tag:theconversation.com,2011:/institutions/trinity-college-1903/articlesTrinity College2024-03-20T12:21:54Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2246012024-03-20T12:21:54Z2024-03-20T12:21:54ZWhat are microcredentials? And are they worth having?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582668/original/file-20240318-30-8cn088.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=41%2C41%2C6955%2C4616&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The payoff for microcredentials varies by profession. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/black-woman-working-from-home-office-royalty-free-image/1444291518?phrase=adult+laptop+at+home&adppopup=true">Drs Producoes via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As <a href="https://www.uschamber.com/workforce/the-states-suffering-most-from-the-labor-shortage">private firms</a> and <a href="https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/state-and-local-government-jobs-still-havent-recovered-pandemic">governments</a> struggle to fill jobs – and with the cost of college <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/college-prices-arent-skyrocketing-but-theyre-still-too-high-for-some/">too high</a> for many students – <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2023/02/23/employers-are-all-microcredentials-survey-shows">employers</a> and <a href="https://www.nga.org/projects/skills-driven-state-community-of-practice/">elected officials</a> are searching for alternative ways for people to get good jobs without having to earn a traditional college degree.</p>
<p>Microcredentials are one such alternative. But just what are microcredentials? And do they lead to better jobs and higher earnings?</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://scholars.org/scholar/daniel-douglas">sociologist</a> who has examined the <a href="https://smlr.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/Documents/Centers/EERC/Review%20of%20Noncredit%20Outcomes_EERC_1.4.24.pdf">research on microcredentials</a>, the best available answer right now is: It depends on what a person is studying.</p>
<h2>Defining the term</h2>
<p>While there is no official definition of a microcredential, there are some broadly accepted components. Like traditional degrees, microcredentials certify peoples’ skills and knowledge, ranging in scope from software skills like Microsoft Excel to broad abilities like project management.</p>
<p>Microcredentials typically indicate “<a href="https://www.utah.gov/pmn/files/745519.pdf">competencies</a>” – that is, things people can do. They are represented by <a href="https://cte.idaho.gov/programs-2/skillstack/">digital badges</a>, which are emblems that can be shared online. Just as a diploma verifies a degree-holder’s achievement, badges verify microcredentials. An employer can click on the digital badge to see who awarded it, when it was awarded and what it represents. </p>
<p>Microcredentials also allow people to verify what they already know, such as a person who is an experienced Python coder, or what they acquire through short-term learning and assessments. An experienced coder in the Python programming language could take an assessment and earn a microcredential, as could a novice after completing a programming course. Either way, microcredentials “<a href="https://www.nea.org/professional-excellence/professional-learning/micro-credentials">allow an individual to show mastery in a certain area</a>.”</p>
<p>What usually distinguishes microcredentials from other short-term learning, like <a href="https://online.wvu.edu/blog/education/online-learning/what-is-the-difference-between-a-certificate-and-a-micro-credential">nondegree certificates</a>, is duration. Certificates typically take longer. The other difference is location: Microcredentials are typically completed online.</p>
<p>Data from <a href="https://credentialengine.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Final-CountingCredentials_2022.pdf">Credential Engine</a>, a nonprofit organization that catalogs education and training credentials, and <a href="https://www.classcentral.com/microcredentials">Class Central</a>, a searchable index of online courses, indicate that business, IT and programming, and health care are popular focus areas for microcredentials.</p>
<h2>A growing trend</h2>
<p>Many colleges and universities, such as <a href="https://www.suny.edu/microcredentials/">SUNY</a>, <a href="https://ecampus.oregonstate.edu/online-degrees/microcredentials/">Oregon State</a> and <a href="https://extension.harvard.edu/academics/microcertificates/">Harvard</a>,
offer microcredentials. But they are also offered through social media companies like <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/learning/">LinkedIn Learning</a> and private providers like <a href="https://campus.edx.org/">EdX</a> and <a href="https://www.coursera.org/">Coursera</a>. Professional organizations like the <a href="https://www.nea.org/professional-excellence/professional-learning/micro-credentials">National Education Association</a> also award microcredentials.</p>
<p>Some microcredentials directly prepare learners to become industry certified – like SkillStorm’s CompTIA A+ certification, <a href="https://stormsurge-catalog.skillstorm.com/courses/comptia-a">an eight-week online course</a> that prepares learners to work in IT support and help desk roles. Others focus on general employability skills – like Binghamton University’s <a href="https://www.credly.com/org/binghamton-university/badge/watson-career-development-essentials">course in career readiness</a>, which helps learners develop their resume, cover letter and LinkedIn profile. It also provides a mock interview opportunity. Some microcredentials are <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/blogs/beyond-transfer/2023/10/05/how-build-stackable-credentials">“stackable”</a> – meaning that they indicate related skills. Someone pursuing a health care career, for example, might earn stackable microcredentials in clinical medical assisting, phlebotomy and as a electrocardiogram – or EKG – technician. </p>
<p>Some microcredential programs are <a href="https://registrar.oregonstate.edu/microcredentials">credit-bearing</a> and may serve as entry points to degree or certificate programs. </p>
<p>Because of the short duration of microcredential programs, most are not regulated by Title IV of the <a href="https://fsapartners.ed.gov/knowledge-center/library/functional-area/Overview%20of%20Title%20IV">U.S. Higher Education Act</a> and are not typically eligible for federal financial aid, which only covers programs lasting 15 weeks or longer.</p>
<p>If Congress passes the <a href="https://edworkforce.house.gov/uploadedfiles/h.r._6585.pdf">Bipartisan Workforce Pell Act</a>, some microcredentials – those that last eight weeks or more – could become eligible for financial aid. But until there is a final bill, it is unclear whether and how legislation would impact learners pursuing microcredentials. The bill was set to be considered on Feb. 28, 2024, but that <a href="https://www.aamc.org/advocacy-policy/washington-highlights/house-postpones-vote-bipartisan-workforce-pell-act#">vote has been postponed</a>.</p>
<h2>Who seeks microcredentials?</h2>
<p>In 2021 and 2022, my colleagues and I surveyed <a href="https://smlr.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/Documents/Centers/EERC/Noncredit%20Students%20at%20Two%20Community%20Colleges%20Final%20-%20EERC%20-%20August%202023.pdf">more than 300 students pursuing noncredit programs</a> at two community colleges. The students are similar to microcredential seekers in that they’re doing short-term programs that are often hybrid or fully online.</p>
<p>Our survey showed that the vast majority – over 90% – were over 25 years old and that most – over 65% – had prior college experience, including many who had earned degrees or certificates.</p>
<p>The majority of surveyed students indicated that their programs were either free or employer-sponsored. About a fourth said they wanted to get out of low-wage jobs or advance in their current jobs. Between 35% and 50% said they wanted to explore a career change.</p>
<p>Many noncredit programs at community colleges are offered partially or fully in-person, while microcredentials are more typically earned online. While online programs may be convenient, they are also known for <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2158244015621777">high withdrawal rates</a>. Nondegree programs of study also have very <a href="https://smlr.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/Documents/Centers/EERC/Review%20of%20Noncredit%20Outcomes_EERC_1.4.24.pdf">low completion rates</a>.</p>
<h2>Which microcredentials pay off?</h2>
<p>Credentials in traditionally male-dominated fields, such as IT and construction specialties, yielded substantial benefits – lower unemployment rates and far higher wages. Credentials in female-dominated fields, such as education and administrative support, yielded little to no benefit in terms of either employment rates or earnings. These findings come from a 2019 <a href="https://go.stradaeducation.org/certified-value">survey of adults without degrees</a>.</p>
<p>The bottom line is that salaries can <a href="https://www.newamerica.org/education-policy/reports/paying-more-and-getting-less/">vary widely</a>. For instance, people in fields such as IT cloud computing may see a pay boost of US$20,000, whereas people in office administration and certain education-related jobs may not see any salary increase. Credentials in these fields are less likely to be employer-sponsored. </p>
<p>Should you get a microcredential? The answer certainly depends on your current employment situation – including your employer’s willingness to sponsor training – and your career goals. While <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2023/02/23/employers-are-all-microcredentials-survey-shows">95% of employers see benefits</a> in their employees earning a microcredential, 46% are “unsure of the quality of education” represented by microcredentials, and 33% are unsure of their alignment with industry standards.</p>
<p>Given the lack of systematic evidence at this point, I believe their concerns are warranted. Federal and state regulation could lead to better data collection and more quality control for microcredentials.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224601/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Douglas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The credentials can be earned online in a matter of weeks and may lead to higher salaries, but not always.Daniel Douglas, Lecturer in Sociology, Trinity CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1915982022-09-30T03:27:21Z2022-09-30T03:27:21ZBagaimana mantan tapol 1965 beserta keluarga mereka bergelut dengan memori kekerasan masa lalu<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/487373/original/file-20220929-22-hou6d7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Unsplash/Kristina Flour)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Apa jadinya jika seseorang mengemban pengetahuan dan memori tentang suatu kejadian dalam sejarah yang penuh kekerasan, tapi sebagian besar kejadian tersebut tak pernah masuk ke dalam buku sejarah?</p>
<p>Saya menanyakan pertanyaan penting ini selama <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-71455-4_10">riset saya di Jawa Tengah</a>. Kala itu, saya berupaya memahami pengalaman dan persepsi para anak dan anggota keluarga dari orang-orang yang menjadi korban kekerasan peristiwa 1965.</p>
<p>Hasil riset ini saya terbiitkan dalam suatu bab dalam buku berjudul “<a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-71455-4"><em>The Indonesian Genocide of 1965</em></a>”.</p>
<p>Pembunuhan massal 1965 di Indonesia tak hanya mengakibatkan kematian dan penahanan <a href="https://theconversation.com/indonesians-should-be-able-to-talk-about-1965-massacres-without-fear-of-censorship-49729">lebih dari setengah juta orang</a>, tapi juga membuat para penyintasnya harus bergelut dengan ingatan peristiwa bersejarah ini sepanjang hidup mereka yang penuh dengan pembungkaman, penerimaan – dan pada akhirnya, ketangguhan.</p>
<h2>‘Diam’ yang bertahan dari generasi ke generasi</h2>
<p>Sepanjang <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/archipel/1677?lang=fr">pemerintahan otoriter Orde Baru Presiden Suharto (1966-1998)</a>, negara mengajarkan kepada para siswa bahwa pada 1965, Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI) berkhianat dan melakukan kudeta yang pada akirnya ditumpaskan dengan “heroik” oleh Tentara Nasional Indonesia (TNI). Narasi ini pun masih terus bergaung di abad ke-21.</p>
<p>Seiring sekolah mengajarkan anak muda Indonesia tentang narasi ini, narasi historis lain yang berlawanan dengan versi tersebut terus diredam oleh negara.</p>
<p>Hal ini tak hanya meliputi <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01436597.2020.1768064?journalCode=ctwq20">sejarah kompleks dari gerakan kiri</a> dalam perpolitikan Indonesia, tapi juga rangkaian kejadian berdarah yang mengerikan setelah <a href="https://brill.com/view/journals/bki/176/2-3/article-p373_6.xml">melejitnya kekuasaan militer Indonesia pada 1965</a>, ketika ratusan ribu orang Indonesia dibunuh atau ditahan tanpa proses hukum karena dituduh berafiliasi dengan PKI.</p>
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Baca juga:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/55-tahun-impunitas-membawa-mundur-indonesia-sejak-tragedi-1965-147181">55 tahun impunitas membawa mundur Indonesia sejak tragedi 1965</a>
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<p>Sejarah mengenai kekerasan ini menjadi <a href="https://theconversation.com/indonesians-should-be-able-to-talk-about-1965-massacres-without-fear-of-censorship-49729">hal yang tak pernah dan tak bisa dibicarakan</a> di ruang publik selama periode Orde Baru.</p>
<p>Banyak orang Indonesia bahkan menerapkan swasensor karena takut – terutama para korban kekerasan, beserta anak dan keluarga mereka.</p>
<p>Para mantan tahanan politik (tapol), yang secara langsung mengalami kekerasan tersebut, misalnya, senantiasa diawasi dan mengalami diskriminasi seiring bebas dari penjara.</p>
<p>Status sebagai orang yang “bersalah” ini pun seakan turun dari para penyintas kepada keturunan mereka. Negara turut mengucilkan para tertuduh “<a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-71455-4_10">anak komunis</a>” ini bersamaan dengan orang tua mereka.</p>
<p>Banyak keluarga korban terjerumus dalam diam. Seringkali, para mantan tapol, termasuk yang saya ajak bicara dalam riset saya, berupaya melindungi anak mereka dengan cara menyembunyikan dan tidak menceritakan pengalaman dan penderitaan mereka di masa lalu.</p>
<p>Selama periode Orde Baru, jawaban paling aman terhadap apa pun yang berkaitan dengan 1965 adalah “<em>Saya tidak tahu apa-apa</em>”.</p>
<p>Lalu, runtuhnya rezim otoriter Suharto dan munculnya Era Reformasi pada 1998 membuat beberapa mantan korban kekerasan lebih berani untuk menantang versi resmi negara terkait sejarah 1965.</p>
<p>Di tengah bangkitnya demokrasi, kemunculan <a href="https://theconversation.com/agar-terekam-dan-tak-pernah-mati-membawa-ingatan-65-ke-ruang-virtual-168080">berbagai medium dan platform</a> ekspresi baru, serta <a href="https://theconversation.com/generasi-muda-tumpuan-baru-untuk-urai-benang-kusut-peristiwa-65-169039">minat generasi muda</a> yang meningkat, para mantan tapol berupaya mengekspos fakta-fakta yang selama ini disembunyikan terkait peristiwa pembunuhan massal dan penahanan terhadap tertuduh komunis.</p>
<p>Beberapa mantan tapol dan korban lain dari peristiwa 1965 mulai memberanikan diri untuk bercerita – termasuk melalui memoar seperti oleh wartawan dan <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33853410-cahaya-mata-sang-pewaris">mantan tahanan politik Putu Oka Sukanta</a>, membentuk organisasi advokasi bersama mantan tapol lain seperti <a href="https://ypkp1965.org/blog/category/sejarah/">Yayasan Penelitian Korban Pembunuhan (YPKP) 1965</a>, dan bahkan wadah kreatif seperti <a href="https://medium.com/ingat-65/salam-harapan-dan-perdamaian-dari-paduan-suara-dialita-a7e39f868a46">Paduan Suara Dialita</a>.</p>
<p>Dalam beberapa kasus, mereka juga mulai menceritakan pada anak dan cucu mereka tentang pengalaman yang mereka lalui.</p>
<p>Tiba-tiba, mereka menjadi bisa, meski tetap tidak semua dan tentu dengan risiko, untuk menyatakan, “<em>Saya tahu</em>”.</p>
<h2>Bergelut dengan ingatan masa lalu</h2>
<p>Meski semakin banyak mantan tapol memilih untuk berbicara, nampaknya masih ada atmosfer ambiguitas terkait pengetahuan dan ingatan seperti apa yang dimiliki oleh para tapol dan anggota keluarga mereka.</p>
<p>Apakah mereka sebenarnya diam-diam tahu, sebagaimana tuduhan para kelompok antikomunis, detail tentang “aksi-aksi pengkhianatan” PKI? Ataukah lebih ke wawasan umum mengenai sejarah gerakan kiri Indonesia sebelum 1965?</p>
<p>Apakah pengetahuan ini meliputi kekerasan mengerikan yang dilakukan dan didukung oleh negara, yang berdampak pada jutaan orang Indonesia selama 1965-1966? Atau mungkin cerita personal dan trauma masa lalu yang diturunkan dari para mantan tapol kepada anak dan cucu mereka?</p>
<p>Apapun itu, kelompok antikomunis menaganggap pengetahuan ini “berbahaya”, serta <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-71455-4_15">membuat resah</a> mereka yang memihak versi sejarah dari negara dan mengkhawatirkan adanya “kebangkitan kembali komunisme”.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Baca juga:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/monster-monster-di-balik-bayang-marxisme-kultural-di-barat-dan-hantu-komunisme-di-indonesia-146106">Monster-monster di balik bayang: Marxisme Kultural di Barat dan Hantu Komunisme di Indonesia</a>
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<p>Tapi, isi pengetahuan dan ingatan masa lalu ini bisa jadi tidak sepenting itu di mata para mantan tapol beserta anak dan cucu mereka. Justru, para tapol yang saya ajak bicara dalam riset saya memilih untuk fokus pada bagaimana menggunakan ingatan masa lalu ini untuk <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-71455-4_10">hidup lebih baik, meruntuhkan stigma, dan mendorong keadilan dan akuntabilitas</a>.</p>
<p>Sumanto, seorang laki-laki lanjut usia yang menjadi tahanan selama 6 tahun karena keterlibatannya dalam organisasi kiri Pemuda Rakyat pada pertengahan 1960-an, mengatakan pada saya bahwa ia nyaman menceritakan penderitaannya kepada aktivis muda yang bukan kerabatnya serta organisasi HAM sebagai upaya mengangkat sejarah kekerasan masa lalu.</p>
<p>Tapi, dengan anaknya sendiri di rumah, ia enggan menceritakan kisah-kisah tertentu.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Saya lebih menekankan kepada semangat kerja bagi anak-anak saya…supaya anak saya bisa bertanggung jawab kepada dirinya sendiri, dan dia tidak menjadi sampah masyarakat. Supaya dia bisa bertanggungjawab kepada dirinya sendiri dan kalau bisa, itu bisa menolong kepada orang lain.” – Sumanto.</p>
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<p>Dua anak mantan tapol yang berusia sekitar 20-an tahun mengatakan pada saya bahwa setelah mendengarkan cerita dari ayah mereka tentang pengalamannya di penjara, mereka tergerak untuk mempelajari sumber-sumber sejarah yang lebih “objektif” tentang peristiwa 1965.</p>
<p>Dan, dengan nada bercanda, Siti, seorang anak perempuan dari wartawan yang diculik pada 1965, menjelaskan bagaimana anaknya menggunakan pengetahuan terkait sejarah keluarga mereka untuk iseng mempertanyakan guru sejarahnya di SMA-nya.</p>
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<p>“Anak bungsu saya sudah lama bersemangat untuk belajar sejarah. Dia sering menunggu dengan tidak sabar untuk masuk kelas biar bisa bertanya ke guru: ‘Bu Guru, Bu Guru, apakah Bu Guru kenal dengan kakek saya?” [tertawa]“ – Siti.</p>
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<p>Pengamatan-pengamatan ini menunjukkan bahwa, ketika saat ini <a href="https://theconversation.com/monster-monster-di-balik-bayang-marxisme-kultural-di-barat-dan-hantu-komunisme-di-indonesia-146106">kelompok konservatif di Indonesia gencar menentang pembahasan sejarah 1965</a>, kita tidak selayaknya memandang berbagai "wawasan” dari para penyintas ini, beserta keluarga mereka, sebagai noda.</p>
<p>Ini justru merupakan tanda ketangguhan mereka, dan suatu dorongan aksi masa depan sebagai perjuangan mencapai <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-should-indonesia-resolve-atrocities-of-the-1965-66-anti-communist-purge-57885">keadilan dan akuntabilitas</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/191598/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Conroe pernah menerima dana dari IIE Fulbright Award, U.S. Department of State (2004-2005)</span></em></p>Tragedi 1965 tak hanya mengakibatkan kematian dan penahanan lebih dari setengah juta orang, tapi juga membuat penyintas dan keluarga mereka bergelut dengan memori kekerasan masa lalu.Andrew Conroe, Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Trinity CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1915082022-09-30T03:26:14Z2022-09-30T03:26:14ZHow former political prisoners of Indonesia’s 1965 mass killings grapple with memories of their bloody past<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/487166/original/file-20220928-21-pm6956.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Unsplash/Kristina Flour)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>What does it mean to have knowledge about a violent historical event that, for the most part, has never made it into national history books?</p>
<p>I asked this important question during <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-71455-4_10">my research in Central Java, Indonesia</a>, where I sought to understand the experiences and perceptions of children and other family members of individuals who were victims of the 1965-1966 anti-communist violence.</p>
<p>I published the results of this study in a chapter of a book titled “<a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-71455-4"><em>The Indonesian Genocide of 1965</em></a>”. The 1965 killings in Indonesia not only resulted in the death and imprisonment of <a href="https://theconversation.com/indonesians-should-be-able-to-talk-about-1965-massacres-without-fear-of-censorship-49729">more than half-a-million people</a>, but also forced its survivors to grapple with knowledge of this bloody past throughout a lifetime of silence, acceptance – and ultimately, resilience.</p>
<h2>A genocide that silenced generations</h2>
<p>In 1965, the “treacherous” Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) launched an attempted coup that was crushed by the “heroic” Indonesian military – or at least, this was the version the state taught Indonesian students throughout President Suharto’s <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/archipel/1677?lang=fr">authoritarian New Order regime (1966-1998)</a>, and even well into the 21st century.</p>
<p>As schools taught young Indonesians this narrative, histories that ran counter to it were being suppressed. These included the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01436597.2020.1768064?journalCode=ctwq20">complex history of the leftist movement</a> in Indonesian politics, but also the bloody, terrifying events following <a href="https://brill.com/view/journals/bki/176/2-3/article-p373_6.xml">the army’s rise to power in 1965</a>, when at least hundreds of thousands of Indonesians were killed or imprisoned without trial for their alleged affiliation with the PKI. </p>
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Baca juga:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/55-years-of-impunity-how-indonesia-is-going-backwards-after-the-1965-genocide-147086">55 years of impunity: how Indonesia is going backwards after the 1965 genocide</a>
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<p>This violent history remained <a href="https://theconversation.com/indonesians-should-be-able-to-talk-about-1965-massacres-without-fear-of-censorship-49729">unspoken and unspeakable</a> in the public sphere during the New Order period.</p>
<p>Many Indonesians even self-censored out of fear – particularly the victims of the violence, and their children and family members. Former political prisoners, those who had most directly experienced the violence, for instance, were subject to various forms of surveillance and discrimination following their release from prison. </p>
<p>Survivors passed along this supposed guilt to their offspring. The state also ostracised these accused “<a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-71455-4_10">communist children</a>” along with their parents. Many families of victims fell into silence. In many cases, former political prisoners, including those I talked to in my research, tried to protect their children by hiding and never speaking of their past ordeals and sufferings.</p>
<p>During the New Order period, the safest response to anything connected with 1965 was “<em>I didn’t/don’t know anything</em>”. Then, the downfall of Suharto’s authoritarian regime and the dawn of the Reform Era in 1998 emboldened some former victims of state violence to challenge the official version of what had happened in 1965. </p>
<p>Amid the emergence of democracy, the rise of <a href="https://theconversation.com/agar-terekam-dan-tak-pernah-mati-membawa-ingatan-65-ke-ruang-virtual-168080">new mediums and platforms</a> of expression, and rising interest <a href="https://theconversation.com/generasi-muda-tumpuan-baru-untuk-urai-benang-kusut-peristiwa-65-169039">among the younger generation</a>, they sought to expose the suppressed facts about the mass killing and imprisonment of suspected communists.</p>
<p>Some former political prisoners and other victims of 1965 began to speak out – including through memoirs such as by journalist and <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33853410-cahaya-mata-sang-pewaris">former political prisoner Putu Oka Sukanta</a>, forming advocacy organisations with other former political prisoners such as <a href="https://ypkp1965.org/blog/category/sejarah/"><em>Yayasan Penelitian Korban Pembunuhan</em></a> (the Foundation for Victims of the 1965/1966 Killings), and even creative outlets such as the <a href="https://medium.com/ingat-65/salam-harapan-dan-perdamaian-dari-paduan-suara-dialita-a7e39f868a46"><em>Dialita Choir</em></a>.</p>
<p>In some cases, they finally started talking to their children and grandchildren about what they had experienced. Suddenly it became possible, with unevenness and still some risk, to state, “<em>I knew/know</em>”. </p>
<h2>Grappling with knowledge of the past</h2>
<p>Even though more and more former political prisoners chose to speak out, however, there still seemed to be an air of mystery and ambiguity regarding what kind of knowledge former political prisoners and their family members possess. </p>
<p>Did the knowledge involve, as many anticommunists had accused, some sinister inside knowledge of the many treacherous actions of the PKI? Or was it more related to the general knowledge of the history of the Indonesian Left prior to 1965?</p>
<p>Was the knowledge about the terrible state-sponsored violence that impacted so many millions of Indonesians in 1965-1966? Or was it more personal stories and past trauma that children and grandchildren of former political prisoners had acquired from their elders?</p>
<p>Whatever they were, anticommunists label this knowledge as “dangerous”, causing <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-71455-4_15">a great deal of anxiety</a> among those Indonesians who defend the state and fear a “communist resurgence”.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Baca juga:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/monster-monster-di-balik-bayang-marxisme-kultural-di-barat-dan-hantu-komunisme-di-indonesia-146106">Monster-monster di balik bayang: Marxisme Kultural di Barat dan Hantu Komunisme di Indonesia</a>
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</em>
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<p>What’s clear is that the content of this knowledge and these memories seemed to matter much less to the former political prisoners themselves, or their children and grandchildren. Instead, those that I talked to in my study choose to focus on how to use this knowledge of the past to <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-71455-4_10">better their lives, escape stigma and promote justice and accountability</a> in Indonesia.</p>
<p>Sumanto, an elderly man who was imprisoned for six years for his involvement in the leftist youth organisation <em>Pemuda Rakyat</em> in the mid 1960s, told me he was comfortable describing his own sufferings to young, unrelated activists and human rights organisations for the purpose of addressing historical wrongs. </p>
<p>But with his own children at home, he had avoided telling specific stories.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I place more of an emphasis on making sure that my children have a good work ethic […] so that they can take responsibility for themselves, and not become dregs of society. If they can take responsibility for themselves, then they can help other people.” – Sumanto.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Two children of former political prisoners in their mid-20s told me that hearing their fathers’ specific stories of imprisonment had spurred them to seek more “objective” historical sources on 1965.</p>
<p>And, in a humorous tone, Siti, one daughter of a journalist who was abducted in 1965 described how her son used his knowledge of their specific family history to mischievously challenge his high school history teacher.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“My younger child was eager to be taught history lessons, even before they were taught. He waited impatiently to take his classes so that he could ask the teacher: ‘Ms. Teacher, Mr. Teacher, do you know my grandfather?’ [laughs]” – Siti.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These observations suggest that, at a time when there is an <a href="https://theconversation.com/monster-monster-di-balik-bayang-marxisme-kultural-di-barat-dan-hantu-komunisme-di-indonesia-146106">ongoing backlash by conservative forces</a> in Indonesia against reckoning with the history of 1965, we should not see these various forms of “knowledge” practised by survivors and their children as a stain.</p>
<p>They are instead a mark of resilience and a spur towards future action in a struggle for <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-should-indonesia-resolve-atrocities-of-the-1965-66-anti-communist-purge-57885">justice and accountability</a>. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Baca juga:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-should-indonesia-resolve-atrocities-of-the-1965-66-anti-communist-purge-57885">How should Indonesia resolve atrocities of the 1965-66 anti-communist purge?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/191508/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Conroe has previously received funding from the IIE Fulbright Award, U.S. Department of State (2004-2005)</span></em></p>The 1965 killings in Indonesia not only led to the death and imprisonment of many, but also forced survivors to shoulder knowledge of this history through silence, acceptance, and resilience.Andrew Conroe, Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Trinity CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1825822022-05-10T19:16:23Z2022-05-10T19:16:23Z5 justices, all confirmed by senators representing a minority of voters, appear willing to overturn Roe v. Wade<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462296/original/file-20220510-10405-u8mp23.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C35%2C5982%2C3952&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An unscalable fence around the U.S. Supreme Court, on May 7, 2022, set up in response to protests against the possible overruling of Roe v. Wade.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/an-un-scalable-fence-stands-around-the-us-supreme-court-in-news-photo/1240520345?adppopup=true"> Jose Luis Magana / AFP/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>If the leaked Supreme Court decision on abortion is to be believed, five justices have <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/07/supreme-court-abortion-roe-roberts-alito/">voted during private deliberations</a> to overturn Roe v. Wade. Notably, those five are what I refer to as <a href="http://studentorgs.kentlaw.iit.edu/cklawreview/">“numerical minority justices</a>.”</p>
<p>They are the only five in American history to qualify for that designation. And three of them were appointed by a minority president. Since Donald Trump <a href="http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2016/nov/21/reince-priebus/despite-losing-popular-vote-donald-trump-won-elect/">lost the popular vote</a> in the 2016 election, he was, by definition, a minority president, elected by a minority of the voters. </p>
<p>Similarly, I define a “numerical minority justice” as a nominee who won confirmation with the support of a majority of senators, but senators who did not represent a majority of voters.</p>
<p>That raises a question that goes to the heart of the Supreme Court’s legitimacy in our democracy: Will this be a court out of line with America? </p>
<p>If so, what might that mean for the country’s politics and law? Indeed, for the nation itself? </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462303/original/file-20220510-12-m7kw7g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman in a hooded jacket using a bullhorn to speak to several other people across the street from her who are holding signs." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462303/original/file-20220510-12-m7kw7g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462303/original/file-20220510-12-m7kw7g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462303/original/file-20220510-12-m7kw7g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462303/original/file-20220510-12-m7kw7g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462303/original/file-20220510-12-m7kw7g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462303/original/file-20220510-12-m7kw7g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462303/original/file-20220510-12-m7kw7g.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Pro-abortion protester Trish Manzke chants into a bullhorn in the direction of anti-abortion protesters outside of the U.S. Supreme Court, May 7, 2022, in Washington, D.C.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/SupremeCourtAbortion/eeea69c447d94234834b98c07f10d268/photo?hpSectionId=dfd51bbd91864f3abf518d2287463b7b&st=hpsection&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=1193&currentItemNo=133">AP Photo/Amanda Andrade-Rhoades</a></span>
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</figure>
<h2>Court out of step with America?</h2>
<p>Consider Justice Brett Kavanaugh, one of the five justices whose name is on the leaked draft opinion overturning Roe. </p>
<p>During his confirmation, Kavanaugh was supported by a majority of the 98 senators voting on the nomination – <a href="https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1152/vote_115_2_00223.htm">49 Republicans and one Democrat</a>. But the votes earned by those 50 senators in their most recent elections added up to a total of only <a href="https://uselectionatlas.org/">54,102,052</a>.</p>
<p>The 48 senators who opposed Kavanaugh’s confirmation, all Democrats, garnered <a href="https://uselectionatlas.org/">78,623,957</a> total votes in their most recent elections – 24.5 million more votes from people supporting those senators.</p>
<p>Compare those figures with the support for one justice who has apparently not joined with those planning to overturn Roe, Elena Kagan. The <a href="https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1112/vote_111_2_00229.htm">Senate confirmed Kagan to a seat on the court by a vote of 63-37</a>. The 63 senators supporting her nomination had collected nearly twice as many votes in their most recent elections as the 37 senators in opposition.</p>
<h2>Seldom far from the mainstream</h2>
<p>To be sure, the framers of the Constitution purposely decided to provide <a href="https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/Constitution_Senate.htm#1">each state with two senators</a>, knowing that those senators from states with smaller populations would represent fewer – at times far fewer – citizens than those with larger ones. Today, for example, California’s population is close to 40 million while Wyoming’s is less than 600,000. Yet both states have two senators.</p>
<p>This arrangement was a central aspect of the <a href="https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/A_Great_Compromise.htm">Great Compromise</a>, which helped convince representatives from sparsely populated states — fearful of being ignored by an alliance of the heavily populated states — to back the new Constitution.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, since the popular vote began to matter in the election of 1824, a minority president had never succeeded in appointing a minority justice. Indeed, until this century, even for presidents who won the popular vote by a large margin, significant Senate resistance more often than not <a href="https://www.loc.gov/law/find/court-withdrawn.php">doomed a nominee to the court</a>. </p>
<p>This might help to explain why political scientist <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=UJXQ4N5oZZQC&pg=PA261&lpg=PA261&dq=lagged+far+behind+nor+forged+far+ahead+of+America&source=bl&ots=2uVXAZCTA4&sig=D2j32feRdEHfxTopMAQA7fvvm-8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwik05OHmYjcAhWlpFkKHSIfAbIQ6AEIODAB#v=onepage&q=lagged%20far%20behind%20nor%20forged%20far%20ahead%20of%20America&f=false">Robert McCloskey concluded</a> in 1960 that the court had rarely “lagged far behind nor forged far ahead of America” and that the justices had “seldom strayed very far from the mainstreams of American life.” </p>
<h2>Might politics and the courts collide?</h2>
<p>Things are different today. We live in a period of <a href="http://www.people-press.org/interactives/political-polarization-1994-2017/">deep political polarization</a>. This shift in American politics raises some important questions about the Supreme Court’s legitimacy in our democracy. </p>
<p>In the past, political majorities at the polls have supported significant doctrinal shifts by the court, even if the specific rulings have been controversial. </p>
<p>In other words, as McCloskey and fellow political scientist Robert Dahl observed, since one party typically dominated during an extended period of time, the justices – because they were products of that enduring regime – generally advanced the regime’s interests in the long term. To put it simply, for much of American history, the court followed the <a href="https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/emlj6&div=20&id=&page=">election returns</a>.</p>
<p>For example, the 1905 decision of <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1900-1940/198us45">Lochner v. New York</a>, which struck down state legislation designed to protect workers via the court’s <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/lochner-v-new-york-fundamental-rights-and-economic-liberty">freedom of contract doctrine</a>, was a product of the Republican regime that dominated American politics at the time. </p>
<p>Similarly, the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/new-deal">New Deal Democratic regime</a> ushered in by the landslide election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 ultimately provided the political basis for another divisive decision, <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/347us483">Brown v. Board of Education</a>, which found that supposedly “separate-but-equal” segregated schools <a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/R/bo3613113.html">were unconstitutional</a>. </p>
<p>Today, no such majority exists.</p>
<p>The popular vote for president and the Electoral College results have twice in the last six presidential elections <a href="http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-pol-electoral-college-20161110-story.html">been out of alignment</a>. And the Democratic presidential nominee has <a href="https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/polls/us-elections/popular-vote/">won the popular vote</a> in seven of the last eight presidential elections, from 1992 to 2020, yet Republican presidents have <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/about/biographies.aspx">appointed six</a> of the nine sitting justices. </p>
<p>Given this recent divide between the popular vote and the electoral vote, it seems reasonable to consider the possibility of the alternative to McCloskey’s conclusions – of a court that consistently diverges from American majorities on the most pressing issues of the day.</p>
<p>After all, Supreme Court justices <a href="http://www.uscourts.gov/about-federal-courts/educational-resources/about-educational-outreach/activity-resources/about">have lifetime appointments</a> and typically stay on the bench for many years, even decades. Their imprint on the law can be enduring and their legitimacy, conferred in part by the confirmation process, helps ensure their place in our democracy. </p>
<h2>Roe’s pending end</h2>
<p>With the addition of the Trump justices, many court observers suspected <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/410/113/case.html">the 1973 Roe ruling</a>, which affirmed a woman’s right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, would become a prime target of the newly-established conservative majority. </p>
<p>While Roe has been a deeply divisive decision since the day it was announced, the Republican in the White House at the time — Richard Nixon — <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/us/politics/24nixon.html">neither publicly denounced it</a> nor <a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/N/bo12079563.html">sought to overturn it</a>. And three of his four appointees to the court <a href="http://landmarkcases.org/en/Page/661/Summary_of_the_Decision">joined the 7-2 majority</a>, including the opinion’s <a href="http://prospect.org/article/conservative-liberal">author Justice Harry Blackmun</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226557/original/file-20180706-122271-vbzdq0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226557/original/file-20180706-122271-vbzdq0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226557/original/file-20180706-122271-vbzdq0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226557/original/file-20180706-122271-vbzdq0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226557/original/file-20180706-122271-vbzdq0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226557/original/file-20180706-122271-vbzdq0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226557/original/file-20180706-122271-vbzdq0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Nixon, flanked by outgoing Chief Justice Earl Warren, left, and incoming Chief Justice Warren Burger, right.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Of course, Nixon’s Republican successor, Ronald Reagan, oversaw a Justice Department that repeatedly asked the court to reverse itself on <a href="https://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/S1059-433720160000070009">Roe</a>. But ultimately a majority of the justices refused to go along, including two of Reagan’s three additions to the court, Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy.</p>
<p>Today, polls show significant opposition to overturning the decision. </p>
<p>For example, according to <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/roe-v-wade-supreme-court-overturn-opinion-poll-2022-05-08/">a post-leak CBS News poll</a>, 64% of Americans want the court to keep Roe “as is.” A Washington Post-ABC News poll supports this conclusion, finding 54% of respondents did not think the court should overturn Roe, while 28% <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/03/most-americans-say-supreme-court-should-uphold-roe-post-abc-poll-finds/">thought it should</a>.</p>
<p>It would be best if a court making a determination on the future of Roe could do so with the utmost democratic legitimacy. But given the state of U.S. politics today, that is a near impossibility. </p>
<p><a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/354908/approval-supreme-court-down-new-low.aspx">In September 2021, Gallup reported</a> that the court’s approval rating had fallen from 58% support a little more than a year earlier to a new low of 40%. Perhaps more strikingly, another poll <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/02/02/publics-views-of-supreme-court-turned-more-negative-before-news-of-breyers-retirement/">showed an increasing partisan divide in views of the court</a>, with 65% of Republicans approving of its work and just 46% of Democrats doing so.</p>
<p>A five-justice conservative majority that discards Roe after nearly 50 years on the books will likely further the belief that the court reaches its rulings based mainly on politics rather than law, especially given the central role opponents of the decision have played in mobilizing voters to support Republican candidates like Donald Trump. </p>
<p><a href="https://internet3.trincoll.edu/facProfiles/Default.aspx?fid=1261609">As a political scientist</a> who has studied and written about the Supreme Court for more than 25 years, I believe this result will likely further erode of the court’s legitimacy, and deepen the partisan divide in America.</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of an article <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-the-supreme-courts-legitimacy-undermined-in-a-polarized-age-99473">originally published on July 7, 2018</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182582/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kevin J. McMahon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>If the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, will it be out of step with America?Kevin J. McMahon, Professor of Political Science & Director of the Graduate Program in Public Policy, Trinity CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1802242022-04-11T12:18:14Z2022-04-11T12:18:14ZPsychological tips aren’t enough – policies need to address structural inequities so everyone can flourish<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457253/original/file-20220410-66379-yjgfvw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1068%2C572%2C5762%2C4330&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Who gets to flourish and who doesn't?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/young-mother-and-father-walking-with-infant-royalty-free-image/909158198">Tony Anderson/DigitalVision via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/19/well/mind/covid-mental-health-languishing.html">Languishing</a>” is the in-vogue term for today’s widely shared sense of pandemic malaise. According to <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/adam_grant_how_to_stop_languishing_and_start_finding_flow?language=en">some psychologists</a>, you can stop languishing with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/04/well/mind/flourishing-languishing.html">simple steps</a>: Savor the small stuff. Do five good deeds. Find activities that let you “<a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_flow_the_secret_to_happiness?language=en">flow</a>.” Change how you think and what you do, and today’s languishing can become tomorrow’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/05/04/well/mind/languishing-definition-flourishing-quiz.html">flourishing</a>.</p>
<p>But in an unjust world burdened by concurrent threats – war, a pandemic, the slow burn of climate change – does this argument ring true? Can <a href="https://hfh.fas.harvard.edu/files/pik/files/activitiesforflourishing_jppw.pdf">simple activities</a> like these really help us – all of us – flourish?</p>
<p>As social scientists who study <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/26665603/vsi/10MQ4BLM58B">flourishing and health</a>, we have watched this psychological approach capture <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2021/11/04/baylor-and-harvard-team-up-for--massive-global-study-of-human-flourishing/?sh=47be107850b8">attention</a> – and <a href="https://www.templetonworldcharity.org/humanflourishing">massive investment</a>. Most of this work is rooted in <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/happier-9780190655648">positive psychology</a>, a fast-growing field that sees individuals as largely responsible for their own flourishing. This new research, most of it survey-based, <a href="https://www.baylorisr.org/programs-research/global-flourishing-study/">aims to revamp health and social policy</a>, nationally and globally. It may well succeed at this — which has us concerned.</p>
<p>What could be wrong with a worldwide effort to help people flourish? <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666560321000451">Our concern</a> is that a narrowly psychological approach overestimates individuals’ control over their own <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/well-being-expanding-the-definition-of-progress-9780190080495">well-being</a>, while underestimating the role of systemic inequities, including those that <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/how-we-rise/2021/11/05/what-does-the-build-back-better-framework-mean-for-bipoc-communities/">well-designed laws and policies can help address</a>.</p>
<h2>Here’s what people told us affected flourishing</h2>
<p>As researchers who combine surveys with interviews, we know that thousands of data points can tell us many things – but not the stuff you learn from sitting down with people to talk, and listen.</p>
<p>In a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmmh.2021.100057">new paper</a> based on our <a href="https://arches.chip.uconn.edu/">collaborative research</a>, we asked open-ended questions that surveys cannot answer. Not just, “Are you flourishing?,” but also: “Why, or why not? What helps you flourish? What gets in the way?”</p>
<p>We took our questions to public libraries and private boardrooms, coffee shops and kitchen tables throughout Greater Cleveland, Ohio, speaking with 170 people from different backgrounds: men and women, rich and poor, liberal and conservative, Black, white and Latino. Would their answers align, we wondered? Would they mesh with the experts’?</p>
<p>In one area, our interviewees’ perspectives line up with leading survey research: For over 70%, social connections had a powerful impact on whether they felt they were flourishing. But other topics people raised are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmmh.2021.100057">ignored in most leading studies of flourishing</a>.</p>
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<p>For instance, a full 70% mentioned a stable income. Nearly as many flagged what public health professionals call the <a href="https://health.gov/healthypeople/objectives-and-data/social-determinants-health">social determinants of health</a> – reliable access to things like healthy food, transportation, education and a safe place to live. Some also cited discrimination, unequal treatment by the police, and other factors described as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1073110520958876">structural determinants of health</a>.</p>
<h2>Poverty, inequity and racism get in the way</h2>
<p>For people who face inequity in their own lives, the links between adversity and flourishing were crystal clear.</p>
<p>Over half of interviewees described themselves as flourishing. But less than half of those earning $30,000 or less annually were flourishing, compared to almost 90% of those with household incomes over $100,000. More than two-thirds of white interviewees were flourishing versus less than half of Black interviewees. And nearly three-quarters of people with a bachelor’s degree were flourishing, compared to just over half of those without.</p>
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<p>A Latina woman we interviewed explained how poverty and other forms of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2011.576725">structural vulnerability</a> can impair flourishing: “If you have a home that’s infested with roaches, and mold, and lead, and water, then after you’ve worked so hard, you come home and just want to rest. And then you’re like oh, I don’t have food, and you didn’t want to cook … then you’re eating unhealthy.” </p>
<p>She described how all these factors affect relationships too: “You’re not being a good mom because you’re angry. … You cannot give 100% at home. … You cannot give 100% to work, and you cannot give 100% to social life, and you have no friends because you’re so angry nobody wants to talk to you.”</p>
<p>Other interviewees told us how entrenched racism obstructs flourishing. One Black woman described racism’s grinding toll as “exhausting” and “such a heavy lift every day.” She compared it to a game of chess requiring “strategies all day long.” The constant vigilance and pressure she described fit <a href="https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2004.060749">what health researchers call weathering</a>, or premature deterioration in health.</p>
<p>Under circumstances like these, would savoring the small things and doing good deeds really help? </p>
<p>To us, the answer is clear: Without the conditions that enable flourishing, psychological exercises will inevitably fall short. More importantly, they risk leaving behind those already facing adversity and injustice.</p>
<h2>Collective flourishing requires structural change</h2>
<p>The path to flourishing is no simple issue of mind over matter. It also depends on society’s systems and structures: <a href="https://www.rwjf.org/en/blog/2019/07/home-is-where-our-health-is.html">Safe, affordable housing</a>. A <a href="https://www.countyhealthrankings.org/take-action-to-improve-health/what-works-for-health/strategies/living-wage-laws">living wage</a>. <a href="https://www.dataforprogress.org/memos/racism-is-a-public-health-crisis">Solutions to systemic racism</a>. Affordable, <a href="https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america">quality food</a> and <a href="https://www.urban.org/research/publication/bolstered-recovery-legislation-health-insurance-safety-net-prevented-rise">health care</a>, including <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/03/02/1084006754/heres-what-experts-say-biden-gets-right-in-his-new-mental-health-plan">mental health care</a>. As <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/well-9780190916831">decades of public health research have shown</a>, factors like these deeply affect health and <a href="http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2020.305831">well-being</a>. We contend that flourishing research and policy need to consider these factors as well.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JftP-75kJDE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Author Sarah Willen discusses flourishing on the Social Science & Medicine – Mental Health video podcast.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There’s nothing wrong with taking concrete steps to cultivate kindness, gratitude and connections with others. To the contrary, these are great ways to improve mental health and strengthen social solidarity. But tips like these are probably most helpful to people whose lives and livelihoods are already secure. For those who struggle to meet their basic needs and those of their loved ones, it will take a lot more than simple activities to flourish. It will take structural change.</p>
<p>“Hostile environments thwart flourishing; congenial environments promote it,” as disability justice scholar <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/human-flourishing-in-an-age-of-gene-editing-9780190940362">Rosemary Garland-Thomson</a> puts it. Unless political leaders are willing to tackle the <a href="https://i1.wp.com/blog.petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Yearby_Graphic.png">root causes of</a> <a href="https://blog.petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/2020/09/22/structural-racism-social-determinant-of-health/">social inequities</a>, chances of flourishing inevitably will be unequal.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/11/13/20955328/positive-psychology-martin-seligman-happiness-religion-secularism">Positive psychologists</a> tend to see flourishing as a psychological matter, separate from social and political conditions. Our interviewees tell a different story. Policy proposals that ignore real-world perspectives like theirs risk leading policymakers astray.</p>
<p>[<em>Over 150,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletters to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?source=inline-150ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p>
<p>Ancient views of flourishing may help forge a path forward. For Aristotle, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmmh.2021.100045">flourishing is not just about happiness or satisfaction</a> – it involves achieving your potential. In his view, this responsibility lies in one’s own hands. But modern <a href="https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/WHO-IER-CSDH-08.1">public health research shows</a> that the ability to achieve your potential depends heavily on the circumstances in which you are born, grow and live. </p>
<p>In hostile environments – of exclusion and oppression, scarcity and risk, war and forcible displacement – no one can flourish. Unless all of us – citizens, policymakers and researchers alike – are prepared to confront the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2017.0197">root causes of today’s hostile environments</a>, efforts to promote flourishing will inevitably miss the mark.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/180224/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah S. Willen is Principal Investigator of ARCHES | the AmeRicans’ Conceptions of Health Equity Study described in this article. Support for ARCHES was provided in part by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Abigail Fisher Williamson is Co-Principal Investigator of ARCHES | the AmeRicans’ Conceptions of Health Equity Study described in this article. Support for ARCHES was provided in part by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Colleen Walsh is Co-Principal Investigator of ARCHES | the AmeRicans’ Conceptions of Health Equity Study described in this article. Support for ARCHES was provided in part by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.</span></em></p>For people who struggle to meet their basic needs, it will take a lot more than simple psychological exercises to flourish. It will take systemic change.Sarah S. Willen, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Research Program on Global Health & Human Rights at the Human Rights Institute, University of ConnecticutAbigail Fisher Williamson, Associate Professor of Political Science and Public Policy and Law, Trinity CollegeColleen Walsh, Associate Professor of Health Sciences, Cleveland State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1668952021-09-14T02:39:43Z2021-09-14T02:39:43Z‘The pigs can smell man’: how decimation of Borneo’s ancient rainforests threatens hunters and the hunted<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420236/original/file-20210909-17-12fslap.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C521%2C2819%2C1745&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Monika Gregussova/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>For more than 40,000 years, Indigenous communities in Borneo have hunted and eaten bearded pigs – huge, nomadic animals that roam the island in Southeast Asia. These 100kg creatures are central to the livelihood and culture of some Bornean peoples – in fact, some hunters rarely talk of anything else.</p>
<p>But this ancient relationship is now at serious risk. Oil palm expansion and urbanisation are forcing changes to hunting practices in Sabah, a Malaysian state in Borneo. <a href="https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/pan3.10250">Our research</a> examined these changes by focusing on Indigenous Kadazandusun-Murut hunters, for whom bearded pigs are a favourite game animal. </p>
<p>The oil palm industry has cleared much of Borneo’s lowland tropical rainforests to make way for plantations. And a shift to a more agrarian and urbanised life means many people hunt less than they used to.</p>
<p>Hunting is one of the most fundamental and enduring of human–wildlife relationships. But the changing dynamic between Borneo’s pigs and Indigenous peoples is a powerful reminder of the fragility of these connections. There is much at stake right now, for both the hunted and the hunter. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420233/original/file-20210909-25-pkdbdt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420233/original/file-20210909-25-pkdbdt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420233/original/file-20210909-25-pkdbdt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420233/original/file-20210909-25-pkdbdt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420233/original/file-20210909-25-pkdbdt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420233/original/file-20210909-25-pkdbdt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420233/original/file-20210909-25-pkdbdt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Detail from an artistic representation of a traditional form of Indigenous bearded pig hunting.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Amy Koehler/author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Changing times</h2>
<p>As its name suggests, the bearded pig has a prominent beard. It’s a large species thought to move up to 650km in search of food, in large herds of up to 300 individuals. </p>
<p>Wild meat can contribute to as much as 36% of meals in Indigenous Bornean societies, and bearded pig meat accounts for 54–97% of this by weight. Bearded pig hunting is also central to recreation, gift-giving and social practices in many of Borneo’s Indigenous communities. </p>
<p>But widespread deforestation and agricultural expansion (primarily oil palm and rubber plantations) has drastically reduced bearded pig habitat in recent decades. The bearded pig is now listed as vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List. </p>
<p>Sabah has been on the front lines of the oil palm boom since the late 20th century. As of 2015, roughly 24% of Sabah’s land area was covered by oil palm or pulpwood plantations. </p>
<p>Sabahans sometimes take work with oil palm companies, own their own oil palm smallholdings or move to urban areas for relatively well-paying jobs in manufacturing and retail. </p>
<p>Those who remain in rural parts of the state have reduced access to croplands and forests in some areas which, among other negative impacts, restricts their ability to hunt game.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/human-progress-is-no-excuse-to-destroy-nature-a-push-to-make-ecocide-a-global-crime-must-recognise-this-fundamental-truth-164594">Human progress is no excuse to destroy nature. A push to make ‘ecocide’ a global crime must recognise this fundamental truth</a>
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<img alt="oil palm plantation meets rainforest" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420246/original/file-20210909-19-1ihhpie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420246/original/file-20210909-19-1ihhpie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420246/original/file-20210909-19-1ihhpie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420246/original/file-20210909-19-1ihhpie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420246/original/file-20210909-19-1ihhpie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420246/original/file-20210909-19-1ihhpie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420246/original/file-20210909-19-1ihhpie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Oil palm plantations have fundamentally changed Borneo’s landscape.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘This is our life’</h2>
<p>We investigated how the above land-use changes have affected pig hunting practices of the Kadazandusun-Murut ethnic group, including 38 interviews with bearded pig hunters.</p>
<p>Hunters are adapting new methods to pursue pigs inside plantations. Respondents reported that hunting in oil palm plantations was easier overall than hunting in forests – because the walking was generally less tiring (and they could sometimes hunt from a car), it was easier to see pigs and foraging locations were more predictable. </p>
<p>Five respondents noted a difference between the taste of meat from pigs in oil palm plantations as compared to forest. One said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The pig from the forest is much tastier, it’s more fit. If the pig eats oil palm its fat isn’t as sweet. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Many hunters said bearded pigs were “wilder”, “smarter” and more skittish than they had been in the past. Comments included:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The pigs can smell man; they are getting more wild because they are always getting shot by men.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Another participant said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In the past pigs only looked, but now they run away. Now the pig has got a high school certificate.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Among hunters who had started hunting before 1985, 71% noted this increased flight response, whereas only 26% of those who began hunting after 1985 mentioned this behavioural change.</p>
<p>Respondents consumed wild bearded pig meat more frequently in rural villages than in urban contexts, indicating an important shift in dietary patterns. Some respondents also hunted less frequently when living in urban environments, due to having less time, increased distance to the forest, lower energy because of having to work or other factors. </p>
<p>But despite these substantial changes in hunting practices, much has remained the same over the last few decades.
Hunting with guns has remained the primary technique over the past two generations, and meat provision is the primary motivation to hunt. </p>
<p>One respondent said his father taught him:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This is our life. We live in the forest; this is our food.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Cultural practices, such as gifting the meat for community events, provided additional motivations to hunt. Some considered weddings, festivals and church events to be incomplete without bearded pig meat.</p>
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<img alt="meat on grill" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420658/original/file-20210913-21-jgbd9k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420658/original/file-20210913-21-jgbd9k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420658/original/file-20210913-21-jgbd9k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420658/original/file-20210913-21-jgbd9k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420658/original/file-20210913-21-jgbd9k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420658/original/file-20210913-21-jgbd9k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420658/original/file-20210913-21-jgbd9k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Wild pig meat is an important source of food in Borneo.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Preserving a fragile relationship</h2>
<p>Our results show both the persistence and malleability of hunting practices among Kadazandusun-Murut people in Sabah. The challenge now is how best to manage bearded pig hunting in the face of ongoing oil palm expansion, urbanisation and broader political–economic changes. </p>
<p>The onslaught of African Swine Flu is complicating matters. For the pigs, the deadly virus is an extra burden for a species already in decline. For some Indigenous hunters, it threatens their food security and livelihoods. </p>
<p>The loss of bearded pigs also erodes traditional celebrations and family gatherings, and the passing down of ancient customary hunting practices to children. </p>
<p>Environmental governance initiatives should support the cultural traditions of Borneo’s Indigenous communities, and any new regulation should be devised in collaboration with local people and tailored to their needs. At the same time, these initiatives must ensure the long-term conservation of bearded pig populations and their habitat.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/orangutans-gibbons-and-mr-sooty-what-the-origins-of-words-in-southeast-asia-tell-us-about-our-long-relationships-with-animals-165175">Orangutans, gibbons and Mr Sooty: what the origins of words in Southeast Asia tell us about our long relationships with animals</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/166895/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The changing dynamic between Borneo’s pigs and Indigenous people is a powerful reminder of the fragility of the human-nature connection.Matthew Scott Luskin, Lecturer in Conservation Science, The University of QueenslandDavid Kurz, Postdoctoral fellow in Environmental Science, Trinity CollegeFiffy Hanisdah Saikim, Senior lecturer, Universiti Malaysia Sabah’s Institute for Tropical Biology and Conservation, Indigenous KnowledgeMatthew D. Potts, Professor, S.J. Hall Chair in Forest Economics, University of California, BerkeleyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1519092021-01-04T12:57:34Z2021-01-04T12:57:34ZThe ‘gateway drug to corruption and overspending’ is returning to Congress – but are earmarks really that bad?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375797/original/file-20201217-23-7z4v47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C6000%2C3691&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A controversial way that Congress spends money is returning, after being banned almost a decade ago.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/dec-14-2020-photo-taken-on-dec-14-2020-shows-the-u-s-news-photo/1230136166?adppopup=true">Liu Jie/Xinhua via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Congressional earmarks – otherwise known as “pork barrel spending” – may be coming back. </p>
<p>For decades, <a href="https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R45429/2">earmarks paid for pet projects back in lawmakers’ districts</a>, with the tacit aim to earn those lawmakers votes. In turn, the awards encouraged legislators to vote for large spending bills. They have long been seen by many members of the public as well as some lawmakers <a href="https://www.cagw.org/sites/default/files/pdf/2007/all_about_pork_2007_final.pdf">as wasteful and distasteful</a>, and they were <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/us/politics/08earmark.html">banned in 2011</a>.</p>
<p>Now, following the 2020 election, House Democrats have apparently decided to return to the practice. Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland announced on Nov. 20 that the Appropriations Committee would soon begin <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2018/12/27/congress-in-2019-why-the-first-branch-should-bring-back-earmarks/">soliciting member requests for earmarks</a>, with a focus on projects that would benefit <a href="https://ctmirror.org/2020/12/04/rosa-delauro-on-her-new-gig-its-every-aspect-of-peoples-lives/%5D(https://ctmirror.org/2020/12/04/rosa-delauro-on-her-new-gig-its-every-aspect-of-peoples-lives/">nonprofit organizations and state and local governments</a>. </p>
<p>Although the Senate has appeared more committed to its ban, Senate Appropriations Chairman Richard Shelby, Republican of Alabama, and <a href="https://www.rollcall.com/2020/11/20/hoyer-earmarks-are-likely-coming-back-next-year/">other Senate Republicans</a> <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/12/09/944314781/democrats-want-to-bring-earmarks-back-as-way-to-break-gridlock-in-congress">and Democrats</a> are also receptive to reviving earmarking.</p>
<p>Federal spending bills normally allocate an amount of money for general purposes and often defer to federal agency officials or state leaders to determine which particular projects best meet the overall goals. Earmarks are specific congressional instructions that carve out some of those funds, declaring directly that X amount of money must be spent on Y project.</p>
<p>Before 2011, <a href="https://www.cagw.org/content/pig-book-2010#historical_trends">earmarks were regularly and – until 2007 – in increasingly large numbers</a> inserted into appropriations and highway funding bills. </p>
<p>While earmarks have been condemned as frivolous at best and corrupt at worst, research on their uses and effects paints a more complex picture of their dynamics. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511617140">My own research</a>, as well as <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/3186129">that of Frances Lee</a>, shows that such projects helped transportation committee leaders pass three massive highway bills, overcoming significant policy controversies.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211762/original/file-20180323-54869-1e7i2ow.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211762/original/file-20180323-54869-1e7i2ow.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=326&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211762/original/file-20180323-54869-1e7i2ow.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=326&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211762/original/file-20180323-54869-1e7i2ow.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=326&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211762/original/file-20180323-54869-1e7i2ow.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211762/original/file-20180323-54869-1e7i2ow.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211762/original/file-20180323-54869-1e7i2ow.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pork-barrel spending can help move things along.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘Reeking of corruption’</h2>
<p>Nevertheless, earmarks have strong opponents. Then-Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., in 2018 called earmarks “<a href="https://www.toomey.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/bipartisan-senate-coalition-introduces-bill-to-permanently-ban-earmarks">the Washington swamp creature that just never seems to die</a>.” To supporters, on the other hand, earmarks are better seen as a legitimate use of Congress’ <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Cheese_Factories_on_the_Moon.html?id=xwILSgAACAAJ">constitutionally conferred power of the purse</a>. And not incidentally, members may benefit in the next election by bringing home the bacon.</p>
<p>Since 2018, many have argued for a return to earmarking to grease the wheels for appropriations bills. Pro-earmark arguments have <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/the-bipartisan-movement-to-bring-back-earmarks-in-congress">come from members of Congress of both parties</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/01/12/trump-just-praised-earmarks-heres-what-the-fuss-is-about/?utm_term=.c59c812e7fb8">President Donald Trump</a>. </p>
<p>The current impetus among House Democrats also may be driven by their <a href="https://www.cnn.com/election/2020/results/house">losses in the 2020 election</a>. The Democrats’ new majority is currently at 222, compared with 211 for the Republicans, with two seats still undecided. </p>
<p>Given that <a href="https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/seats-congress-gainedlost-the-presidents-party-mid-term-elections">the party of the president almost always loses seats in midterm elections</a>, Democrats could lose their majority altogether in the 2022 congressional elections. Earmarks could help endangered Democrats shore up their support among voters back home.</p>
<h2>How to pass bills</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/12/09/944314781/democrats-want-to-bring-earmarks-back-as-way-to-break-gridlock-in-congress">Efforts to revive earmarking over the past few years</a> have been driven by an additional factor: Congress’ near total inability to pass individual spending bills in a timely manner since the ban was adopted.</p>
<p>In the normal appropriations process, Congress would pass 12 individual spending bills each year, a process designed to give legislators a chance to examine the spending in each bill before voting. </p>
<p>The reality is far different. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/01/16/congress-has-long-struggled-to-pass-spending-bills-on-time/">Data compiled</a> by the Pew Research Center show that between the 2011 earmark ban and fiscal 2018, only one individual appropriations bill was enacted, rather than the 84 appropriations bills Congress should have passed. Individual appropriations bills have fared just as poorly in more recent years.</p>
<p>Instead, Congress has funded government agencies in <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/01/16/congress-has-long-struggled-to-pass-spending-bills-on-time/">massive omnibus appropriations bills, and partial- and full-year continuing resolutions</a>, making it virtually impossible for members to know what they were voting for. </p>
<p>This breakdown in the regular appropriations process coincides neatly with the earmark moratorium, although before the 2011 moratorium, the process did not always go smoothly. </p>
<p>My own research shows that between 1994 and 2000, as Congress went from Democratic to Republican control, earmarks, once highly effective in inducing members to vote for appropriations bills, became gradually less so.</p>
<h2>Partisanship could undermine earmarks’ effectiveness</h2>
<p>My interviews with committee staff members suggested various reasons for this diminished effectiveness. Prominent among them, according to one staffer, was the fact that votes were “increasingly … on highly charged substantive policy matters.” Senators needed to vote on those issues in a partisan manner, regardless of earmarks. </p>
<p>Another staffer blamed the failure of leaders to punish disloyal members by removing their earmarks. </p>
<p>That staffer said, “People have no shame. They vote no and take the dough.”</p>
<p>It is difficult to predict how returning to pork-barrel spending would work today.</p>
<p>For earmarks to be effective tools, members might have to vote contrary to their own or their party’s preferences. Their willingness to do so would undoubtedly depend partly on the electoral consequences.</p>
<p>As political scientist David Mayhew has argued, members believe that bringing home district benefits gives them something for which to claim credit, <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300105872/congress">enhancing their chances for reelection</a> and providing congressional leaders with leverage over their votes. </p>
<p>The evidence for this effect is nuanced, however. </p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2013.08.001">Earmarks can help members win reelection</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055412000457">especially when members claim credit for them</a>. </p>
<p>But there is evidence that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/106591299705000405">constituents are more likely to reward Democrats than Republicans</a>. This is not entirely surprising, given that earmarks are consistent with Democrats’ commitment to activist government, whereas for Republicans committed to minimizing the cost of government, bringing home earmarks could be painted as hypocritical. </p>
<p>These differences could help explain why, in my research, earmarks provided leaders with less leverage over <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511617140">members’ votes in Republican-controlled congresses</a>. </p>
<h2>‘Gateway drug’</h2>
<p>The negative effects of earmarking for Republicans may have grown more powerful. Over the past two decades, critics of earmarks have framed them as egregious government waste. </p>
<p>The late Sen. John McCain, for example, called earmarks “<a href="https://twitter.com/SenJohnMcCain/status/951140038892556288">the gateway drug to corruption and overspending</a>.” </p>
<p>But overspending is in the eye of the beholder. At their peak, earmarks amounted to approximately 3% of the discretionary budget, which itself is about one-third of total federal spending. (Discretionary spending is money over which Congress has direct control, unlike Social Security or Medicare, for example.) As a result of earmark reform in 2007, reforms that Democrats intend to retain, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6210.2010.02304.x">spending on earmarks dropped to 1.3% of the budget</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375795/original/file-20201217-15-1ur1vp4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Sen. John McCain at his desk in the Senate." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375795/original/file-20201217-15-1ur1vp4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375795/original/file-20201217-15-1ur1vp4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375795/original/file-20201217-15-1ur1vp4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375795/original/file-20201217-15-1ur1vp4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375795/original/file-20201217-15-1ur1vp4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375795/original/file-20201217-15-1ur1vp4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375795/original/file-20201217-15-1ur1vp4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The late Sen. John McCain said earmarks led to ‘corruption and overspending.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/day-in-the-life-of-republican-senator-john-mccain-in-news-photo/1024139110?adppopup=true">Benjamin Lowy/Reportage via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Earmarks are vulnerable to other criticisms as well, not least of which is the disproportionate share <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X15576952">awarded to the states and districts of the most powerful members</a>. </p>
<p>In addition, the majority party gets disproportionately more earmarks than the minority, although the minority gets enough to make it harder for them <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/3088396">to use earmarks as a campaign issue</a>. </p>
<p>As Congress wrestles with the process of passing individual appropriations bills, congressional leaders are poised to once again allow earmarks in appropriations bills to ease the bills’ passage and protect vulnerable Democrats at the polls.</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-return-to-earmarks-could-grease-the-wheels-in-congress-91811">an article</a> originally published on March 26, 2018.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/151909/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Diana Evans does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Banned in 2011, pork-barrel spending may return to Congress, where Democrats want to resurrect the practice to make passing budgets easier – and help keep their narrow majority in 2022 elections.Diana Evans, Professor of Political Science, Trinity CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1094172019-01-07T00:19:22Z2019-01-07T00:19:22ZWould bringing back pork-barrel spending end government shutdowns?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/252593/original/file-20190106-32136-9fnjuw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Members of Congress, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., second from right, walk toward the Capitol building, Jan. 4, 2019. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/New-Congress/5e0e6f888c6d4b92b6181165b2340737/2/0">AP/Andrew Harnik</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For eight years, Congress has banned the use of earmarks, otherwise known as “pork-barrel spending.” Earmarks paid for pet projects of legislators back in their districts, as a way of encouraging those officials’ votes for a spending bill. </p>
<p>But earmarks were seen by many members of the public as wasteful and distasteful. Even some lawmakers didn’t like them. </p>
<p>“Earmarks are the gateway drug to spending addiction,” <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=uof0TefzQRMC&lpg=PR4-IA65&ots=hsDaNcni5r&dq=%E2%80%9CEarmarks%20are%20the%20gateway%20drug%20to%20spending%20addiction.%E2%80%9D&pg=PR4-IA65#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9CEarmarks%20are%20the%20gateway%20drug%20to%20spending%20addiction.%E2%80%9D&f=false">said Sen. Tom Coburn, a Republican from Oklahoma,</a> in 2007.</p>
<p>But now, in the middle of one of the longest federal government shutdowns on record, Rep. Nita Lowey, the new chairwoman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, made a bold statement: She wants to bring back pork-barrel spending in order to make passing appropriations bills easier.</p>
<p>“I would be supportive of earmarks,” Lowey, a Democrat from New York, <a href="https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2019/01/05/shutdown-negotiations-drag-on-371052">told Politico</a>. “I think there is a way to do it.”</p>
<h2>Greasing the wheels – maybe</h2>
<p>Earmarks would not have solved the current government shutdown, which is the result of an impasse between congressional Democrats and President Trump over funding the president’s border wall. </p>
<p>But Lowey’s not alone in her concern with Congress’ inability to pass spending bills on schedule. That difficulty, which has ended in several government shutdowns in the last decade, has produced unrelenting criticism by commentators and members of Congress alike. </p>
<p>A return to earmarking – for <a href="https://www.cagw.org/content/pig-book-2010">projects ranging</a> from new bridges to museum funding to renewable energy research, tailored for individual members’ districts – would require lifting a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/what-is-an-earmark/2012/01/27/gIQAK6HGvQ_story.html?utm_term=.4d20f6eae67f">2011 moratorium</a> imposed on the practice.</p>
<p>I have <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/american-government-politics-and-policy/greasing-wheels-using-pork-barrel-projects-build-majority-coalitions-congress?format=PB&isbn=9780521545327#iRqCLBv6sXpLtGJr.97">studied</a> the effect of pork-barrel spending on passing spending bills. Although earmarks are worth reconsidering as a way of greasing the legislative wheels, I would argue that the case for them is mixed.</p>
<p>Pro-earmark arguments have come from <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/the-bipartisan-movement-to-bring-back-earmarks-in-congress">both parties</a>. The supporters include Sens. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, as well as <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/01/12/trump-just-praised-earmarks-heres-what-the-fuss-is-about/?utm_term=.c59c812e7fb8">President Trump</a>. </p>
<p>Simultaneously, pressure from House Republicans led former Speaker Paul Ryan <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?439801-1/house-rules-committee-holds-hearing-earmarks">to allow hearings</a> to consider ending the 2011 earmark moratorium. </p>
<p>Prior to 2011, these earmarks were, with a few exceptions, regularly, and until 2006, in increasingly <a href="https://www.cagw.org/content/pig-book-2010#historical_trends">large numbers,</a> put into appropriations bills as well as highway reauthorizations to help smooth the way to passage. </p>
<h2>Pork helps move things along</h2>
<p>My own <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/american-government-politics-and-policy/greasing-wheels-using-pork-barrel-projects-build-majority-coalitions-congress?format=PB&isbn=9780521545327#iRqCLBv6sXpLtGJr.97">research</a>, as well as that of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3186129?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents/">Frances Lee of the University of Maryland</a>, shows that earmarks helped transportation committee leaders pass three massive highway bills, overcoming significant policy controversies surrounding each bill. I also found that earmarks were often helpful in passing appropriations bills. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, to opponents, earmarks remain pork-barrel projects that are rife with waste and reek of corruption. Former Sen. Clare McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat, called earmarks “the Washington swamp creature that <a href="https://www.toomey.senate.gov/?p=news&id=2097">just never seems to die.”</a> </p>
<p>To supporters, on the other hand, earmarks are a legitimate use of Congress’ constitutionally mandated <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Cheese_Factories_on_the_Moon.html?id=xwILSgAACAAJ">power of the purse</a>, which, not incidentally, may help members’ political careers.</p>
<p>Earmark proponents say a return to the practice could remedy the long-running difficulty of passing appropriations bills in a carefully considered, transparent manner. </p>
<h2>What did we spend that money for?</h2>
<p>In the normal appropriations process, Congress would pass 12 individual spending bills each year, a process designed to give members of Congress a chance to examine the spending in each bill before voting. </p>
<p>The reality is far different. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/01/16/congress-has-long-struggled-to-pass-spending-bills-on-time/">Data compiled</a> by the Pew Research Center show that between the 2011 earmark moratorium and fiscal year 2018, only one individual appropriations bill was enacted, rather than the 84 appropriations bills Congress should have passed. </p>
<p>The record was somewhat better last year, when five of the 12 bills became law. The remaining seven Fiscal Year 2019 appropriations bills have been held up by the president’s insistence on funding for a border wall in the Homeland Security bill.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211762/original/file-20180323-54869-1e7i2ow.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211762/original/file-20180323-54869-1e7i2ow.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=326&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211762/original/file-20180323-54869-1e7i2ow.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=326&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211762/original/file-20180323-54869-1e7i2ow.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=326&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211762/original/file-20180323-54869-1e7i2ow.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211762/original/file-20180323-54869-1e7i2ow.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211762/original/file-20180323-54869-1e7i2ow.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pork-barrel spending can help move things along.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Instead of using the process that encourages careful consideration of individual spending items, Congress has funded government agencies in <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/01/16/congress-has-long-struggled-to-pass-spending-bills-on-time/">massive omnibus appropriations bills or full-year continuing resolutions</a>. These bills make it virtually impossible for members to know what they are voting for. </p>
<p>This breakdown in the appropriations process coincides neatly with the earmark moratorium. </p>
<p>However, the process did not always go smoothly before the moratorium either. The <a href="https://www.cagw.org/content/pig-book-2010#historical_trends">large increase</a> between 1991 and 2006 in the cost of earmarks, from $3.1 billion to $29 billion, did not ensure the passage of stand-alone appropriations bills.</p>
<p>Would earmarks now help Congress pass appropriations bills? </p>
<p>The evidence is less clear than it is for highway bills. I <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/american-government-politics-and-policy/greasing-wheels-using-pork-barrel-projects-build-majority-coalitions-congress?format=PB&isbn=9780521545327#iRqCLBv6sXpLtGJr.97">analyzed</a> a number of Senate appropriations bills from 1994 to 2000; although the political dynamics might be different today, the findings could be helpful for the current conversation about earmarks. </p>
<p>In 1994, when the Democrats controlled Congress, earmarks helped convince senators to vote in support of the positions of the powerful appropriations subcommittee chairs. </p>
<p>After the Republican takeover in 1995, however, earmarks were somewhat less effective. By 2000, with Republicans still in control, earmarks – although growing in number and cost – had no discernible effect on senators’ appropriations votes. </p>
<h2>Partisanship could undermine earmarks’ benefits</h2>
<p>My interviews with committee staff members suggested various reasons for this. Prominent among them, according to one staffer, was the fact that votes were “increasingly … on highly charged substantive policy matters.” Senators needed to vote on those issues in a partisan manner, regardless of earmarks. </p>
<p>Another staffer blamed the failure of leaders to punish disloyal members by removing their earmarks. </p>
<p>That staffer said, “People have no shame. They vote no and take the dough.”</p>
<p>It is difficult to predict how returning to pork-barrel spending would work today. </p>
<p>For earmarks to be effective tools, members who otherwise would oppose the bills on a partisan or ideological basis would have to vote contrary to their own or their party’s preferences. Their willingness to do so would undoubtedly depend partly on the electoral consequences.</p>
<p>As Yale political scientist David Mayhew has <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300105872/congress">argued</a>, members believe that bringing benefits to their home district gives them something they can claim credit for, enhancing their chances for re-election. That gives congressional leaders leverage over members’ votes.</p>
<p>The evidence for this effect is nuanced, however. </p>
<p>Earmarks can help members <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0176268013000633">win re-election</a>, especially when members <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/how-words-and-money-cultivate-a-personal-vote-the-effect-of-legislator-credit-claiming-on-constituent-credit-allocation/7538BBE494CE31274DAE7F9F2E220F04">claim credit for them</a>. </p>
<p>But there is also evidence that constituents are more likely to reward Democrats than Republicans <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/4935138_Deficits_Democrats_and_Distributive_Benefits_Congressional_Elections_and_the_Pork_Barrel_In_The_1980s">for such benefits</a>. This is not entirely surprising, given that earmarks are consistent with Democrats’ commitment to activist government. For Republicans committed to cutting the cost of government, bringing home earmarks could be painted as hypocritical. </p>
<p>These differences could help explain why I found that earmarks provided leaders with less leverage over members’ votes in Republican-controlled congresses.</p>
<h2>The powerful get more</h2>
<p>At their peak, earmarks amounted to approximately 3 percent of the discretionary budget, the portion that Congress controls, which amounts to about one-third of total federal spending. As a result of earmark reform in 2007, spending on earmarks dropped to 1.3 percent <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1540-6210.2010.02304.x/abstract">of the discretionary budget</a>. In fiscal year 2010, earmarks cost $16.5 billion.</p>
<p>Earmarks are vulnerable to other criticisms, not least of which is the disproportionate share awarded to the districts of the most powerful members, particularly to members and leaders of the appropriations committees. </p>
<p>For example, scholar <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1532673X15576952">Austin Clemens and his colleagues found</a> that in 2008 and 2009, members of the House Appropriations Committee got 35 percent of all earmarked dollars. That was more than twice what they would have received if earmarks had been equally distributed among all the committee members.</p>
<p>In addition, the majority party gets disproportionately more earmarks than the minority, although the minority gets enough to make it harder for them to use earmarks as a campaign issue. That’s a strategy dubbed “partisan blame avoidance,” <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/3088396?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">according to Steven J. Balla of George Washington University and his colleagues</a>.</p>
<p>While it is tempting to condemn earmarks as frivolous or corrupt, research paints a more complex picture of their role in the governing process. </p>
<p>As Congress wrestles with the process of passing individual appropriations bills, party leaders may respond by once again allowing earmarks in appropriations bills, winning more votes for spending bills, and protecting some of their own vulnerable members at the polls.</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-return-to-earmarks-could-grease-the-wheels-in-congress-91811">an article</a> originally published on March 26, 2018.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/109417/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Diana Evans is affiliated with
Common Cause in Connecticut </span></em></p>Banned since 2011, pork-barrel spending may well help Congress pass bills on schedule. Now, a powerful Democratic lawmaker said she’d like to resurrect the practice to make passing budgets easier.Diana Evans, Professor of political science, Trinity CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/994732018-07-07T12:44:21Z2018-07-07T12:44:21ZIs the Supreme Court’s legitimacy undermined in a polarized age?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226361/original/file-20180705-122259-13x5ia0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The U.S. Supreme Court</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As the United States Senate readies to vote on the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to be the next Supreme Court justice, I am reminded of its recent <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/07/us/politics/neil-gorsuch-supreme-court.html">confirmation of Justice Neil Gorsuch</a>.</p>
<p>The Gorsuch vote was unprecedented in the history of the country. Never before had a “minority president” named a “minority justice.”<br>
<a href="https://internet2.trincoll.edu/FacProfiles/Default.aspx?fid=1261609">I’m a scholar</a> of the presidency and the Supreme Court. In a recently published article in the <a href="http://studentorgs.kentlaw.iit.edu/cklawreview/">Chicago-Kent Law Review</a>, I consider the concepts of a “minority president” and a “minority justice” in relation to presidential appointments to the High Court for much of American history.</p>
<p>Here’s what I mean by these terms. </p>
<h2>Court out of step with America?</h2>
<p>Since Donald Trump <a href="http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2016/nov/21/reince-priebus/despite-losing-popular-vote-donald-trump-won-elect/">lost the popular vote</a> in the 2016 election, he is, by definition, a minority president, elected by a minority of the voters. </p>
<p>Similarly, I define a “minority justice” as a nominee who won confirmation with the support of a majority of senators, but senators who did not represent a majority of voters.</p>
<p>Consider Gorsuch. He was supported by a majority of senators – <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/04/07/us/politics/gorsuch-confirmation-vote.html">51 Republicans and three Democrats</a>. But the votes earned by those 54 senators only added up to a total of <a href="https://uselectionatlas.org/">54,557,602</a>.</p>
<p>The 45 senators who opposed Gorsuch, all Democrats, collected <a href="https://uselectionatlas.org/">76,507,374 </a>votes in their most recent elections – a nearly 22 million-vote difference.</p>
<p>There are now three Supreme Court justices – Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Gorsuch – that fit the description of a “minority justice.” They are the only three in the nation’s history. And they are the most conservative members of the current court. </p>
<p>If the Senate narrowly confirms Kavanaugh largely along partisan lines as most expect, he will become the fourth “minority justice” – the second appointed by a “minority president.” </p>
<p>That raises a question that goes to the heart of the Supreme Court’s legitimacy in our democracy: Will this be a court out of line with America? </p>
<p>If so, what might that mean for the country’s politics and law? Indeed, for the nation itself?</p>
<h2>Seldom far from the mainstream</h2>
<p>To be sure, the framers of the Constitution purposely decided to provide <a href="https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/Constitution_Senate.htm#1">each state with two senators</a>, knowing that those senators from states with smaller populations would represent fewer – at times far fewer – citizens than those with larger ones. Today, for example, California’s population is close to 40 million while Wyoming’s is less than 600,000. Yet both states have two senators.</p>
<p>This arrangement was a central aspect of the <a href="https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/A_Great_Compromise.htm">Great Compromise,</a> which helped convince representatives from sparsely populated states — fearful of being ignored by an alliance of the heavily populated states — to back the new Constitution.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, since the popular vote began to matter in the election of 1824, a minority president had never succeeded in appointing a minority justice. Indeed, until this century, even for presidents who won the popular vote by a large margin, significant Senate resistance more often than not <a href="https://www.loc.gov/law/find/court-withdrawn.php">doomed a nominee to the court</a>. </p>
<p>This might help to explain why political scientist <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=UJXQ4N5oZZQC&pg=PA261&lpg=PA261&dq=lagged+far+behind+nor+forged+far+ahead+of+America&source=bl&ots=2uVXAZCTA4&sig=D2j32feRdEHfxTopMAQA7fvvm-8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwik05OHmYjcAhWlpFkKHSIfAbIQ6AEIODAB#v=onepage&q=lagged%20far%20behind%20nor%20forged%20far%20ahead%20of%20America&f=false">Robert McCloskey concluded</a> in 1960 that the court had rarely “lagged far behind nor forged far ahead of America” and that the justices had “seldom strayed very far from the mainstreams of American life.” </p>
<h2>Might politics and the courts collide?</h2>
<p>Things are different today. We live in a period of <a href="http://www.people-press.org/interactives/political-polarization-1994-2017/">deep political polarization</a>. This shift in American politics raises some important questions about the Supreme Court’s legitimacy in our democracy. </p>
<p>In the past, political majorities at the polls have supported significant doctrinal shifts by the court, even if the specific rulings have been controversial. </p>
<p>In other words, as McCloskey and fellow political scientist Robert Dahl observed, since one party typically dominated during an extended period of time, the justices – because they were products of that enduring regime – generally advanced the regime’s interests in the long term. To put it simply, for much of American history, the court followed the <a href="https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/emlj6&div=20&id=&page=">election returns.</a></p>
<p>For example, the 1905 decision of <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1900-1940/198us45">Lochner v. New York</a>, which struck down state legislation designed to protect workers via the court’s <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/lochner-v-new-york-fundamental-rights-and-economic-liberty">freedom of contract doctrine</a>, was a product of the Republican regime that dominated American politics at the time. </p>
<p>Similarly, the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/new-deal">New Deal Democratic regime</a> ushered in by the landslide election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 ultimately provided the political basis for another divisive decision, <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/347us483">Brown v. Board of Education</a>, which found that supposedly “separate-but-equal” segregated schools <a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/R/bo3613113.html">were unconstitutional</a>. </p>
<p>Today, no such majority exists.</p>
<p>The popular vote for president and the Electoral College results have twice in the last five presidential elections <a href="http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-pol-electoral-college-20161110-story.html">been out of alignment</a>. And the Democratic presidential nominee has <a href="https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/polls/us-elections/popular-vote/">won the popular vote</a> in six of the last seven presidential elections (from 1992 to 2016), yet Republican presidents have <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/about/biographies.aspx">appointed a majority</a> of the sitting justices. </p>
<p>Given this recent divide between the popular vote and the electoral vote, it seems reasonable to consider the possibility of the alternative to McCloskey’s conclusions – of a court that consistently diverges from American majorities on the most pressing issues of the day.</p>
<p>After all, Supreme Court justices <a href="http://www.uscourts.gov/about-federal-courts/educational-resources/about-educational-outreach/activity-resources/about">have lifetime appointments</a> and typically stay on the bench for many years, even decades. Their imprint on the law can be enduring and their legitimacy, conferred in part by the confirmation process, helps ensure their place in our democracy. </p>
<p>With the addition of a Justice Kavanaugh, many court observers suspect the 1973 ruling, known popularly as <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/410/113/case.html">the “Roe” case</a>, which affirms women’s right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, will be a prime target of the conservative majority. </p>
<h2>Will Roe stand?</h2>
<p>While Roe has been a deeply divisive decision since the day it was announced, the Republican in the White House at the time — Richard Nixon — <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/us/politics/24nixon.html">neither publicly denounced it</a> nor <a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/N/bo12079563.html">sought to overturn it</a>. And three of his four appointees to the court <a href="http://landmarkcases.org/en/Page/661/Summary_of_the_Decision">joined the 7-2 majority</a>, including the opinion’s <a href="http://prospect.org/article/conservative-liberal">author Justice Harry Blackmun</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226557/original/file-20180706-122271-vbzdq0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226557/original/file-20180706-122271-vbzdq0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226557/original/file-20180706-122271-vbzdq0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226557/original/file-20180706-122271-vbzdq0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226557/original/file-20180706-122271-vbzdq0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226557/original/file-20180706-122271-vbzdq0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226557/original/file-20180706-122271-vbzdq0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Nixon, flanked by outgoing Chief Justice Earl Warren, left, and incoming Chief Justice Warren Burger, right.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Of course, Nixon’s Republican successor, Ronald Reagan, oversaw a Justice Department that repeatedly asked the Court to reverse itself on <a href="https://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/S1059-433720160000070009">Roe</a>. But ultimately a majority of the justices refused to go along, including two of Reagan’s three additions to the court, Sandra Day O'Connor and the now departing Anthony Kennedy.</p>
<p>Today, polls show significant opposition to overturning the decision. </p>
<p>For example, according to a recent <a href="https://www.kff.org/health-reform/press-release/poll-two-thirds-of-americans-dont-want-the-supreme-court-to-overturn-roe-v-wade/">Kaiser Family Foundation poll</a>, 67 percent of Americans are opposed to the Court doing so, including 43 percent of Republicans. <a href="https://poll.qu.edu/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=2553">A Quinnipiac poll</a> supported this conclusion, finding 63 percent of respondents agreed with Roe while just 31 percent did not. </p>
<p>It would be best if a court making a determination on the future of Roe could do so with the utmost legitimacy. But given the state of our politics today, that is a near impossibility. </p>
<p>According to the <a href="https://poll.qu.edu/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=2553">same Quinnipiac poll</a>, a majority of Americans already believe that the court reaches its rulings based mainly on politics rather than law – 50 versus 42 percent.</p>
<p>A conservative court that quickly discards Roe will likely further that belief, given the central role opponents of the decision have played in mobilizing voters to support Republican candidates like Donald Trump. The result may be a further erosion of the court’s legitimacy, and a deepening of the partisan divide in America.</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of an article originally published on July 7, 2018; it includes a correction to the number of votes cast in the most recent elections for senators who voted to confirm, or oppose, Neil Gorsuch.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/99473/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kevin J. McMahon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Democrats won the popular vote in six of the last seven presidential elections, but Republican presidents have appointed a majority of the sitting justices. Is the court out of step with America?Kevin J. McMahon, Professor of Political Science & Director of the Graduate Program in Public Policy, Trinity CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/986602018-06-20T19:53:28Z2018-06-20T19:53:28ZBreaking up families? America looks like a Dickens novel<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224113/original/file-20180620-137714-1vt2rup.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Almost 1,500 immigrant boys, aged 10 to 17, were separated from their parents and brought to stay at Casa Padre in Brownsville, Texas</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Department of Health and Human Services</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The news has been <a href="https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS782US782&ei=wI0qW_CfBOy3jwTDkbHIBQ&q=families+immigrant+detention&oq=families+immigrant+detention&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0i22i30k1l2.18943.21969.0.22372.19.19.0.0.0.0.158.1849.15j4.19.0....0...1.1.64.psy-ab..0.19.1843...0j0i22i10i30k1.0.Ryohcidtjn4">full these past few weeks</a> of disturbing stories from the nation’s borders. The Trump administration has separated immigrant children from their parents precisely to <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/trump-admin-discussed-separating-moms-kids-deter-asylum-seekers-feb-n884371">discourage others</a> from trying to enter the country. </p>
<p>Trump has signed an order <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/gop-leaders-voice-hope-that-bill-addressing-family-separations-will-pass-thursday/2018/06/20/cc79db9a-7480-11e8-b4b7-308400242c2e_story.html?utm_term=.6c05eee4e74e">to end the practice</a>. But thousands of children have been traumatized as part of an explicit effort to, in Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s words, send a powerful “message” to other potential immigrants. Sessions <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/06/15/on-looking-to-the-bible-to-support-hard-line-immigration-policies/?utm_term=.81c22f4587ab">used the Bible</a> to defend the practice: “I would cite to you the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13 to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224094/original/file-20180620-137750-m0llwr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224094/original/file-20180620-137750-m0llwr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224094/original/file-20180620-137750-m0llwr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224094/original/file-20180620-137750-m0llwr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224094/original/file-20180620-137750-m0llwr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224094/original/file-20180620-137750-m0llwr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224094/original/file-20180620-137750-m0llwr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Please sir, may I have some more?’ James Mahoney’s illustration for chapter one of Dickens’s ‘Adventures of Oliver Twist.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Public domain</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What has struck me, as a <a href="https://www.sarahbilston.org/">professor of English literature</a>, are the startling parallels between the Trump administration’s policy on immigrant families and the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/history/shp/britishsociety/thepoorrev1.shtml">“New” Poor Laws of England</a> in the 1830s, whose cruelty was illuminated by Charles Dickens in novels and other writings.</p>
<p>England tried much the same kind of tactics that Trump’s administration has used. Americans may remember the suffering face of <a href="http://www.dickenslit.com/Oliver_Twist/">Oliver Twist, begging</a> for just a little more food. It may surprise some to realize that Dickens wrote the novel specifically <a href="https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/oliver-twist-and-the-workhouse">to shine a light on new and brutal laws</a>. Dickens was particularly concerned by the state’s assault on the integrity of the family.</p>
<h2>‘Fraud, indolence or improvidence’</h2>
<p>England’s <a href="http://www.workhouses.org.uk/poorlaws/1834act.shtml">“New” Poor Laws of the 1830s</a> were designed to “solve” what was believed to be a common problem: the existence of a body of weak, lazy people leeching off the state. How could the government end abuses of the system? How could money be saved, diverted back to the honest hard-working citizens who paid their way? </p>
<p>In 1834, <a href="http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/senior-poor-law-commissioners-report-of-1834">a Royal Commission issued a report</a> insisting that poverty was almost always a result of “fraud, indolence or improvidence.” Good news: This, apparently, could be fixed.</p>
<p>The commission rolled out a series of recommendations. At the center of these was a core idea: The poor should be cared for <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/livinglearning/19thcentury/overview/poorlaw/">in conditions so abject, so truly humiliating</a>, only the really desperate would turn to them. </p>
<p>Under the “<a href="https://www.russellsage.org/sites/all/files/u4/Besley,%20Coate,%20%26%20Guinnane_Incentives,%20Information,%20and%20Welfare.pdf">workhouse test</a>,” relief would only be given to those willing to relinquish their independence, their human dignity, their spouses and their children. Others, the argument went, would buck up, get a job and stop bothering the righteous rest. Their <a href="https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/oliver-twist-and-the-workhouse">rights, needs and humanity were disregarded</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1834/may/09/amendment-of-the-poor-laws-england#s3v0023p0_18340509_hoc_36">The new rules went into effect</a> on June 1, 1835, two years before Victoria became queen. </p>
<h2>Families torn apart</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.workhouses.org.uk/education/">Children forced into the workhouse system</a> were either housed in separate buildings from their parents or sent miles away, to live in government-run <a href="http://www.workhouses.org.uk/education/workhouse.shtml#District">district schools</a>. The “reformers” proudly trumpeted that children <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=umn.319510022989380;view=1up;seq=4">could be fed less than adults when families were separated.</a> They also argued children would learn new and better values once isolated from their parents. </p>
<p>Many families were never reunited. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/oliver-twist-and-the-workhouse">Dickens was appalled</a>. “Oliver Twist” exposes, on every page, <a href="http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/dickens/diniejko.html">the hypocrisy</a> of those who brutalize vulnerable children and claim to be virtuous in the process. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224098/original/file-20180620-137728-emuznk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224098/original/file-20180620-137728-emuznk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=842&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224098/original/file-20180620-137728-emuznk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=842&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224098/original/file-20180620-137728-emuznk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=842&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224098/original/file-20180620-137728-emuznk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1058&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224098/original/file-20180620-137728-emuznk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1058&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224098/original/file-20180620-137728-emuznk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1058&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Charles Dickens in an 1861 photo.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP/New York Public Library</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In an early scene, Oliver sobs when the Board of the Workhouse condemns him because he does not know how to pray. Oliver has never been taught to pray – has never been shown kindness, sympathy or compassion of any kind. </p>
<p>“What a noble illustration of the tender laws of this favored country,” Dickens <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=SU0eBhqFpuAC&pg=PA8&lpg=PA8&dq=%22What+a+noble+illustration+of+the+tender+laws+of+this+favored+country,%22&source=bl&ots=x2FyjAaMbV&sig=xSmT7aegoNk_BL6VK6eVppgeofU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiZuMP1xuLbAhVB7IMKHfgFBrAQ6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=%22What%20a%20noble%20illustration%20of%20the%20tender%20laws%20of%20this%20favored%20country%2C%22&f=false">remarks bitterly</a>, as Oliver weeps himself into unconsciousness. “They let the paupers go to sleep!”</p>
<p>In later novels, Dickens continued to expose the hypocrisy of those in power. He particularly loathed all those <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=S2_2UZdT3kwC&pg=PA264&lpg=PA264&dq=Mrs.+Pardiggle+christian&source=bl&ots=i6l1ktUnvN&sig=nVM4lHwaYRjw_QaQULXFnaIwm9w&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwianczvyOLbAhWL4IMKHaAMCLgQ6AEILzAC#v=onepage&q=Mrs.%20Pardiggle%20christian&f=false">who used Christianity</a> as a <a href="http://www.literaturepage.com/read/dickens-bleak-house-123.html">“constable’s staff</a>.” </p>
<p><a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1023/1023-h/1023-h.htm">“Bleak House"’s</a> horrific <a href="http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100305995?rskey=avT0HU&result=17">Mrs. Pardiggle</a> is, as Dickens put it, an "inexorable moral Policeman.” She shouts Christian teachings at the poor and suffering and fails in her most basic duties of care. She’s so busy spouting religious text, she does not notice when a baby dies in front of her. </p>
<p>Dickens was not the only writer to expose the horrors of the poor laws. The separation of <a href="http://www.victorianweb.org/history/poorlaw/separate.html">children from their parents</a> was a flashpoint then, as now. </p>
<p>A famous 1843 cartoon in Punch, called <a href="http://www.victorianlondon.org/houses/workhouses.htm">“The Milk of Poor-Law ‘Kindness,’”</a> was the Victorian equivalent of the recent photo of a sobbing two-year-old by <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2018/06/18/i-wanted-to-stop-her-crying-the-image-of-a-migrant-child-that-broke-a-photographers-heart/?utm_term=.390a27301519*">her immigrant mother’s knees</a>. It showed a crone-like workhouse matron dragging a baby from its horrified mother, as a devil sneers and an angel hides its face in horror. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224097/original/file-20180620-137750-h4qkiu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224097/original/file-20180620-137750-h4qkiu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=811&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224097/original/file-20180620-137750-h4qkiu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=811&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224097/original/file-20180620-137750-h4qkiu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=811&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224097/original/file-20180620-137750-h4qkiu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1019&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224097/original/file-20180620-137750-h4qkiu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1019&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224097/original/file-20180620-137750-h4qkiu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1019&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A crone steals a child from her mother’s arms in an 1843 cartoon from Britain’s Punch Magazine.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">public doman</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Marches and acts of political disobedience followed, including <a href="https://www.historyextra.com/period/victorian/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-workhouse/">riots and arson against</a> the new-built workhouses, with many Victorians uniting around the sanctity of the family.</p>
<p>The depiction of paupers as suffering people, not just leeches on the system, <a href="http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/dickens/diniejko.html">helped shock the population</a> and precipitate social change. With deliberate use of sentiment and tear-jerking scenes of tragedy and loss, Charles Dickens gave a human face to those who were being treated with profound inhumanity. </p>
<p>I’ve taught the novels of Charles Dickens for more than 20 years. My students have tended to approach his era as a bizarre and strangely cruel period in human history. But Dickens’s world has come to life again. Our government has detained children as young as infants in “tender age” centers in south Texas. </p>
<p>It’s 2018, but it sure feels like 1834.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/98660/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Bilston does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There are strong parallels between the Trump administration’s policy on immigrant families and the 19th century’s ‘New’ Poor Laws of England, whose cruelty was illuminated by writer Charles Dickens.Sarah Bilston, Associate Professor of English, Trinity CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/918112018-03-26T10:48:05Z2018-03-26T10:48:05ZA return to earmarks could grease the wheels in Congress<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211759/original/file-20180323-54893-1vpgr9s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Members of Congress debated a government spending bill into the early morning on March 20.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> AP/J. Scott Applewhite</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Congress passed a US$1.3 trillion spending bill last Thursday, March 22 – only narrowly averting a third government shutdown this year. President Trump <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/us/politics/trump-veto-spending-bill.html">signed the bill</a> into law on Friday.</p>
<p>Congress’s inability to pass spending bills on schedule has produced unrelenting frustration and criticism by commentators and members of Congress alike. </p>
<p>Because the congressional budgeting process has become so dysfunctional, many suggest that a return to earmarks, popularly known as “pork-barrel spending,” would grease the wheels for appropriations bills. An earmark is money provided for an individual project in an elected official’s district, as a way of encouraging that official’s vote for a spending bill. </p>
<p>A return to earmarking – for <a href="https://www.cagw.org/content/pig-book-2010">projects ranging</a> from new bridges to museum funding to renewable energy research, tailored for individual members’ districts – would require lifting a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/what-is-an-earmark/2012/01/27/gIQAK6HGvQ_story.html?utm_term=.4d20f6eae67f">2011 moratorium</a> imposed on the practice.</p>
<p>I have <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/american-government-politics-and-policy/greasing-wheels-using-pork-barrel-projects-build-majority-coalitions-congress?format=PB&isbn=9780521545327#iRqCLBv6sXpLtGJr.97">studied</a> the effect of pork-barrel spending on passing spending bills. Although earmarks are worth reconsidering as a way of greasing the legislative wheels, I would argue that the case for them is mixed.</p>
<p>Pro-earmark arguments have come from <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/the-bipartisan-movement-to-bring-back-earmarks-in-congress">both parties</a>. The supporters include Sens. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, as well as <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/01/12/trump-just-praised-earmarks-heres-what-the-fuss-is-about/?utm_term=.c59c812e7fb8">President Trump</a>. </p>
<p>Simultaneously, pressure from House Republicans has led Speaker Paul Ryan <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?439801-1/house-rules-committee-holds-hearing-earmarks">to allow hearings</a> to consider ending the 2011 earmark moratorium. </p>
<p>Prior to 2011, these earmarks were, with a few exceptions, regularly, and until 2006, in increasingly <a href="https://www.cagw.org/content/pig-book-2010#historical_trends">large numbers,</a> put into appropriations bills as well as highway reauthorizations to help smooth the way to passage. </p>
<h2>Pork helps move things along</h2>
<p>My own <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/american-government-politics-and-policy/greasing-wheels-using-pork-barrel-projects-build-majority-coalitions-congress?format=PB&isbn=9780521545327#iRqCLBv6sXpLtGJr.97">research</a>, as well as that of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3186129?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents/">Frances Lee of the University of Maryland</a>, shows that earmarks helped transportation committee leaders pass three massive highway bills, overcoming significant policy controversies surrounding each bill. I also found that earmarks were often helpful in passing appropriations bills. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, to opponents, earmarks remain pork-barrel projects that are rife with waste and reek of corruption. Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., called earmarks “the Washington swamp creature that <a href="https://www.flake.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2018/1/bipartisan-senate-coalition-introduces-bill-to-permanently-ban-earmarks">just never seems to die.”</a> </p>
<p>To supporters, on the other hand, earmarks are congressionally directed spending. They are a legitimate use of Congress’s constitutionally mandated <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Cheese_Factories_on_the_Moon.html?id=xwILSgAACAAJ">power of the purse</a>, which, not incidentally, may help members’ political careers.</p>
<p>Earmark proponents say a return to the practice could remedy the long-running difficulty of passing appropriations bills in a carefully considered, transparent manner. </p>
<h2>What did we spend that money for?</h2>
<p>In the normal appropriations process, Congress would pass twelve individual spending bills each year, a process designed to give members of Congress a chance to examine the spending in each bill before voting. </p>
<p>The reality is far different. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/01/16/congress-has-long-struggled-to-pass-spending-bills-on-time/">Data compiled</a> by the Pew Research Center show that between the 2011 earmark moratorium and fiscal year 2018, only one individual appropriations bill was enacted, rather than the 84 appropriations bills Congress should have passed. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211762/original/file-20180323-54869-1e7i2ow.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211762/original/file-20180323-54869-1e7i2ow.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=326&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211762/original/file-20180323-54869-1e7i2ow.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=326&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211762/original/file-20180323-54869-1e7i2ow.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=326&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211762/original/file-20180323-54869-1e7i2ow.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211762/original/file-20180323-54869-1e7i2ow.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211762/original/file-20180323-54869-1e7i2ow.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pork-barrel spending can help move things along.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Instead of using the process that encourages careful consideration of individual spending items, Congress has funded government agencies in <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/01/16/congress-has-long-struggled-to-pass-spending-bills-on-time/">massive omnibus appropriations bills or full-year continuing resolutions</a>. These bills make it virtually impossible for members to know what they are voting for. </p>
<p>This breakdown in the appropriations process coincides neatly with the earmark moratorium. </p>
<p>However, prior to the moratorium, the process did not always go smoothly. The <a href="https://www.cagw.org/content/pig-book-2010#historical_trends">large increase</a> between 1991 and 2006 in the cost of earmarks, from $3.1 billion to $29 billion, did not ensure the passage of stand-alone appropriations bills.</p>
<p>Would earmarks now help Congress pass appropriations bills? </p>
<p>The evidence is less clear than it is for highway bills. I <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/american-government-politics-and-policy/greasing-wheels-using-pork-barrel-projects-build-majority-coalitions-congress?format=PB&isbn=9780521545327#iRqCLBv6sXpLtGJr.97">analyzed</a> a number of Senate appropriations bills from 1994 to 2000; although the political dynamics might be different today, the findings could be helpful for the current conversation about earmarks. </p>
<p>In 1994, when the Democrats still controlled Congress, earmarks helped convince senators to vote in support of the positions of the powerful appropriations subcommittee chairs. </p>
<p>After the Republican takeover in 1995, however, earmarks were somewhat less effective. By 2000, with Republicans still in control, earmarks – although growing in number and cost – had no discernible effect on senators’ appropriations votes. </p>
<h2>Partisanship could undermine earmarks’ benefits</h2>
<p>My interviews with committee staff members suggested various reasons for this. Prominent among them, according to one staffer, was the fact that votes were “increasingly … on highly charged substantive policy matters.” Senators needed to vote on those issues in a partisan manner, regardless of earmarks. </p>
<p>Another staffer blamed the failure of leaders to punish disloyal members by removing their earmarks. </p>
<p>That staffer said, “People have no shame. They vote no and take the dough.”</p>
<p>It is difficult to predict how returning to pork-barrel spending would work today. </p>
<p>For earmarks to be effective tools, members who otherwise would oppose the bills on a partisan or ideological basis would have to vote contrary to their own or their party’s preferences. Their willingness to do so would undoubtedly depend partly on the electoral consequences.</p>
<p>As Yale political scientist David Mayhew has <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300105872/congress">argued</a>, members believe that bringing benefits to their home district gives them something they can claim credit for, enhancing their chances for re-election. That gives congressional leaders leverage over members’ votes.</p>
<p>The evidence for this effect is nuanced, however. </p>
<p>Earmarks can help members <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0176268013000633">win re-election</a>, especially when members <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/how-words-and-money-cultivate-a-personal-vote-the-effect-of-legislator-credit-claiming-on-constituent-credit-allocation/7538BBE494CE31274DAE7F9F2E220F04">claim credit for them</a>. </p>
<p>But there is also evidence that constituents are more likely to reward Democrats than Republicans <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/4935138_Deficits_Democrats_and_Distributive_Benefits_Congressional_Elections_and_the_Pork_Barrel_In_The_1980s">for such benefits</a>. This is not entirely surprising, given that earmarks are consistent with Democrats’ commitment to activist government. For Republicans committed to cutting the cost of government, bringing home earmarks could be painted as hypocritical. </p>
<p>These differences could help explain why I found that earmarks provided leaders with less leverage over members’ votes in Republican-controlled congresses.</p>
<p>The negative effect of earmarking for Republicans may have grown over the last two decades, as critics have increasingly made earmarks a national issue, framing them as egregious government waste. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211737/original/file-20180323-54866-1bpk3hk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211737/original/file-20180323-54866-1bpk3hk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211737/original/file-20180323-54866-1bpk3hk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211737/original/file-20180323-54866-1bpk3hk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211737/original/file-20180323-54866-1bpk3hk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211737/original/file-20180323-54866-1bpk3hk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211737/original/file-20180323-54866-1bpk3hk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Former Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., was a frequent critic of pork-barrel spending.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Former Sen. Tom Coburn, a Republican from Oklahoma, for example, called earmarks “<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/tom-coburn-porkys-ii-the-earmarkers-strike-back-1398985965">the gateway drug to Washington’s spending addiction</a>.”</p>
<h2>The powerful get more</h2>
<p>At their peak, earmarks amounted to approximately 3 percent of the discretionary budget, the portion that Congress controls, which amounts to about one-third of total federal spending. As a result of earmark reform in 2007, spending on earmarks dropped to 1.3 percent <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1540-6210.2010.02304.x/abstract">of the discretionary budget</a>. In fiscal year 2010, earmarks cost $16.5 billion.</p>
<p>Earmarks are vulnerable to other criticisms, not least of which is the disproportionate share awarded to the districts of the most powerful members, particularly to members and leaders of the appropriations committees. </p>
<p>For example, scholar Austin Clemens and his colleagues <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1532673X15576952">found</a> that in 2008 and 2009, members of the House Appropriations Committee got 35 percent of all earmarked dollars. That was more than twice what they would have received if earmarks had been equally distributed among all the committee members.</p>
<p>In addition, the majority party gets disproportionately more earmarks than the minority, although the minority gets enough to make it harder for them to use earmarks as a campaign issue. That’s a strategy dubbed “partisan blame avoidance,” <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/3088396?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">according to Steven J. Balla of George Washington University and his colleagues</a>.</p>
<p>While it is tempting to condemn earmarks as frivolous at best, and wholly wasteful and corrupt at worst, research on their uses and effects paints a more complex picture of their role in the governing process. </p>
<p>As Congress wrestles with the process of passing individual appropriations bills, Republican leaders may respond by once again allowing earmarks in appropriations bills, winning more Democratic votes for spending bills, and protecting some of their own vulnerable members at the polls.</p>
<p><em>An updated version of this story can be found <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-gateway-drug-to-corruption-and-overspending-is-returning-to-congress-but-are-earmarks-really-that-bad-151909">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/91811/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Diana Evans does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Pork-barrel spending – that often reviled custom otherwise known as ‘earmarks’ – may well help Congress pass bills on schedule. Banned since 2011, they may be making a comeback.Diana Evans, Professor of Political Science, Trinity CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.