and you work backwards and i can see how it can be easily applied to electoral politics running for office but is it just as a political to running the office governance which by definition is far more diffused when it comes to the stated goals yes well i think mechanism design comes into politics first in the design of governments. where when the country is trying to figure out how it is going to allocate power to the executive to the legislative it will draw up a constitution and the process of designing and executing a constitution is an exercise in mechanism design but i soon the challenge here would be not only defining and sort of operationalizing your goals but also prioritizing them and as much as you want to bring more mathematics and science

into governance do you think it's actually possible realistic to construct that multi-layered governing algorithm and when you're so constrained by short political cycle mechanism design. is more concerned with. what constraints you place on the politicians officials what what scope for the exercise of power they have once they're in office it's up to them to operate within those constraints that is the mechanism design doesn't tell them what they should do with office it's interesting that you stress the sort of a limiting part and i think that's actually a very cultural american thing about. they do about limiting power but obviously when a politician arm a new government comes into office it also needs

a certain freedom to. and secured its own policies how would you ballance those out that's where constraints on. on what a particular official can do come in. for example. under the american system the government is not allowed to. tell the newspaper not to write. on a subject unless unless it can be argued that. national security will be jeopardized immediately and that's a very difficult argument to think they're free to tell the newspaper or or t.v. station if they don't like what those what journalists are doing but they can't stop them but it's interesting if you can bring in this example of media because i

think that's of particular. american hangout because governance is not about what the media is riding on not writing about this or that particular governor governor of government don't you actually think that in the united states the whole conversation about governance is now reduced to how the government relates to the media and over comedian play an essential role. in american politics because it's very difficult for government sue monitor itself but don't you think that actually substitutes governance for politics because when you cover the government's actions only from political and sometimes very partisan point of view do you actually have enough capacity both as media and as government to pursue you know policies that actually matter for people in that daily lives like health care education and so on and so forth because to be honest with you i haven't seen

much coverage of those essential issues in the american media it's all about trump these days that very little about the substantive questions well if you if you look at the coverage of the recent attacks bill. you'll see quite a while of substance in press coverage. who will be affected by the tax cuts whether this will still be a way it's. growth whether it will cause american companies to repatriate their assets all of this is covered in the preface and a good thing too because that's how the that's how the public finds out what what's actually in the tax bill now you're also contribute to that discussion because the earlier this year you will call it an article suggesting swapping the current clip plurality of rule for a majority rule in presidential elections saying that after two hundred twenty four

years perhaps quote it's time to change the rules of the game why now well only because as we saw in what happens. in steers election. particularly look particularly bad flaws in the current system just to give an example in the republican primary elections there were initially sixteen candidates running one of those candidates was donald trump. and trump benefited. very much from the existing plurality rule system because he was so different from the other candidates if you took any one of those mainstream candidates and you put him in the head to head contest with trump. that other

candidate might well have won but because the. because the support for the mainstream was divided over so many. different candidates all those candidates ended up losing to trump trump a plurality of the vote even though he couldn't have a majority and so it can be argued there would have been other candidates who would have actually been supported more widely by republican voters and by trump now i understand that you view trump a somebody who is unequivocally bad for the american system but. what makes you actually believe that i am because you've argued before i in favor of mainstream candidates no and you know on their personal level it's easy to relate to that when you see some of the tweets and the statements that the current president of the united states has made but on the policy level when you actually analyze what he

has done and what other mainstream candidates in the american political system have done. is there an argument that he is actually scientific argument that he's so much worse down and all the other mainstream candidates i think there is. if you look at his so coal policy proposals many of them are or incoherent for example trump came into office with a pledge that he was going to reform the. health care system. but once he was in office he did nothing of the kind he spent his first few months trying to tear down the currents system the system that was created by his predecessor president obama but he he did nothing at all

sue to try to put something in its place and that was possibly because he also faced such an imposition from congress and from the larger american electorate but he didn't even say what he was going to put in its place that's the point that it was not a well thought out policy well i may agree with you on that point that it was not their well thought out policy but there have been a number of american presidents of presidential candidates before who didn't come to office saying that for example they are going to launch a war in iraq or an invasion or an attack on libya and they actually did so when you compare the damage of those not even suggested no policies to what he's been proposing but hasn't been able to realize is see it again really so much worse than the others oh. as for what he's actually done so far. i don't think he's been as damaging for example as george w.

bush. i'm judging him primarily on his plans he looks one step ahead whereas to formulate sensible policies you have to walk five steps ahead he's not he's not one . or following the consequences of his policy train crews. forward in time to build respect i know this station i represent here is often accused of being very hostile to you he is. a potential competitor and mrs clinton but when we look back at her post in libya you kind of make an argument that it was really thought through i'm not arguing in favor of one of the other but again i'm interested from the structural analysis point of view. because i mean the american system to expand a little bit on that hat is

a very peculiar system it's not the first time for example the electoral college has produced a different outcome from the popular vote there has been it has numerous it happened twice in seventeen years absolutely there is gerrymandering reaches i think it is an example of malicious mechanism design and yet none of those structural issues have rap told the american political elites to quite the same extent as chums personality does is it really a rational approach to politics. you're i think you are you are right that there probably has been an overreaction to. trump's personality to the to the tweets. at the same time. we haven't had a president before who has been quite so dishonest as trump who has said so many things. which are in obvious contradiction to the fact that on an on his very first day in office he claimed that the

the the size of the audience at his inauguration was the largest ever now of course this is not a fairly important issue but the fact that he made this claim and it was so easy to check that was false. got him his presidency off to have a bad start. has the press focused on the is small details too much probably yes but still it's unusual to have a president who is so disallowed i agree that even if it's and usually. signet have been american presidents who lied before they were just better at covering it but at the end of the day i think they lied as much if if they if they lied. there was perhaps some way at least to themselves.

justifying the law well i'm sure they can justify it to himself but i guess the question i want to ask is whether whatever you think about. personally whether they're still at a learning value from peace presidency in a sense of that you know of politics may be very susceptible to mechanism design but life is not life is an open ended experiment isn't there. a learning value you know and it means just change fitting value in how and having somebody like trump because it energizes your society that's right and that makes us stronger that's right so so the american government gets on. what we call the principle of checks and balances. and one thing that we are testing. the trump presidency is the ability of other parts of governments to limits the power of the president and then i mean it's useful it's not always

being with us. but that i never really is but but but but it is useful in the same way that when richard nixon was president it was useful to see. that the government was able. to effectively remove him from office without there being who well professor musketry have to take a very short break now but people are back in just a few moments. all see we have a great we need to strengthen before the free float world cold and your bets have

been a legend to keep it so i took it back. in ninety nine to two that most qualified for the european championships at the very last moment no one believed in us but we won and i'm hoping to bring some of that waving spirit to the r.c.c. . recently i've had a lot of practice so i can guarantee you that peter schmeichel will be the best since my last will call. those in the euro zone. russia. knows left left left more or less ok that's really good it's all the politicians who make people afraid let's be a better relations with russia better relations with the united states only do it all super and nationalism in brussels and the european union that is the real reason and that is something i don't see right.

welcome back to worlds apart eric musk and american economist and at two thousand and seven nobel prize laureate the president must get it talked about the united states now let's talk about russia russia has a fundamentally different system with last constraints on the government and especially on the executive and i think the biggest challenge here is finding a balance between social stability and economic development because you can easily have one without another and have you know development without stability or stability without development but combining the two you has been the major challenge for this country and i think it's resulted in the prolonged stagnation from the point of view of the theory that you pioneered do you have any solutions.

well i think one reason why russia has found its so difficult to develop economically. is that it it hasn't found a way. of limiting. the power of the executive if i'm a foreign investor. and i'm thinking of putting my money into russia under the current system. i might worry that it's my assets will be exposed created. i might worry that i personally if i say something that displeases the. the leadership that i will be thrown in jail. one way of preventing that sort of thing from happening is to give independent power to

a court system a different branch an independent branch of government it's it's an interesting comment and to be honest with you i think when you are a foreign investor specially in the current climate the russian government will be very protective of you but i think it is for the local businesses that is much more difficult to define that interesting clearing in the court system and here i would take an issue with your comment because you sad that the government should gift power and in russia there has been a number of attempts to reform the court system but the problem is that it's not just the government but many other actors economic actors who find out ways of manipulating the court system so i guess the question i'm asking is whether you can what it is really so easy to. give power to somebody as opposed to the society actually developing that muscle to claim that power because in russia you

know there is not the very long tradition of private responsibility of personal initiative and that isn't something that all obviously benefits the kremlin but it's is it fair it should limit russia all its you the only powerful kremlin and everybody else. i would say relative to a system which would produce better economic development the kremlin has too much power. if we look back at european history if we look back at the history of it in one for example where when the. in one first start developing into an economic power it was when the kenyan was able to give all some of this power so that investors the entrepreneurs of that time were willing to take the risk of investing that mr mosque and i think that's again

a very relevant the example but i'm not sure how political it is because both the united kingdom and the united states to washing stand have the luxury of developing at their own pace you know it was an evolutionary development whereas in many other countries including russia they're sort of having to catch up they have to declare democracy first and then try to fill in that institutions with theft and i'm that is actually a reverse engineering in is able to act as but don't you think that it creates this sort of different challenges from the ones that the united states and the u.k. sort and so you are right. that in ones that we england rather than the united states the united states wrote a constitution where are they in effect learned from the mistakes that were made and then ones about how to. to divide up power so that it wasn't all concentrated in one place but you're right in the case of england it happened.

in a natural in the end as in the slow evolutionary way but there are modern examples contemporary examples of countries which have successfully made the transition from a dictatorship if you are to to a well functioning democracy look at south korea look what they did also talk to can the third sharon government to do that yes but the but the authoritarian government bond totally gave. a great deal of its power that is interesting enough i think that is actually the crossroads that russia finds itself at the moment because having a passive societies very convenient when you have short term goals when you're only interested in staying in power but when you have an ambition of great power self-sustaining great power with a rebellious geo political agenda you actually need a strong society if you do. and i think the problem that they have with the russian

leadership right now is that it realizes that but it is very upper hand to flooding the russian society to make its own mistakes and by the way the tums example is not very inspiring here because nobody in russia wants to see the crime and wants to see a person like trump and on winning the elections how would you navigate this very precarious process of or prechter carries needs various goals of on the one have having to let your society grow and mature even by making mistakes and down exercising enough responsibility and leadership to prevent their wars and from happening will i think i think one. way you move. toward the goal of a more in gauged society is through the educational system i feel i think. one thing that more universities can do the higher school is trying to do this is

to. is to teach students not just the conventional curriculum but it's. how economics and politics. do and would interacts in a in a well functioning society you know the soviet union also had a great educational system and even higher institutions despite having an extensive curriculum marxism-leninism they actually had pretty solid fundamental expertise on the sciences social scientist mathematics physics and so on and so forth but i think the perennial problem of russia is. translating that extensive knowledge into practical outcome making about knowledge work. so the soviet union

was great at technical knowledge they were they produce great mathematicians great physicists not such great social scientists so i would say. well if you make a case that. communism was a constructed reality done it lasted for seventy years and i think you know given that it lasted for so long. it requires a militia the economics of wasn't very good because at the end of the day but by the end that's right well one of the things that the higher school with economics is do is now trying to promote is the idea of entrepreneurship perhaps of entrepreneur doesn't it's. invents new technology or new products but an entrepreneur knows how to with some bold. new developments in technology and the in business to offer something new.

to consumers that's a way of thinking that it's largely absent that i think in russian business. is something. that the educational system in in russia could promote. with entrepreneurs and will of citizens thinking creative way about their society was there or their economy means you have the possibility of an engaged public. but the sort of the evolution of power that we were discussing earlier becomes more practical i actually agree with you. and i would even expand that because i think in russia and japan your ship is highly vital for developing that social engagement

muscle that is very weak in this society and i'm not quite sure that even the government and. president putin just the other day and now is that russia has actually gone all off increasing the share of small sized businesses just somewhere around thirty to forty percent of it in the next few decades which is a commendable goal but i'm not quite sure that the government has that capacity and the expertise of how to develop that do you think i have foreign countries could how it's up to go sue. provide the conditions under which a new business can create itself so for example. from from my discussions with people in business in russia i have. i have the impression that to sum up a new business now involves a huge amount of bureaucratic red tape i think this is not exactly accurate because

in the in the reading of russia's of doing business russia has actually advanced quite a bit setting up a business is not an issue of what i think the business about is far more difficult because of corruption and the red tape and everything it takes but setting up a firm is fairly easy that's not the impression i have and even if russia was has advanced. to the tables of. ease of doing business it still has. a long way to go to be competitive with a. new economy is in in europe and north america absolutely and i guess my question was whether you think that the russian government in trying to present a good face abroad may be a paying attention to appearances much more than just substance because whether it takes you sixty days or let's say ninety days to set up your business is not really

irrelevant compared to what kind of environment the business will be running and that kind of from vironment addressing that kind of environment that i assume would take you know a far deeper at. indeed one of the things that the russian business lacks at the moment. is a. is a labor force with the skills needed to. i undertake the tasks of a modern economy as we were discussing before. the russian educational system. in many ways this is impressive than a produces great mathematicians and great physicists what it doesn't do very well is to. produce

a labor force that is well suited to modern business needs that that is the sort of thing that that government. can assist with unfortunately we have to leave it there it's been a very interesting conversation for me thank you for your time thank you and to our viewers please share your comments our facebook twitter and you tube pages and i hope to see you again same place same time here on worlds apart.

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