors, including the deep partisan divide in the electorate, the expectations of a close presidential race, and the growing competition in key Senate and House races, have combined with recent party investments in new technology and the emergence of the Internet as a major fundraising tool to produce what one party chairman has described as a "perfect storm" for party fundraising.¹ Consequently, both national parties have exceeded the mid-year fundraising totals achieved in 2000, and both approach the general election with substantial amounts of money in the bank.

After eighteen months of experience under the new rules, the national parties are still outpacing their fundraising efforts of four years ago. As of June 30, the national parties have raised $611.1 million in federally regulated hard money alone, as compared to $535.6 million in hard and soft money combined at a similar point in the 2000 election cycle. The Republicans lead the way, taking in more than $381 million as compared to about $309 million in hard and soft money by the end of June in 2000. The Democrats have also raised more, bringing in $230 million as compared to about $227 million in hard and soft money four years ago. Furthermore, with six months remaining in the election cycle, both national parties have already raised more hard money than they did in the 2000 election cycle.² In fact, by the end of June, every one of the Democratic and Republican national party committees had already exceeded its hard money total for the entire 2000 campaign.³

This surge in hard money fundraising has allowed the national party committees to replace a substantial portion of the revenues they previously received through unlimited soft money contributions. Through June, these committees have already taken in enough additional hard money to compensate for the $254 million of soft money that they had garnered by this point in 2000, which represented a little more than half of their $495 million in total soft money receipts in the 2000 election cycle.

View the accompanying data tables (PDF - 11.4 KB)

¹Terrence McAuliffe, Democratic National Committee Chairman, quoted in Paul Fahri, "Small Donors Grow Into Big Political Force," Washington Post, May 3, 2004, p. A11.
²In 2000, the Republican national party committees raised $361.6 million in hard money, while the Democratic national committees raised $212.9 million. These figures are based on unadjusted data and do not take into account any transfers of funds that may have taken place among the national party committees.
³The election cycle totals for 2000 can be found in Federal Election Commission, "FEC Reports Increase in Party Fundraising for 2000," press release, May 15, 2001. Available at http://www.fec.gov/press/press2001/051501partyfund/051501partyfund.html (viewed July 28, 2004).

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Campaign finance remains one of the most important and controversial aspects of U.S. democracy, as shown by recent legislation, court challenges, and demands for reform. A new Brookings Institution Press book, Financing the 2004 Election, examines the implications that the costs and trends of 2004 have for the current elections.

On September 12, as the 2006 election cycle shifted into high gear, Brookings hosted a panel of experts on money and politics to examine how the year's campaign spending patterns compared to those in previous elections.

Brookings Senior Fellow Thomas Mann addressed these issues along with co-editors Anthony Corrado, Brookings nonresident senior fellow and professor of government at Colby College in Waterville, Maine; and David Magleby, Senior Research Fellow at the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy and Dean of the School of Family, Home and Social Sciences at Brigham Young University in Utah.

The speakers compared candidate and party receipts of 2006 to date with those of 2002 and 2004, and examined the importance of the surge in individual donors and the role of 527 and 501(c) organizations. They also discussed how the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) performed in 2004 and how the 2006 elections further test federal elections legislation. The briefing was co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy.

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The 2008 elections showcased the power of the Internet to generate voter enthusiasm, mobilize volunteers and increase small-donor contributions. After the political world has been arguing about campaign finance policy for decades, the digital revolution has altered the calculus of participation.

On January 14, a joint project of the Campaign Finance Institute, American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution unveiled a new report that seeks to change the ongoing national dialogue about money in politics. At this event, the four authors of the report will detail their findings and recommendations. Relying on lessons from the record-shattering 2008 elections and the rise of Internet campaigning, experts will present a new vision of how campaign finance and communications policy can help further democracy through broader participation.

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Super PACs have already spent tens of millions of dollars in the race for the GOP presidential nomination, with more to come. Expert Anthony Corrado says that the unlimited spending by the PACs, made possible by two Supreme Court decisions, is giving wealthy individuals unprecedented influence in the 2012 elections.

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Despite the attention on the mid-term races, few elections are competitive. Electoral competition, already low at the national level, is in decline in state and primary elections as well. Reformers, who point to gerrymandering and a host of other targets for change, argue that improving competition will produce voters who are more interested in elections, better-informed on issues, and more likely to turn out to the polls.

On October 27, the Brookings Institution—in conjunction with the Cato Institute and The Pew Research Center—presented a discussion and a groundbreaking survey exploring the attitudes and opinions of voters in competitive and noncompetitive congressional districts. The survey, part of Pew's regular polling on voter attitudes, was conducted through the weekend of October 21. A series of questions explored the public's perceptions, knowledge, and opinions about electoral competitiveness.

The discussion also explored a publication that addresses the startling lack of competition in our democratic system. The Marketplace of Democracy: Electoral Competition and American Politics (Brookings, 2006), considers the historical development, legal background, and political aspects of a system that is supposed to be responsive and accountable, yet for many is becoming stagnant, self-perpetuating, and tone-deaf. Michael McDonald, editor and Brookings visiting fellow, moderated a discussion among co-editor John Samples, director of the Center for Representative Government at the Cato Institute, and Andrew Kohut and Scott Keeter from The Pew Research Center, who also discussed the survey.

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If you're an upstanding U.S. citizen, you'll stand up and be counted this Election Day, right? Well, maybe not. Just because Americans can vote doesn't mean they do. But who shows up is what decides the tight races, which makes turnout one of the most closely watched aspects of every election -- and one that has fostered a number of myths. Here are five, debunked:

1. Thanks to increasing voter apathy, turnout keeps dwindling.

This is the mother of all turnout myths. There may be plenty of apathetic voters out there, but the idea that ever fewer Americans are showing up at the polls should be put to rest. What's really happening is that the number of people not eligible to vote is rising -- making it seem as though turnout is dropping.

Those who bemoan a decline in American civic society point to the drop in turnout from 55.2 percent in 1972, when 18-year-olds were granted the right to vote, to the low point of 48.9 percent in 1996. But that's looking at the total voting-age population, which includes lots of people who aren't eligible to vote -- namely, noncitizens and convicted felons. These ineligible populations have increased dramatically over the past three decades, from about 2 percent of the voting-age population in 1972 to 10 percent today.

When you take them out of the equation, the post-1972 "decline" vanishes. Turnout rates among those eligible to vote have averaged 55.3 percent in presidential elections and 39.4 percent in midterm elections for the past three decades. There has been variation, of course, with turnout as low as 51.7 percent in 1996 and rebounding to 60.3 percent by 2004. Turnout in the most recent election, in fact, is on a par with the low-60 percent turnout rates of the 1950s and '60s.

2. Other countries' higher turnout indicates more vibrant democracies.

You can't compare apples and oranges. Voting rules differ from nation to nation, producing different turnout rates. Some countries have mandatory voting. If Americans were fined $100 for playing voter hooky on Election Day, U.S. participation might increase dramatically. But in fact, many people with a ballot pointed at their head simply cast a blank one or a nonsense vote for Mickey Mouse.

Moreover, most countries have national elections maybe once every five years; the United States has presidential or congressional elections every two years. Frequent elections may lead to voter fatigue. New European Union elections, for instance, seem to be depressing turnout in member countries. After decades of trailing turnout in the United Kingdom, U.S. turnout in 2004 was on a par with recent British elections, in which turnout was 59.4 percent in 2001 and 61.4 percent in 2005.

Americans are asked to vote more often -- in national, state, local and primary contests -- than the citizens of any other country. They can be forgiven for missing one or two elections, can't they? Even then, over the course of several elections, Americans have more chances to participate and their turnout may be higher than that in countries where people vote only once every five years.

3. Negative ads turn off voters and reduce turnout.

Don't be so sure. The case on this one is still open. Negative TV advertising increased in the mid-1980s, but turnout hasn't gone down correspondingly. The negative Swift boat campaign against Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) apparently did little to depress turnout in the 2004 presidential race.

Some academic studies have found that negative advertising increases turnout. And that's not so surprising: A particularly nasty ad grabs people's attention and gets them talking. People participate when they're interested. A recent GOP attack ad on Rep. Harold E. Ford Jr. (D-Tenn.), a Senate candidate, has changed the dynamic of the race, probably not because it changed minds or dissuaded Democrats, but because it energized listless Republicans.

We'll have to wait to see whether the attack on Ford backfires because voters perceive it as unfair. That's the danger of going negative. So campaigns tend to stick to "contrast ads," in which candidates contrast their records with those of their opponents. When people see stark differences between candidates, they're more likely to vote.

4. The Republican "72-hour campaign" will win the election.

Not necessarily. You can lead citizens to the ballot, but you can't make them vote.

Republicans supposedly have a super-sophisticated last-minute get-out-the-vote effort that identifies voters who'll be pivotal in electing their candidates. Studies of a campaign's personal contact with voters through phone calls, door-to-door solicitation and the like find that it does have some positive effect on turnout. But people vote for many reasons other than meeting a campaign worker, such as the issues, the closeness of the election and the candidates' likeability. Further, these studies focus on get-out-the-vote drives in low-turnout elections, when contacts from other campaigns and outside groups are minimal. We don't know what the effects of mobilization drives are in highly competitive races in which people are bombarded by media stories, television ads and direct mail.

Republican get-out-the-vote efforts could make a difference in close elections if Democrats simply sat on the sidelines. But this year Democrats have vowed to match the GOP mobilization voter for voter. So it'll take more than just knowing whether a prospective voter owns a Volvo or a BMW for Republicans to eke out victory in a competitive race.

5. Making voter registration easier would dramatically increase turnout.

Well, yes and no.

In 1993, the Democratic government in Washington enacted "Motor Voter," a program that allowed people to register to vote when they received their driver's license or visited a welfare office. Democrats thought that if everyone were registered, turnout rates would increase -- by as much as 7 percentage points.

But while many people registered to vote, turnout didn't go up much. Subsequent studies found only small increases in turnout attributable to Motor Voter, perhaps 2 percentage points.

Sizable increases in turnout can be seen in states with Election Day registration, which allows people to register when they vote. This may be related to the fact that lots of people don't make up their minds to vote until Election Day, rather than months in advance when they get a license.

Scholars from the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute are collaborating to promote transparency in redistricting. In January 2010, an advisory board of experts and representatives of good government groups was convened in order to articulate principles for transparent redistricting and to identify barriers to the public and communities who wish to create redistricting plans. This document summarizes the principles for transparency in redistricting that were identified during that meeting.

Benefits of a Transparent, Participative Redistricting Process

The drawing of electoral districts is among the most easily manipulated and least transparent systems in democratic governance. All too often, redistricting authorities maintain their monopoly by imposing high barriers to transparency and public participation. Increasing transparency and public participation can be a powerful counterbalance by providing the public with information similar to that which is typically only available to official decision makers, which can lead to different outcomes and better representation.

Increasing transparency can empower the public to shape the representation for their communities, promote public commentary and discussion about redistricting, inform legislators and redistricting authorities which district configurations their constituents and the public support, and educate the public about the electoral process.  

Fostering public participation can enable the public to identify their neighborhoods and communities, promote the creation of alternative maps, and facilitate an exploration of a wide range of representational possibilities. The existence of publicly-drawn maps can provide a measuring stick against which an official plan can be compared, and promote the creation of a “market” for plans that support political fairness and community representational goals.

Transparency Principles

All redistricting plans should include sufficient information so the public can verify, reproduce, and evaluate a plan. Transparency thus requires that:

• Redistricting plans must be available in non-proprietary formats.
• Redistricting plans must be available in a format allowing them to be easily read and analyzed with commonly-used geographic information software.
• The criteria used as a basis for creating plans and individual districts must be clearly documented.

Creating and evaluating redistricting plans and community boundaries requires access to demographic, geographic, community, and electoral data. Transparency thus requires that:

• All data necessary to create legal redistricting plans and define community boundaries must be publicly available, under a license allowing reuse of these data for non-commercial purposes.
• All data must be accompanied by clear documentation stating the original source, the chain of ownership (provenance), and all modifications made to it.

Software systems used to generate or analyze redistricting plans can be complex, impossible to reproduce, or impossible to correctly understand without documentation. Transparency thus requires that:

• Software used to automatically create or improve redistricting plans must be either open-source or provide documentation sufficient for the public to replicate the results using independent software.
• Software used to generate reports that analyze redistricting plans must be accompanied by documentation of data, methods, and procedures sufficient for the reports to be verified by the public.

Services offered to the public to create or evaluate redistricting plans and community boundaries are often opaque and subject to misinterpretation unless adequately documented. Transparency thus requires that:

• Software necessary to replicate the creation or analysis of redistricting plans and community boundaries produced by the service must be publicly available.
• The service must provide the public with the ability to make available all published redistricting plans and community boundaries in non-proprietary formats that are easily read and analyzed with commonly-used geographic information software.
• Services must provide documentation of any organizations providing significant contributions to their operation.

Promoting Public Participation

New technologies provide opportunities to broaden public participation in the redistricting process. These technologies should aim to realize the potential benefits described and be consistent with the articulated transparency principles.

Official Endorsement from Organizations – Americans for Redistricting Reform, Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, Campaign Legal Center, Center for Governmental Studies, Center for Voting and Democracy, Common Cause, Demos, and the League of Women Voters of the United States.

Attending board members – Nancy Bekavac, Director, Scientists and Engineers for America; Derek Cressman, Western Regional Director of State Operations, Common Cause; Anthony Fairfax, President, Census Channel; Representative Mike Fortner (R), Illinois General Assembly; Karin Mac Donald, Director, Statewide Database, Berkeley Law, University of California, Berkeley; Leah Rush, Executive Director, Midwest Democracy Network; Mary Wilson, President, League of Women Voters.

Editors – Micah Altman, Harvard University and the Brookings Institution; Thomas E. Mann, Brookings Institution; Michael P. McDonald, George Mason University and the Brookings Institution; Norman J. Ornstein, American Enterprise Institute.

This project is funded by a grant from the Sloan Foundation to the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute.

Every 10 years — unfortunately, sometimes more frequently — legislative district lines are redrawn to balance population for demographic changes revealed by the census. What goes on is much more than a simple technical adjustment of boundaries, with ramifications that largely escape public notice.

Politicians often use redistricting as an opportunity to cut unfavorable constituents and potential challengers out of their districts. Barack Obama, for example, learned the rough and tumble of redistricting politics when Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) carved Obama's Chicago home out of Rush's congressional district after losing a 2000 primary challenge to Obama, then a state senator.

Incumbents can also use redistricting to move favorable constituents into their districts. Obama himself used the state legislative redistricting to extend his predominantly African American district north into a wealthy area of Illinois known as the Gold Coast. This new constituency allowed Obama to hone an effective biracial campaigning style that served him well when he ran for the U.S. Senate and the presidency.

Critically, these decisions are made with little or no public input or accountability. While Arizona and California are among the few states that give the public a chance to see and participate in how the boundaries are set, by using open redistricting commissions, most states gerrymander legislative lines behind closed doors. Figures from both major parties tilt the electoral playing field so much that one party is essentially assured of winning a given district, controlling the state legislature or winning the most seats in the state's congressional delegation. In other words, the democratic process is subverted. In this system, politicians select voters rather than voters electing politicians.

A 2006 Pew survey found that 70 percent of registered voters had no opinion about congressional redistricting. Among the few that expressed an opinion, some mistook the question to be about school districts rather than congressional districts.

For many reasons it has been hard to fault the public. An immense amount of population data must be sifted and then assembled, much like a giant jigsaw puzzle, to ensure that districts satisfy complex federal requirements relating to equal population and the Voting Rights Act, and varying state requirements that may include compactness and respect for existing political boundaries or communities. And access to these data and the software necessary to assemble and analyze them have long been out of public reach.

In the previous round of redistricting, according to a 2002 survey of authorities we conducted with our colleague Karin Mac Donald, most states did not provide any tools, facilities, dedicated assistance or software to support the public in developing redistricting plans. Many states failed to provide even minimal transparency by making data available, providing information about their plans online or accepting publicly submitted plans. Many redistricting authorities have not made firm plans to support transparency or public participation in the current round of redistricting.

In the coming year, however, technological advancements will enable anyone with a Web browser and an interest in how he or she is represented to draw district maps of his or her community and state that meet the same requirements as official submissions. Under the direction of scholars at the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute, and with consultation from an array of experts in redistricting issues, we have developed a set of principles for transparency and public participation. These principles have been endorsed by an array of stakeholders, including Common Cause and the League of Women Voters of the United States.

Americans will be able to participate directly in their democracy by offering plans to be compared with the politician-drawn maps. The public and even the courts will no longer have to accept that whatever is devised by politicians in the backroom.

The Wizard of Oz appeared powerful because he hid behind a curtain -- until it was pulled back. The time has come to pull back the curtain on redistricting. A good place to start is by passing Rep. John Tanner's Redistricting Transparency Act, which has 38 co-sponsors from both parties. If Congress will not act, state governments can follow the lead of the few states that provide for meaningful transparency and public participation. Failure to provide for transparency and public participation should be recognized for what it is: an obviously self-serving act, placing the interests of politicians above the public interest.

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As the recent primary in Delaware attests, this year's midterm elections continue to offer unexpected twists and raise large questions. Will the Republicans take over the House and possibly the Senate? Or has the Republican wave ebbed? What role will President Obama play in rallying seemingly dispirited Democrats -- and what effect will reaction to the sluggish economy play in rallying Republicans? Is the Tea Party more an asset or a liability to the G.O.P.'s hopes? What effect will the inevitably narrowed partisan majorities have in the last two year's of Obama's first term? And how will contests for governorships and state legislatures around the nation affect redistricting and the shape of politics to come?

On October 4, a panel of Brookings Governance Studies scholars, moderated by Senior Fellow E.J. Dionne, Jr., attempted to answer these questions. Senior Fellow Thomas Mann provided an overview. Senior Fellow Sarah Binder discussed congressional dynamics under shrunken majorities or divided government. Senior Fellow William Galston offered his views on the administration’s policy prospects during the 112th Congress. Nonresident Senior Fellow Michael McDonald addressed electoral reapportionment and redistricting around the country.

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With little time remaining until the midterm elections, campaigning is intensifying and the outcome for control of Congress remains uncertain. Voter enthusiasm and turnout will be big factors in the elections, where Republicans have demonstrated a leg up in the party’s primaries.

On October 20, Brookings expert Michael McDonald answered your questions about what the polls and early voting are telling us about the upcoming midterm elections, in a live web chat moderated by POLITICO Assistant Editor Seung Min Kim. McDonald, with Seth McKee, is author of "Revenge of the Moderates," in today's POLITICO.

The transcript of this chat follows:

12:30 Seung Min Kim: Good afternoon, everyone! We have just under two weeks until the Nov. 2 midterm elections, and the Brookings Institution's Michael McDonald is here to answer your questions. Thanks and welcome, Michael.

12:30 [Comment From Dale Dean (Arlington): ] I was wondering from the historical record how closely early results mirror the actual results. Are there systemic distortions in early voting that are the same over many elections or do they differ with each election?

12:30 Michael McDonald: Early voting does not necessarily correspond with Election Day voting. Several data sources suggest the following: Overall, prior to 2008, more Republicans tended to vote early. In 2008, it was Democrats who voted early. We have to see 2010 will be a continuation of 2008 or a reversion to previous elections.

12:30 Michael McDonald: Another important factor is the number of early votes. For high early voting states like Oregon and Washington, essentially ALL votes will be cast early. In other states that require an excuse to vote absentee, the early voting electorate will be much smaller, and have a partisan character more similar to pre-2008.

12:31 [Comment From Katy Steinmetz: ] Are black voters going to turn out for Obama like they did in 2008? Why or why not? How big of a difference do you think this will make?

12:31 Michael McDonald: Since we started surveying, pollsters have found that midterm electorates -- compared to presidential electorates -- tend to be older, wealthier, better educated, and composed of fewer minorities. Sometimes Democrats can overcome this hurdle, as they did in 2006, of course. It would be highly unusual for African-Americans to vote at the same rate as they did in 2008. In some key races, in states with large minority populations, lowered levels of minority voting could be a critical determinant to the outcome.

12:32 [Comment From tim: ] Do the polls accurately reflect the relative turnout of Democrats, GOP and Independents?

12:33 Michael McDonald: Pollsters try as best they can. They try to forecast who is likely to vote by various methods that are not consistent across polling firms. So, this is as much as art as a science. There are a number of factors that may further affect the partisan composition of polls, such as if people are interviewed by live interviewers or automatically or whether or not cell phones are interviewed.

12:34 [Comment From Katy Steinmetz: ] When Republican pundits like Karl Rove predict gains of 60 or so seats in the House, does that help or hurt them (in terms of making Republicans complacent and driving Democrats to the polls)?

12:36 Michael McDonald: One of the big questions in this election is the relative effects of enthusiasm versus voter mobilization. Republicans are hoping the enthusiasm gap will help them to victory, while Democrats are banking on their organization to GOTV. So far as I can tell, neither side has a distinct edge yet.

12:37 [Comment From Casey (DC): ] I have a question about the margin of error. Let's say candidate A has been consistently polling a point above candidate B, with a 3% margin of error. Is the fact that A has beaten B in all recent polls statistically significant, even with a margin of error? That is, wouldn't it be misleading to claim that A and B are tied (due to the margin of error) since A has been beating B consistently in the same poll, even by just a point? If they're truly tied, wouldn't we see A beating B half the time and B beating A the other half??

12:41 Michael McDonald: To quickly review, the MoE is determined by the number of respondents to a survey, and it does not linearly decline as the number of respondents increases [it declines by a factor of 1/sqrt(# of respondents)]. Suppose you have two polls with 1,000 persons each, then. You may treat them as two polls of 2,000. So, the MoE would decline, but it may not decline as much as you might think. Further, as I describe above, different pollsters use different techniques to create likely voter screens (and many other survey issues), so the polls themselves are not entirely comparable.

12:42 Michael McDonald: As a general rule, I like averaging polls and looking at trends among the same pollster. If all the polls are moving in the same direction, I tend to believe that a trend is real and not just statistical noise.

12:43 Michael McDonald: Finally (I know a long answer!): never trust a single poll. Unfortunately, the media tend to report their poll, or a surprising poll, and disregard others.

12:43 [Comment From Jazziette Devereaux (AZ): ] Do you think that early voting can prevent voters from learning facts about candidates that are presented in the feverish last two weeks of the election?

12:44 Michael McDonald: My favorite example is a John Edwards voter who was upset in 2008 that he had cast his vote before he dropped out of the race.

12:46 Michael McDonald: Early voting has certainly changed campaign dynamics. No longer can an opponent release the October surprise the last week. Their opponent gets a chance to respond. And it makes elections more expensive since campaigns need to be active throughout the entire election period. So, there are pluses and minuses.

12:46 [Comment From Mark, Greenbelt: ] Is it your feeling that early voting favors one party over another generally, or is it all case-by-case?

12:48 Michael McDonald: Prior to 2008, more Republicans voted early. In 2010, more Democrats voted early. So, far more Democrats are voting early in 2008, so it may be that 2008 was a watershed election for early voting. Still, in a state-by-state basis, Republicans tend to do better among early voters in states that require an excuse to vote an absentee ballot (early voting rates are much lower, too!).

12:48 [Comment From Rosemarie (NH): ] How do you think negative campaigning impacts turnout?

12:50 Michael McDonald: It used to be that people thought negative campaigning decreased turnout, but since then, numerous studies have shown it increases turnout. People are apt to be interested in slowing down and watching the accident on the side of the road. The media certainly enjoy covering the most negative campaigns, too.

12:50 [Comment From Malcolm, DC: ] Do you have any stats about early voting so far, and can you draw any conclusions?

12:50 Michael McDonald: They are here. So far, over 2 million people have already voted!

12:52 [Comment From Borys Ortega: ] How do you see the Obama support base (liberals, young people, etc) in terms of enthusiasm?

12:52 Seung Min Kim: And in addition to that, it seems like the White House and Democrats are doing a lot more outreach to young voters, with the MTV/BET town halls and the large rallies at universities. Do you think that will have any effect, considering young people have a low turnout rate for midterm elections?

12:53 Michael McDonald: Since we began surveying, polls consistently show that young people, minorities, the poor and uneducated tend to vote at lower rates -- perhaps the most ironic thing about this election is that the people most affected by the economic downturn are the least likely to vote.

12:55 Michael McDonald: The Democrats need to counter the Republican enthusiasm by expanding the electorate. Their strategy is to do voter mobilization targeted at the low propensity midterm voters, like the youth. We will again have to see how effective the Democrat's mobilization will be compared to the Republican's enthusiasm.

12:55 [Comment From Rosemarie (NH): ] Has there been any correlation between the level and campaign spending (especially on advertising) and the results?

12:57 Michael McDonald: A funny statistic is that the more an incumbent spends, the worse they do. This is because they are spending to counter a threat from a viable challenger. This is why this is one of the most difficult questions to answer -- surprisingly. We do not know the marginal effect of another dollar spent because the other campaign is also spending money.

12:57 [Comment From Sally: ] There was a flap this week about Univision airing ads that seek to depress Hispanic voter turnout. How common is that practice?

12:59 Michael McDonald: Voter suppression targeted at minorities has a long and ignoble history in American politics. Generally, I think everyone should vote since democracy works best when its citizens are engaged. This particular episode may ultimately backfire since it may rile up Nevada Latinos in a campaign that has had many racial overtones.

1:00 [Comment From Drew C.: ] What's your evaluation of early vote-by-mail, vs. in-person voting? Are both being done well?

1:00 Michael McDonald: In 2008, approximately 500,000 mail ballots were rejected. These were people who thought they voted by their vote did not count.

1:02 Michael McDonald: Why does this happen? People do not follow the procedures properly -- the return the ballot in the wrong envelope, they do not sign the envelope, etc. I do like California's method of allowing voters to drop their ballots off on election day at their polling places. This allows poll workers to check that the voter followed procedures.

1:03 Michael McDonald: An advantage of in-person early voting is that these problems do not occur, and their is a chance for a voter and election administrators to fix any problems, such as a first time voter forgetting to bring mandatory ID.

1:03 [Comment From Nick, DC: ] Along the lines of what Sally was asking about, we hear a lot about voter suppression, and we also hear a lot about alleged voter fraud. Are either of them really very common? And are voting machines more subject to tampering than the old paper ballots?

1:05 Michael McDonald: Vote fraud -- someone actually intentionally casting an illegal vote -- is extremely rare. When it happens, it tend to happen among mail ballots. Although there are potentially security flaws with electronic machines, there is little evidence of tampering (of course, that may be because there is no way to check!).

1:06 [Comment From Peter G.: ] If you could make one voting reform nationwide to make the system work better, what would it be?

1:08 Michael McDonald: Universal voter registration. There is plenty of evidence that our system of requiring voters to register themselves does not work well. Just about every other advanced democracy registers their own voters. In states with Election Day registration, turnout is much higher (5 to 7 percentage points). So, not only would we increase turnout, but we would get third party organizations like the now-defunct ACORN our of the business of registering voters.

1:09 [Comment From Ben Griffiths: ] You said incumbents fare worse when they spend more. is the same true of challengers? I'm thinking this year of Sharron Angle's $14 million in Nevada. Is it even possible to spend that much in the time left?

1:10 Michael McDonald: The spending in Nevada is tremendous. Despite that likely about half the voters will have already voted by Election Day -- Nevada is a high turnout state -- I think the campaigns will continue spending to the end since the election appears to be going down to the wire.

1:11 Michael McDonald: As for your first question, there is a point where a challenger spends enough money to become viable, which triggers a response in spending from an incumbent.

1:11 [Comment From Rosemarie (NH): ] Is overall turnout higher in states that allow early voting?

1:13 Michael McDonald: I testified to the U.S. Senate that I believe the answer is yes, though the turnout effects are a modest one to two points in presidential elections. There are studies that find big turnout increases in non-presidential elections. Indeed, the very first usage of all-mail ballot elections was in local jurisdictions that needed to meet threshold turnout rates to pass local bond measures.

1:13 [Comment From Nancy: ] Which party gets the early bragging rights?

1:14 Michael McDonald: So far, Democrats have jack rabbited out of the starting line in most states where we have a clue of which party's registrants are voting early. Nevada is an interesting departure, where Democrats have a lead, but it is not as great as 2008.

1:14 [Comment From Carson P.: ] One of your Brookings colleagues - Bill Galston - has proposed the idea of mandatory voting, like they do in Australia. Could that work here? Is it a good idea?

1:15 Michael McDonald: Good luck trying to convince Americans that they will be fined if they do not vote. I do not think this is practical for the U.S., though it obviously increases turnout.

1:15 [Comment From Don: ] What are the prospects for Lisa Murkowski come election day? Do you think she has a realistic shot at beating Joe Miler?

1:16 Michael McDonald: The polls are close. I think it is anyone's game in Alaska. In fact, I wrote an op-ed with my co-author Seth McKee, which was published at Politico today.

1:16 [Comment From Greg Dworkin: ] Thanks for all your hard work on this! How 'institutionalized' do you see the early vote by the parties? are they incorporating early voting as part of GOTV or are they behind in realizing so many people vote early these days?

1:19 Michael McDonald: As I document with another co-author -- Tom Schaller -- the Democrats created a strong early voting GOTV organization in 2008, and Republicans only belatedly tried to mobilize their voters to vote early. We will have to see how well Democrats will roll over this organization to 2010. Eventually, I believe the Republicans will have to build as strong as an organization. Early voting allows a party to mobilize over a longer period of time.

1:19 [Comment From Mary H. Hager, PhD: ] Please clarify polling methodology. Who is reached; who is not. The role of technology (email, telephonic, etc.) in defining the subpopulation for polling data.

1:20 Michael McDonald: That is quite a tall order for a chat :) We discuss many of these issues on Pollster -- which now has a home in the politics section of Huffington Post (I also blog at Pollster).

1:21 [Comment From Don (Ossning, NY): ] Does Christine O'Donnell have a chance in Delaware?

1:21 Michael McDonald: No.

1:21 [Comment From Geoffrey V.: ] Over the years, I've gotten the sense that campaigns are moving faster, that there are more undecided voters and that many voters don't make up their minds until the last minute. Is that supported by the data?

1:23 Michael McDonald: Well, given the tremendous increase of early voting from 20% in 2004 to 30% in 2008, it appears that many voters are making up their minds sooner, not later. Still, in a midterm election, the rule has generally been that people tend to hold their ballots longer because they do not have as much information about the candidates. It appears that this election may break that previous pattern.

1:23 [Comment From Joan: ] Do you think compromise will come back to Congress after the midterms?

1:24 Michael McDonald: No. Historically, we still have a ways to go before we reach the highest levels of polarization in our politics observed in the late 19th century.

1:24 [Comment From Al Amundson, ND: ] It seems sometimes that pollsters are "surprised" by wins. Polling is so scientific these days, and there's so much money behind it -- how often does a real surprise actually occur?

1:25 Michael McDonald: Surprises more often occur in primary elections, where the electorate is difficult to predict and information is fluid. I do not expect we will be greatly surprised by the 2010 election outcomes.

1:25 [Comment From Rosemarie (NH): ] Do you think that even with early voting, people just want to get it over with, go in to vote and make up their minds while they read the ballot?

1:27 Michael McDonald: Want the campaigns to stop bugging you? Vote early if you can. Election officials track who has a mail ballot in hand and who has voted, and they share this information with the campaigns.

1:27 [Comment From Bert C.: ] How is Sharron Angle still holding on in Nevada even after her numerous public gaffes?

1:27 Michael McDonald: The economic crisis has hit Nevada VERY hard (and I don't often write in caps!).

1:28 [Comment From Peggy: ] What role do you think the Tea Party will play in future elections? Is this a one-off movement or something more serious in American politics?

1:30 Michael McDonald: Shameless plug: see my Politico op-ed. A conservative/populist movement is nothing new to American politics. At least in the short run, I expect the tea party to continue to be influential, especially if Republicans take the House -- I do not expect they will take the Senate as of today. Victories will further embolden the activists.

1:31 Michael McDonald: Thanks to everyone for your questions. Sorry I could not answer them all!

1:31 Seung Min Kim: And that's it for today. Thanks for all the great questions as we count down the days until Election Day. And thanks to Michael for his insightful answers!

Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s write-in candidacy for reelection makes her the latest to join a growing number of prominent politicians who have shed political affiliations in the hopes of winning public office.

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist is running as an independent for the Senate, former Sen. Lincoln Chafee is running as an independent for Rhode Island governor, Mayor Michael Bloomberg became an independent to run New York City, and, of course, Sen. Joe Lieberman lost the 2006 Democratic Senate primary — but won in the general as an independent.

The trend of moderate independent candidates who have forsworn party affiliations is not new to U.S. politics. Since the Civil War, when the modern Republican Party was established to compete against the Democratic Party, minor party or unaffiliated candidates have won election to the House or Senate a total of 697 times. Of these, 89 percent of elected minor party candidates had voting records ideologically between the two major parties.

Despite the recent polarization of U.S. politics, history tells us that moderates make winners. Consider the Wisconsin Progressive Party. Its development has a familiar ring to today’s politics. Extremist elements flourished in the Republican Party during the Great Depression, growing out of our nation’s economic anxieties. GOP moderates responded by creating this Wisconsin group, focused on issues of reform and pragmatic governance.

It started when Wisconsin Gov. Philip La Follette ran for reelection in 1932 as the GOP nominee. He was heckled throughout his speeches by Republican ‘Stalwarts’ on his political right. They “had their Phil” and were angered by his policies of perceived higher taxes to support government spending. La Follette lost the Republican primary to Stalwart-backed Walter Kohler amid then-record turnout. Kohler lost to the Democrat in the general election.

La Follette is a famous political name. Gov. Philip La Follette and Sen. Robert La Follette Jr. were sons of the leading GOP politician, Sen. Robert La Follette Sr. Republican progressives had supported him for the party’s presidential nomination in 1912 and 1916. He eventually ran for president in 1924 — on his own Independent Progressive Party ticket. But while the father’s exploits are well-known, his sons’ reactions to Wisconsin’s political climate are more relevant to today’s politics.

Frustrated by the GOP extremists, the La Follette brothers created the Wisconsin Progressive Party, and they ran as party candidates when successfully elected governor and senator in 1934. Today’s independent candidates share a similar frustration with the ideological purists on their right and left. The extremists in the Democratic and Republican primary electorates are rejecting centrist candidates who might be better positioned to win general elections.

Consider the words of Crist when he declared his Independent candidacy. “If you want somebody on the right or you want somebody on the left,” Crist said, “you have the former speaker, Rubio, or the congressman, Meek. If you want somebody who has common sense, who puts the will of the people first, who wants to fight for the people first, now you've got Charlie Crist. You have a choice.”

With all the attention paid to the successes of Tea Party activists during the GOP primaries, it is easy to forget that these are not like general elections. Primary voters tend to be more ideologically extreme. So these Republican primary voters may end up denying the party several general election victories.

For example, many political observers agree that Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del.), a moderate, would have been a stronger candidate for Senate than the GOP primary victor, Christine O’Donnell, his tea party-backed opponent. General elections have traditionally been won in the center -- where most voters still reside.

Minor party successes usually arise when the two major political parties become ideologically polarized. Moderates can usually find a seat under a big tent, but when party activists are unable to tolerate dissent, moderates are shut out and left to their own devices. So it isn’t surprising that strong candidates holding moderate positions realize they are electorally viable by abandoning their party and appealing to the center in general elections.

History tells us that conditions now are favorable for moderates like Chafee, Crist, Lieberman, and Murkowski. They step into a political vacuum at the center that the major parties created by moving to the political extremes. With room left for further polarization, this may be just the beginning of the rise of moderate independent candidates.

History also tells us the political party that first figures out how to recapture the middle -- and bring these candidates and their supporters into the fold -- is the one most likely to emerge as dominant.

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The drawing of legislative district boundaries is among the most self-interested and least transparent systems in American democratic governance. All too often, formal redistricting authorities maintain their control by imposing high barriers to transparency and to public participation in the process. Reform advocates believe that opening that process to the public could lead to different outcomes and better representation.

On January 20, Brookings hosted a briefing to review how redistricting in the 50 states will unfold in the months ahead and present a number of state-based initiatives designed to increase transparency and public participation in redistricting. Brookings Nonresident Senior Fellows Micah Altman and Michael McDonald unveiled open source mapping software which enables users to create and submit their own plans, based on current census and historical election data, to redistricting authorities and to disseminate them widely. Such alternative public maps could offer viable input to the formal redistricting process.

After each presentation, participants took audience questions.

Learn more about Michael McDonald's Public Mapping Project »

Video

• Injecting Transparency into Redistricting
• GOP Could Re-Draw 145 Districts
• Towards a New Political Culture
• Coalitions Pushing for Greater Transparency
• The Public Mapping Project

Audio

• Toward Public Participation in Redistricting
• Toward Public Participation in Redistricting
• Toward Public Participation in Redistricting

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• Download Micah Altman's and Michael McDonald's Presentation (.pdf)
• Download Tim Storey's Presentation (.pdf)
• Download Clare Dyer's Presentation (.pdf)
• Download the Redistricting Authority in the States Factsheet (.pdf)
• Download Micah Altman's and Michael McDonald's Report (.pdf)
• Download the District Builder Summary (.pdf)

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Now that the 2010 Census is concluded, states will begin the process of reapportionment—re-drawing voting district lines to account for population shifts. Nonresident Senior Fellow Michael McDonald says redistricting has been fraught with controversy and corruption since the nation’s early days, when the first “gerrymandered” district was drawn. Two states—Arizona and California—have instituted redistricting commissions intended to insulate the process from political shenanigans, but politicians everywhere will continue to work the system to gain electoral advantage and the best chance of re-election for themselves and their parties.

Subscribe to audio and video podcasts of Brookings events and policy research »

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• States Attempt to Reform Redistricting

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Full video archive of this event is also available via C-SPAN here.

The drawing of legislative district boundaries is arguably among the most self-interested and least transparent systems in American democracy. Every ten years redistricting authorities, usually state legislatures, redraw congressional and legislative lines in accordance with Census reapportionment and population shifts within states. Most state redistricting authorities are in the midst of their redistricting process, while others have already finished redrawing their state and congressional boundaries. A number of initiatives—from public mapping competitions to independent shadow commissions—have been launched to open up the process to the public during this round of redrawing district lines.

On July 18, Brookings hosted a panel of experts to review the results coming in from the states and discuss how the rest of the process is likely to unfold. Panelists focused on evidence of partisan or bipartisan gerrymandering, the outcome of transparency and public mapping initiatives, and minority redistricting.

After the panel discussion, participants took audience questions.

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Thousands of Americans are already casting their votes in the 2012 elections through a variety of vote-by-mail and in-person balloting that allows citizens to cast their votes well in advance of November 6. From military personnel posted overseas to absentee voters, these early voting opportunities give voters the opportunity to make their voices heard even when they can’t stand in line on Election Day. However, there are pitfalls in the process.

Expert Michael McDonald says that while a great deal of attention has been focused on voter fraud, the untold story is that during the last presidential election, some 400,000 absentee ballots were discarded as improperly submitted. How can early voters make sure their voices are heard? What effect will absentee and other early voting programs have in this election year? On September 26, McDonald took your questions and comments in a live web chat moderated by Vivyan Tran of POLITICO.

12:30 Vivyan Tran: Welcome everyone, let's get started.

12:30 Michael McDonald: Early voting was 30% of all votes cast in the 2008 election. My expectation is that 35% of all votes in 2012 will be cast prior to Election Day. In some states, the volume will be much higher. In the battleground state of CO, about 85% of the votes will be cast early; 70% in FL; and 45% in Ohio.

What does it all mean? Hopefully I will be able to answer that question in today's chat!

12:30 Comment from JMC: At what point do you think that the in person early voters become less partisan types eager to cast their vote and more "regular folks" who would be more swayed by debate performances, TV ads, and the like?

12:30 Comment from Jason: 400,000 absentee ballots were discarded in 2008? How?

12:30 Michael McDonald: Reasons why election officials reject mail ballots: unsigned, envelope not sealed, multiple ballots in one envelope, etc. 400K rejected in 2008 does not include the higher rate of spoiled ballots that typically occur with paper mail ballots compared to electronic recording devices used in polling places. Moral: make sure you follow closely the proper procedures to cast your mail ballot!

12:31 Michael McDonald: @JMC: If they are going to vote early, most people wait until the week prior to the election. Those voting now have already made up their minds. But, the polls indicate many people have already done so, so maybe we see more early voting in 2012 as a consequence.

12:31 Comment from User: It was my understanding that absentee ballots are never counted unless the race is incredibly close in a particular state? Is that true - or do the rules for that vary by state?

12:32 Michael McDonald: No, all early votes are counted. What may not be counted, depending on state law and if the election is close enough for them to matter, are provisional ballots.

12:33 Comment from Damion: The blurb here says 400,000 early votes were discarded. Shouldn't the board of elections be reprimanded for that? Who was at fault and what consequences were there?

12:33: Michael McDonald: No, these are ballots "discarded" because people did not follow proper procedures and they must be rejected by law.

12:33 Comment from Shirley: Can you Facebook your vote in?

12:34 Michael McDonald: No. However, election officials are transmitting ballots electronically to overseas citizens and military voters. Voters must print the ballot, fill it out, sign it, scan it, and return. There are ways for these voters to verify that their ballot was received.

12:35 Comment from Karen K: What kind of impact could these discards have on the 2012 election?

12:36 Michael McDonald: Difficult to say. More Republicans vote by mail (excluding all mail ballot states). But, we don't know much about those who fail to follow the procedures. They might be less educated or elderly, and thus might counter the overall trend we see in mail balloting. Who knows?

12:37 Comment from User: This is the first I've heard of so many early votes getting discarded. Is this an issue people are addressing in a serious way?

12:38 Michael McDonald: Unfortunately, we are too focused on issues like voter fraud, which are low occurrence events, when there are many more important ways in which votes are lost in the system. Hopefully we can get the message out so fewer people disenfranchise themselves.

12:39 Comment from Anonymous: What do we know so far about absentee votes for 2012? Can we tell who they're leaning toward in specific states and how?

12:40 Michael McDonald: It's a little early :) yet. One of the major changes from 2008 is that the overseas civilian ballots -- a population that leans D -- was sent ballots much earlier this year than in 2008. We'll get a much better sense of the state of play in the two weeks prior to the election.

12:41 Michael McDonald: That said, the number of absentee ballot requests is running about the same as in 2008, if not a little higher, suggesting that the early vote will indeed be higher than in 2008, and perhaps that overall turnout will be on par with 2008, too.

12:41 Comment from Leslie: So, how can I ensure my early ballot is counted? There are so many rules and regulations, I'm never sure I've brought/filled out the paperwork.

12:42 Michael McDonald: Many states and localities allow people to check on-line the status of their ballot. Do a search for your local election official's webpage to see if that is available to you.

12:42 Comment from Daryyl: Can you define provisional ballots then?

12:44 Michael McDonald: Provisional ballots are required under federal law to allow people to vote if there is a problem with their voter registration. Election officials work after the election to resolve the situation.

If you vote in-person early, then you can resolve provisional ballot situations much sooner, which is good.

12:45 Michael McDonald: Some states use provisional ballots for other purposes: e.g., for a person who does not have the required id or to manage a change in voter registration address. One of the untold stories of this cycle is that FL will manage change of reg. address through provisional ballots. OH does so, and 200K provisionals were cast in 2008. Expect 300K in FL, which may mean we will not know the outcome in FL until weeks after the election. Can you say 2000?

12:45 Comment from Mark, Greenbelt: Is early voting a new phenomenon, or is it increasing? It seems we should make it easier for people to vote when they can.

12:46 Michael McDonald: We are seeing more people vote early, particularly in states that offer the option. However, only MD changed its law from 2008 to allow in-person early voting. OH is sending absentee ballot requests to all registered voters, which is not a change in law, but a change in procedure that is expected to significantly increase early voting there.

12:47 Comment from Jennifer S. : Why do we vote on Tuesday? It seems inconvenient. Wouldn't more people vote if we did it on the weekend? Or over a period of days that offered both morning and evening hours?

12:48 Michael McDonald: We used to have early voting in the US! Back at the Founding, elections were held over several days to allow people living in remote areas to get to the courthouse (the polling place back in the day) to vote. In the mid-1840s, the federal gov't set the current single day for voting because -- what else? -- claims of vote fraud. That people could vote more than once.

12:49 Comment from Winston: What percentage of the U.S. population votes? And, if you could make one change that would increase voting in the U.S. what would be?

12:50 Michael McDonald: I also calculate turnout rates for the country for the media and academics. 62.2% of the eligible voters cast a ballot that counted in 2008. If I were to wave a magic wand, I would have election day registration. California just adopted it yesterday (but starting 2015). States with EDR have +5-7 percentage points of turnout.

12:50 Comment from Bernie S.: One of your colleagues at Brookings, Bill Galston, has suggested that we make voting mandatory, as they do in Australia. What do you think of that idea? Is it even possible here?

12:51 Michael McDonald: That will never happen in a county that values individual freedom so deeply as the US. Fun fact: a few years back, AZ voters rejected a ballot initiative to have voters entered into a lottery.

12:51 Comment from James: If early voting becomes more and more common, shouldn't candidates start campaigning earlier?

12:53 Michael McDonald: They do. In fact, you will see the presidential candidates visit battleground states that have in-person early voting at the start of the period. In 2008, you could see how early voting increased in places where Obama held rallies.

12:53 Comment from Devi P. : What are the factors that drive turnout? How do we get people to the polls? And what can you say about the "microtargeting" strategies the political parties are using to get their voters out?

12:54 Michael McDonald: One of the major ways in which elections have changed in the past decade is that campaigns now place more effort into voter contacts. Over 50% of people reported a contact in 2008. These contacts are known to increase turnout rates by upwards of 10 percentage points. Even contacts from Facebook friends seems to matter!

12:54 Comment from Wendy P, Ohio: What's your position on electronic voting? Can't every voting machine be hacked? Isn't plain old paper balloting more secure?

12:56 Michael McDonald: I went to Caltech, so I am sensitive to the potential for hacking. That said, I encourage experimentation so that we can build a better system. There are counties that do hold electronic elections!

12:56 Comment from Leslie: 400,000 seems like a lot - does this actually have impact on the electoral votes, and if so, should we be worried in this coming election that a lengthy recall may occur?

12:57 Michael McDonald: It could affect the outcome. So please spread the word through your networks. This is the #1 way in which votes are lost in the system!

12:57 Comment from JVotes: Perhaps we should microtarget with ballot issues. Many Americans seem disappointed with the two candidates we have to choose from.

12:58 Michael McDonald: Actually, ballot issues are known to increase turnout. But only a small amount in a presidential election, about 1 percentage point. People vote in the main show: the presidential election.

12:58 Michael McDonald: Interesting aside on that: early voting seems to have a small turnout effect in presidential election, but a larger effect in state and local elections.

12:58 Comment from Jaime Ravenet: Is there a reading of the new voter ID requirements (in at least the 9 most contested states) that does not constitute an "abridgment" of citizens' voting rights?

1:00 Michael McDonald: Perhaps under state constitutions. But the US Supreme Court has already ruled in favor of Indiana's id law. Still, that does not mean that lawyers will try to find some way under federal law to overturn them. TX was blocked because their law was determined to be discriminatory, per Sec. 5 of the Voting Rights Act.

1:00 Vivyan Tran: Thanks for the questions everyone, see you next week!

Analysis of dozens of publicly created redistricting plans shows that map-making technology can improve political representation and detect a gerrymander.  In 2012, President Obama won the vote in Ohio by three percentage points, while Republicans held a 13-to-5 majority in Ohio’s delegation to the U.S. House. After redistricting in 2013, Republicans held 12 of Ohio’s House seats while Democrats held four. As is typical in these races, few were competitive; the average margin of victory was 32 points. Is this simply a result of demography, the need to create a majority-minority district, and the constraints traditional redistricting principles impose on election lines—or did the legislature intend to create a gerrymander?

Crowd-Sourced Redistricting Maps

In the Ohio elections, we have a new source of information that opens a window into the legislature’s choice: Large numbers of publicly created redistricting plans.

During the last round of redistricting, across the country thousands of people in over a dozen states created hundreds of legal redistricting plans. Advances in information technology and the engagement of grassroots reform groups made these changes possible. To promote these efforts we created the DistrictBuilder open redistricting platform and many of these groups used this tool to create their plans.

Over the last several years, we have used the trove of information produced by public redistricting to gain insight into the politics of representation. In previous work that analyzed public redistricting in Virginia^[1], and in Florida^[2], we discovered that members of the public are capable of creating legal redistricting plans that outperform those maps created by legislatures in a number of ways.

Public redistricting in Ohio shows something new—the likely motives of the legislature. This can be seen through using information visualization methods to show the ways in which redistricting goals can be balanced (or traded-off) in Ohio , revealing the particular trade-offs made by the legislature.

The figure below, from our new research paper^[3], shows 21 plots—each of which compares legislative and publicly-created plans using a pair of scores—altogether covering seven different traditional and representational criteria. A tiny ‘A’ shows the adopted plan. The top-right corner of each mini-plot shows the best theoretically possible score. When examined by itself, the legislative plan meets a few criteria: it minimizes population deviation, creates an expected majority-minority seat, and creates a substantial majority of districts that would theoretically be competitive in an open-seat race in which the statewide vote was evenly split.

Figure 1: Pairwise Congressional Score Comparisons (Scatterplots) - Standardized Scores

In previous rounds of redistricting, empirical analysis would stop here—unless experts were called in to draw alternative plans in litigation. However, the large number of public plans now available allows us to see other options, plans the legislature could readily have created had it desired to do so. Comparison of the adopted plans and public plans reveal the weakness of the legislature’s choice. Members of the public were able to find plans that soundly beat the legislative plan on almost every pair of criteria, including competitive districts.

So why was the adopted plan chosen? Information visualization can help here, as well, but we need to add another criterion—partisan advantage:

Pareto Frontier: Standard Criteria vs. Democratic Surplus

When we visualize the number of expected Democratic seats that was likely to result from each plan, and compare this to the other score, we can see that the adopted plan is the best at something— producing Republican seats.

Was Ohio gerrymandered? Applying our proposed gerrymandering detection method, the adopted plans stands in high contrast to the public sample of plans, even if the overall competition scoring formula is slightly biased towards the Democrats, as strongly biased towards the Republicans on any measure of partisan fairness. Moreover analyzing the tradeoffs among redistricting criteria illuminate empirically demonstrates what is often suspected, but is typically impossible to demonstrate—that had the legislature desired to improve any good-government criterion—it could have done so, simply by sacrificing some partisan advantage. In light of this new body of evidence, the political intent of the legislature is clearly displayed.

However, when politics and technology mix, beware of Kranzberg’s first law: “Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.”^[4] Indeed there is an unexpected and hopeful lesson on reform revealed by the public participation that was enabled by new technology. The public plans show that, in Ohio, it is possible to improve the expected competitiveness, and to improve compliance with traditional districting principles such as county integrity, without threatening majority-minority districts simply by reducing partisan advantage—this is a tradeoff we should gladly accept.

Policies and initiatives to promote U.S. manufacturing would be well advised to take a value chain perspective of this economic sector. Currently, our economic statistics do not include pre-production services to manufacturing such as research and development or design or post-production services such as repair and maintenance or sales. Yet, manufacturing firms invest heavily in these services because they are crucial to the success of their business. 

In a new paper, Kate Whitefoot and Walter Valdivia offer a fresh insight into the sector’s labor composition and trends by examining employment in manufacturing from a value chain perspective. While the manufacturing sector shed millions of jobs in the 2002-2010 period—a period that included the Great Recession—employment in upstream services expanded 26 percent for market analysis, 13 percent for research and development, and 23 percent for design and technical services. Average wages for these services increased over 10 percent in that period. Going forward, this pattern is likely to be repeated. Technical occupations, particularly in upstream segments are expected to have the largest increases in employment and wages.

In light of the findings, the authors offer the following recommendations: 

• Federal manufacturing policy: Expand PCAST’s Advanced Manufacturing Partnership recommendations—specifically, for developing a national system of certifications for production skills and establishing a national apprenticeship program for skilled trades in manufacturing—to include jobs outside the factory such as those in research and development, design and technical services, and market analysis.
• Higher education: Institutions of higher education should consider some adjustment to their curriculum with a long view of the coming changes to high-skill occupations, particularly with respect to problem identification and the management of uncertainty in highly automated work environments. In addition, universities and colleges should disseminate information among prospect and current students about occupations where the largest gains of employment and higher wage premiums are expected. 
• Improve national statistics: Supplement the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) with data that permits tracking the entire value chain, including the development of a demand-based classification system. This initiative could benefit from adding survey questions to replicate the data collection of countries with a Value Added Tax—without introducing the tax, that is—allowing in this manner a more accurate estimation of the value added by each participant in a production network.

Whitefoot and Valdivia stress that any collective efforts aimed at invigorating manufacturing must seize the opportunities throughout the entire value chain including upstream and downstream services to production.

Downloads

• Download the paper

Universities cash handsome awards on infringement cases

Last month, a jury found Apple Inc. guilty of infringing a patent of the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW) and ordered the tech giant to pay $234 million. The university scored a big financial victory, but this hardly meant any gain for the good name of the university.

The plaintiffs argued successfully in court that Apple infringed their 1998 patent on a predictor circuit that greatly improved the efficiency of microchips used in the popular iPhone 5s, 6, and 6 Plus. Apple first responded by challenging the validity of the patent, but the US Patent and Trademark Office ruled in favor of the university. Apple plans to appeal, but the appellate court is not likely to reverse the lower court’s decision.

This is not the first time this university has asserted its patents rights (UW sued Intel in 2008 for this exact same patent and reportedly settled for $110 million). Nor is this the first time universities in general have taken infringers to court. Prominent cases in recent memory include Boston University, which sued several companies for infringement of a patent for blue light-emitting diodes and settled out of court with most of them, and Carnegie Mellon, who was awarded $237 million by the federal appellate court on its infringement suit against Marvell, a semiconductor company, for its use of an enhanced detector of data in hard drives called Kavcic detectors.

Means not always aligned with aims in patent law

When university inventions emerge from federal research grants, universities can also sue the infringers, but in those cases they would be testing the accepted interpretations of current patent law.

The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 extended patent law and gave small-business and universities the right to take title to patents from federal grants—later it was amended to extend the right to all federal grantees regardless of size. The ostensible aim of this act is to “to promote the utilization of inventions arising from federally supported research or development.” Under the law, a condition for universities to keep their exclusive rights on those patents is that they or their licensees take “effective steps to achieve practical application” of those patents. Bayh-Dole was not designed to create a new source of revenue for universities. If companies are effectively using university technologies, Bayh-Dole’s purpose is served without need of the patents.

To understand this point, consider a counterfactual: What if the text of Bayh-Dole had been originally composed to grant a conditional right to patents for federal research grantees? The condition could be stated like this: “This policy seeks to promote the commercialization of federally funded research and to this end it will use the patent system. Grantees may take title to patents if and only if other mechanisms for disseminating and developing those inventions into useful applications prove unsuccessful.” Under this imagined text, the universities could still take title to patents on their inventions if they or the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office were not aware that the technologies were being used in manufactures.

But no court would find their infringement claim meritorious if the accused companies could demonstrate that, absent of willful infringement, they had in fact used the technologies covered by university patents in their commercial products. In this case, other mechanisms for disseminating and developing the technologies would have proven successful indeed. The reality that Bayh-Dole did not mandate such a contingent assignation of rights creates a contradiction between its aims and the means chosen to advance those aims for the subset of patents that were already in use by industry.

I should clarify that the predictor circuit, the blue-light diode, and the Kavcic detectors are not in that subset of patents. But even in they were, there is no indication that the University of Wisconsin-Madison would have exercised its patent rights with any less vigor just because the original research was funded by public funds. Today, it is fully expected from universities to aggressively assert their patent rights regardless of the source of funding for the original research.

You can have an answer for every question and still lose the debate

It is this litigious attitude that puts off many observers. While the law may very well allow universities to be litigious, universities could still refuse to exercise their rights under circumstances in which those rights are not easily reconciled with the public mission of the university.

Universities administrators, tech transfer personnel, and particularly the legal teams winning infringement cases have legitimate reasons to wonder why universities are publicly scorned. After all, they are acting within the law and simply protecting their patent rights; they are doing what any rational person would do. They may be really surprised when critics accuse universities of becoming allies of patent trolls, or of aiding and abetting their actions. Such accusations are unwarranted. Trolls are truants; the universities are venerable institutions. Patent trolls would exploit the ambiguities of patent law and the burdens of due process to their own benefit and to the detriment of truly productive businesses and persons. In stark contrast, universities are long established partners of democracy, respected beyond ideological divides for their abundant contributions to society.

The critics may not be fully considering the intricacies of patent law. Or they may forget that universities are in need of additional revenue—higher education has not seen public financial support increase in recent years, with federal grants roughly stagnated and state funding falling drastically in some states. Critics may also ignore that revenues collected from licensing of patents, favorable court rulings, and out-of-court settlements, are to a large extent (usually two thirds of the total) plugged back into the research enterprise.

University attorneys may have an answer for every point that critics raise, but the overall concern of critics should not be dismissed outright. Given that many if not most university patents can be traced back to research funded by tax dollars, there is a legitimate reason for observers to expect universities to manage their patents with a degree of restraint. There is also a legitimate reason for public disappointment when universities do not seem to endeavor to balance the tensions between their rights and duties.

Substantive steps to improve the universities’ public image

Universities can become more responsive to public expectations about their character not only by promoting their good work, but also by taking substantive steps to correct misperceptions.

First, when universities discover a case of proven infringement, they should take companies to court as a measure of last resort. If a particular company refuses to negotiate in good faith and an infringement case ends up in court, the universities should be prepared to demonstrate to the court of public opinion that they have tried, with sufficient insistence and time, to negotiate a license and even made concessions in pricing the license. In the case of the predictor circuit patent, it seems that the University of Wisconsin-Madison tried to license the technology and Apple refused, but the university would be in a much better position if it could demonstrate that the licensing deals offered to Apple would have turned to be far less expensive for the tech company.

Second, universities would be well advised not to join any efforts to lobby Congress for stronger patent protection. At least two reasons substantiate this suggestion. First, as a matter of principle, the dogmatic belief that without patents there is no innovation is wrong. Second, as a matter of material interest, universities as a group do not have a financial interest in patenting. It’s worth elaborating these points a bit more.

Neither historians nor social science researchers have settled the question about the net effects of patents on innovation. While there is evidence of social benefits from patent-based innovation, there is also evidence of social costs associated with patent-monopolies, and even more evidence of momentous innovations that required no patents. What’s more, the net social benefit varies across industries and over time. Research shows economic areas in which patents do spur innovation and economic sectors where it actually hinders them. This research explains, for instance, why some computer and Internet giants lobby Congress in the opposite direction to the biotech and big pharma industries. Rigorous industrial surveys of the 1980s and 1990s found that companies in most economic sectors did not use patents as their primary tool to protect their R&D investments.

Yet patenting has increased rapidly over the past four decades. This increase includes industries that once were uninterested in patents. Economic analyses have shown that this new patenting is a business strategy against patent litigation. Companies are building patent portfolios as a defensive strategy, not because they are innovating more. The university’s public position on patent policy should acknowledge that the debate on the impact of patents on innovation is not settled and that this impact cannot be observed in the aggregate, but must be considered in the context of each specific economic sector, industry, or even market. From this vantage point, universities could then turn up or down the intensity with which they negotiate licenses and pursue compensation for infringement. Universities would better assert their commitment to their public mission if they compute on a case by case basis the balance between social benefits and costs for each of its controversial patents.

As to the material interest in patents, it is understandable that some patent attorneys or the biotech lobby publicly espouse the dogma of patents, that there is no innovation without patents. After all, their livelihood depends on it. However, research universities as a group do not have any significant financial interest in stronger patent protection. As I have shown in a previous Brookings paper, the vast majority of research universities earn very little from their patent portfolios and about 87% of tech transfer offices operate in the red. Universities as a group receive so little income from licensing and asserting their patents relative to the generous federal support (below 3%), that if the federal government were to declare that grant reviewers should give a preference to universities that do not patent, all research universities would stop the practice at once. It is true that a few universities (like the University of Wisconsin-Madison) raise significant revenue from their patent portfolio, and they will continue to do so regardless of public protestations. But the majority of universities do not have a material interest in patenting.

Time to get it right on anti-troll legislation

Last year, the House of Representative passed legislation closing loopholes and introducing disincentives for patent trolls. Just as mirror legislation was about to be considered in the Senate, Sen. Patrick Leahy withdrew it from the Judiciary Committee. It was reported that Sen. Harry Reid forced the hand of Mr. Leahy to kill the bill in committee. In the public sphere, the shrewd lobbying efforts to derail the bill were perceived to be pro-troll interests. The lobbying came from pharmaceutical companies, biotech companies, patent attorneys, and, to the surprise of everyone, universities.  Little wonder that critics overreacted and suggested universities were in partnership with trolls: even if they were wrong, these accusations stung.

University associations took that position out of a sincere belief in the dogma of patents and out of fear that the proposed anti-troll legislation limited their ability to sue patent infringers. However, their convictions stand on shaky ground and their material interests are not those of the vast majority of universities.

A reversal of that position is not only possible, but would be timely. When anti-troll legislation is again introduced in Congress, universities should distance themselves from efforts to protect the policy status quo that so benefits patent trolls. It is not altogether improbable that Congress sees fit to exempt universities from some of the requirements that the law would impose. University associations could show Congress the merit of such exemptions in consideration of the universities’ constant and significant contributions to states, regions, and the nation. However, no such concessions could ever be expected if the universities continue to place themselves in the company of those who profit from patent management.

No asset is more valuable for universities than their prestige. It is the ample recognition of their value in society that guarantees tax dollars will continue to flow into universities. While acting legally to protect their patent rights, universities are nevertheless toying with their own legitimacy. Let those universities that stand to gain from litigation act in their self-interest, but do not let them speak for all universities. When university associations advocate for stronger patent protection, they do the majority of universities a disservice. These associations should better represent the interests of all their members by advocating a more neutral position about patent reform, by publicly praising universities’ restraint on patent litigation, and by promoting a culture and readiness in technology transfer offices to appraise each patent not by its market value but by its social value. At the same time, the majority of universities that obtain neither private nor social benefits from patenting should press their political representatives to adopt a more balanced approach to policy advocacy, lest they squander the reputation of the entire university system.

This post originally appeared on the Center for Technology Innovation’s TechTank blog.

Universities cash handsome awards on infringement cases

This October, a jury found Apple Inc. guilty of infringing a patent of the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW) and ordered the tech giant to pay $234 million. The university scored a big financial victory, but this hardly meant any gain for the good name of the university.

The plaintiffs argued successfully in court that Apple infringed their 1998 patent on a predictor circuit that greatly improved the efficiency of microchips used in the popular iPhone 5s, 6, and 6 Plus. Apple first responded by challenging the validity of the patent, but the US Patent and Trademark Office ruled in favor of the university. Apple plans to appeal, but the appellate court is not likely to reverse the lower court’s decision.

This is not the first time this university has asserted its patents rights (UW sued Intel in 2008 for this exact same patent and reportedly settled for $110 million). Nor is this the first time universities in general have taken infringers to court. Prominent cases in recent memory include Boston University, which sued several companies for infringement of a patent for blue light-emitting diodes and settled out of court with most of them, and Carnegie Mellon, who was awarded $237 million by the federal appellate court on its infringement suit against Marvell, a semiconductor company, for its use of an enhanced detector of data in hard drives called Kavcic detectors.

Means not always aligned with aims in patent law

When university patented inventions emerge from federal research grants, infringement suits test the accepted interpretations of current patent law.

The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 extended patent law and gave small-business and universities the right to take title to patents from federal research grants—later it was amended to extend the right to all federal grantees regardless of size. The ostensible aim of this act is to “to promote the utilization of inventions arising from federally supported research or development.” Under the law, a condition for universities (or any other government research performers) to keep their exclusive rights on those patents is that they or their licensees take “effective steps to achieve practical application” of those patents. Bayh-Dole was not designed to create a new source of revenue for universities. If companies are effectively using university technologies, Bayh-Dole’s purpose is served without need of patents.

To understand this point, consider a counterfactual: What if the text of Bayh-Dole had been originally composed to grant a conditional right to patents for federal research grantees? The condition could be stated like this: “This policy seeks to promote the commercialization of federally funded research and to this end it will use the patent system. Grantees may take title to patents if and only if other mechanisms for disseminating and developing those inventions into useful applications prove unsuccessful.” Under this imagined text, the universities could still take title to patents on their inventions if they or the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office were not aware that the technologies were being used in manufactures.

But no court would find their infringement claim meritorious if the accused companies could demonstrate that, absent of willful infringement, they had in fact used the technologies covered by university patents in their commercial products. In this case, other mechanisms for disseminating and developing the technologies would have proven successful indeed. The reality that Bayh-Dole did not mandate such a contingent assignation of rights creates a contradiction between its aims and the means chosen to advance those aims for the subset of patents that were already in use by industry.

I should remark that UW’s predictor circuit resulted from grants from NSF and DARPA and there is no indication that the university exercised its patent rights with any less vigor just because the original research was funded by public funds. In fact, it is fully expected from universities to aggressively assert their patent rights regardless of the source of funding for the original research.

You can have an answer for every question and still lose the debate

It is this litigious attitude that puts off many observers. While the law may very well allow universities to be litigious, universities could still refuse to exercise their rights under circumstances in which those rights are not easily reconciled with the public mission of the university.

Universities administrators, tech transfer personnel, and particularly the legal teams winning infringement cases have legitimate reasons to wonder why universities are publicly scorned. After all, they are acting within the law and simply protecting their patent rights; they are doing what any rational person would do. They may be really surprised when critics accuse universities of becoming allies of patent trolls, or of aiding and abetting their actions. Such accusations are unwarranted. Trolls are truants; the universities are venerable institutions. Patent trolls would exploit the ambiguities of patent law and the burdens of due process to their own benefit and to the detriment of truly productive businesses and persons. In stark contrast, universities are long established partners of democracy, respected beyond ideological divides for their abundant contributions to society.

The critics may not be fully considering the intricacies of patent law. Or they may forget that universities are in need of additional revenue—higher education has not seen public financial support increase in recent years, with federal grants roughly stagnated and state funding falling drastically in some states. Critics may also ignore that revenues collected from licensing of patents, favorable court rulings, and out-of-court settlements, are to a large extent (usually two thirds of the total) plugged back into the research enterprise.

University attorneys may have an answer for every point that critics raise, but the overall concern of critics should not be dismissed outright. Given that many if not most university patents can be traced back to research funded by tax dollars, there is a legitimate reason for observers to expect universities to manage their patents with a degree of restraint. There is also a legitimate reason for public disappointment when universities do not seem to endeavor to balance the tensions between their rights and duties.

Substantive steps to improve the universities’ public image

Universities can become more responsive to public expectations about their character not only by promoting their good work, but also by taking substantive steps to correct misperceptions.

First, when universities discover a case of proven infringement, they should take companies to court as a measure of last resort. If a particular company refuses to negotiate in good faith and an infringement case ends up in court, the universities should be prepared to demonstrate to the court of public opinion that they have tried, with sufficient insistence and time, to negotiate a license and even made concessions in pricing the license. In the case of the predictor circuit patent, it seems that the University of Wisconsin-Madison tried to license the technology and Apple refused, but the university would be in a much better position if it could demonstrate that the licensing deals offered to Apple would have turned to be far less expensive for the tech company.

Second, universities would be well advised not to join any efforts to lobby Congress for stronger patent protection. At least two reasons substantiate this suggestion. First, as a matter of principle, the dogmatic belief that without patents there is no innovation is wrong. Second, as a matter of material interest, universities as a group do not have a financial interest in patenting. It’s worth elaborating these points a bit more.

Neither historians nor social science researchers have settled the question about the net effects of patents on innovation. While there is evidence of social benefits from patent-based innovation, there is also evidence of social costs associated with patent-monopolies, and even more evidence of momentous innovations that required no patents. What’s more, the net social benefit varies across industries and over time. Research shows economic areas in which patents do spur innovation and economic sectors where it actually hinders them. This research explains, for instance, why some computer and Internet giants lobby Congress in the opposite direction to the biotech and big pharma industries. Rigorous industrial surveys of the 1980s and 1990s found that companies in most economic sectors did not use patents as their primary tool to protect their R&D investments.

Yet patenting has increased rapidly over the past four decades. This increase includes industries that once were uninterested in patents. Economic analyses have shown that this new patenting is a business strategy against patent litigation. Companies are building patent portfolios as a defensive strategy, not because they are innovating more. The university’s public position on patent policy should acknowledge that the debate on the impact of patents on innovation is not settled and that this impact cannot be observed in the aggregate, but must be considered in the context of each specific economic sector, industry, or even market. From this vantage point, universities could then turn up or down the intensity with which they negotiate licenses and pursue compensation for infringement. Universities would better assert their commitment to their public mission if they compute on a case by case basis the balance between social benefits and costs for each of its controversial patents.

As to the material interest in patents, it is understandable that some patent attorneys or the biotech lobby publicly espouse the dogma of patents, that there is no innovation without patents. After all, their livelihood depends on it. However, research universities as a group do not have any significant financial interest in stronger patent protection. As I have shown in a previous Brookings paper, the vast majority of research universities earn very little from their patent portfolios and about 87% of tech transfer offices operate in the red. Universities as a group receive so little income from licensing and asserting their patents relative to the generous federal support (below 3%), that if the federal government were to declare that grant reviewers should give a preference to universities that do not patent, all research universities would stop the practice at once. It is true that a few universities (like the University of Wisconsin-Madison) raise significant revenue from their patent portfolio, and they will continue to do so regardless of public protestations. But the majority of universities do not have a material interest in patenting.

Time to get it right on anti-troll legislation

Last year, the House of Representative passed legislation closing loopholes and introducing disincentives for patent trolls. Just as mirror legislation was about to be considered in the Senate, Sen. Patrick Leahy withdrew it from the Judiciary Committee. It was reported that Sen. Harry Reid forced the hand of Mr. Leahy to kill the bill in committee. In the public sphere, the shrewd lobbying efforts to derail the bill were perceived to be pro-troll interests. The lobbying came from pharmaceutical companies, biotech companies, patent attorneys, and, to the surprise of everyone, universities.  Little wonder that critics overreacted and suggested universities were in partnership with trolls: even if they were wrong, these accusations stung.

University associations took that position out of a sincere belief in the dogma of patents and out of fear that the proposed anti-troll legislation limited the universities’ ability to sue patent infringers. However, their convictions stand on shaky ground and only a few universities sue for infringement. In taking that policy position, university associations are representing neither the interests nor the beliefs of the vast majority of universities.

A reversal of that position is not only possible, but would be timely. When anti-troll legislation is again introduced in Congress, universities should distance themselves from efforts to protect the policy status quo that so benefits patent trolls. It is not altogether improbable that Congress sees fit to exempt universities from some of the requirements that the law would impose. University associations could show Congress the merit of such exemptions in consideration of the universities’ constant and significant contributions to states, regions, and the nation. However, no such concessions could ever be expected if the universities continue to place themselves in the company of those who profit from patent management.

No asset is more valuable for universities than their prestige. It is the ample recognition of their value in society that guarantees tax dollars will continue to flow into universities. While acting legally to protect their patent rights, universities are nevertheless toying with their own legitimacy. Let those universities that stand to gain from litigation act in their self-interest, but do not let them speak for all universities. When university associations advocate for stronger patent protection, they do the majority of universities a disservice. These associations should better represent the interests of all their members by advocating a more neutral position about patent reform, by publicly praising universities’ restraint on patent litigation, and by promoting a culture and readiness in technology transfer offices to appraise each patent not by its market value but by its social value. At the same time, the majority of universities that obtain neither private nor social benefits from patenting should press their political representatives to adopt a more balanced approach to policy advocacy, lest they squander the reputation of the entire university system.

Editor's Note: The post was corrected to state that UW’s predictor circuit did originate from federally funded research.

Tuesday night, President Obama presented four critical questions about the future of America and I should like to comment on the first two:

1. How to produce equal opportunity, emphasizing economic security for all.
2. In his words, “how do we make technology work for us, and not against us,” particularly to meet the “urgent challenges” of our days.

The challenges the president wishes to meet by means of technological development are climate change and cancer. Let’s consider cancer first. There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical: this is not the first presidential war against cancer, President Nixon tried that once and, alas cancer still has the upper hand. It is ironic that Mr. Obama chose this particular ”moonshot”, because not only are the technical aspects of cancer more uncertain than those of space travel, political support for the project is vastly different and we cannot be sure that even another Democrat in the White House would see this project to fruition. In effect, neither Mr. Obama nor his appointed “mission control”, Vice President Biden, have time in office to see fruits from their efforts on this front.

The second challenge the president wishes to address with technology is problematic beyond technical and economic feasibility (producing renewable energy at competitive prices); curbing carbon emissions has become politically intractable. The president correctly suggested that being leaders in the renewable energy markets of the future makes perfect business sense, even for global warming skeptics. Nevertheless, markets have a political economy, and current energy giants have a material interest in not allowing any changes to the rules that so favor them (including significant federal subsidies). Only when the costs of exploration, extraction, and distribution of fossil fuels rise above those of renewable sources, we can expect policy changes enabling an energy transition to become feasible. When renewables are competitive on a large scale, it is not very likely that their production will be controlled by new industrial players. Such is the political economy of free markets. What’s more, progressives should be wary of standard solutions that would raise the cost of energy (such as a tax on carbon emissions), because low income families are quite sensitive to energy prices; the cost of electricity, gas, and transportation is a far larger proportion of their income than that of their wealthier neighbors.

It’s odd that the president proposes technological solutions to challenges that call for a political solution. Again, in saying this, I’m allowing for the assumption that the technical side is manageable, which is not necessarily a sound assumption to make. The technical and economic complexity of these problems should only compound political hurdles. If I’m skeptical that technological fixes would curb carbon emissions or cure cancer, I am simply vexed by the president’s answer to the question on economic opportunity and security: expand the safety net. It is not that it wouldn’t work; it worked wonders creating prosperity and enlarging the middle-class in the post-World War II period. The problem is that enacting welfare state policies promises to be a hard political battle that, even if won, could result in pyrrhic victories. The greatest achievement of Mr. Obama expanding the safety net was, of course, the Affordable Care Act. But his policy success came at a very high cost: a majority of the voters have questions about the legitimacy of that policy. Even its eponymous name, Obamacare, was coined as a term of derision. It is bizarre that opposition to this reform is often found amidst people who benefit from it. We can blame the systematic campaign against it in every electoral contest, the legal subterfuges brought up to dismantle it (that ACA survived severely bruised), and the AM radio vitriol, but even controlling for the dirty war on healthcare reform, passing such as monumental legislation strictly across party lines has made it the lighting rod of distrust in government.

Progressives are free to try to increase economic opportunity following the welfare state textbook. They will meet the same opposition that Mr. Obama encountered. However, where progressives and conservatives could agree is about increasing opportunities for entrepreneurs, and nothing gives an edge to free enterprise more than innovation. Market competition is the selection mechanism by which an elite of enterprises rises from a legion created any given year; this elite, equipped with a new productive platform, can arm-wrestle markets from the old guard of incumbents. This is not the only way innovation takes place: monopolies and cartels can produce innovation, but with different outcomes. In competitive markets, innovation is the instrument of product differentiation; therefore, it improves quality and cuts consumer prices. In monopolistic markets, innovation also takes place, but generally as a monopolist’s effort to raise barriers to entry and secure high profits. Innovation can take place preserving social protections to the employees of the new industries, or it can undermine job security of its labor force (a concern with the sharing economy). These different modes of innovation are a function of the institutions that govern innovation, including industrial organization, labor and consumer protections.

What the President did not mention is that question two can answer question one: technological development can improve economic opportunity and security, and that is likely to be more politically feasible than addressing the challenges of climate change and cancer. Shaping the institutions that govern innovative activity to favor modes of innovation that benefit a broad base of society is an achievable goal, and could indeed be a standard by which his and future administrations are measured. This is so because these are not the province of the welfare state. They are policy domains that have historically enjoyed bipartisan consensus (such as federal R&D funding, private R&D tax credits) or low contestation (support for small business, tech transfer, loan guarantees).

As Mr. Obama himself suggested, technology can be indeed be made to work for us, all of us.

The promise of geoengineering is placing average global temperature under human control, and is thus considered a powerful instrument for the international community to deal with global warming. While great energy has been devoted to learning more about the natural systems that it would affect, questions of political nature have received far less consideration. Taking as a given that regional effects will be asymmetric, the nations of the world will only give their consent to deploying this technology if they can be given assurances of a fair compensation mechanism, something like an insurance policy. The question of compensation reveals that the politics of geoengineering are far more difficult than the technical aspects.

What is Geoengineering?

In June 1991, Mount Pinatubo exploded, throwing a massive amount of volcanic sulfate aerosols into the high skies. The resulting cloud dispersed over weeks throughout the planet and cooled its temperature on average 0.5° Celsius over the next two years. If this kind of natural phenomenon could be replicated and controlled, the possibility of engineering the Earth’s climate is then within reach.

Spraying aerosols in the stratosphere is one method of solar radiation management (SRM), a class of climate engineering that focuses on increasing the albedo, i.e. reflectivity, of the planet’s atmosphere. Other SRM methods include brightening clouds by increasing their content of sea salt. A second class of geo-engineering efforts focuses on carbon removal from the atmosphere and includes carbon sequestration (burying it deep underground) and increasing land or marine vegetation. Of all these methods, SRM is appealing for its effectiveness and low costs; a recent study put the cost at about $5 to $8 billion per year.¹

Not only is SRM relatively inexpensive, but we already have the technological pieces that assembled properly would inject the skies with particles that reflect sunlight back into space. For instance, a fleet of modified Boeing 747s could deliver the necessary payload. Advocates of geoengineering are not too concerned about developing the technology to effect SRM, but about its likely consequences, not only in terms of slowing global warming but the effects on regional weather. And there lies the difficult question for geoengineering: the effects of SRM are likely to be unequally distributed across nations.

Here is one example of these asymmetries: Julia Pongratz and colleagues at the department of Global Ecology of the Carnegie Institution for Science estimated a net increase in yields of wheat, corn, and rice from SRM modified weather. However, the study also found a redistributive effect with equatorial countries experiencing lower yields.² We can then expect that equatorial countries will demand fair compensation to sign on the deployment of SRM, which leads to two problems: how to calculate compensation, and how to agree on a compensation mechanism.

The calculus of compensation

What should be the basis for fair compensation? One view of fairness could be that, every year, all economic gains derived from SRM are pooled together and distributed evenly among the regions or countries that experience economic losses.

If the system pools gains from SRM and distributes them in proportion to losses, questions about the balance will only be asked in years in which gains and losses are about the same. But if losses are far greater than the gains; then this would be a form of insurance that cannot underwrite some of the incidents it intends to cover. People will not buy such an insurance policy; which is to say, some countries will not authorize SRM deployment. In the reverse, if the pool has a large balance left after paying out compensations, then winners of SRM will demand lower compensation taxes.

Further complicating the problem is the question of how to separate gains or losses that can be attributed to SRM from regional weather fluctuations. Separating the SRM effect could easily become an intractable problem because regional weather patterns are themselves affected by SRM.  For instance, any year that El Niño is particularly strong, the uncertainty about the net effect of SRM will increase exponentially because it could affect the severity of the oceanic oscillation itself. Science can reduce uncertainty but only to a certain degree, because the better we understand nature, the more we understand the contingency of natural systems. We can expect better explanations of natural phenomena from science, but it would be unfair to ask science to reduce greater understanding to a hard figure that we can plug into our compensation equation.

Still, greater complexity arises when separating SRM effects from policy effects at the local and regional level. Some countries will surely organize better than others to manage this change, and preparation will be a factor in determining the magnitude of gains or losses. Inherent to the problem of estimating gains and losses from SRM is the inescapable subjective element of assessing preparation. 

The politics of compensation

Advocates of geoengineering tell us that their advocacy is not about deploying SRM; rather, it is about better understanding the scientific facts before we even consider deployment. It’s tempting to believe that the accumulating science on SRM effects would be helpful. But when we consider the factors I just described above, it is quite possible that more science will also crystalize the uncertainty about exact amounts of compensation. The calculus of gain or loss, or the difference between the reality and a counterfactual of what regions and countries will experience requires certainty, but science only yields irreducible uncertainty about nature.

The epistemic problems with estimating compensation are only to be compounded by the political contestation of those numbers. Even within the scientific community, different climate models will yield different results, and since economic compensation is derived from those models’ output, we can expect a serious contestation of the objectivity of the science of SRM impact estimation. Who should formulate the equation? Who should feed the numbers into it? A sure way to alienate scientists from the peoples of the world is to ask them to assert their cognitive authority over this calculus. 

What’s more, other parts of the compensation equation related to regional efforts to deal with SRM effect are inherently subjective. We should not forget the politics of asserting compensation commensurate to preparation effort; countries that experience low losses may also want compensation for their efforts preparing and coping with natural disasters.

Not only would a compensation equation be a sham, it would be unmanageable. Its legitimacy would always be in question. The calculus of compensation may seem a way to circumvent the impasses of politics and define fairness mathematically. Ironically, it is shot through with subjectivity; is truly a political exercise.

Can we do without compensation?

Technological innovations are similar to legislative acts, observed Langdon Winner.³ Technical choices of the earliest stage in technical design quickly “become strongly fixed in material equipment, economic investment, and social habit, [and] the original flexibility vanishes for all practical purposes once the initial commitments are made.” For that reason, he insisted, "the same careful attention one would give to the rules, roles, and relationships of politics must also be given to such things as the building of highways, the creation of television networks, and the tailoring of seeming insignificant features on new machines."

If technological change can be thought of as legislative change, we must consider how such a momentous technology as SRM can be deployed in a manner consonant with our democratic values. Engineering the planet’s weather is nothing short of passing an amendment to Planet Earth’s Constitution. One pesky clause in that constitutional amendment is a fair compensation scheme. It seems so small a clause in comparison to the extent of the intervention, the governance of deployment and consequences, and the international commitments to be made as a condition for deployment (such as emissions mitigation and adaptation to climate change). But in the short consideration afforded here, we get a glimpse of the intractable political problem of setting up a compensation scheme. And yet, if the clause were not approved by a majority of nations, a fair compensation scheme has little hope to be consonant with democratic aspirations.

¹McClellan, Justin, David W Keith, Jay Apt. 2012. Cost analysis of stratospheric albedo modification delivery systems. Environmental Research Letters 7(3): 1-8.

²Pongratz, Julia, D. B. Lobell, L. Cao, K. Caldeira. 2012. Nature Climate Change 2, 101–105.

³Winner, Langdon. 1980. Do artifacts have politics? Daedalus (109) 1: 121-136.

It has been hailed as the most significant discovery in biology since polymerase chain reaction allowed for the mass replication of DNA samples. CRISPR-Cas9 is an inexpensive and easy-to-use gene-editing method that promises applications ranging from medicine to industrial agriculture to biofuels. Currently, applications to treat leukemia, HIV, and cancer are under experimental development.¹ However, new technical solutions tend to be fraught with old problems, and in this case, ethical and legal questions loom large over the future.

Disagreements on ethics

The uptake of this method has been so fast that many scientists have started to worry about inadequate regulation of research and its unanticipated consequences.² Consider, for instance, the disagreement on research on human germ cells (eggs, sperm, or embryos) where an edited gene is passed onto offspring. Since the emergence of bioengineering applications in the 1970s, the scientific community has eschewed experiments to alter human germline and some governments have even banned them.³ The regulation regimes are expectedly not uniform: for instance, China bans the implantation of genetically modified embryos in women but not the research with embryos.

Last year, a group of Chinese researchers conducted gene-editing experiments on non-viable human zygotes (fertilized eggs) using CRISPR.⁴ News that these experiments were underway prompted a group of leading U.S. geneticists to meet in March 2015 in Napa, California, to begin a serious consideration of ethical and legal dimensions of CRISPR and called for a moratorium on research editing genes in human germline.⁵ Disregarding that call, the Chinese researchers published their results later in the year largely reporting a failure to precisely edit targeted genes without accidentally editing non-targets. CRISPR is not yet sufficiently precise.

CRISPR reignited an old debate on human germline research that is one of the central motivations (but surely not the only one) for an international summit on gene editing hosted by the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the U.K.'s Royal Society in December 2015. About 500 scientists as well as experts in the legal and ethical aspects of bioengineering attended.⁶ Rather than consensus, the meeting highlighted the significant contrasts among participants about the ethics of inquiry, and more generally, about the governance of science. Illustrative of these contrasts are the views of prominent geneticists Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health, and George Church, professor of genetics at Harvard. Collins argues that the “balance of the debate leans overwhelmingly against human germline engineering.” In turn, Church, while a signatory of the moratorium called by the Napa group, has nevertheless suggested reasons why CRISPR is shifting the balance in favor of lifting the ban on human germline experiments.⁷

The desire to speed up discovery of cures for heritable diseases is laudable. But tinkering with human germline is truly a human concern and cannot be presumed to be the exclusive jurisdictions of scientists, clinicians, or patients. All members of society have a stake in the evolution of CRISPR and must be part of the conversation about what kind of research should be permitted, what should be discouraged, and what disallowed. To relegate lay citizens to react to CRISPR applications—i.e. to vote with their wallets once applications hit the market—is to reduce their citizenship to consumer rights, and public participation to purchasing power.⁸ Yet, neither the NAS summit nor the earlier Napa meeting sought to solicit the perspectives of citizens, groups, and associations other than those already tuned in the CRISPR debates.⁹

The scientific community has a bond to the larger society in which it operates that in its most basic form is the bond of the scientist to her national community, is the notion that the scientist is a citizen of society before she is a denizen of science. This bond entails liberties and responsibilities that transcend the ethos and telos of science and, consequently, subordinates science to the social compact. It is worth recalling this old lesson from the history of science as we continue the public debate on gene editing. Scientists are free to hold specific moral views and prescriptions about the proper conduct of research and the ethical limits of that conduct, but they are not free to exclude the rest of society from weighing in on the debate with their own values and moral imaginations about what should be permitted and what should be banned in research. The governance of CRISPR is a question of collective choice that must be answered by means of democratic deliberation and, when irreconcilable differences arise, by the due process of democratic institutions.

Patent disputes

More heated than the ethical debate is the legal battle for key CRISPR patents that has embroiled prominent scientists involved in perfecting this method. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office initiated a formal contestation process, called interference, in March 2016 to adjudicate the dispute. The process is likely to take years and appeals are expected to extend further in time. Challenges are also expected to patents filed internationally, including those filed with the European Patent Office.

To put this dispute in perspective, it is instructive to consider the history of CRISPR authored by one of the celebrities in gene science, Eric Lander.¹⁰ This article ignited a controversy because it understated the role of one of the parties to the patent dispute (Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier), while casting the other party as truly culminating the development of this technology (Feng Zhang, who is affiliated to Lander’s Broad Institute). Some gene scientists accused Lander of tendentious inaccuracies and of trying to spin a story in a manner that favors the legal argument (and economic interest) of Zhang.

Ironically, the contentious article could be read as an argument against any particular claim to the CRISPR patents as it implicitly questions the fairness of granting exclusive rights to an invention. Lander tells the genesis of CRISPR that extends through a period of two decades and over various countries, where the protagonists are the many researchers who contributed to the cumulative knowledge in the ongoing development of the method. The very title of Lander’s piece, “The Heroes of CRISPR” highlights that the technology has not one but a plurality of authors.

A patent is a legal instrument that recognizes certain rights of the patent holder (individual, group, or organization) and at the same time denies those rights to everyone else, including those other contributors to the invention. Patent rights are thus arbitrary under the candle of history. I am not suggesting that the bureaucratic rules to grant a patent or to determine its validity are arbitrary; they have logical rationales anchored in practice and precedent. I am suggesting that in principle any exclusive assignation of rights that does not include the entire community responsible for the invention is arbitrary and thus unfair. The history of CRISPR highlights this old lesson from the history of technology: an invention does not belong to its patent holder, except in a court of law.

Some scientists may be willing to accept with resignation the unfair distribution of recognition granted by patents (or prizes like the Nobel) and find consolation in the fact that their contribution to science has real effects on people’s lives as it materializes in things like new therapies and drugs. Yet patents are also instrumental in distributing those real effects quite unevenly. Patents create monopolies that, selling their innovation at high prices, benefit only those who can afford them. The regular refrain to this charge is that without the promise of high profits, there would be no investments in innovation and no advances in life-saving medicine. What’s more, the biotech industry reminds us that start-ups will secure capital injections only if they have exclusive rights to the technologies they are developing. Yet, Editas Medicine, a biotech start-up that seeks to exploit commercial applications of CRISPR (Zhang is a stakeholder), was able to raise $94 million in its February 2016 initial public offering. That some of Editas’ key patents are disputed and were entering interference at USPTO was patently not a deterrent for those investors.

Towards a CRISPR democratic debate

Neither the governance of gene-editing research nor the management of CRISPR patents should be the exclusive responsibility of scientists. Yet, they do enjoy an advantage in public deliberations on gene editing that is derived from their technical competence and from the authority ascribed to them by society. They can use this advantage to close the public debate and monopolize its terms, or they could turn it into stewardship of a truly democratic debate about CRISPR.

The latter choice can benefit from three steps. A first step would be openness: a public willingness to consider and internalize public values that are not easily reconciled with research values. A second step would be self-restraint: publicly affirming a self-imposed ban on research with human germline and discouraging research practices that are contrary to received norms of prudence. A third useful step would be a public service orientation in the use of patents: scientists should pressure their universities, who hold title to their inventions, to preserve some degree of influence over research commercialization so that the dissemination and access to innovations is consonant with the noble aspirations of science and the public service mission of the university. Openness, self-restraint, and an orientation to service from scientists will go a long way to make of CRISPR a true servant of society and an instrument of democracy.

Other reading: See media coverage compiled by the National Academies of Sciences.

¹Nature: an authoritative and accessible primer. A more technical description of applications in Hsu, P. D. et al. 2014. Cell, 157(6): 1262–1278.

³More about ethical concerns on gene editing here: http://www.geneticsandsociety.org/article.php?id=8711

⁴Liang, P. et al. 2015. Protein & Cell, 6, 363–372

⁵Science: A prudent path forward for genomic engineering and germline gene modification.

⁶Nature: NAS Gene Editing Summit.

⁷While Collins and Church participated in the summit, their views quoted here are from StatNews.com: A debate: Should we edit the human germline. See also Sciencenews.org: Editing human germline cells sparks ethics debate.

⁸Hurlbut, J. B. 2015. Limits of Responsibility, Hastings Center Report, 45(5): 11-14.

⁹This point is forcefully made by Sheila Jasanoff and colleagues: CRISPR Democracy, 2015 Issues in S&T, 22(1).

¹⁰Lander, E. 2016. The Heroes of CRISPR. Cell, 164(1-2): 18-28.

Editor's Note: TechTakes is a new series that collects the diverse perspectives of scholars around the Brookings Institution on technology policy issues. This first post in the series features contributions from Scott Andes, Susan Hennessey, Adie Tomer, Walter Valdivia, Darrell M. West, and Niam Yaraghi on the Internet of Things.

In the coming years, the number of devices around the world connected to the Internet of Things (IoT) will grow rapidly. Sensors located in buildings, vehicles, appliances, and clothing will create enormous quantities of data for consumers, corporations, and governments to analyze. Maximizing the benefits of IoT will require thoughtful policies. Given that IoT policy cuts across many disciplines and levels of government, who should coordinate the development of new IoT platforms? How will we secure billions of connected devices from cyberattacks? Who will have access to the data created by these devices? Below, Brookings scholars contribute their individual perspectives on the policy challenges and opportunities associated with the Internet of Things.

The Internet of Things will be everywhere

Darrell M. West is vice president and director of Governance Studies and founding director of the Center for Technology Innovation.

Humans are lovable creatures, but prone to inefficiency, ineffectiveness, and distraction. They like to do other things when they are driving such as listening to music, talking on the phone, texting, or checking email. Judging from the frequency of accidents though, many individuals believe they are more effective at multi-tasking than is actually the case.

The reality of these all too human traits is encouraging a movement from communication between computers to communication between machines. Driverless cars soon will appear on the highways in large numbers, and not just as a demonstration project. Remote monitoring devices will transmit vital signs to health providers, who then can let people know if their blood pressure has spiked or heart rhythm has shifted in a dangerous direction. Sensors in appliances will let individuals know when they are running low on milk, bread, or cereal. Thermostats will adjust their energy settings to the times when people actually are in the house, thereby saving substantial amounts of money while also protecting natural resources.

With the coming rise of a 5G network, the Internet of Things will unleash high-speed devices and a fully connected society. Advanced digital devices will enable a wide range of new applications from energy and transportation to home security and healthcare. They will help humans manage the annoyances of daily lives such as traffic jams, not being able to find parking places, or keeping track of physical fitness. The widespread adoption of smart appliances, smart energy grids, resource management tools, and health sensors will improve how people connect with one another and their electronic devices. But they also will raise serious security, privacy, and policy issues.

Implications for surveillance

Susan Hennessey is Fellow in National Security in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. She is the Managing Editor of the Lawfare blog, which is devoted to sober and serious discussion of "Hard National Security Choices.”

As the debate over encryption and diminished law enforcement access to communications enters the public arena, some posit the growing Internet of Things as a solution to “Going Dark.” A recently released Harvard Berkman Center report, “Don’t Panic,” concludes in part that losses of communication content will be offset by the growth of IoT and networked sensors. It argues IoT provides “prime mechanisms for surveillance: alternative vectors for information-gathering that could more than fill many of the gaps left behind by sources that have gone dark – so much so that they raise troubling questions about how exposed to eavesdropping the general public is poised to become.”

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper agrees that IoT has some surveillance potential. He recently testified before Congress that “[i]n the future, intelligence services might use the IoT for identification, surveillance, monitoring, location tracking, and targeting for recruitment, or to gain access to networks or user credentials.”

But intelligence gathering in the Internet age is fundamentally about finding needles in haystacks – IoT is poised to add significantly more hay than needles. Law enforcement and the intelligence community will have to develop new methods to isolate and process the magnitude of information. And Congress and the courts will have to decide how laws should govern this type of access.

For now, the unanswered question remains: How many refrigerators does it take to catch a terrorist?

IoT governance

Scott Andes is a senior policy analyst and associate fellow at the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Initiative on Innovation and Placemaking, a part of the Centennial Scholar Initiative at the Brookings Institution.

As with many new technology platforms, the Internet of Things is often approached as revolutionary, not evolutionary technology. The refrain is that some scientific Rubicon has been crossed and the impact of IoT will come soon regardless of public policy. Instead, the role of policymakers is to ensure this new technology is leveraged within public infrastructure and doesn’t adversely affect national security or aggravate inequality. While these goals are clearly important, they all assume technological advances of IoT are staunchly within the realm of the private sector and do not justify policy intervention. However, as with almost all new technologies that catch the public’s eye—robotics, clean energy, autonomous cars, etc.—hyperbolic news reporting overstates the market readiness of these technologies, further lowering the perceived need of policy support.

The problem with this perspective is twofold. First, greater scientific breakthroughs are still needed. The current rate of improvement in processing power and data storage, miniaturization of devices, and more energy efficient sensors only begin to scratch the surface of IoT’s full potential. Advances within next-generation computational power, autonomous devices, and interoperable systems still require scientific breakthroughs and are nowhere near deployment. Second, even if the necessary technological advancements of IoT have been met, it’s not clear the U.S. economy will be the prime recipient of its economic value. Nations that lead in advanced manufacturing, like Germany, may already be better poised to export IoT-enabled products. Policymakers in the United States should view technological advancements in IoT as a global economic race that can be won through sound science policies. These should include: accelerating basic engineering research; helping that research reach the market; supporting entrepreneurs’ access to capital; and training a science and engineering-ready workforce that can scale up new technologies.

IoT will democratize innovation

Walter D. Valdivia is a fellow in the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings.

The Internet of Things could be a wonderful thing, but not in the way we imagine it.

Today, the debate is dominated by cheerleaders or worrywarts. But their perspectives are merely two sides of the same coin: technical questions about reliability of communications and operations, and questions about system security. Our public imagination about the future is being narrowly circumscribed by these questions. However, as the Internet of Things starts to become a thing—or multiples things, or a networked plurality—it is likely to intrude so intensely into our daily lives that alternative imaginations will emerge and will demand a hearing.

A compelling vision of the future is necessary to organize and coordinate the various market and political agents who will integrate IoT into society. Technological success is usually measured in terms set by the purveyor of that vision. Traditionally, this is a small group with a financial stake in technological development: the innovating industry. However, the intrusiveness and pervasiveness of the Internet of Things will prompt ordinary citizens to augment that vision. Citizen participation will deny any group a monopoly on that vision of the future. Such a development would be a true step in the direction of democratizing innovation. It could make IoT a wonderful thing indeed.

Applications of IoT for infrastructure

Adie Tomer is a fellow at the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program and a member of the Metropolitan Infrastructure Initiative.

The Internet of Things and the built environment are a natural fit. The built environment is essentially just a collection of physical objects—from sidewalks and streets to buildings and water pipes—that all need to be managed in some capacity. Today, we measure our shared use of those objects through antiquated analog or digital systems. Think of the electricity meter on a building, or a person manually counting pedestrians on a busy city street. Digital, Internet-connected sensors promise to modernize measurement, relaying a whole suit of indicators to centralized databases tweaked to make sense of such big data.

But let’s not fool ourselves. Simply outfitting cities and metro areas with more sensors won’t solve any of our pressing urban issues. Without governance frameworks to apply the data towards goals around transportation congestion, more efficient energy use, or reduced water waste, these sensors could be just another public investment that doesn’t lead to public benefit.

The real goal for IoT in the urban space, then, is to ensure our built environment supports broader economic, social, and environmental objectives. And that’s not a technology issue—that’s a question around leadership and agenda-setting.

Applications of IoT for health care

Niam Yaraghi is a fellow in the Brookings Institution's Center for Technology Innovation.

Health care is one of the most exciting application areas for IoT. Imagine that your Fitbit could determine if you fall, are seriously hurt, and need to be rushed to hospital. It automatically pings the closest ambulance and sends a brief summary of your medical status to the EMT personnel so that they can prepare for your emergency services even before they reach the scene. On the way, the ambulance will not need to use sirens to make way since the other autonomous vehicles have already received a notification about approaching ambulance and clear the way while the red lights automatically turn green. 

IoT will definitely improve the efficiency of health care services by reducing medical redundancies and errors. This dream will come true sooner than you think. However, if we do not appropriately address the privacy and security issues of healthcare data, then IoT can be our next nightmare. What if terrorist organizations (who are becoming increasingly technology savvy) find a way to hack into Fitbit and send wrong information to an EMT? Who owns our medical data? Can we prevent Fitbit from selling our health data to third parties? Given these concerns, I believe we should design a policy framework that encourages accountability and responsibility with regards to health data. The framework should precisely define who owns data; who can collect, store, mine and use it; and what penalties will be enforced if entities acted outside of this framework.

Even before the eruption of anti-Muslim rhetoric in the past several weeks, I had a privileged position from which to observe the deep current of Islamophobia that ran beneath the crust of mainstream politics over the fourteen years since 9/11. Because I work on Islamist extremism, my dad often forwards emails about Americans Muslims he receives from friends to ask if they are true. I don’t blame him for asking: they’re truly scary. Muslims imposing Sharia law over the objections of their fellow Americans. Muslims infiltrating the U.S. government to subvert it. And so on.

But as with most Internet rumors circulated over email, the vast majority of the scary reports aren’t true. Take a peek at the “25 Hottest Urban Legends” on the rumor-busting website Snopes and you’ll see what I mean. The 11th on the list is about Muslim passengers on an AirTran flight that attempted a dry run to bring down a plane (they didn’t). The 15th is about an American Muslim who oversees all U.S. immigration (she just coordinates special naturalization ceremonies). The underlying message is that American Muslims are not to be trusted because of their religion.

One reason these rumors have currency is that most Americans don’t know many of their Muslim neighbors. For all the worry of a Muslim takeover, there are only around 4 million in this country, a little over 1 percent of the total population. Most of them do not live in Republican strongholds, where they are most feared.

[A]s with most Internet rumors circulated over email, the vast majority of the scary reports aren’t true.

Of course, familiarity does not always lessen fears or tensions. But it does complicate easy stories about an unfamiliar culture and those who identify with it. For example, because I’ve worked on counterterrorism in the U.S. government, I’ve never bought the story that American Muslims are infiltrating the U.S. government to subvert it. I’ve simply met too many Muslims in the government working impossible hours to keep this country and its Constitution safe.

American Muslims have their own easy stories to tell about non-Muslims that could use some complicating. Several of my Muslim friends have been surprised at the number of non-Muslim strangers who’ve come up to them and voiced their support. They’re surprised, presumably, because they assume that most non-Muslims in this country agree with Trump's rhetoric, which they don’t.

Some American Muslims view Islamophobia a natural outgrowth of white American racism, religious bigotry, and xenophobia. That easy story may account for some Islamophobia but it ignores something major: actions by Muslims to deliberately set non-Muslims against them. Jihadist groups like al-Qaida and ISIS carry out attacks in this country to create popular backlash against Muslims in hopes of recruiting those who are angered by the backlash. 

Even though most Muslims reject the siren call of the jihadists, the backlash still leads some Muslims to expect the worst of nonbelievers and of the American government. Like the anti-Muslim rumor mill, they spread half-truths about Christian vigilante violence and government plots. For example, at least one prominent religious leader in the American Muslim community has insinuated that the San Bernardino attackers were patsies in a government conspiracy against Muslims. 

My hope is that we’ll all try to be a little less suspicious of one another’s motives and a little more suspicious of the easy stories we tell.

Since it’s the holiday season, I shall indulge in a wish for the New Year. My hope is that we’ll all try to be a little less suspicious of one another’s motives and a little more suspicious of the easy stories we tell. I know the wish is fanciful given the current political climate but I’ve been struck by the number of Americans—Muslim and non-Muslim—who have been willing to confront their biases over the past few weeks and see things from the other side. If our enemies succeed by eroding our empathy for one another, we will succeed by reinforcing and expanding it.

As President Obama prepares to give the final State of the Union address of his presidency tonight, he’s promised to stay away from the technocrat’s laundry list of to-do’s. Instead, he’s expected to deliver a speech that will remind his fellow citizens of their ability to “come together as one American family.” It’s going to be a tough sell, especially when the citizens are terrified of outsiders and suspicious of one another.

Most of the fear and paranoia revolves around the Islamic State group. Although the group poses far less of a threat to the United States than to our allies and friends in Europe and the Middle East, it is the sum of all fears in the minds of many Americans—an immigrant, terrorist, cyber, WMD, genocidal threat rolled into one. Its name alone can be invoked to indict Obama’s national security and immigration policies—substantive criticisms are unnecessary.

[T]he Islamic State group...is the sum of all fears in the minds of many Americans.

Most of those fears are overblown, but the president will want to tackle them each of them in his speech if he intends to calm fears and bring people together. He’ll explain why taking in refugees is not just living up to American values but also smart counterterrorism. He’ll showcase evidence that the military campaign against the Islamic State in the Middle East is bearing fruit. He’ll reassure Americans that the Islamic State can’t plant a skilled operative into this country and remind them that the best way to stop the unskilled lone wolf shooters inspired by the Islamic State is to close gun loop holes and monitor their behavior online before they act. He’ll demonstrate his commitment to blunting Islamic State recruitment, touting changes to how the government counters the Islamic State’s appeal online and in America’s big cities.

All of that is well and good, but it’s a bureaucrat’s (or think tanker’s) effort at reassuring the public. To truly succeed in mitigating America’s fears and bringing citizens together, our country’s leader has to acknowledge that their fears are real and explain what our enemies hope to gain by engendering them. While Americans’ fears may be overblown, they won’t be deflated by technocratic hot air.

Will McCants: ISIS-claimed attacks in Paris, Beirut, and Egypt indicate the organization wants to take the fight to its enemies abroad. One reason might be that all is not well in ISIS-land. The nascent state in Syria and Iraq has lost around 25 percent of its territory and tens of thousands of fighters in the year since America and its allies began to their campaign to defeat it. While the state still endures for now, it's under tremendous pressure because of the costs of ceaseless war.

To explain the troubles ISIS faces at home, we have invited a group of scholars to comment on its governance over the past years and speculate on what they might face in the year ahead. First was Mara Revkin, who examined how opinions towards ISIS have changed since it captured Mosul more than a year ago.

Next up is Aymenn al-Tamimi, a Jihad-Intel research fellow at the Middle East Forum, who argues that internal documents show increasing challenges for the Islamic State. 

Aymenn al-Tamimi: There are a variety of ways to assess Islamic State (or ISIS) governance over its territories. One angle involves trying to talk to residents living within ISIS-controlled lands, and indeed this is the primary line of evidence Mara Revkin relies on in her piece assessing ISIS administration.

While oral testimony may produce some interesting observations on ISIS governance, it is also beset with difficulties in reliability and corroboration. The ISIS system of rule is a totalitarian dictatorship, on the lookout for anyone who could be deemed to be collaborating with the outside world. As such, residents may be reluctant to criticize, out of fear that they could be accused of leaking information harmful to ISIS. That can get a person disappeared or publicly executed. 

Last year, when I was speaking with a friend living in the western Anbar town of Rawa, he initially said that most residents preferred life under ISIS: 

“We are not content like before but I and most of the people here prefer living under the shade of the Islamic State, as no soldier comes upon our lands, and now I assure you that all the people of Rawa will fight in one rank against the [Iraqi] army if it tries to advance an inch because the army won’t have mercy on anyone…and this is the truth…and I give you knowledge of the sentiment among most of the people who were persecuted by the army but had committed no crime or fault, but we only lack [national grid] electricity.” 

At first glance, his sentiments seem quite understandable. Harassment, mass arrests, and disappearances in prisons of Iraqi Sunnis by the Baghdad government’s security forces were common grievances—maybe they have more weight than loss of access to public services like the national electricity grid, from which most areas under IS control have now been cut off. 

Yet in a subsequent conversation, in which I inquired about any publications ISIS had distributed in his area, the fear of ISIS became very apparent: 

“Brother, you know why I am cautious in giving you information: because the Internet is being monitored. And I want to know what you will do with it and whether this thing will harm the Dawla [ISIS], because after God Almighty and Exalted is He, we don’t have anything besides the Islamic State, and I fear having a [negative] effect on them.” 

Another resident of Rawa refused to discuss anything about life in the town, with the same concern about Internet communication being monitored by ISIS. 

These examples offer a glimpse into the challenges of understanding ISIS administration through local testimony. How can we be sure the testimony is not compromised on account of fear? It is of course possible to find people critical of ISIS living within its territories: for instance, a relative in Mosul told me a year ago that 90 percent of the city’s inhabitants prefer life before ISIS, but said fear prevents them from expressing their true feelings. But how does one even verify that claim? 

Cracks in the system

With clear shortcomings in oral testimony, I prefer to focus instead on internal ISIS documents to understand the evolution in governance—as well as problems facing ISIS that we don’t see in the endless streams of propaganda. To be sure, this method also has limitations: though I have managed to compile hundreds of documents so far, they likely constitute only a small fraction of the whole cache. Only if the ISIS project collapses with loss of major strongholds like Raqqa and Mosul—and hopefully the capture of tens of thousands of documents—will we get a fuller picture. 

Even so, the documents unearthed so far yield a number of important insights. The ISIS bureaucracy is ostensibly comprehensive and impressive, but it is clear that as time progresses, the state project is facing challenges due to pressure from its enemies. 

Only if the ISIS project collapses with loss of major strongholds like Raqqa and Mosul—and hopefully the capture of tens of thousands of documents—will we get a fuller picture.

For example, in mid-2015, the agricultural department issued a general notification urging people to conserve grain stocks on account of the “economic war” being waged by the coalition against ISIS, indicating that agricultural output in ISIS territories was in trouble. In addition, while ISIS makes no secret of its appeals for medical personnel to come to the caliphate, internal documents show that brain-drain is also a problem: multiple ultimatums have been issued, calling for medical professionals to return to ISIS lands or risk having their property confiscated. 

While ISIS would like to cultivate a new generation of professionals, the only real existing institution is Mosul University, which practically remains open only to Iraqi students. ISIS closed some departments on the grounds of contravening its ideology, and even those that remain open cannot function, likely owing to the wider issue of brain drain.

Documents also show great concern about the anti-ISIS coalition’s ability to launch airstrikes on high-profile targets. Worried about data security, the ISIS leadership increasingly attempts to restrict all broadcasting of information to its own channels. It has warned fighters and commanders not to open social media accounts or use mobiles, and recently banned satellite television.

Cash rules everything

Finally, for all the criticisms of the anti-ISIS coalition’s strategies, it is clear that they have significantly dented the group’s financial revenues. The Iraqi government no longer pays salaries of workers living under ISIS rule, airstrikes have hit ISIS-owned assets in the oil industry, Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) have taken the key Syria-Turkey border point of Tel Abyad, and Turkey has tightened security on remaining border areas under ISIS control. 

As a result, ISIS has reduced expenditures and increased taxation on its populations. In Mosul, for instance, ISIS imposed all costs for printing textbooks on school students. From Raqqa province, a memo dating to November/December 2015 established a 50 percent pay cut for all fighters, regardless of rank. The latter pointed to “the exceptional circumstances” ISIS is facing (referring, no doubt, to financial troubles). This is particularly significant as a financial budget I obtained from Deir az-Zor province shows that military upkeep—primarily in the form of fighters’ salaries—can be reasonably estimated to account for two-thirds of ISIS expenditures. These pay cuts may exacerbate problems of military cohesion in ISIS’s ranks—evidenced by a month-long general amnesty issued in October 2015 for deserters, and the failures of mobilization efforts to stop the Assad regime and Iran from breaking the ISIS siege of Kweiris airbase in Aleppo province.

Bring the fight home

For all of these insights into internal challenges for the ISIS project, I deem the prospect of collapse from an internal revolt unlikely. It is evident that internal opponents of ISIS face a stifling environment, and no one to date has offered them an alternative model of governance. Any internal uprisings that do occur—such as the Sha’itat revolt in Deir az-Zor province back in 2014—have been put down with ruthless efficiency. From the economic side, the group’s financial difficulties are unlikely to translate into total collapse, as it’s impossible to completely seal off cash flow between ISIS and the outside world. 

All of this shows that it will be up to outside forces to take the fight against ISIS to its heartlands.

Will McCants: ISIS-claimed attacks in Paris, Beirut, and Egypt indicate the organization wants to take the fight to its enemies abroad. One reason might be that all is not well in ISIS-land. The nascent state in Syria and Iraq has lost around 25 percent of its territory and tens of thousands of fighters in the year since America and its allies began to their campaign to defeat it. While the state still endures for now, it's under tremendous pressure because of the costs of ceaseless war.

To explain the troubles ISIS faces at home, we have invited a group of scholars to comment on its governance over the past years and speculate on what they might face in the year ahead. First was Mara Revkin, who examined how opinions towards ISIS have changed since it captured Mosul more than a year ago.

Next up was Aymenn al-Tamimi, a Jihad-Intel research fellow at the Middle East Forum, who argued that internal documents show increasing challenges for the Islamic State. 

This time, we’ve asked Aaron Zelin, the Richard Borow Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, to weigh in with a historical perspective.

Aaron Zelin: Attempts by salafi-jihadis to create states or govern territory are not a new phenomenon. Even for the Islamic State (IS), this is its second attempt at establishing a state and governing territories it controls. What sets it apart this time is the level of planning, sophistication, and capabilities compared to ten years ago.

Unlike the prior pieces in this series, I hope to present a historical perspective on IS governance, since I do not think one can be separate from the other.

The first state

In October 2006—when the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) was declared—the leader of al-Qaida in the Land of Two Rivers (better known as AQI), Abu Ayyub al-Masri (Abu Hamza al-Muhajir) pledged allegiance to the new self-declared leader of the faithful, Abu ‘Umar al-Baghdadi. In a January 2007 book, ISI’s Shaykh ‘Uthman ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Tamimi explains the rationale for declaring the state. In it, he also outlines the state’s responsibilities for areas it controls: prosecuting criminals and sinners, implementation of the hudud (fixed punishments in the Qur’an and Hadith), mediating and resolving conflicts, providing security, distributing food and relief, and selling oil and gas. 

Although it called itself a state, the Islamic State of Iraq controlled only small amounts of territory, for limited periods of time—in no small part because of the American military occupation, but also due to insurgent and tribal competition for power. It attempted to show a veneer of legitimacy by establishing a cabinet of ministries in April 2007 and September 2009. Because of ISI’s limitations, it was nearly impossible to resolve conflicts, provide security, distribute food and relief, or sell oil and gas. Instead, it fell back on mostly only instituting hisba (moral policing) activities and targeting enemies as murtadin (apostates) and therefore legitimate to target and kill. Ten years ago, therefore, ISI did not live up to its own standards of governance excellence.

Ten years ago, therefore, ISI did not live up to its own standards of governance excellence.

ISI killed and kidnapped leaders from prior allies—such as the Islamic Army of Iraq, Ansar al-Sunnah, and other insurgent factions—because they were unwilling to pledge allegiance to al-Baghdadi. It required female residents to wear the niqab, burned down beauty salons and stores selling music, flogged individuals for drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes, and banned barbers’ use of electric razors. ISI also banned positioning certain fruits next to one another at markets out of concerns over sexual innuendo, as well as banned the local bread (samun) and the use of ice. In town after town, this precipitated what eventually became known as the tribal sahwa, or awakening. That, along with the U.S. military surge in Iraq, tactically defeated ISI by 2009.

Towards a second state

Since ISI was only tactically and not strategically defeated, it used the American drawdown of troops that ended in December 2011, Sunni grievances with the Nouri al-Maliki regime in Baghdad, and most importantly the battlefield next door in Syria to rebuild its infrastructure and capabilities. As I noted in March 2013, a month before it changed its name to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS): “Through sectarian rhetoric, [ISI] will use the Syrian fight to try and gain more recruits in Iraq and redeem itself for its lost opportunity last decade.” Indeed it did. This time proved much different than a decade earlier. It also had a provisional position paper that outlined how it sought to take over territory and govern.

Prior to the infighting that began in January 2014 between ISIS and revolutionary, Islamist, and other jihadi factions in Syria, there was an understanding among the different insurgent forces against the Assad regime. As a consequence, ISIS was able to embed itself within the broader anti-Assad coalition even if other factions were wary of it—unlike now, when IS has pariah status. From April 2013 to January 2014, ISIS’s main focus was to present itself in a positive light to the Syrian population through da’wa (missionary) forums and by providing services. It also conducted softer moral policing, such as burning cigarettes or confiscating alcohol. But similar to a decade ago, it also killed other leaders from Syrian insurgent factions, prompting backlash. ISIS was pushed out of Latakia, Idlib, and parts of Aleppo governorates between January and March 2014. 

This led to ISIS’s independent consolidation of territory farther to the east in the Raqqa governorate and parts of Dair al-Zour governorate. It is also when more harsh punishments began to appear, such as cutting off hands for robbery or crucifying alleged apostates. In this period, ISIS also sought to appear as a state-like entity, showing off its various administrative departments including its da’wa offices, shariah courts, religious schools, police stations, and local municipalities, among others. It was an uneven process across its proto-wilayat (provinces) until its June 2014 declaration of the Caliphate, when ISIS changed its name again—to IS.

The second state

Since then, based on my review of thousands of IS media releases, a pattern emerged in IS attempts to expand, take over new territory, and consolidate its control. IS’s systematizing, bureaucratizing, and formalizing its governance structures allow it to operate consistently and in parallel across its various wilayat. This governance model can equally be applied in its core territory of Iraq and Syria as well as various other provinces. It is far more advanced than its prior incarnations, let alone al-Qaida branches (the closest instance being al-Shabab in Somalia).

IS’s systematizing, bureaucratizing, and formalizing its governance structures allow it to operate consistently and in parallel across its various wilayat.

My research demonstrates that IS state-building exhibits two stages: pre- or partial territorial control and full territorial control. Within these two categories are five phases of establishing control: intelligence, military, da’wa, hisba (consumer protection and moral policing), and governance. Although hisba would generally be considered part of IS’s governance apparatus, I separated the two—this helps distinguish the level of advancement and sophistication associated with meting out justice, versus that associated with actual services, administration, and economic activity, since the former is easier to implement than the latter. More details with specifics and case studies can be found here.

When compared with its first state as ISI and its building toward a second state as ISIS, the post-June 2014 IS structures, plans, and implementation are far superior.

When compared with its first state as ISI and its building toward a second state as ISIS, the post-June 2014 IS structures, plans, and implementation are far superior. Further, depending on the date and the particular province, IS did live up to its own standards of governance. That’s not to legitimize it, but rather to understand it on its own terms. This increased efficacy illustrates the organization’s ability to learn from past experiences. It also suggests that IS may apply lessons learned as more of its governance plays out in areas outside of Iraq and Syria—especially in Libya, but possibly even in Yemen or Afghanistan in the future. New knowledge will sharpen IS’s thinking and continue its growth and evolution as well as shorten its learning curve.

Therefore, aspects of the IS model could shift in the future. Moreover, since the American-led airstrikes began, its capabilities have been slowly diminished. As a result, it is currently difficult to determine whether IS is living up to its standards anymore.

Moreover, since the American-led airstrikes began, its capabilities have been slowly diminished. As a result, it is currently difficult to determine whether IS is living up to its standards anymore.

Watch and learn

Similar to IS, al-Qaida is in the process of learning lessons from the governance experience of the ISI in the mid-2000s. It is also looking back on its first attempted cases of governance activities by its own branches in the past several years in Somalia, Yemen, Mali, and Syria. Unlike IS, al-Qaida is attempting to root itself into local insurgencies in Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Mali, and not play a monopolizing role (at least for now). The second governance attempt by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is still in its infancy, but its performance will provide more answers about the evolution in al-Qaida’s thinking on governance and how it differs from IS’s second governance attempt. 

The establishment of jihadi governance projects are a new normal. For now, it’s clear that IS has set a higher standard when compared to its earlier attempt a decade ago and to al-Qaida’s present governance. But the question going forward is whether either IS’s or al-Qaida’s models (or both) will be able to self-sustain in the long-term as they continue to incorporate lessons learned.

Will McCants: ISIS-claimed attacks in Paris, Beirut, and Egypt indicate the organization wants to take the fight to its enemies abroad. One reason might be that all is not well in ISIS-land. The nascent state in Syria and Iraq has lost around 25 percent of its territory and tens of thousands of fighters in the year since America and its allies began to their campaign to defeat it. While the state still endures for now, it's under tremendous pressure because of the costs of ceaseless war.

To explain the troubles ISIS faces at home, we have invited a group of scholars to comment on its governance over the past years and speculate on what they might face in the year ahead. First was Mara Revkin, who examined how opinions towards ISIS have changed since it captured Mosul more than a year ago. Then Aymenn al-Tamimi argued that internal documents show increasing challenges for the Islamic State. Next, Aaron Zelin weighed in with a historical perspective, analyzing the extent to which ISIS has lived up to its own standards of governance.

Now, we have Kamran Bokhari, a fellow with George Washington University's Program on Extremism, to argue that security—namely defending territory—is the foremost governance objective of ISIS in the short term.

Kamran Bokhari: Ascertaining the extent to which ISIS excels at governing requires, among other things, an understanding of its imperatives and capabilities. The most fundamental act of governance for any state is protecting its territory. With many of the world’s most powerful militaries now dedicating significant resources towards the Islamic State’s destruction, the group has its work cut out for it in this regard. Defending its current territorial holdings in Syria and Iraq (and expanding if and where possible) is the single most critical imperative for ISIS.

This is not to say that other aspects of governance, including those detailed by Mara Revkin, Aymenn al-Tamimi, and Aaron Zelin, are not priorities for ISIS. The polity erected by the transnational jihadist movement cannot hope to survive—much less expand—without the provision of essential services such as sanitation, utilities, healthcare, and education to its citizenry. However, ISIS can only focus so much on these functions when the areas it controls are under attack on multiple fronts. In the last few months, it has lost ground in certain areas—largely in Iraq—but its core turf in Syria remains intact. 

This resilience should sharpen the focus of U.S. and Western military and intelligence institutions. At present, analysts and policymakers focus too much on ISIS’s ideology and too little on its war-making tradecraft. Radicalization is necessary but not sufficient to produce violence—definitely not on the scale that ISIS has demonstrated. The geopolitical real estate directly under ISIS control in Syria and Iraq is about the size of the state of New York; if we include the swathes of land where it enjoys relative freedom of operation, it’s approximately as big as Great Britain. 

Defending such a wide expanse against ground assaults, airstrikes, special operations forces missions, as well as human and signals intelligence probes requires elaborate institutionalization. Aaron Zelin details how ISIS systematized bureaucratic structures between the fall of its first attempt at statehood (2006 to 2009) and its second incarnation (2011 to the present). During these periods, it crucially developed a multi-divisional conventional military and counter-intelligence. In addition to its primary need to defend its nascent state, the jihadist movement has spent most of its existence developing military and intelligence capabilities, which played a key role in its emergence as the most potent rebel force in post-Arab spring Syria. 

Where did ISIS leaders pick up their self-defense strategies? One answer is al-Qaida, though many analysts over-emphasize that linkage. ISIS leadership has also likely studied the rise and fall of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Run by the Afghan Taliban, the Emirate was the first and only contemporary jihadist movement to have established a state of any significance before ISIS. There are differences, of course. The Taliban emirate was based within the confines of the Afghan nation-state, and enjoyed active backing from Pakistan and other Gulf Arab states. Furthermore, ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has denounced the movement founded by Mullah Mohammed Omar as a “deviant” entity. However, the experiences of the Afghan Taliban from 1996 to 2001 offer very valuable lessons for ISIS—all the more since the latter’s caliphate rejects national boundaries and lacks state sponsorship. 

Security first

ISIS leaders fear losing their nascent state in the face of growing economic and military pressures. They seek to avoid, in particular, the circumstances that allowed for the collapse of the Taliban regime following the September 11 attacks. Many have asked why ISIS would engage in transcontinental attacks in the West if its primary aim is the preservation of its polity. As Shadi Hamid has discussed, ISIS likely does not view its terrorist attacks like the one in Paris as undermining its state. I would actually argue that ISIS sees a U.S. ground intervention as only helping its cause. What it fears is a more complex approach from the Americans involving Syrian boots on the ground. 

Thus in many ways, ISIS’s caliphate today faces circumstances similar to the ones that the Taliban emirate did in late 2001. The U.S.-led coalition against the Taliban launched airstrikes, while intelligence and special operations forces supported an anti-Taliban militia coalition, the proverbial “boots on the ground.” Fast-forward 15 years, and the battlespace that ISIS finds itself in—though much more complex—has the same basic configuration. The ISIS leadership is now vigorously searching for ways to endure airstrikes, block intelligence efforts, and thwart special operations missions designed to take out critical leadership and infrastructure. 

Perhaps most pressing is the need to prevent the emergence of a critical mass of Kurdish and/or rival jihadist militias to whom ISIS could potentially lose significant tracts of land. In Afghanistan, anti-Taliban militiamen with U.S. support were able to stage a comeback from their bases in northern Afghanistan near the Tajikistan border, sweeping through Kabul and even seizing the Taliban’s home turf of Kandahar. ISIS does not want to experience something similar to that, with Syrian rebel forces turning toward its territory in eastern Syria, especially now that they have run into serious problems in western parts of the county. There, regime forces backed by Russian aircraft are gaining the upper hand in critical places in Aleppo and Idlib provinces. U.S. strategy, for its part, seems to be focused not on the collapse of the Assad regime but rather in equipping rebel forces to take on ISIS. Some rebels may do so in the hope of garnering greater Western support. 

For these reasons, ISIS needs to ensure that both those in its own ranks as well as the people over whom it rules have little incentive to desert or rebel. Coercion helps, but only to a certain extent. The Afghan Taliban learned this lesson the hard way, when the very same population that had initially welcomed it as protectors against anarchy turned against the movement and were instrumental in the implosion of its state. This is why the ISIS regime will try to balance coercion and the provision of quality services (which Mara Revkin highlights). But as Aymenn al-Tamimi notes, financial constraints seriously limit the organization’s ability to sustain public support by providing essential services without having to resort to tax increases. 

Civilian administration is a relatively new activity for ISIS, and it therefore will take time to improve its performance. In the short term, ISIS will focus more heavily on the security aspects of governance. It is better equipped and experienced in this sphere, given its own prior experience as non-state jihadist force. ISIS is likely to continue to focus on what it knows best, as doing so offers it a better chance of holding hard-fought ground against its opponents.

Event Information

The Center for 21st Century Security Intelligence seventh annual military and federal fellow research symposium

On March 1, the seventh annual military and federal fellow research symposium featured the independent research produced by members of the military services and federal agencies who are currently serving at think-tanks and universities across the nation. Organized by the fellows themselves, the symposium provides a platform for building greater awareness of the cutting-edge work that America’s military and governmental leaders are producing on key national security policy issues.

With presidential primary season well underway, it’s clear that whoever emerges in November 2016 as the next commander-in-chief will have their hands full with a number of foreign policy and national security choices. This year’s panels explored these developing issues and their prospects for resolution after the final votes have been counted. During their keynote conversation, the Honorable Michèle Flournoy discussed her assessment of the strategic threat environment with General John Allen, USMC (Ret.), who also provided opening remarks on strategic leadership and the importance of military and other federal fellowship experiences.

Video

• Opening remarks and The future of the All-Volunteer Force
• The next generation of terrorism
• Harnessing technology in the future force
• Keynote discussion: Assessing the strategic environment
• To intervene, or not to intervene?

Audio

• Beyond 2016: Security challenges and opportunities for the next administration

Will McCants: ISIS-claimed attacks in Paris, Beirut, and Egypt indicate the organization wants to take the fight to its enemies abroad. One reason might be that all is not well in ISIS-land. The nascent state in Syria and Iraq has lost around 25 percent of its territory and tens of thousands of fighters in the year since America and its allies began to their campaign to defeat it. While the state still endures for now, it's under tremendous pressure because of the costs of ceaseless war.

To explain the troubles ISIS faces at home, we have invited a group of scholars to comment on its governance over the past years and speculate on what they might face in the year ahead. First was Mara Revkin, who examined how opinions towards ISIS have changed since it captured Mosul more than a year ago. Then Aymenn al-Tamimi argued that internal documents show increasing challenges for the Islamic State. Next, Aaron Zelin weighed in with a historical perspective, analyzing the extent to which ISIS has lived up to its own standards of governance. And Kamran Bokhari argued that security—namely defending territory—is the foremost governance objective of ISIS in the short term.

Below is an analysis from Quinn Mecham, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Brigham Young University. He focuses on the need to provide alternative, positive models of governance for the populations living under ISIS control.

Quinn Mecham: The Islamic State group (ISIS), despite clear pretentions to statehood in the form of the “caliphate” it declared in June 2014, does not preside over a particularly successful “state.” It faces numerous challenges from both within and without, challenges that accelerated in 2015 with increasingly systematic airstrikes on ISIS fighters and facilities by numerous external actors. 

However, the governing institutions over which the Islamic State presides currently represent the best approximation of institutionalized governance for the millions of people in Iraq and Syria under its rule. Though international actors unanimously refuse to acknowledge the Islamic State as a legitimate state in the international system, it nevertheless provides many of the functions of a state for those living within its territory. The fulfillment of these state functions is critical to the lives and livelihoods of those governed in territory controlled by the Islamic State. An effective policy to challenge the Islamic State must take the group’s governance agenda into account by constructing appealing alternatives to Islamic State governance rather than simply seeking to undermine it. 

The Islamic State’s ambitious state-building efforts present a challenging policy problem for the array of states now fighting the Islamic State group. France, Britain, Russia, and the United States, among others, regularly articulate the urgent need to destroy the group and they have increasingly acted to do so. Airstrikes that accelerated in the later half of 2015 have put substantial pressure on the Islamic State’s institutions, killing off thousands of Islamic State fighters and destroying a substantial amount of military and economic infrastructure, most notably the capacity to refine and distribute oil resources. Ground operations, such as the one that retook the Iraqi city of Ramadi in December, have also ratcheted up the pressure. 

[I]n addition to degrading the organization, the attacks on ISIS are also degrading the only current form of effective governance for civilians.

While these efforts help fulfill the primary goal of degrading or destroying ISIS by targeting the group’s military and operational infrastructure, they also harm the coalition’s ultimate goal of creating regional stability. This is because, in addition to degrading the organization, the attacks on ISIS are also degrading the only current form of effective governance for civilians, leading to very negative consequences for the populations living under Islamic State rule. As governing capacity is degraded without providing an effective substitute for ISIS governance, many of the coalition’s objectives in the region will become more elusive in the medium term. Additionally, certain aspects of the Islamic State’s state-building goals, which outside groups would like to prevent, may actually be enhanced as a result of the conflict. 

War, what is it good for?

As military pressure mounts on the Islamic State, significant parts of its project are in danger, including its financing, military success, and leadership capacity. However, it is not certain that all aspects of its state capacity will decline. Scholarship on state-building makes it clear that although war can destroy states, it can also help to build them. Although the Islamic State is often viewed externally simply as a rebel group, its domestic state-building agenda follows the historical path of many developing states in that it has benefitted from some of the effects of being at war.

[A]lthough war can destroy states, it can also help to build them.

War helps to build states in a number of ways. First, it creates an environment where the state can much more efficiently extract resources from the population in the form of taxation, military conscription, or extortion. When security is at stake, people are more willing to give up other goods for protection; a state at war also has a high degree of readiness for violence, which can be applied to extract resources from its own people. 

Second, state survival during war requires a high degree of institutional efficiency, including the creation of new bureaucratic structures such as taxation systems, governance mechanisms, information networks, and other institutions designed to control and manage conquered territory. Finally, the pressures of constant warfare for those under threat and on the front lines can also solidify group commitments and strengthen aspects of the military culture, bureaucracy, and ideology that have contributed to the group’s success.

Scaling back

Certainly warfare also can degrade state capacity, and it has done so across Islamic State territory over the past year. Much of that degraded capacity is military in nature, but the process has also reduced state capacity on which civilians directly depend. There is substantial evidence now to suggest that military pressure on the Islamic State group has negatively impacted a variety of core state functions for civilians. While most coalition airstrikes to date have sought to avoid dominantly civilian targets, economic infrastructure has been actively targeted, leading to a significant decline in the resources devoted to civilian concerns.

Compared with only a year ago, the group is now a less effective distributor of resources and has also become more dependent on resource extraction from the populations that it controls. For example, as the group’s revenues from oil and the initial spoils from captured territory have declined, both its social service provision and its ability to pay salaries have severely deteriorated. This is harmful not just because of concerns over civilian protection, but also because it reduces social stability and plays into the group’s narrative that its enemies are making people’s lives much worse. While it is difficult to measure the extent to which civilians blame the group for these new difficulties, a current media crackdown in ISIS territory means that the dominant ISIS narrative of blaming external aggressors is the only one disseminated and likely has significant impact on public opinion.

After airstrikes accelerated in the autumn, an internal Islamic State memo revealed that due to a loss of revenue, the salaries of Islamic State fighters were being cut by a dramatic 50 percent from the original promised payments. These cuts have also affected non-military employees of the Islamic State, spreading to all civil servants. At the same time, the prices for basic goods have been dramatically increasing. Financial infrastructure has also been targeted, making basic economic transactions much harder, while declining soldier salaries make it more likely that those with guns will look to civilian resources to supplement their incomes. Popular policies such as subsidies for bread have been difficult to finance and in some areas under external pressure, essentials such as wheat have become very scarce. This pressure on the food supply impacts civilians in unpredictable ways because the Islamic State has tightly regulated agricultural markets and has failed to allow free market mechanisms to efficiently distribute food resources. 

In the realm of health and education, student registration fees have gone up dramatically while subsidies have declined, scaling back access to a key service designed to systematically socialize students into the ideology of the Islamic State. Professionals are also fleeing Islamic State territory, as exemplified by physicians who have been leaving the Islamic State in large numbers. Despite apparently having significant physical resources for basic medical care, such as vaccinations, the new labor shortage of physicians has made it impossible to keep up regular vaccination schedules within the civilian population. More recently, pressure on obtaining key medical supplies has also increased. 

Two sides of the coin

Attacks on the Islamic State have therefore both strengthened and degraded different components of state capacity. Some aspects of state capacity have actually increased under conditions of war, such as taxation, extortion, conscription, and coercive institutions that control civilians. Military attacks have degraded other aspects of the state, however, such as the resources of ISIS fighters and civil servants, resource distribution capacity, and institutions that support economic development. 

It is not yet clear what these changes in military and state capacity will have on the overall trajectory of Islamic State survival and the stated goal to destroy the Islamic State. While the Islamic State could ultimately be destroyed by a coalition military campaign that proactively takes and governs territory, under the present strategy it is much more likely that the Islamic State will persist and continue to preside over a fragile and increasingly marginal system of governance that is neither good for the group, for the people that live within its territory, or for long-term stability in the Middle East. 

Costs and benefits of a military campaign

This creates a set of difficult policy choices because there are also many good reasons for the military campaign against the Islamic State. The group has demonstrated its capacity and will continue to launch violent attacks on a range of international targets, providing external actors with clear justification to destroy the group’s military capacity in an effort to maintain global security. Likewise, the group’s military success and territorial control are central to its attractiveness to foreign fighters. The ideology that drives the Islamic State depends in part on its continued ability to challenge the current international system. Delivering sustained military defeats is therefore critical to puncturing the group’s apocalyptic narrative of ever greater success and expansion. 

Much of the Islamic State’s domestic control is also maintained through fear, and military defeats confirm in the public imagination that the group can be beaten, from without and potentially from within. Although significant local challenges have not yet materialized, as the Islamic State’s coercive capacity becomes weaker, defections to other groups may occur, and domestic opponents may begin to recalculate their odds of a successful challenge. 

[U]nder the present strategy it is much more likely that the Islamic State will persist and continue to preside over a fragile and increasingly marginal system of governance.

The clear need for military action must, however, be weighed against the serious costs to both civilian populations and to the long-term war effort of harming existing state capacity on which civilians depend. The largely aerial campaign against the Islamic State group has had painful effects on the populations it controls. The reduction of fuel availability, the collapse in salaries, the removal of food and educational subsidies, and the deep insecurity that comes from a constant fear of bombardment has likely done very little to endear civilian populations to the cause of the coalition’s military activity, which is often seen as supporting the Syrian regime. 

Degrading state capacity through military action also feeds into the group’s narrative that both the West and Arab leaders have no concern for Muslim civilians, and that the group is the only possible one that can act as a protector against external enemies. Dozens of recent Islamic State videos paint the anti-ISIS coalition as a Russian, Syrian, Jewish, or U.S. conspiracy designed to harm civilians. While it is difficult to determine the extent of civilian casualties as a result of the campaign to date, the heightened deprivation resulting from the coalition military campaign, coupled with a glaring lack of alternative models of good governance, is unlikely to break the dependence of civilians on the Islamic State. 

Wanted: Alternatives

When one takes the Islamic State’s substantive role in governance into account in formulating a strategy to destroy the group, it becomes increasingly clear that an effective military strategy must be coupled with a much more robust agenda to build alternative governance mechanisms if it is to be successful at permanently displacing the group from its territory. 

Challenging civilian dependence on the Islamic State requires alternative forms of governance that are more appealing to the populations currently governed by the group. Even if the quality of Islamic State governance declines in relative terms, a substantively more appealing option must be available if those currently under the Islamic State’s control will be willing to support it. The great current challenge is to formulate a policy that can meet or exceed the Islamic State’s ability to build governing institutions, not just tear them down. At this point in the tragic narrative, those craving good governance are likely to be much less interested in regime type than in institutions that can provide consistent levels of security, economic growth, and the rule of law.

The great current challenge is to formulate a policy that can meet or exceed the Islamic State’s ability to build governing institutions, not just tear them down.

While the Islamic State adeptly uses theatrical violence and fear to exercise control within its territory, a large portion of its success in maintaining control should also be attributed to the poor alternative options for the populations that reside within it. For many Sunnis in Iraq and Syria, the imaginable alternative models of governance are currently deeply unappealing. These include:

• re-absorption into the repressive cruelties of the Syrian state, 
• control by violent and corrupt Syrian rebel groups without a track record of effective governance, 
• governance by a deeply sectarian, Shiite-dominated Iraqi government that is dependent on ideological sectarian militias to maintain security, or 
• rule by ethnic Kurdish militias that have a poor reputation for their treatment of Arab communities. 

When compared with these options, the Islamic State group often comes across as more authentic, less corrupt, more committed to the rule of law, and a better provider of state services. Its current basic governance failures, while many, are also increasingly attributable to the effects of the military campaign waged by its enemies. 

Let's build

Despite its deep, persistent flaws, an alternative, better system of governance is more likely to come from the Iraqi state (in the case of large population centers such as Mosul), or from existing informal tribal governance (in Syria and more rural areas) than it is to come from other sources. The key actions that currently need to be taken are thus two-fold:

1. First, in territory already reclaimed from the group—such as in the devastated city of Ramadi—the anti-ISIS coalition should extend every effort to distribute needed resources, infuse the economy with ready employment options, reaffirm property rights and judicial institutions, and severely punish those pursuing violent retribution. Unfortunately, little in this direction has been accomplished in the months since the capture of Ramadi, as the rebuilding of civilian infrastructure has been treated as secondary to lingering security concerns. A clear investment of institutional and economic resources that helps to demonstrate the ability to maintain security and equal treatment under the rule of law will send a more powerful signal of the Islamic State’s weakness than the results of an aerial bombing campaign. 
2. Second, a greater external commitment to support the best in existing institutions within the Iraqi state as well as in areas with the potential for effective non-state tribal governance is a critical investment in the long-term stability of Islamic State territory. In other words, external resources should increasingly focus not just on training and equipping local military allies, but also in supporting high quality civilian institutions of local and regional governance. 

Unfortunately, it takes much longer to build effective state institutions than to destroy them.

Aggressively pursuing a governance strategy will be much more difficult than pursuing an air war against a proto-state without anti-air defenses, but it is a necessary one if the persistent appeal of the group’s state-building project is to be overcome. Because the Islamic State has powerfully distinguished itself from other jihadist competitors through its governance agenda, its support cannot be eliminated through a strategy solely dependent on destroying the governance upon which local populations depend. 

Unfortunately, it takes much longer to build effective state institutions than to destroy them. The faster that a serious, resource-intensive commitment to building alternative governing institutions in areas bordering Islamic State territory begins, the more likely we are to see the group that calls itself the Islamic State lose control of its narrative, its territory, and the civilian support upon which it relies.

Will McCants: ISIS-claimed attacks in Paris, Beirut, and Egypt indicate the organization wants to take the fight to its enemies abroad. One reason might be that all is not well in ISIS-land. The nascent state in Syria and Iraq has lost around 25 percent of its territory and tens of thousands of fighters in the year since America and its allies began to their campaign to defeat it. While the state still endures for now, it's under tremendous pressure because of the costs of ceaseless war.

To explain the troubles ISIS faces at home, we have invited a group of scholars to comment on its governance over the past years and speculate on what they might face in the year ahead. First was Mara Revkin, who examined how opinions towards ISIS have changed since it captured Mosul more than a year ago. Then Aymenn al-Tamimi argued that internal documents show increasing challenges for the Islamic State. Next, Aaron Zelin weighed in with a historical perspective, analyzing the extent to which ISIS has lived up to its own standards of governance. Kamran Bokhari argued that security—namely defending territory—is the foremost governance objective of ISIS in the short term, while Quinn Mecham focused on the need to provide alternative, positive models of governance for the populations living under ISIS control.

Next up, Nelson Kasfir, Professor of Government Emeritus at Dartmouth College, and Zachariah Mampilly, Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of Africana Studies at Vassar College, compare ISIS’s governance choices with how other armed groups have governed civilian populations. 

Nelson Kasfir and Zachariah Mampilly: Now that the Islamic State (ISIS) claims to be a state, any useful analysis of how it rules should rest on a systematic conception of governance by insurgents who hold populated territory, a surprisingly common phenomenon. If we are to understand what ISIS is doing, how long it is likely to stick around and indeed why some civilians in its domain prefer its government to what they had experienced from either Baghdad or Damascus, it would be a good idea to compare its choices of governance with other armed groups that have captured territory and governed civilian populations. All of them must administer territory without the advantages conferred by sovereignty—an important resource available to even the weakest internationally recognized states.

In our new book, Rebel Governance in Civil War, we offer a framework to explain how rebels govern. We bring together leading scholars to explore specific issues and cases from all over the globe. While single-factor hypotheses don't help much, there are broad patterns describing how and why armed groups govern that fit ISIS.

By rebel governance, we mean decision-making, the provision of services and the regulatory framework that armed groups establish to produce a social order within a specific territory they control. Rebel governance activities can be separated into those that concern how decisions are made, what social services are provided and how the production or taxation of economic rents is organized. Symbolic practices and ideologies, including religious creeds, have significant effects in supporting any system of rebel rule.

Armed groups differ widely in their approach to governance.

Armed groups differ widely in their approach to governance, as the case studies in our book demonstrate. Few armed groups that control territory can ignore civilian governance, short of expelling civilian populations altogether. The vast majority of insurgent organizations range from governing minimally, by assuming few regulatory functions, to maximally by ruling everything, including the provision of public goods.

For example, although the leaders of the National Patriotic Front (NPFL) in Liberia were primarily interested in personal profit, they still created the veneer of government to seek international recognition and to ensure the proceeds of commercial enterprises went into their pockets. Both types of insurgents were active during the Greek civil war, the conservatives limiting their governance activities, while the communists tried to regulate all aspects of social life.

Despite the many Western press accounts that dwell on ISIS’ penchant for flamboyant displays of callous cruelty, it would be a mistake to think that ISIS does not engage in civilian governance. As Charles Lister notes: "By perceiving and presenting itself as a state, IS [ISIS] has sought to control and govern territory and maintain a cabinet of ministers responsible for a broad range of 'ministries,' incorporating military, civil, political, and financial duties." As a caliphate, ISIS has opted primarily for a hierarchical top-down administration. It demands strict obedience, but it is also intent on building infrastructure and running it effectively. By basing governance on its revival of the "Caliphate according to the prophetic method," that is, re-establishing institutions on the basis of what it understands the Prophet Mohammed to have insisted, ISIS leaders appear to have demanded control over most facets of social and personal life.

As a caliphate, ISIS has opted primarily for a hierarchical top-down administration.

As early as 2007, ISIS published a booklet outlining its plans for governance. In 2013, it issued pamphlets that laid out the exact governance activities the organization would undertake once in control of specific territories. Immediately after capturing various towns in Syria and Iraq, ISIS set about taking control over key industries and services including the distribution of electricity, water, and fuel as well as the production and distribution of food. ISIS monopolized service provision and proved sophisticated in using it to balance its brutality. As a result, "Sunni civilians have been more likely to accept the imposition of harsh norms," as Lister has written.

Symbolic processes are powerful tools of governance that legitimate rebel groups or signal their coercive capability. These processes are often influenced by specific ideological concerns. Like nation-states, rebels create distinctive symbolic repertoires by producing their own flags, currencies, mausoleums and staging parades and rallies. The leaders of ISIS are well aware of the importance of symbols. "The Islamic State was signaling that its flag was not only the symbol of its government and the herald of a future caliphate; it was the harbinger of the final battle at the End of Days," writes Will McCants in The ISIS Apocalypse.

The leaders of ISIS are well aware of the importance of symbols.

Explaining varying approaches

What factors shape these different traits of rebel governance? In our book, we identify four clusters: causes arising before the rebellion; causes arising during the rebellion; those emanating from attributes or behavior of the rebels; and finally those developing from responses of civilians.

First, pre-conflict factors involving the relations between state and society shape subsequent patterns of rebel governance. History matters because insurgents mostly acquire their cultural values, education, and ideas about governance, while growing up in the society they later defy. These experiences shape them even as they rebel. How they resolve these contradictions will vary from case to case. Thus, the Forces Nouvelles that occupied northern Côte d'Ivoire after 2002 "adopted—or rather adapted—procedures from the former state administration." Since they did not hold unchallenged authority, they chose to share the maintenance of security with neo-traditional hunters' associations who were deeply trusted by local residents. In a different case, General Padiri's Mai-Mai militia in the Democratic Republic of the Congo adopted the administrative pattern of offices of the Congolese government while adding "Bureau Six" to incorporate commonly held autochthonous magico-religious beliefs that greatly deepened the legitimacy of the militia's leaders.

Because ISIS takes an uncompromisingly radical stance, it is difficult to identify its continuities with prior governance. Still, a closer examination of ISIS’ involvement in food distribution provides an illustrative example of its links with the practices of past regimes. As one recent academic study (by José Ciro Martínez and Brent Eng, in a still-unpublished manuscript) points out, food production has long been understood as a key element of the weak social contract binding pre-conflict regimes in Syria and Iraq to their people. In pre-conflict Syria, the Baath Party had long understood direct control over the bread market as an integral task of the social welfare pact it struck with the population. Recognizing the importance of bread distribution to the Syrian population, ISIS undertook numerous efforts to control and ensure the production of bread within its territories. In a 2013 pamphlet published in Aleppo that outlines ISIS’ governance strategy, a promise to ensure bread distribution stands out alongside more conventional governance activities. Importantly, considering the propagandistic nature of many ISIS communications, the group went far beyond rhetorical positions in their commitment to policies concerning bread. Instead of merely mandating the manner in which bread would be produced and distributed in ISIS-controlled areas of Aleppo and Raqqa, the group also “subsidized the cost of flour, accelerated the opening of bakeries and distributed bread itself when necessary,” as Martínez and Eng write.

[W]artime contextual factors...affect rebel governance.

Second, wartime contextual factors—those circumstances that emerge during rebellion— also affect rebel governance. As rebels fight and as they engage with civilians, they often change their practices of governance. The military threat of the incumbent and other military rivals as well as the broader wartime political economy often significantly impact insurgents’ approaches toward civilians. With regard to military capacity, Stathis Kalyvas shows that as the communist insurgents lost territory towards the end of the Greek civil war, they became more coercive. In Latin America as well, there have been many cases in which rebel governance decayed when insurgent groups failed to protect their civilian populations from either internal or external violence, or in response to expansion of electoral opportunities by the incumbent state.

Similarly, a comparison of ISIS’ governance in Raqqa and Mosul, the two largest cities under its control, suggests that external military pressure has made the government more intimidating and sometimes less willing to abide by its own rules. After ISIS took control of each city, it quickly imposed its authority and provided more efficient administration than its predecessors had. In Raqqa the regime acted on the basis of its posted rules until American-led air strikes caused its leaders to become somewhat “more paranoid and prone to kidnapping people randomly.” In Mosul, residents, who originally regarded ISIS as “liberators,” became more dissatisfied as their taxes greatly increased and their nonpayment was met with physical punishments and fines. The failure of ISIS to protect its citizens from collateral damage from air strikes is certain to have increased their discontent.

After ISIS took control of each city, it quickly imposed its authority and provided more efficient administration than its predecessors had.

Material rewards also affect rebel governance. Rebels often change their pattern of governance when they begin to accumulate significant rents through the exploitation of natural resources. The National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) changed after it began to export diamonds and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC) stopped following some of its Marxist principles after it began to export cocaine.

Usually, rebels cannot defend oil wells from attacks by incumbent states. ISIS has been an exception, making a daily income of $3 million in September 2014. After the recent steep fall in crude oil prices and air strikes, internal taxation (or extortion) may have become a more significant source of revenue. ISIS has also profited from kidnapping and bank robberies. Its reliance on oil production has proven both a boon and curse as the value of ISIS-produced oil shifts dramatically due to both the challenge of ensuring production and fluctuations in oil prices globally. The income permitted ISIS to pay generous salaries to civilians to keep sanitation and utility services functioning.

Third, rebel attributes and behavior—organizational structure and ideological orientation—affect rebel governance. Ideologies often provide rebels with political identities, coherent frameworks for political and social action and a sense of disciplined commitment to an overriding purpose. The Greek communists learned their Marxism before they rebelled. Ethnic secessionists, such as the Naga in India, knew whom they were going to exclude from their imagined polity in advance of taking up arms.

Establishing a legal code is a social service that often demonstrates the influence of ideology on rebel governance.

Establishing a legal code is a social service that often demonstrates the influence of ideology on rebel governance. Rules that rebels create and civilians obey can help provide legitimate authority, whether out of trust (as in the case of the Shining Path in Peru) or out of fear (as inspired by the Taliban in Afghanistan).

ISIS bases not only its fundamental character, but also its plan of governance, almost entirely on its peculiar interpretation of Islamic doctrine. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the ISIS leader, received both a masters and a doctorate in Islamic rhetoric from the University of Islamic Sciences in Baghdad. As the caliph, some of the Islamic rationales that have been supplied to justify specific ISIS regulations can be traced to his earlier education.

The influence of Islam on ISIS’ ideology is most evident in its attempts to establish a legal system. The rebellion "sees itself as creating a distinctive and authentic legal order for the here and now, one that is based not only on a literal (if selective) reading of early Islamic materials but also on a long-standing [Islamic] theory of statecraft and legal authority." Andrew March and Mara Revkin identify laws governing land, trade, taxation and treatment of prisoners and slaves, all derived from ISIS’ interpretation of scripture. In addition, they assert "the theory of the caliphate implies a law-based social contract with reciprocal obligations and rights between the caliph and the people." The extent to which this legal order actually results in enforceable rights that protect civilians is unclear. However, there is evidence that ISIS officials engaged in dispute resolution among civilians, even punishing its fighters when they took bribes or harmed civilians.

[C]ivilian responses to the insurgent group affect rebel governance.

Finally, civilian responses to the insurgent group affect rebel governance. We examine both individual reactions to armed groups as well as how varying social groups—such as traders, religious orders, ethnic groups, and civil society organizations—engage with or challenge an armed group’s governance efforts. ISIS is challenging to study since it is perceived as denying civilians’ agency completely. But even under the most autocratic governance arrangements, civilians have found ways to influence and even challenge armed groups. For example, during the war in Sri Lanka, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam had numerous methods for incorporating civilian feedback despite its deserved reputation as an autocratic and brutal organization. The education system in Tiger-ruled areas emerged as a result of civilian pressure and meaningfully incorporated civilians into its daily operations.

Indeed, a surprising number of rebel groups have shared decision-making with civilians. The African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde (PAIGC) created democratic village councils, as did the National Resistance Army during its war in Uganda. On the other hand, summary justice and brutal punishments can increase legitimacy among civilians when meted out to thieves and rapists. Residents gave strong support to rebels who took over neighborhoods in Medellín, Colombia and provided instant justice to those the community regarded as criminals.

It appears that ISIS does not share decision-making with civilians, similar to other rebels that take Islam as the doctrinal basis for their revolt such as the Taliban in Afghanistan or Boko Haram in Nigeria. But discerning whether civilian responses affect ISIS governance would require difficult (though not impossible) field visits to ISIS-controlled territory. The fact that the group frequently needs to rely on civilians in order to provide services suggests that there may be greater scope for civilian involvement than is commonly recognized.

[W]hile ISIS may appear unique, it is not an exception from the pressures that shape rebel governance patterns generally.

Taken together, the above discussion shows that while ISIS may appear unique, it is not an exception from the pressures that shape rebel governance patterns generally. Armed groups do not determine the outcome of their governance efforts in a vacuum. Rather, civilian governance outcomes are established by the behavior of a variety of actors each interacting in a shifting and complex environment. While ISIS may be distinctive in its commitment to implementing a form of civilian governance based on its understanding of Islamic modes of governance, it is still subject to these dynamics. Analyzing it through the four clusters of factors discussed above show how its governance of civilians compares with other rebel groups.

The sustainability question

What does this tell us about the future of civilian governance under ISIS? Because ISIS has established a caliphate, it is committed to governing the people in the territories it conquers. As discussed above, ISIS leaders have adopted an approach to law that creates room for some protections for civilians and an approach to social welfare that provides space for a limited social pact. Yet, these rulers have fashioned an uncompromising notion that civilians must be governed within their strict interpretation of Islamic doctrine. In addition, they depend on foreign military recruits to buttress their rule.

These factors create contradictions that may cause regime instability that might either increase regime brutality, if leaders remain constant to their principles, or result in regime decay, if they lose their sense of purpose. ISIS may eventually be “hamstrung by its radicalism.” During the short time that ISIS has ruled civilians, it has insisted that its decisions cannot be questioned. The relevant lesson from studying other rebellions is that groups better able to accommodate different political actors through a process of political negotiation are more likely to endure. If ISIS leaders remain obstinate, refusing to compromise in favor of a principled ideological stand, civilians will continue to suffer and either fight or flee if they can. Alternately, if the group’s leaders are tempted by the wealth the regime has accumulated, they may give in to corruption and fashion a more predatory regime.

ISIS has also become a magnet for foreign fighters. No one really knows how many there are, but an early (2014) estimate is 15,000 from 90 countries. Although the flow has decreased recently, cultural interactions and political disputes among these foreigners and civilians are certain to remain problematic. As the external military threats faced by ISIS grow, its leaders are likely to rely on the loyalty and morale of their foreign fighters at the expense of the civilian population. Civilian governance will probably decay, resulting in greater instability and perhaps sowing the seeds of ISIS' own demise.

Editors’ Note: The mass-casualty terrorist attacks in Paris and now in Brussels underscore an unsettling truth: Jihadis pose a greater threat to France and Belgium than to the rest of Europe. Research by Will McCants and Chris Meserole reveals that French political culture may play a role. This post originally appeared in Foreign Affairs.

The mass-casualty terrorist attacks in Paris and now in Brussels underscore an unsettling truth: Jihadists pose a greater threat to France and Belgium than to the rest of Europe. The body counts are larger and the disrupted plots are more numerous. The trend might be explained by the nature of the Islamic State (ISIS) networks in Europe or as failures of policing in France and Belgium. Both explanations have merit. However, our research reveals that another factor may be at play: French political culture.

Last fall, we began a project to test empirically the many proposed explanations for Sunni militancy around the globe. The goal was to take common measures of the violence—namely, the number of Sunni foreign fighters from any given country as well as the number of Sunni terror attacks carried out within it—and then crunch the numbers to see which explanations best predicted a country’s rate of Sunni radicalization and violence. (The raw foreign fighter data came from The International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence; the original attack data came from the University of Maryland’s START project.)

What we found surprised us, particularly when it came to foreign fighter radicalization. It turns out that the best predictor of foreign fighter radicalization was not a country’s wealth. Nor was it how well-educated its citizens were, how healthy they were, or even how much Internet access they enjoyed. Instead, the top predictor was whether a country was Francophone; that is, whether it currently lists (or previously listed) French as a national language. As strange as it may seem, four of the five countries with the highest rates of radicalization in the world are Francophone, including the top two in Europe (France and Belgium).

Knowledgeable readers will immediately object that the raw numbers tell a different story. The English-speaking United Kingdom, for example, has produced far more foreign fighters than French-speaking Belgium. And fighters from Saudi Arabia number in the several thousands. But the raw numbers are misleading. If you view the foreign fighters as a percentage of the overall Muslim population, you see a different picture. Per Muslim resident, Belgium produces far more foreign fighters than either the United Kingdom or Saudi Arabia. 

[W]hat could the language of love possibly have to do with Islamist violence? We suspect that it is really a proxy for something else: French political culture.

So what could the language of love possibly have to do with Islamist violence? We suspect that it is really a proxy for something else: French political culture. The French approach to secularism is more aggressive than, say, the British approach. France and Belgium, for example, are the only two countries in Europe to ban the full veil in their public schools. They’re also the only two countries in Western Europe not to gain the highest rating for democracy in the well-known Polity score data, which does not include explanations for the markdowns.

Adding support to this story are the top interactions we found between different variables. When you look at which combination of variables is most predictive, it turns out that the “Francophone effect” is actually strongest in the countries that are most developed: French-speaking countries with the highest literacy, best infrastructure, and best health system. This is not a story about French colonial plunder. If anything it’s a story about what happens when French economic and political development has most deeply taken root.

An important subplot within this story concerns the distribution of wealth. In particular, the rate of youth unemployment and urbanization appear to matter a great deal too. Globally, we found that when between 10 and 30 percent of a country’s youth are unemployed, there is a strong relationship between a rise in youth unemployment and a rise in Sunni militancy. Rates outside that range don’t have an effect. Likewise, when urbanization is between 60 and 80 percent, there is a strong relationship.

These findings seem to matter most in Francophone countries. Among the over 1,000 interactions our model looked at, those between Francophone and youth unemployment and Francophone and urbanization both ranked among the 15 most predictive. There’s broad anecdotal support for this idea: consider the rampant radicalization in Molenbeek, in the Parisbanlieus, in Ben Gardane. Each of these contexts have produced a massively disproportionate share of foreign fighters, and each are also urban pockets with high youth unemployment.

As with the Francophone finding overall, we’re left with guesswork as to why exactly the relationships between French politics, urbanization, youth unemployment, and Sunni militancy exist. We suspect that when there are large numbers of unemployed youth, some of them are bound to get up to mischief. When they live in large cities, they have more opportunities to connect with people espousing radical causes. And when those cities are in Francophone countries that adopt the strident French approach to secularism, Sunni radicalism is more appealing.

For now, the relationship needs to be studied and tested by comparing several cases in countries and between countries. We also found other interesting relationships—such as between Sunni violence and prior civil conflict—but they are neither as strong nor as compelling.

Regardless, the latest attacks in Belgium are reason enough to share the initial findings. They may be way off, but at least they are based on the best available data. If the data is wrong or our interpretations skewed, we hope the effort will lead to more rigorous explanations of what is driving jihadist terrorism in Europe. Our initial findings should in no way imply that Francophone countries are responsible for the recent horrible attacks—no country deserves to have its civilians killed, regardless of the perpetrator’s motives. But the magnitude of the violence and the fear it engenders demand that we investigate those motives beyond just the standard boilerplate explanations.

Will McCants: ISIS-claimed attacks in Paris, Beirut, Egypt, and Brussels indicate the organization wants to take the fight to its enemies abroad. One reason might be that all is not well in ISIS-land. The nascent state in Syria and Iraq has lost around 25 percent of its territory and tens of thousands of fighters in the year since America and its allies began to their campaign to defeat it. While the state still endures for now, it's under tremendous pressure because of the costs of ceaseless war.

To explain the troubles ISIS faces at home, we have invited a group of scholars to comment on its governance over the past years and speculate on what they might face in the year ahead. First was Mara Revkin, who examined how opinions towards ISIS have changed since it captured Mosul more than a year ago. Then Aymenn al-Tamimi argued that internal documents show increasing challenges for the Islamic State. Next, Aaron Zelin weighed in with a historical perspective, analyzing the extent to which ISIS has lived up to its own standards of governance. And Kamran Bokhari argued that security—namely defending territory—is the foremost governance objective of ISIS in the short term. Quinn Mecham focused on the need to provide alternative, positive models of governance for the populations living under ISIS control, and most recently, Nelson Kasfir and Zachariah Mampilly compared ISIS’ governance choices with how other armed groups have governed civilian populations.

Next up is Hassan Hassan, a resident fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy and co-author of ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror. He assesses ISIS’ model of governance before and after coalition airstrikes against the group began. Before the strikes, he argues, ISIS had a freer hand to implement its policies, and has used savagery and governance to both deter and incentivize communities under its control.

Hassan Hassan: Abu Sameh, a Syrian in his late twenties, joined the Syrian al-Qaida-affiliated Nusra Front as a fighter in early 2013. He fought for the group in Deir Ezzor and northeastern Syria until the Islamic State (ISIS) began to dominate there in the summer of 2014. That’s when he switched sides.

He was drawn to ISIS through one of his relatives, a commander of a small armed faction operating near the Iraqi border. With ISIS, battle-hardened Abu Sameh landed a job related to his undergraduate major for the first time since graduating college in 2009. He became an accountant working in the group’s oil industry.

As with many like Abu Sameh, ISIS benefited from local expertise to run its state-building enterprise in the areas it conquered in northwestern Iraq and northeastern Syria in 2013 and 2014. It also re-opened institutions that ceased to operate after the collapse of provisional governments—former employees, for instance, had continued to receive salaries from Baghdad and Damascus, but they typically sat at home and enjoyed the kickbacks, without being made to work by armed groups in control of the areas. When ISIS took over, many of them were forced back to work.

Enforcement of strict rules helped ISIS establish a semblance of order, which appealed to local communities plagued by kidnapping, highway robbery, theft, and warlordism. After ISIS took control, crime disappeared overnight and people could travel unarmed from Aleppo to Mosul. Through savagery and governance, ISIS both deterred and incentivized communities under its control.

Through savagery and governance, ISIS both deterred and incentivized communities under its control.

Local perception

Assessments of ISIS’ model of governance should distinguish between the periods before and after coalition airstrikes. Priority should be given to the period that preceded the airstrikes—between June and November 2014 in most areas—when the group had a freer hand to implement its policies. Assessments must also consider how ISIS fared in comparison to the armed groups and governments which preceded it. In some cases, ISIS appeared to have gone even further than previous governments in extending its writ to rural areas of Iraq and Syria. 

In this context, local perception is key to the evaluation of ISIS’ performance. According to weekly or sometimes daily conversations I have had with residents in eastern Syria—where I am originally from—people living under ISIS rule equally blame airstrikes or government bombings for the worsening economic situation in their areas, not just ISIS. The desire to link ISIS’ inability to deliver services with the failure of its model is understandable, it allows one to undermine its appeal and wholly blame it for the deteriorating situation in ISIS-held areas. But properly understanding the way ISIS ruled during this specific period with an emphasis on local perceptions is vital not only for academic objectivity but also to fully grasp the unintended consequences of the current coalition campaign against ISIS.

Referring to the destruction of Ramadi after the expulsion of ISIS in December, Col. Steven H. Warren, a Pentagon spokesman in Iraq, told The New York Times: “One hundred percent of this is on ISIL [another acronym for ISIS] because no one would be dropping any bombs if ISIL hadn’t gone in there.” In reality, however, many in those areas see the causes of destruction with a little more nuance than “no ISIS, no bombs.” First, ISIS entered most of those towns with little confrontation with civilians; it was political grievances and the failure of other armed groups that partly enabled ISIS to occupy certain areas to begin with. Moreover, the air campaign targeted bridges and oil facilities, which made life harder for civilians and disrupted a wartime economy that preceded ISIS rule.

Beyond violence 

ISIS is a manager and not a distributor of resources. In the Syrian context, nationalist, Islamist, and jihadist groups have generally sought to win hearts and minds primarily through the free or cheap provision of basic resources. ISIS, however, opts for managing what it has under its control. Even as it charges the population for services, the model remains more effective than the ones in southern and northern Syria for a simple reason. Because ISIS seeks to function as a state, local communities obtain essential benefits in return: safety and security, effective courts, and unified rule. Elsewhere, like in Eastern Ghouta outside Damascus or in Aleppo, provision of services is trumped by chaos, uncertainty, and ineffective courts, because local groups do not have exclusive or unchallenged control over territory.

Because ISIS seeks to function as a state, local communities obtain essential benefits in return: safety and security, effective courts, and unified rule.

Other forces that ruled in Syria prior to ISIS aimed to establish order based on consent. Even the Nusra Front, which was far more powerful and disciplined than other forces up until the rise of ISIS, retracted some of its decisions, seeking to avoid clashes with local families. The Nusra Front (and other Islamist groups as well) typically shied away from enforcing their rules to avoid alienating the population. In most court cases, for instance, whether a ruling would be enforced or not would hinge on whether the criminal or his family had voluntarily accepted the court’s judgment in the first place.

Conversely, under ISIS, courts have a high enforcement mechanism. This was true even when ISIS was a minor player operating from bases in rebel-controlled areas in early 2013. ISIS would encourage people to seek its help when they had a complaint about a person and would forcefully resolve the issue, even if that meant confrontation with powerful groups or individuals. This occurred numerous times ahead of ISIS’ rise to prominence in late 2013. This partly explains why many villagers either travelled outside their towns to fight for ISIS even after it was driven out of their areas in that period or accepted it when it returned later.

ISIS’ model was high-risk. The group was consistent and determined about enforcing its rules, and would not tolerate rivalry in its territory or recognize Sharia commissions other than its own. It demanded uniformity at any cost. One of the most claimed “advantages" of ISIS’ rule in its territories is that it “gets the job done.” Unlike the Free Syrian Army and other Islamist groups, ISIS would send a patrol to fetch someone if another person filed a complaint about him (these complaints typically involved financial fraud or unsettled commercial disputes). According to one resident who was involved in such a case, even if the complaint in question dated back to the years before the uprising, ISIS would settle the situation, provided that the complainant had proof.

ISIS...demanded uniformity at any cost.

“If you’re an FSA commander and you have a civilian relative, [FSA and other rebels] would accept mediation,” Hassan al-Salloum, a former rebel commander from Idlib, told me, referring to the time when ISIS was still a marginal player in 2013. “But with ISIS, if I complain about an FSA member, they go and bring him in for interrogation. They would not accept mediation. People then started to go to complain to ISIS, looking for help and asking them to intervene.”

Regulations and price controls are other areas in which ISIS’ governance proved successful. It banned fishermen from using dynamite and electricity to catch fish. It also prohibited residents from using the chaos of war to stake new land claims. This was especially true in the Syrian desert, where residents had attempted to build new homes or establish new businesses in public lands, much to the chagrin of their neighbors. ISIS also limited the profit margins on oil by-products, ice, flour, and other essential commodities. It also prohibited families from setting up refineries close to private residences, under the threat of confiscation, a policy that led some families to quit the oil business altogether, according to residents I interviewed.

A state—and more

In certain cases, ISIS governed areas more comprehensively than the governments of Baghdad and Damascus. Whether in delivery of services or management of people and resources under its control, ISIS makes it clear it is the only ruler in town, and once residents recognize that, they are often allowed to help govern their areas. There have been instances, according to tribal sources from Iraq and Syria I spoke to, of “deputization” whereby ISIS re-armed specific tribesmen to control their own area, though that process remained extremely limited.

Before, other groups and previous governments would use tribal leaders as intermediaries between them and local communities. ISIS, by contrast, acts as an intermediary between different tribes and even within the same tribe to resolve disputes, some of which date back to the 1970s and 1980s. Furthermore, it has systematically disarmed local communities that came under its rule in a way that previous governments failed to do over decades. 

The group is the only one in the two countries that employs an extensive network of staff exclusively dedicated to dealing with tribal affairs. The man in charge of tribal affairs is a Saudi national by the name of Daygham Abu Abdullah, locally known to be well-versed in tribal lineage and dynamics. He oversees a bureau that receives tribal delegations from across the self-styled caliphate that desire to resolve conflict or appeal for clemency. After ISIS asserts control over an area, tribal outreach helps it engage with local tribes and act as a social arbiter. Even though the organization carried out mass atrocities against certain tribes, the group often has other members of those same tribes fighting in its ranks, including members of Albu Nimr and Albu Fahad in Iraq, and Al Shaytat in Syria. ISIS employs a seemingly contradictory strategy of divide-and-rule. It first attempts infiltrate an area, and follows up with an outreach policy after consolidating control. The office that handles amending tribal disputes is known as Public Relations Bureau.

Whereas Islamic inheritance laws stipulate that women are to receive half of that received by a male sibling, tribal society often deprives women even of that half share. Unlike governments, which rarely enforce Sharia-based inheritance laws, ISIS sent out instructions to local communities to provide women with their due share and some women who complained to ISIS judges would receive their shares retroactively from their brothers.

These measures suggest that the group, in some instances, is more vigorous and micro-managerial than previous governments that ruled these predominantly rural areas in Iraq and Syria.

These measures suggest that the group, in some instances, is more vigorous and micro-managerial than previous governments that ruled these predominantly rural areas in Iraq and Syria. Lawlessness, kidnappings, arbitrary killings, and highway robbery are greater sources of grievance for people living outside regime areas than poor services, something that ISIS has dealt with by providing security based on brutal justice and policing. The semblance of order established by ISIS remains a strong advantage for the group, despite its diminished ability in other aspects of governance, and forces that will take over from ISIS will be judged accordingly.

Conclusion

There is little doubt that the group has lost the initial appeal it had when it conquered large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria in the summer of 2014. The U.S.-led air campaign has blunted the group’s ability to generate income from oil and war spoils that usually come from rapid expansion. It has also reduced the group’s capacity to provide sufficient services for communities under its rule. The air campaign has also resulted in an interesting trend: it has strengthened the role of ISIS’ security and intelligence core in the towns, villages and cities the group controls, a development that has led to mounting complaints about their harsh and crude behavior.

ISIS associates, too, complain of the group’s security apparatus to the extent that it has become common to hear of clerics explaining to ISIS members that the state that Prophet Mohammed founded also included munafiqun, or “hypocrites,” and that this should not be a reason to abandon it, according to interviews I conducted, including with members. (Connoting someone who only feigns belief in public, the term munafiqun is a heavy accusation to levy at a fellow Muslims, and such people are condemned in the Quran.)

[T]argeting the economy of ISIS-controlled areas can make matters worse.

But all that will not translate into a rebellion against ISIS. Additionally—and more importantly—targeting the economy of ISIS-controlled areas can make matters worse. In some cases, airstrikes led families to send their children to join ISIS as the only way to generate income. Iraqi officials have warned that choking off ISIS’s economic routes might result in “collateral damage.” While they may see this as necessary evil, it also runs the risk of helping ISIS tighten its grip by driving residents closer to it as the only employer or provider in town.

The unintended consequences of the air campaign are a serious concern, especially if ISIS is to be defeated strategically. This is something I have discussed with everyone involved, from civilians to ISIS members to Western officials involved in the anti-ISIS campaign. Residents often complain that they are suffering collective punishment by inconsiderate foreign forces. ISIS, meanwhile, tells the communities under its rule that it would have brought more prosperity to their towns had it not been for the airstrikes. A high-level American official involved in the campaign acknowledged to me that officials were aware of the possibility of unintended consequences but insisted that airstrikes targeting the economy in eastern Syria and western Iraq will only intensify.