Decreasing populism and improving democracy, evidence-based policy, and rationality

Abstract

This short review explores what a potential philanthropist could fund in the “Decreasing populism, improving democracy, evidence-based policy, and rationality” space. This document sets out: What populism is, what its impacts and causes are, and who is working on this cause alreadyWhat a philanthropist could do to tackle the problem Our analysis informed our ranking of which broad causes are specifically effective to decrease populism, which is based on qualitative subjective impressions. We concluded that improving rationality, institutional decision making and evidence-based policy are particularly promising.

This should just be seen as a rough guide towards finding potentially highly effective interventions. Throughout the report we highlight concrete ideas of things that a philanthropist could fund. We distinguish between “funding ideas”, which are promising broad areas that could be explored further, and “funding opportunities”, which are a bit more concrete because we have found a non-profit or academic researcher that is already working on a very promising idea or project that seem plausibly highly effective and that could be funded in the very near term. Our rough ranking of promising funding opportunities is as follows:

For instance, our top choice is the Initiative on Global Markets (IGM), a research center at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Specifically, their “Economics Experts Panel”, regularly polls top economists on economic policy questions. A philanthropist could fund this project so that it can be expanded. Basing economic policy on expert consensus should be robustly positive.