Theoretical economists are given to abstraction. They often dismiss the importance of words and labels. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. There is increasing evidence that's not so. The words that politicians and the media use to frame debate is important. You can create exactly the same economic analytic graph whether you call something a "fine," a "tax," or a "user fee," but the political and behavioral consequences can be quite different in actual practice.
So there is indeed some political significance and weight that comes from the media's choice to dub certain administration officials as "czars."
Here are some of the more fascinating media-dubbed "czar" titles on the complete list of Bush and Obama "czars" compiled by the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center.
Abstinence Czar
Birth Control Czar
Faith Czar (hmmmm, what about the First Amendment?)
Democracy Czar (What an oxymoron!)
Domestic Violence Czar (What an image that conjures up!)
Homelessness Czar (This conjures up a Marie-Antoinette-like image!)
Reading Czar (Yet another amazing image: a czar towering over little kids struggling to learn to read? or perhaps ordering their teachers to use his preferred method of instruction?)
Weapons Czar
Strangely enough, there's no "Tax Czar" on either the Bush or Obama list. Googling on "Tax Czar" turns up no media references to that exact term in the press, though there are a few obscure blog references suggesting that Timothy Geithner should get that title. (Also, Carol Browner, sometimes comes up as "Climate Czar," and sometimes as "Climate Tax Czar.")
In some cases, it's easy to guess which administration the so-called czar worked for. Some policy priorities are clearly associated with a particular president. In other cases, the answer might surprise you.
Based on the Annenberg Center's exhaustive research of conventional press references to the czar titles, here is the list:
"Czar" titles given by media to Bush appointees: Abstinence, AIDS, Bailout/TARP, Bioethics, Bird Flu, Birth Control, Budget, Cleanup (EPA), Communications, Counterterrorism, Cybersecurity, Democracy, Domestic Policy, Drug, Faith, Food Safety, Gulf Coast Reconstruction, Health IT, Homeland Security, Homelessness, Intelligence, Manufacturing, Mine Safety, Policy, Public Diplomacy, Reading, Regulatory, Science, War, World Trade Center Health.
"Czar" titles given by media to Obama appointees: Afghanistan-Pakistan, AIDS, Auto Recovery, Border, California Water, Car, Climate, Counterterrorism/Homeland Security, Diversity, Domestic Violence, Drug, Economics, Energy, Government Performance, Great Lakes, Green Jobs, Guantanamo Closure, Health, Intelligence, Iran, Manufacturing, Mideast, Pay (Executive Compensation), Science, Stimulus Accountability, TARP, Technology/Infotech, Technology, Urban Affairs, Weapons, Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Source: http://www.factcheck.org/UploadedFiles/Czars.pdf
[If you visit the source, you can find a list of the people who held those unofficial media-dubbed titles, along with links to articles in the press that used the title. Note that in some cases, more than one person held the same title during a given administration. As a result the number of "czars" is greater than the number of titles.]
The czar list is quite fascinating to me. During the 1970s and 1980s, I studied and/or worked with at least half a dozen people who later became "czars," beginning with Chris DeMuth (Deregulation) in 1981, and continuing through to Ash Carter (Weapons) and Larry Summers (Economics) in 2009.
Czar is not exactly a comfortable label to wear on one's head. There was a time in my life when I might have been on a career track to become a czar(ina?) myself. There are a lot of expectations placed on the head of a czar, there's a lot of political cross-fire and uncertainty confronting a czar, and of course, a czar has far less power than the usage of the word suggests. It's a burden I'm profoundly glad I never had.
The czar title was fresh and relatively new and exciting and empowering--if silly--when Chris Demuth assumed the role of "Deregulation czar" in 1981. (I've totally forgotten what his official title was--something long and bureaucratic.) But now the word is now so overused as to be almost meaningless. Yet, the term "czar" still has powerful associations and connotations, and could turn out to be part of a political football.
Update: I now know that the czar usage by the press is much older than I realized in 1981. Time Magazine says that the application of the term czar to an administration official dates back to at least World War I, when the press called Bernard Baruch the Industry Czar after President Wilson named him to head the War Industries Board. Time also pointed out that this happened just after the Russians deposed their last Czar, Nicholas II. (Perhaps the press felt there was a vacuum in the use of the title czar, at that point?) So I guess it wasn't actually as "new" in 1981 as it seemed to me at the time. I don't think people were as aware of the history of the term's usage back then--searches of newspaper archives were much harder to do in those pre-Internet days.
Post Script Note to Eco 339 Public Finance students: the timing of the current media focus on czars fits ironically well with this week's study of the Arrow Impossibility Theorem.
Showing posts with label czars. Show all posts
Showing posts with label czars. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Czars and Czarinas: Bush vs. Obama?
The numbers below come from the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center list of media-dubbed "czars" under the past two administrations. (They didn't actually do the czar vs. czarina gender breakdown. I added that part. It's a little tricky--for example, you need to know that "Cass Sunstein" is male, not female, and it's possible I got the gender breakdown wrong.)
President Bush: 33 czars, 2 czarinas Total 35
President Obama: 29 czars, 3 czarinas Total 32
For the rest of the Annenberg Public Policy Center's answer to the question, see here.
As they point out, the usage of the term czar is rather silly, but it does help the media draw attention to important policy areas that a particular president prioritizes.
The usage of the term "czar" evokes some pretty powerful personal memories for me.
When I first started working as a brand new assistant professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government in fall of 1981, I was slated to co-teach a course in the economics of regulation along with a more experienced colleague, Chris DeMuth. Two weeks before the fall term started, the Reagan administration tapped Chris on the shoulder to become the so-called Deregulation Czar for the Reagan administration. Deregulation was indeed an important policy priority for the Reagan administration, so Chris accepted the job. In his left few days before leaving town for DC, he spent some time trying to help me as much as possible as I prepared to teach the course on my own. (That sort of thing happened quite a bit at the Kennedy School. Faculty members were often called away on short notice to take positions in federal and/or state government, with the rest of us scrambling around like utility infielders.)
It was an exciting time to be teaching about regulation--there was a general consensus that there were way too many dysfunctional regulations in many industries, especially communications and transportation, and there was a lot of economic growth to be gained by allowing competition and markets to work more freely in those areas. We can thank deregulation for the cheap long-distance phone rates and airfares we have today.
Of course, that doesn't mean that all regulations are unnecessary and bad. Another of my former Kennedy School colleagues, Nick Nichols, also went down to Washington to work for the Reagan administration, later in the 1980s, where he was heavily involved in the development of new EPA regulations that banned lead from gas. As chief economist for the EPA he directed a highly persuasive and influential 1985 cost-benefit study of lead in gasoline, which caused the EPA to slash allowable lead levels in gasoline by an order of magnitude within a year. Nick took into account new evidence from scientific studies suggesting that emissions from vehicles burning leaded gas was leading to measurable increases in lead levels in children's blood, which in turn was leading to significant decreases in their cognitive abilities. [Note to my eco 339 students: the linked study is a prime example of cost-benefit analysis in action.]
There is a general stereotype of Republicans as "anti-government regulation" and Democrats as "pro-government regulation." The reality is more complicated than that.
When the press dubs certain appointees as "czars," they can reinforce those stereotypes, but, as I said, the reality is more complicated. Nobody called Nick Nichols the "Lead regulation czar," but perhaps if the media had done so, we would have a more nuanced view of the Reagan administration. And the deregulation of the communications and transportation industries really began in the Carter administration, even before Reagan took office. By the same token, during the Clinton administration, nobody called Robert Rubin and Larry Summers "Derivatives deregulation czars," even though many policy analysts are now calling attention to their late 1990s advocacy for allowing the exotic financial derivatives market to go unregulated.
Having said all that, it is instructive to look at the list of "czar" titles the media has given to Bush and Obama appointees, for what it says about the media's view of the two administration's priorities. I'll consider those lists in my next post.
President Bush: 33 czars, 2 czarinas Total 35
President Obama: 29 czars, 3 czarinas Total 32
Q: Does Obama have an unprecedented number of "czars"?
A: "Czar" is media lingo, not an official title. But our research shows that George Bush’s administration had more "czars" than the Obama administration.
FULL QUESTION
A friend of mine sent me a link claiming that Obama has more czars than any other president ever and he is trying to turn the USA into a dictatorship. Please give me confirmation so I can give it to her that she has no reason to fear. Does hiring czars allow a president to bypass Congress for approval? And does President Obama have more than any other president?
FULL ANSWER
It’s meaningless to ask a question about what "hiring czars" allows a president to do, because presidents don’t hire czars. "Czar" is a label bestowed by the media – and sometimes the administration – as a shorthand for the often-cumbersome titles of various presidential advisers, assistants, office directors, special envoys and deputy secretaries. (After all, what makes for a better headline – "weapons czar" or "undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics"?) ....
For the rest of the Annenberg Public Policy Center's answer to the question, see here.
As they point out, the usage of the term czar is rather silly, but it does help the media draw attention to important policy areas that a particular president prioritizes.
The usage of the term "czar" evokes some pretty powerful personal memories for me.
When I first started working as a brand new assistant professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government in fall of 1981, I was slated to co-teach a course in the economics of regulation along with a more experienced colleague, Chris DeMuth. Two weeks before the fall term started, the Reagan administration tapped Chris on the shoulder to become the so-called Deregulation Czar for the Reagan administration. Deregulation was indeed an important policy priority for the Reagan administration, so Chris accepted the job. In his left few days before leaving town for DC, he spent some time trying to help me as much as possible as I prepared to teach the course on my own. (That sort of thing happened quite a bit at the Kennedy School. Faculty members were often called away on short notice to take positions in federal and/or state government, with the rest of us scrambling around like utility infielders.)
It was an exciting time to be teaching about regulation--there was a general consensus that there were way too many dysfunctional regulations in many industries, especially communications and transportation, and there was a lot of economic growth to be gained by allowing competition and markets to work more freely in those areas. We can thank deregulation for the cheap long-distance phone rates and airfares we have today.
Of course, that doesn't mean that all regulations are unnecessary and bad. Another of my former Kennedy School colleagues, Nick Nichols, also went down to Washington to work for the Reagan administration, later in the 1980s, where he was heavily involved in the development of new EPA regulations that banned lead from gas. As chief economist for the EPA he directed a highly persuasive and influential 1985 cost-benefit study of lead in gasoline, which caused the EPA to slash allowable lead levels in gasoline by an order of magnitude within a year. Nick took into account new evidence from scientific studies suggesting that emissions from vehicles burning leaded gas was leading to measurable increases in lead levels in children's blood, which in turn was leading to significant decreases in their cognitive abilities. [Note to my eco 339 students: the linked study is a prime example of cost-benefit analysis in action.]
There is a general stereotype of Republicans as "anti-government regulation" and Democrats as "pro-government regulation." The reality is more complicated than that.
When the press dubs certain appointees as "czars," they can reinforce those stereotypes, but, as I said, the reality is more complicated. Nobody called Nick Nichols the "Lead regulation czar," but perhaps if the media had done so, we would have a more nuanced view of the Reagan administration. And the deregulation of the communications and transportation industries really began in the Carter administration, even before Reagan took office. By the same token, during the Clinton administration, nobody called Robert Rubin and Larry Summers "Derivatives deregulation czars," even though many policy analysts are now calling attention to their late 1990s advocacy for allowing the exotic financial derivatives market to go unregulated.
Having said all that, it is instructive to look at the list of "czar" titles the media has given to Bush and Obama appointees, for what it says about the media's view of the two administration's priorities. I'll consider those lists in my next post.
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