Strings Attached: Untangling the Ethics of Incentives [Hardcover]

"Can social engineering be a force for democratic improvement, or does it undermine democracy by treating citizens like puppets on a string?"

In Strings Attached, Dr. Ruth Grant considers the matter of incentives to discern their universal and setting-specific usefulness. Weighing arguments from history, psychology, ancient political theory, popular culture, economics, and other fields, she pokes holes in traditional views of incentives as applied in various settings; most directly the fields of education (as in pay-for-grades), cash incentives for medical testing, IMF loan restrictions, and plea bargaining. Along the way she clearly defines incentives in terms of their relationship to power, politics, and economics, and develops a set of standards to judge these and other uses of incentives. She concludes by questioning, as in in the quote above, how all incentives presume a mechanical understanding of human motivations and thereby devalue the individual decision-maker to potentially disastrous effects in a democratic society.

The primary strength of this book lies in Dr. Grant's method of argument. She is a generous and sensitive writer as she pursues her points without moralizing. When she pokes holes in the common practice of plea bargaining, for example, she does not have a target, be it lazy judges or overeager lawyers, but seeks instead to draw attention to the way in which plea bargaining itself undermines the very purposes of the justice system as "it cannot serve either truth or justice." Indeed, Dr. Grant's targets are never individual decision-makers or institutions but practices and assumptions. She is no polemicist. Her goal is a better society, not the persecution of any particular mistaken individual.

A second strength of the book lies in the breadth of argument employed. This book is not for the layman, though the layman would surely benefit from her arguments. Even as she employs examples from a kindergarten classroom, she draws on examples from authors as varied as John Locke, Thucydides, and William Easterly. I found this breadth enjoyable as my assumptions about incentives were challenged from disparate cultures, eras, and fields, but I winced a few times as I read because the examples given could perhaps turn off a more casual reader. Not that Dr. Grant's writing style is opaque: if anything, this is one of the more easily readable books written by a Professor of Political Science that I have read in some time. I just wish the question Dr. Grant raises about incentives would be asked by a broader audience than this book portends to reach.

The one weakness is hard to identify as a weakness because it directly contradicts the two aforementioned strengths of String Attached: because Dr. Grant is a sensitive author who employs a broad range of arguments, the system she creates to judge individual incentives is complicated and leads (as she readily admits), to difficult judgment calls when considering how and when to apply incentives. She writes "the application of standards turns out to be a complex affair. As with all prudential judgments, context matters greatly. There is no `rule of thumb' ..." Though she (thankfully) reiterates her criteria for the ethical application of incentives throughout the book, I still found myself flipping back and forth (no mean feat on a kindle) to remember the standards she has created. That implies two things: 1) the standards created, though they are well-reasoned, are not very memorable; and 2) the standards are probably sufficiently complex to preclude their usage by most policy-makers. Perhaps I am underestimating policy-makers, but I do not see too many of them thoughtfully considering the definitions and standards found in Strings Attached when they consider the specific application of incentives in their respective fields.

The value of this book lies in the questions Dr. Grant asks about incentives from a more theoretical, universal point of view. What malignant effects will incentives have on our democratic society when they replace persuasion as our primary means of social progress? What happens when we simply assume, from the outset, that people need external motivators to do good things or develop moral values? These are worthy questions.

In brief: a great read on an incredibly important topic that asks very important questions about a rapidly-spreading tool for social and political control. Non-political scientists, keep Wikipedia close at hand.

For the sake of full disclosure, I did study with Dr. Grant as a student at Duke University in 2003-2004 but have not really spoken with her since (to my chagrin, really).

The idea of the book Strings Attached: Untangling the Ethics of Incentives by Ruth W. Grant came about from a class she taught in Greek political philosophy. The discussion centered on under what circumstances you should use coercion or force when attempting to persuade a certain action.
Grant goes back to the philosophical root of these and the even defines the changing meaning of incentive. The current accepted intent of the word is a relatively new concept.
The author explores the concept of inceptive by the lens of ethical and unethical ones, the standard and how they are judged.
What makes this book valuable is that it goes beyond academic ease and uses the cases to explore how they are implicated. The most interesting one is when she explores the history of plea bargaining in our court systems. I find this fascinating and gives insight to a relatively new tool used.
Political Scientist Ruth Grant opens the discussion on what works when crafting public policy that develops to foster a desired outcome. This is a gray area and can be tricky when implemented.
Strings Attached is a good read to hook you into a larger discussion of what works and what doesn't in public policy or how what are better tactics we can use in persuading others in our daily lives.