Can Star Wars inform public policy? | VIEWPOINT

Michael: There's a lot of social science in your book, phrases like network effects and information cascades are sprinkled throughout. What are the most interesting applications of social science to Star Wars, both in the films and in the broader Star Wars phenomenon? Cass: I think you put your finger on the number one, which is informational cascades. So when you think in politics how an idea spreads, whether the idea is we should have deregulation or the idea is that we should ban genetically

modified food or label it, often that idea spreads not because every single person studies deregulation or GMOs, but because people are taking their cues from other people. That's how rebellions large and small happen. That's how people become very serious presidential candidates. That's how the Star Wars movies depict both the rise of the Empire and the rise of the Rebellion, their cascade effects where people are taking their cues from others. Luke of course at first didn't want to become part

of the Rebellion, but he's taking a cue from others, and then Han takes it from Luke, and Leia of course was there at the beginning. She's like a true believer, and that is a very important phenomenon. We often think that people as a whole rise up in favor of some product or idea, but it's actually informational cues that sometimes through a very rapid spreading and sometimes it's slower. Something becomes common knowledge in everybody's house, or in the White House, and that's what's depicted.

The success of Star Wars as a phenomenon is exactly the same process, where the movie makers didn't have much faith in it. The studio certainly had very little faith in it. Lucas, the mind behind Star Wars, thought it might do as well as an average Disney movie, and that was at the high end of optimism, but there was a cascade of, "This is amazing," and people were hearing other people say it was amazing, and eventually there were lines along the block, and once there are lines along the block,

then you can really create a phenomenon. Michael: Once you hear there's a line around the block you want to go stand in the line. Cass: Definitely. Michael: Can Star Wars inform public policy? Cass: I think so. I don't think it's the first place I'd go if I wanted to learn about public policy. Michael: I guess it depends on the policy environment you're talking about. Cass: I would maybe go some texts by people whose specialty is public policy, but it does have a few ideas. I think the one I'd

single out is the immense importance and in some ways fragility of separation of powers. So George Lucas studied this stuff, and you can see his emphasis on both the potential paralysis of a gridlocked legislature and the problems that call for public faith and trust in institutions. He kind of got that in the much-maligned prequels, and also the sense that in the face of a blocked, potentially corrupt, and certainly sharply divided legislature, there's pressure, public pressure, for a strong ex

ecutive, which is depicted in Star Wars as deeply threatening to liberty. That's a very fair thing for any democracy to worry over, and the idea republic, of course, as the kind of guiding political lodestar in Star Wars, and Benjamin Franklin famously said after the Constitution was written to the people in Philadelphia, "We have a Constitution if you can keep it." You can think that the political message of Star Wars is exactly Franklin's.