The Atlantic: Most Campaign Outreach Has Zero Effect on Voters

A new paper by two California political scientists finds that the total effect of these efforts is zero, meaning that they have no impact on how voters vote. David Broockman, a Stanford University assistant professor, and Joshua Kalla, a doctoral student at the University of California, Berkeley, analyzed data from 49 field experiments—state, local, and federal campaigns that let political scientists access their data to evaluate their methods. For every flyer stuck in a mailbox, every door knocked by an earnest volunteer, and every candidate message left on an answering machine, there was no measurable change in voting outcomes. Even early outreach efforts, which are somewhat more successful at persuading voters, tend to fade from memory by Election Day. Broockman and Kalla also estimated that the effect of television and online ads is zero, although only a small portion of their data speaks directly to that point. [...]

Before they published this paper, Broockman and Kalla ran into minor social-science fame when they debunked a major study showing that voters can be persuaded to change their views on same-sex marriage if they meet a gay or lesbian person. A short while later, the pair published their own paper on a campaign to change minds about transgender people, finding that persuasion is, in fact, possible. This new study suggests that intentionally curated, issue-specific persuasion campaigns may shift people’s views more easily than partisan political campaigns. [...]

Kalla: All the money is being poured into the same time and the same place. It’s hard to imagine that the hundredth TV ad that a person views is really worth it from a monetary perspective, versus that same money spent in a different race or a lower race. There’s a case to be made that too much money is being spent in the same ways and on the same people.  But the takeaway from this paper should not be that campaigns should stop. Campaigns do a lot of work that is measurable in return on getting voters to vote, and persuading voters. It’s just a question of how the money is spent.

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The Atlantic: Guantanamo and the Myth of Swift Justice

That line is consistent with Trump’s remarks since before he became president. During the 2016 presidential campaign, for instance, Trump said he would consider sending U.S. citizens to Guantanamo, where the U.S. has attempted to try terrorism suspects captured on the battlefield following the attacks of September 11, 2001; no U.S. citizen has ever been sent there. His remarks Wednesday notwithstanding, the federal court system has been far more effective at trying and convicting terrorism suspects than the military courts at Guantanamo. Since the September 11 attacks, eight people have been convicted of terrorism at Guantanamo. Of those, three convictions were completely overturned; one was partially overturned. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged 9/11 mastermind who has been at Guantanamo since he was captured in 2003, has yet to be tried. Federal courts, on the other hand, have convicted 620 terrorists, including such figures as Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker, and Jose Padilla, the al-Qaeda member. [...]

Then there is the legal question of whether the administration can take individuals from the U.S. and transfer them to Guantanamo. Raha Wala, director of national-security advocacy at Human Rights First, a civil-liberties group, told me that it’s prohibited to try U.S. citizens at Guantanamo and legally problematic to try green-card holders, like Saipov, who are permanent residents of the U.S. and enjoy most of the same rights as citizens. [...]

At its peak, Guantanamo held more than 750 prisoners, but President Obama released those that were deemed to be of little to no risk and persuaded other countries to take them. Some 55 detainees, the so-called “worst of the worst” suspects, are still at the facility. If Trump has his way, Saipov will join them. But, as Wala said: “I think you’ll see an outcry [if that happens] ... and you’ll see efforts to bring accountability in court, as well.”

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The Atlantic: Why Does Uzbekistan Export So Many Terrorists?

A beard would be considered a sign of religious extremism in Uzbekistan, which has a long and notorious record of restricting the religious practices of its majority Muslim population. All clerics are government vetted; all madrassas are government controlled and infiltrated by undercover informants. Pilgrims to Mecca have to go through a rigorous government vetting process and are then accompanied on the journey by government minders. The communal marking of the end of each day of fasting during the month of Ramadan is banned, as is the celebration of Eid al Fitr, the feast marking the end of Ramadan. Until recently, children under 18 were banned from attending mosques. The authoritarian regime of Islam Karimov, Uzbekistan’s post-Soviet ruler who died last year, outlawed Islamist political parties and imprisoned and tortured dozens of religious activists. The government keeps a “black list” of people it has decided are religious extremists. According to a recent report by Human Rights Watch, “Those on the list are barred from obtaining various jobs and travel, and must report regularly for police interrogations.” Until the new president shortened the list in August, it contained some 18,000 names.

The ostensible point of all these restrictions was to fight the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, or IMU, a jihadist movement that emerged just after the collapse of the Soviet Union—Uzbekistan was, until 1991, a Soviet republic. The IMU wanted to impose Islamic law in Uzbekistan, and was quickly banned by the new Karimov government. IMU fighters scattered throughout the region—to Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and, after the U.S.-led invasion of  Afghanistan in 2001, to the tribal areas of Pakistan—from where they have launched multiple raids into Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. In 2014, the IMU pledged its allegiance to ISIS. [...]

In 2014, seemingly acknowledging that government restrictions on the practice of Islam weren’t working, Karimov asked Russia’s Vladimir Putin for help in dealing with his extremist problem. Putin shared Karimov’s concerns, but he was in the process of exporting his own Islamist threat to Syria, turning a blind eye to thousands of Russian citizens going to join the fighting as long as they stayed out of the way during the 2014 Sochi Olympics. This year, Russia has overtaken Saudi Arabia and Tunisia to become the largest supplier of foreign fighters to ISIS. Men from Russia’s Muslim republic of Dagestan told me in April that when they ventured into ISIS-controlled territory in Syria, they found a Russian-language subculture on the streets of cities like Tabqa, where fighters and families from all over Central Asia were united by that region’s Soviet lingua franca. On the Syrian border with Turkey, they encountered busloads of Central Asian women—mothers going to wrest their children from the clutches of the Islamic State.

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Social Europe: Macron’s Challenge For Europe

Macron’s speech was a welcome call to arms for a European Union that is confronting many crises and threats. But on the crucial and controversial question of fixing the eurozone, his proposals were disappointing. And he will have a hard time winning over his more cautious European counterparts, not least German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose room for manoeuvre was crimped by her party’s poor showing in last weekend’s federal election. [...]

The ball is now in Germany’s court. Europe could very well succumb to nationalism if Macron’s plan fails. That would be devastating for Germany, a country whose economic success, political identity, and security are based on a strong, functioning EU.

Macron is the most pro-German French president imaginable, and he has boosted his credibility by pursuing difficult labor-market reforms and unveiling a Teutonically prudent budget. Germany would be committing a monumental strategic blunder if it did not engage seriously with his proposals. [...]

The danger now is that Macron will achieve only a token eurozone budget in exchange for even tighter controls on national budgets, which would prove economically harmful and politically poisonous. He would also miss his chance to enact the reforms that the eurozone actually needs. These include deeper financial-market integration; an easier process for writing down bank and government debts; greater fiscal flexibility; and more balanced economic-adjustment mechanisms.  

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Politico: Madrid on Catalonia: We got this

More than 150 Catalan officials have been fired, most notably President Carles Puigdemont and his entire cabinet. Defying Madrid, Puigdemont went ahead with an October 1 referendum on independence that was declared illegal by Spanish courts, and used its contested results to support a unilateral declaration of independence last Friday. Madrid later that day moved to take over the region. [...]

Catalonia’s motley coalition of pro-independence factions swerved in recent days from negotiations with Madrid to a hasty declaration of independence that they lacked the levers to enforce and that was not recognized by any country. For its part, Madrid has asserted its authority in Catalonia, at least for the time being, almost effortlessly — dispelling fears, including among some members of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s Cabinet, according to a senior government official, that it would be met with active resistance.[...]

There are numerous risks lurking in the weeks ahead for Madrid, including the likely possibility that the same or larger pro-independence majority regains control over the regional legislature. But government officials these days point to missteps by the Catalan leadership to justify their optimism. [...]

The main pro-independence Catalan political parties have vowed that they will take part in the ballot, implicitly accepting Madrid’s direct rule. The question remains if they will form a common front and under what motto they will run their campaign — with some separatists arguing they should frame the ballot as some sort of ratification for the new Catalan Republic. [...]

The prospect of economic trouble — with nearly 1,900 companies fleeing Catalonia since the disputed independence referendum on October 1 — and the cold welcome of the international community to the newly declared republic, said the official, should’ve convinced the separatist that the path of confrontation leads nowhere.

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