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The Myth of the Rational Elected Official
Hail Mark Steckbeck, for sending me such content:
US elected officials scored abysmally on a test measuring their civic knowledge, with an average grade of just 44 percent, the group that organized the exam said Thursday.
Ordinary citizens did not fare much better, scoring just 49 percent correct on the 33 exam questions compiled by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI).
Here's one detail:
Asked about the electoral college, 20 percent of elected officials incorrectly said it was established to "supervise the first televised presidential debates."
Here is the clincher:
The question that received the fewest correct responses, just 16 percent, tested respondents' basic understanding of economic principles, asking why "free markets typically secure more economic prosperity than government's centralized planning?"
This one is a little tricky:
Forty percent of respondents, meanwhile, incorrectly believed that the US president has the power to declare war, while 54 percent correctly answered that that power rests with Congress.
I'm not sure if those last few numbers are for the officials or for everyone, though it doesn't much seem to matter. The quiz itself is here. Here is more on the results for the non-officials.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on November 23, 2008 at 07:36 AM in Political Science | Permalink
Comments
When thinking about an occupation, pretty much the best questions you can ask are "what is the occupation's recruiting pool?" and "what incentives are faced by the occupation's practitioners?". Given that, these results are pretty much to be expected.
Posted by: Dave at Nov 23, 2008 7:44:43 AM
27) Free markets typically secure more economic prosperity than government’s centralized planning because:
A. the price system utilizes more local knowledge of means and ends...
OTC derivatives and CDO´s not included here.
Posted by: muirgeo at Nov 23, 2008 8:04:03 AM
Woo I scored a 30/33! Should I be happy about this?
Posted by: a person at Nov 23, 2008 8:07:44 AM
i scored 32/33 simply by being an informed citizen and taking poli sci 101 & econ 101 in college. the fact that the scores are so low for elected officials is absolutely hilarious/sad.
Posted by: stacey at Nov 23, 2008 8:21:11 AM
93.94% ... 6 and 10 fooled me
Posted by: odograph at Nov 23, 2008 8:29:53 AM
All of the answers to 9 should be acceptable (what are federal powers under the constitution), and 'levy income taxes' is as explicitly permitted as making treaties.
I wouldn't include Socrates under the people who think that moral and political truths are accessible to reason, since he's more noteworthy for being skeptical that he or any other human had such knowledge.
'Free enterprise or capitalism exists insofar as individual citizens create, exchange, and control goods and resources,' seems wrong, since most exchanges in capitalist societies occur between individuals and corporations or corporations and corporations. If you say that corporations are just individual citizens legally organized in a certain way, then the definition may be said of government, and everything is capitalism.
The definition of a public good (a resident can benefit from it without directly paying for it) is wrong. If it were right, then answer E (government pays for its construction) would be right, too.
Posted by: beamish at Nov 23, 2008 8:56:55 AM
Defining 'elected official' as anyone who has ever held an elected office likely makes the population of elected officials older than the general population of quiz-takers. It would be good to know if the study's result still holds up after accounting for age.
Posted by: Cyrus at Nov 23, 2008 9:12:43 AM
This finding smells fishy in a number of ways. What is the n for elected officials as a subgroup in a randomized phone survey of 2,500 that asks for the youngest male first? A quick peek at the ISI survey does not answer this question (maybe it is in there but it is buried). And the ISI is notorious for producing surveys that inevitably confirm its ideological positions. In short, not a finding one should be bandying about without major caveats.
Posted by: Larry at Nov 23, 2008 9:20:36 AM
Some of these questions (notably the one on "public goods" for example) and the "benefits of markets" is rather odd. A few of them are definitely meant to be trick questions that become HARDER to answer the more you know about a specific question. (I mean really, the declare war one, after the War Powers Act, technically Congress no longer has that power since the President can just commit forces...)
Also is anyone surprised "elected officials" as a group don't know any of this stuff? Some local elected officials clearly aren't all too smart...I mean really, Sarah Palin anyone?
Posted by: Nob Akimoto at Nov 23, 2008 9:27:50 AM
Gah, what a miserable test. It relies far too much on knowing the lingo of first year US History, Econ 101, and PoliSci 101 and not nearly enough on actual comprehension. (The "public good" question is particularly egregious, since many of the answers are true statements, so it's 100% testing familiarity-with-jargon)
As in, who cares whether elected officials know where the phrase "a “wall of separation” between church and state" comes from, as long as they understand that a lack of official religion is a critical component of American democracy.
Also suffers from multiple-choice-test syndrome - Beamish above pointed out some of the problems - where it punishes the more sophisticated test-taker who can see multiple sides of an argument. E.g. #30 about fiscal stimulus - econ 101 has a "right answer", but the best answer is "opinions differ, even between Nobel laureates".
Also, if you do it quickly, there are several questions with multiple answers that are true statements - if you don't read the questions very carefully you can be tricked into a bad answer. Miserable.
[I got 31/33, and am Canadian so I screwed up a bit on US history)
Posted by: Andrew Edwards at Nov 23, 2008 9:36:33 AM
Also, they report 49% being the average score, but once I take the test it shows an average this month of 77.6%. Hunh?
Posted by: Andrew Edwards at Nov 23, 2008 9:38:20 AM
100%, Woohoo! I guess I'm overqualified to hold public office.
Posted by: josh at Nov 23, 2008 9:44:34 AM
Those presuming that the results here on "US elected officials" were actually representative might want to take that online test on statistical knowledge.
Posted by: Michael Drake at Nov 23, 2008 9:58:38 AM
I got a 32/33; missed #24 on foreign policy. I thought there was some arcane provision in the Constitution that the state governments had to approve a new treaty or something under odd circumstances, but I think in retrospect I'm getting it mixed up with something else. (Maybe election of senators?)
I agree with the negative comments above. It doesn't bother me that a bunch of politicians (or average Americans for that matter) scored poorly on this test, because it really is more about "have you read the same books I have?" as opposed to "do you understand US history?"
The ones that jumped out at me as bad questions (and note I'm not including the one I missed!):
=======
9) Under Our Constitution, some powers belong to the federal government. What is one power of the federal government?
A. Make treaties
B. Levy income taxes
C. Maintain prisons
D. Natural Disaster Aid
=======
Both (A) and (B) are explicitly true (after amendments). They should have said "as originally written" or something. This is important I think, since they are presumably trying to show how much #()$*#$ the federal government does that is unconstitutional. Well, there's a difference between something not being in there, versus something being included in an amendment process that some people (who often email me!) claim was bogus.
=========
10) Name one right or freedom guaranteed by the first amendment.
A. Right to bear arms
B. Due process
C. Religion
D. Right to counsel
==========
This one was hard to answer, because the other questions made it clear they are referring to the Constitution / Bill of Rights as originally written. And as far as I know, an individual state had the power to make all sorts of laws about religion, and the federal government had no power to overturn them. In other words, there is no way that the two official answers for #9 and #10 can be justified. Either they have to mean "as of 1800" or "as of right now," but they aren't consistent.
=========
27) Free markets typically secure more economic prosperity than government’s centralized planning because:
A. the price system utilizes more local knowledge of means and ends
B. markets rely upon coercion, whereas government relies upon voluntary compliance with the law
C. more tax revenue can be generated from free enterprise
D. property rights and contracts are best enforced by the market system
E. government planners are too cautious in spending taxpayers’ money
==========
I thought this was a ridiculous question. I would be surprised if 80% of the people in my PhD class at NYU would get that one right. This is supposed to be a quiz about American heritage, not about who's read Hayek or Thomas Sowell. I.e. the phrasing in (A) is quite particular to a certain school of thought about markets, and isn't nearly as general a remark as "bureaucrats lack the incentives and expertise to outperform individual entrepreneurs." Also, I think (D) is true!
=========
29) A flood-control levee (or National Defense) is considered a public good because:
A. citizens value it as much as bread and medicine
B. a resident can benefit from it without directly paying for it
C. government construction contracts increase employment
D. insurance companies cannot afford to replace all houses after a flood
E. government pays for its construction, not citizens
=========
As others have noted, terrible question. The standard definition of a public good includes, yes, that it is non-excludable, but also that it is non-rival in consumption. I.e. the "answer" (B) above doesn't include that a resident can benefit from it without thereby preventing another resident from benefiting from it.
Posted by: Bob Murphy at Nov 23, 2008 10:03:44 AM
I think the intent of question 9 is to ask which power is exclusive to ("belongs to") the federal government, but I agree that it is poorly worded.
Posted by: Dan Riley at Nov 23, 2008 10:18:35 AM
100%, no surprises for me.
But I'm amazed that anyone with a high school diploma could not score at least 60% to 70% correct.
As I've previously said, you are naive if you believe that our elected officials have any kind of economic or investment smarts. Now we can see that they don't even have civics smarts.
The 3 books every federal elected official ought to read are "Washington," by Meg Greenfield, "The Complete Idiot's Guide to American Government," by Mary Shaffrey and Melanie Fonder, and "Economics For Dummies," by Sean Flynn.
Posted by: at Nov 23, 2008 10:22:13 AM
"You answered 33 out of 33 correctly — 100.00 %"
Awesome.
Also, if you think economic knowledge (and, more specifically, what the government's role should be in the economy) is important at all, then the public good question is similarly very important.
If you don't know WHY the government "should be" providing public goods...well...you have an understanding deficiency.
Posted by: Robert Olson at Nov 23, 2008 10:34:45 AM
9) Under Our Constitution, some powers belong to the federal government. What is one power of the federal government?
A. Make treaties
B. Levy income taxes
C. Maintain prisons
D. Natural Disaster Aid
Bob Murphy I think the point with this question is that states also can levy an income tax, but you're supposed to pick the one that only the federal government can do. either way it is a poorly worded question
Posted by: pants at Nov 23, 2008 10:45:38 AM
Also, if you think economic knowledge (and, more specifically, what the government's role should be in the economy) is important at all, then the public good question is similarly very important.
The objection to this question is that the term "public good" as used here is economics jargon. One can perectly well understand the idea, or remember it from a class, without knowing or remembering the specific term.
Posted by: Bernard Yomtov at Nov 23, 2008 10:53:33 AM
Bob,
Your points are well taken (I would add that the question about Socrates didn't seem particularly relevant). However, with the exception of #9, the best answer to each of these questions is pretty easy to determine based on a process of elimination. In question 10, for example, one can have all sorts of quibbles with "Religion" as being a correct answer, but the other options are all clearly false, and so that has to be it.
The same is true for the other questions as well (I realize that the anarcho-capitalist in you thinks that property and contract rights are best enforced through a market system; but you presumably don't think this is *why* markets are superior to central planning, since if it were a purely minimal state would do no better than the Soviet Union).
Posted by: Blackadder at Nov 23, 2008 11:09:14 AM
My score on the test was 100%, I suppose that means I'm overqualified to be both an American citizen and elected official.
I wonder if the quality of the electorate correlates convincingly to the quality of elected officials (and campaigns). If we have 'irrational voters', then perhaps that explains 'irrational elected officials'.
Posted by: Paludicola at Nov 23, 2008 11:19:51 AM
32/33 here. I could have *sworn* Lincoln lifted "of the people..." from the Declaration of Independence.
Same question as others: why are random web testees scoring 77.6%?
Self-selection, I suppose...
Posted by: Steve Roth at Nov 23, 2008 11:38:32 AM
100% and I am Canadian.
Posted by: assman at Nov 23, 2008 12:04:12 PM
"All of the answers to 9 should be acceptable (what are federal powers under the constitution), and 'levy income taxes' is as explicitly permitted as making treaties."
I agree but I think they meant exclusive powers of the federal government.
Posted by: assman at Nov 23, 2008 12:07:21 PM
"I agree with the negative comments above. It doesn't bother me that a bunch of politicians (or average Americans for that matter) scored poorly on this test, because it really is more about "have you read the same books I have?" as opposed to "do you understand US history?"
It does bother me. The test is extremely elementary. The United States has a public education system so everybody should have as you put it "read the same books". That is one of the basic reasons for a public education system in the first place.
Plus I don't like the focus on sophistication in our society. People keep talking about derivatives, CDSs, CDOs, inflation, normal distributions blah blah blah. But they don't have even a very elementary understanding of discounted cash flow or basic corporate finance (e.g. difference between stock and bond). Its very scary. The same holds true in many areas. There is a faux sophistication. There is nothing wrong with basic ideas and understanding. You can often go very very far with this. Look at Warren Buffet or Paul Krugman. Our society is way too sophisticated.
Posted by: assman at Nov 23, 2008 12:42:45 PM
