My old college pal David Landy is organising a conference: PALESTINE AS ‘STATE OF EXCEPTION ': A GLOBAL PARADIGM.
One amusing feature of this is that it stars Ilan Pappe, an Israeli academic. Pappe has played a leading role in advocating a boycott of Israeli academia similar to that which apartheid era South Africa was subjected. So I should really boycott any talk he delivers, but instead I am signing up to hear him speak. Here is a great short article by Pappe on the Israeli legal system: 'In Court'.
I think the conference title draws on the ideas of political and social scientists like Giorgio Agamben, who talk about how it is the ability of states to suspend the normal niceties of constutional rule that defines them. Malcolm Bull reviewed Agamben's States of Exception in the LRB earlier this year: 'States don’t really mind their citizens dying (provided they don’t all do it at once): they just don’t like anyone else to kill them'.
(You'll need to be a subscriber of the London Review of Books to read those linked to articles in full)
30 August, 2006
29 August, 2006
History Today
I was bemused by an article David Cannadine wrote for the BBC News website, "A Tale of Two Historians". He talks about two well-known but now deceased historians, A.J.P. Taylor and Hugh Trevor-Roper. He mentioned how since their deaths, the reputation of one has soared and the other nose-dived. But bizarrely, it seems to be Taylor's stock which has fallen while suddenly everyone apparently loves Trevor-Roper.
The contention is interesting, but Mr Cannadine has little to say in favour of Trevor-Roper, apart from claiming that his collected letters are a cracking read. Big mickey, especially given that they seem to largely deal with the puerile university politics that kept him away from producing anything to rival Taylor's works.
Er, not that I am actually that familiar with Taylor's oeuvre in its totality. Years and years ago I read an entertaining book about British foreign policy dissidents, but the one big book of Taylor's I have read is his Origins of the Second World War. That is a cracker, a book covering interstate politics in Europe from the end of the First World War to the beginning of the Second, with the sense of pace and drama that makes it a page turner to rival the most exciting thriller.
One very odd thing about that book is the way people keep saying that it is some kind of apologia for Hitler. This is bollocks, basically. Taylor treats Hitler as an actual person pursuing goals rather than the kind of dehistoricised monster some are more comfortable with. And the focus of the book is on relations between the states of Europe, meaning that their internal affairs are largely outside its concern. That said, Taylor is quite clear on how Kristalnacht and the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia were important events, in that they made the British public realise that Hitler really was a maniac and not someone who could be appeased. Taylor is quite clear on Hitler's boundless appetite, even if he does not believe that Der Fuhrer came into office in 1933 planning to launch a European war in September 1939.
Mmmm. I think I will add The Struggle for Mastery in Europe and Taylor's book about the Habsburgs to my mountain of unread books.
The contention is interesting, but Mr Cannadine has little to say in favour of Trevor-Roper, apart from claiming that his collected letters are a cracking read. Big mickey, especially given that they seem to largely deal with the puerile university politics that kept him away from producing anything to rival Taylor's works.
Er, not that I am actually that familiar with Taylor's oeuvre in its totality. Years and years ago I read an entertaining book about British foreign policy dissidents, but the one big book of Taylor's I have read is his Origins of the Second World War. That is a cracker, a book covering interstate politics in Europe from the end of the First World War to the beginning of the Second, with the sense of pace and drama that makes it a page turner to rival the most exciting thriller.
One very odd thing about that book is the way people keep saying that it is some kind of apologia for Hitler. This is bollocks, basically. Taylor treats Hitler as an actual person pursuing goals rather than the kind of dehistoricised monster some are more comfortable with. And the focus of the book is on relations between the states of Europe, meaning that their internal affairs are largely outside its concern. That said, Taylor is quite clear on how Kristalnacht and the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia were important events, in that they made the British public realise that Hitler really was a maniac and not someone who could be appeased. Taylor is quite clear on Hitler's boundless appetite, even if he does not believe that Der Fuhrer came into office in 1933 planning to launch a European war in September 1939.
Mmmm. I think I will add The Struggle for Mastery in Europe and Taylor's book about the Habsburgs to my mountain of unread books.
12 August, 2006
Virtual War
I hope eventually to trundle along through the magic of IR theory, bringing you eventually to the magic of post-modernism in so far as it relates to my discicpline. In the meantime, ILX brought me to an article by Eyal Weizman called Israeli Military Using Post-Structuralism as “Operational Theory” which originally appeared in the journal Radical Philosophy. I'm not saying this article is brilliant or anything (I've only barely skimmed it myself), but it seems illustrative of the type.
29 July, 2006
Voodoo Economics
I have been reading this book Silent Revolution: The Rise of Market Economics in Latin America by Duncan Green. It's about how Latin America, hit by the debt crisis of the early 1980s, found itself caught in the embrace of neo-liberal economics. The book is interesting enough, and I may talk about it at more length when I eventually tell you everything you need to know about Latin America.
Green's thesis is that neo-liberalism is BAD. Fair enough, it's not like the region has done particularly well since it embraced the creed. However, he displays a less than total understanding of basic economics, which undermines his credibility when he scoves at the discipline in general or attempts to draw conclusions about particular economic models. The error that most struck me was when he attempted to explain Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage by giving an example of a situation where the different concept of absolute advantage applies. The error is not fatal to his analysis, but it did make me wonder what other clunkers had crept in there. So I am somewhat more sceptical about his overall conclusions.
Green's thesis is that neo-liberalism is BAD. Fair enough, it's not like the region has done particularly well since it embraced the creed. However, he displays a less than total understanding of basic economics, which undermines his credibility when he scoves at the discipline in general or attempts to draw conclusions about particular economic models. The error that most struck me was when he attempted to explain Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage by giving an example of a situation where the different concept of absolute advantage applies. The error is not fatal to his analysis, but it did make me wonder what other clunkers had crept in there. So I am somewhat more sceptical about his overall conclusions.
25 July, 2006
Europe Endless
Momus writes about Europe, referring to a piece in a magazine called Europe Endless and referring to writings by some Mark Leonard fellow (whose book, Why Europe Will Run The 21st Century stares provocatively at me in bookshops.
The European Union is unstoppable, because our progress is based not on war but personal and economic commerce. Our flubbly world of compromise, difference, and bureaucratic deal cutting is endlessly attractive to outsiders. I look forward to the day when Morocco and Turkey join the EU, because it sets the project rolling for the EU's transformation into the WU, a pacific league straddling the globe.
The European Union is unstoppable, because our progress is based not on war but personal and economic commerce. Our flubbly world of compromise, difference, and bureaucratic deal cutting is endlessly attractive to outsiders. I look forward to the day when Morocco and Turkey join the EU, because it sets the project rolling for the EU's transformation into the WU, a pacific league straddling the globe.
16 July, 2006
Theorising International Relations: Marxism
Some time ago I said that I would take you all on a journey through the world of International Relations theory. Sadly, the train had barely left the station when it faced a long delay in its second stop, but now let’s get things moving again. And look, we are pulling in at the third stop, which is called Marxism. This is the third of International Relations’ big three theories, though it is very much the poor relation of Liberalism and Realism.
In broad outline you probably know what Marxism is all about. In some ways it is reducible to a string of buzzwords - class struggle, dialectics, historical materialism, modes of production, relations of production, alienation, base & superstructure, surplus value, and so on. The interesting question is how applicable all this is to world politics. In his own writings, Karl Marx largely confined himself to analysing power structures within countries, saying very little about how the workings of capitalism work internationally.
Still, Marx says more than nothing about the world as a whole - there is a fascinating passage in The Communist Manifesto of 1848 where he talk presciently of globalisation, and of capitalism’s insatiable urge to spread itself throughout the world, transforming all traditional societies it touches through the introduction of the cash nexus and capitalist relations of production. Nevertheless, the argument is somewhat unsophisticated in the light of later developments - capitalism is seen as turning the whole world into a simulacrum of the advanced industrial societies. The division of the world into a developed core and a (seemingly) permanently underdeveloped periphery does not look like something he envisaged.
After Marx’s death, others tried to develop his ideas and more complex Marxist ideas of relevance to International Relations
began to develop. V.I. Lenin, in works such as Imperialism - The Highest Stage of Capitalism, talked about how through colonialism and overseas investment capitalism had become transnational, that in a sense entire countries had become bourgeois or proletarian. Lenin’s grasp of economics was much weaker than Marx’s, and his belief that colonialism was driving the world into world war seems a bit simplistic when you look at how the First World War actually started. Nevertheless, Lenin was in retrospect correct in identifying Russia as capitalism’s weakest link, in so far as it was both an imperial state and (through extensive inward investment) a de facto colony, thus making it the place where world revolution was most likely to begin.
Lenin’s legacy for Marxism was ultimately malign - by achieving his revolution and identifying Marxism (or Marxism-Leninism) as the state ideology, Marxism was tied to the USSR’s fortunes and forced through conceptual hoops to support whatever twist in policy the country’s leadership felt like espousing. The USSR’s quarter century rule by a psychopath also did not help. That end of Marxism gradually lost any intellectual credibility, and I doubt anyone in the world now seriously reads Marxist scholarship originating in the USSR.
In the west, however, a separate Marxist tradition developed in academia, divorced from the rough and tumble of actual politics. Marx himself would probably have been appalled by this development, given that he devoted as much effort to organising socialist movements as he did to research and writing, but the ivory tower academics have kept his ideas alive. Unfortunately for the International Relations student, the ideas of these intellectual Marxists have gone in many different directions. Some of these roads have produced lines of thought relevant to our discipline, such as Dependency Theory or various strands of Critical Theory. However, these have either evolved so far from original Marxist orthodoxy as to be essentially post-Marxist, or they have been almost completely discredited by the passage of time (or both). I would therefore question whether one could still talk of a "pure" Marxism as having any great relevance to International Relations.
Nevertheless, Marxism has one major contribution to our subject. When you look at writings in the Realist or Liberal tradition, the focus is all on diplomacy, states, armies, treaties, statesmen, and high politics. When you look at what Marxist writers talk about, you see stuff about economics, companies, exploitation, class, and so on. In some ways that makes Marxism look like it is from a completely different discipline to "true" International Relations. However, the question can be turned on its head by asking whether it is actually the old-school theories that are missing the point and ignoring what is actually relevant to the way the world works. Marxism is also important in that it explodes the idea that states are unitary actors working for the good of all their citizens - rather we see conflict within states which in turn is bound to affect how they operate internationally.
In the end, Marxism is probably more relevant to International Relations because of the questions it asks rather than the answers it provides. Others have taken those questions and answered them in ways that go beyond anything Marx would have envisaged.
In broad outline you probably know what Marxism is all about. In some ways it is reducible to a string of buzzwords - class struggle, dialectics, historical materialism, modes of production, relations of production, alienation, base & superstructure, surplus value, and so on. The interesting question is how applicable all this is to world politics. In his own writings, Karl Marx largely confined himself to analysing power structures within countries, saying very little about how the workings of capitalism work internationally.
Still, Marx says more than nothing about the world as a whole - there is a fascinating passage in The Communist Manifesto of 1848 where he talk presciently of globalisation, and of capitalism’s insatiable urge to spread itself throughout the world, transforming all traditional societies it touches through the introduction of the cash nexus and capitalist relations of production. Nevertheless, the argument is somewhat unsophisticated in the light of later developments - capitalism is seen as turning the whole world into a simulacrum of the advanced industrial societies. The division of the world into a developed core and a (seemingly) permanently underdeveloped periphery does not look like something he envisaged.
After Marx’s death, others tried to develop his ideas and more complex Marxist ideas of relevance to International Relations
began to develop. V.I. Lenin, in works such as Imperialism - The Highest Stage of Capitalism, talked about how through colonialism and overseas investment capitalism had become transnational, that in a sense entire countries had become bourgeois or proletarian. Lenin’s grasp of economics was much weaker than Marx’s, and his belief that colonialism was driving the world into world war seems a bit simplistic when you look at how the First World War actually started. Nevertheless, Lenin was in retrospect correct in identifying Russia as capitalism’s weakest link, in so far as it was both an imperial state and (through extensive inward investment) a de facto colony, thus making it the place where world revolution was most likely to begin. Lenin’s legacy for Marxism was ultimately malign - by achieving his revolution and identifying Marxism (or Marxism-Leninism) as the state ideology, Marxism was tied to the USSR’s fortunes and forced through conceptual hoops to support whatever twist in policy the country’s leadership felt like espousing. The USSR’s quarter century rule by a psychopath also did not help. That end of Marxism gradually lost any intellectual credibility, and I doubt anyone in the world now seriously reads Marxist scholarship originating in the USSR.
In the west, however, a separate Marxist tradition developed in academia, divorced from the rough and tumble of actual politics. Marx himself would probably have been appalled by this development, given that he devoted as much effort to organising socialist movements as he did to research and writing, but the ivory tower academics have kept his ideas alive. Unfortunately for the International Relations student, the ideas of these intellectual Marxists have gone in many different directions. Some of these roads have produced lines of thought relevant to our discipline, such as Dependency Theory or various strands of Critical Theory. However, these have either evolved so far from original Marxist orthodoxy as to be essentially post-Marxist, or they have been almost completely discredited by the passage of time (or both). I would therefore question whether one could still talk of a "pure" Marxism as having any great relevance to International Relations.
Nevertheless, Marxism has one major contribution to our subject. When you look at writings in the Realist or Liberal tradition, the focus is all on diplomacy, states, armies, treaties, statesmen, and high politics. When you look at what Marxist writers talk about, you see stuff about economics, companies, exploitation, class, and so on. In some ways that makes Marxism look like it is from a completely different discipline to "true" International Relations. However, the question can be turned on its head by asking whether it is actually the old-school theories that are missing the point and ignoring what is actually relevant to the way the world works. Marxism is also important in that it explodes the idea that states are unitary actors working for the good of all their citizens - rather we see conflict within states which in turn is bound to affect how they operate internationally.
In the end, Marxism is probably more relevant to International Relations because of the questions it asks rather than the answers it provides. Others have taken those questions and answered them in ways that go beyond anything Marx would have envisaged.
12 July, 2006
Why are all those borders in those places?
Ralph Peters, writing in the Armed Forces Journal, reckons that all the borders of the Middle East to reflect ethnic and religious facts on the ground.
Thanks to Nicholas Whyte for this, who in turn got it from my pal Carl Bildt, who reckons it is "insanely stupid and dangerous".
This kind of attempt to play god with an entire region's borders is obviously arrant mentalism, but at times I reckon that the international community attaches too high a value on defending the work of past cartographers. I cannot but think that the good folk of Somaliland, say, would be in a much happier position if the world did not insist on shackling them to the corpse of Somalia.
22 June, 2006
Current Library Loans
I've got a load of books on loan from the library of my university. I bet you are wondering what they are, so now I will tell you.
Robert D. Putnam (2000) Bowling Along: The Collapse and Revival of American Community
You know, that book about how people don't like joining things any more because they'd rather sit at home watching shite on TV (or posting to their stupid internet blogs). I borrowed it partly because the subject sounds kind of interesting, because it is kind of zeitgeisty, and as an example of good social research that has managed to say things which have resonated with people.
This book has lots of graphs showing things going down.
Robert Elgie (1999) Semi-Presidentialism in Europe
Robert Elgie is my thesis supervisor, though I've not met him yet as I don't actually have a thesis topic. I reckoned reading one of his books would be a good idea, partly just to be a lick and partly because I might end up doing some research on this semi-presidentialism business. What is semi-presidentialism? Well, in presidential regimes like that of the USA, executive power is completely focussed on this president guy elected (indirectly) by the people? On the other hand, parliamentary regimes like Germany have a purely ceremonial president appointed by parliament, with executive power being focussed on a premier whose power comes from their ability to command a parliamentary majority. In a semi-presidential regime, you have an elected president and also a premier requiring a parliamentary majority to govern; France is the classic semi-presidential regime.
As I said, I may do research on semi-presidentialism. I am thinking of looking at the politics of the Palestinian Authority through this kind of lens, though I might of course do something completely different.
Stephen R. Weart (1998)Never at War: Why Democracies Will Not Fight One Another
As you will recall, I am interested in that democratic peace hypothesis thing. I picked up this book more or less at random to see what kind of explanation people throw out for this observable phenomenon.
Duncan Green (1995) Silent Revolution: The Rise of Market Economics in Latin America
In some ways I am just playing catch-up on the Latin American course I did last semester, in others laying the ground work for Peadar Kirby's development course in the autumn. This is the first edition of this book, and the only one you can borrow on long loan. The more recent second edition is perhaps more interesting, as its subtitle is the more exciting The Rise and Crisis of Market Economics in Latin America.
Mancur Olson (1965) The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups
I gather this book is quite famous. I also reckon it might be the anti-Bowling Alone, as Olson comes across as seeing groups as a bit dodge and hostile to the natural desire of most people to be left alone. That, anyway, is something I picked up from reading Tom Garvin's Preventing The Future, a book I really ought to get round to reviewing.
James Der Derian(ed) (1995) International Theory: Critical Investigations
As you know, I love theory. I would like to do research guided by some of the more wacky International Relations theories. If you're into that kind of stuff, Der Der Derian is your only man.
John L. Esposito(ed) (1997) Political Islam: Revolution, Radicalism, or Reform?
Political Islam, very interesting.
Adam Przeworski et al (2000) Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Well-Being in the World, 1950-1990
I have had this book recommended to me when I expressed an interest in doing research that sought to compare the economic performance of different regime types. This book has lots of complicated looking tables showing all sorts of important variables.
I always feel sorry for multiple authors who aren't the first named on a book... it must be really annoying to endlessly see yourself cited as "et al".
Adam Przeworski (1991) Democracy and the Market: Political |and Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe and Latin America
I have borrowed this for similar reasons to Przeworski's other book. In this one it seems like he is trying to show how political institutions affect economic outcomes.
I hope I actually read these books.
Robert D. Putnam (2000) Bowling Along: The Collapse and Revival of American Community
You know, that book about how people don't like joining things any more because they'd rather sit at home watching shite on TV (or posting to their stupid internet blogs). I borrowed it partly because the subject sounds kind of interesting, because it is kind of zeitgeisty, and as an example of good social research that has managed to say things which have resonated with people.
This book has lots of graphs showing things going down.
Robert Elgie (1999) Semi-Presidentialism in Europe
Robert Elgie is my thesis supervisor, though I've not met him yet as I don't actually have a thesis topic. I reckoned reading one of his books would be a good idea, partly just to be a lick and partly because I might end up doing some research on this semi-presidentialism business. What is semi-presidentialism? Well, in presidential regimes like that of the USA, executive power is completely focussed on this president guy elected (indirectly) by the people? On the other hand, parliamentary regimes like Germany have a purely ceremonial president appointed by parliament, with executive power being focussed on a premier whose power comes from their ability to command a parliamentary majority. In a semi-presidential regime, you have an elected president and also a premier requiring a parliamentary majority to govern; France is the classic semi-presidential regime.
As I said, I may do research on semi-presidentialism. I am thinking of looking at the politics of the Palestinian Authority through this kind of lens, though I might of course do something completely different.
Stephen R. Weart (1998)Never at War: Why Democracies Will Not Fight One Another
As you will recall, I am interested in that democratic peace hypothesis thing. I picked up this book more or less at random to see what kind of explanation people throw out for this observable phenomenon.
Duncan Green (1995) Silent Revolution: The Rise of Market Economics in Latin America
In some ways I am just playing catch-up on the Latin American course I did last semester, in others laying the ground work for Peadar Kirby's development course in the autumn. This is the first edition of this book, and the only one you can borrow on long loan. The more recent second edition is perhaps more interesting, as its subtitle is the more exciting The Rise and Crisis of Market Economics in Latin America.
Mancur Olson (1965) The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups
I gather this book is quite famous. I also reckon it might be the anti-Bowling Alone, as Olson comes across as seeing groups as a bit dodge and hostile to the natural desire of most people to be left alone. That, anyway, is something I picked up from reading Tom Garvin's Preventing The Future, a book I really ought to get round to reviewing.
James Der Derian(ed) (1995) International Theory: Critical Investigations
As you know, I love theory. I would like to do research guided by some of the more wacky International Relations theories. If you're into that kind of stuff, Der Der Derian is your only man.
John L. Esposito(ed) (1997) Political Islam: Revolution, Radicalism, or Reform?
Political Islam, very interesting.
Adam Przeworski et al (2000) Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Well-Being in the World, 1950-1990
I have had this book recommended to me when I expressed an interest in doing research that sought to compare the economic performance of different regime types. This book has lots of complicated looking tables showing all sorts of important variables.
I always feel sorry for multiple authors who aren't the first named on a book... it must be really annoying to endlessly see yourself cited as "et al".
Adam Przeworski (1991) Democracy and the Market: Political |and Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe and Latin America
I have borrowed this for similar reasons to Przeworski's other book. In this one it seems like he is trying to show how political institutions affect economic outcomes.
I hope I actually read these books.
14 June, 2006
Why do we have elections?
My old friend and quaffing partner Nicholas Whyte has provided a handy guide to upcoming elections, together with some information on how to go about observing them. Election observing sounds like great fun, a way of turning spectator politics into a job while feeling like you are advancing the cause of democratisation.
He also mentions a course you can do in observing elections. Sadly, it has been scheduled on a day on which I must attend a wedding (not mine, ladies).
I was very interested to see that Turkmenistan is having municipal elections this year. I wonder will Mr Nizayov Turmenbahsi's lot be re-elected!
He also mentions a course you can do in observing elections. Sadly, it has been scheduled on a day on which I must attend a wedding (not mine, ladies).
I was very interested to see that Turkmenistan is having municipal elections this year. I wonder will Mr Nizayov Turmenbahsi's lot be re-elected!
13 June, 2006
The asocial Swiss
I've been reading that zeitgeisty book Bowling Alone, by Robert D. Putnam. You probably know of it already, if not it's about how people these days are much less likely to get involved in things than people in the past were, and how this is bad.
Anyway, there is a bit near the beginning where he talks about how low the participation rates in US elections are. The Americans have the lowest rate of voting in the developed world, with the exception of... The Swiss. It surprised me that the Swiss have such a low rate of voting, as I think of them as being very civic minded and being into doing things in the socially approved way. So I have started thinking about why they vote so little, and come up with some possible theories which I will now share with you.
1. They don't vote because they participate so much in public life through other means that the act of voting seems like an irrelevance. I'm thinking of all those military manoeuvres the blokes go on, but also all the checking on their neighbours' alcohol consumption and so on. Maybe if you are very civically engaged, marking a ballot paper seems a bit trivial.
2. They don't vote because Switzerland's weird power sharing system means that the same guys are always in power. That is, if elections change nothing, not even the faces at the top, then why vote?
3. They don't vote in national elections because the central government is relatively weak, and real power lies at the local level where people can take part in direct democratic activities. In other countries, local elections see lower turn-outs, but given Switzerland's strongly cantonal identity, maybe this is reversed there.
I don't know, can anyone come up with a better solution for this mystery?
Anyway, there is a bit near the beginning where he talks about how low the participation rates in US elections are. The Americans have the lowest rate of voting in the developed world, with the exception of... The Swiss. It surprised me that the Swiss have such a low rate of voting, as I think of them as being very civic minded and being into doing things in the socially approved way. So I have started thinking about why they vote so little, and come up with some possible theories which I will now share with you.
1. They don't vote because they participate so much in public life through other means that the act of voting seems like an irrelevance. I'm thinking of all those military manoeuvres the blokes go on, but also all the checking on their neighbours' alcohol consumption and so on. Maybe if you are very civically engaged, marking a ballot paper seems a bit trivial.
2. They don't vote because Switzerland's weird power sharing system means that the same guys are always in power. That is, if elections change nothing, not even the faces at the top, then why vote?
3. They don't vote in national elections because the central government is relatively weak, and real power lies at the local level where people can take part in direct democratic activities. In other countries, local elections see lower turn-outs, but given Switzerland's strongly cantonal identity, maybe this is reversed there.
I don't know, can anyone come up with a better solution for this mystery?
29 May, 2006
The Licence Raj
In lieu of a proper post, I'm going to point you at an article about India on the BBC news website, written by one Kaushik Basu. He asserts that employment regulations in India, designed to combat unemployment by making it difficult to lay off workers, have had the perverse effect of slowing employment growth. he maintains that this has happened because risk averse employers are loth to take on workers that they can't easily get rid of should times change.
I think the article has something going for it, and comparisons with the recent attempts to change employment law in France might be instructive. At the same time, I am curious as to what the guy says squares with the commercial and sci-tech boom India has recently experienced.
I think the article has something going for it, and comparisons with the recent attempts to change employment law in France might be instructive. At the same time, I am curious as to what the guy says squares with the commercial and sci-tech boom India has recently experienced.
21 May, 2006
Essays are fun
Yeah, sorry. Spy School has been keeping me busy, making it hard for me to update this. I have recently been researching essays on Pinochet's foreign policy, Honduras' suckass attempts to achieve equitable insertion into the world economy, and the distinctively post-communist (or not) political systems of eastern Europe. I may eventually share this knowledge with you, but I am still writing the third one so it may be a while.
In the meantime, here is an engagingly idiosyncratic blog post about Zionism. Mike likens the creation of the state of Israel to the ghettos of the Middle Ages, with Israel representing a bizarre instance of self-ghettoisation.
In the meantime, here is an engagingly idiosyncratic blog post about Zionism. Mike likens the creation of the state of Israel to the ghettos of the Middle Ages, with Israel representing a bizarre instance of self-ghettoisation.
18 April, 2006
My new best friend
Hey look! Former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt has a blog!
I am going to link to his blog, so that people will think we are friends and stuff. And then maybe he will see that loads of people are coming to his blog from mine, and he will then come to Ireland and hang out with me, and we'll be able to talk about the timeless wisdom of political realism and suchlike.
I am going to link to his blog, so that people will think we are friends and stuff. And then maybe he will see that loads of people are coming to his blog from mine, and he will then come to Ireland and hang out with me, and we'll be able to talk about the timeless wisdom of political realism and suchlike.
17 April, 2006
Return to the International Monetary Fund
I sometimes scove at my pals on Helicopterview, but one fellow's reply to my post on the IMF hit paydirt... basically he pointed out the interesting fact that prior to the 1970s, the IMF worked as an institution lending large sums of money in short term loans more or less to whoever wanted them. After that, however, the IMF started imposing heavy-duty conditions on the loans, and basically only lending to countries if they would reorganise their economies on lines dictated by the organisation.
16 April, 2006
Yet more Mearsheimer & Walt action
I appreciate that I have been neglecting Hunting Monsters. By way of amends, I will now write again about that article about the pro-Israel lobby by John Mearsheimer & Stephen Walt. I am largely doing this because it's a surefire way to grab a few hits.
Anyway, if you are interested in all that stuff, may I refer you to this article in Ha'aretz by one Ned Lazarus? the great thing about it is that it is written by someone who understands what Realism is, and appreciates the irony of Realists ciriticising US policy towards Israel, given that Israel's actions seem largely to be dominated by Realist ideas. In some ways this reminds me of one of the central problems with Realism - is it meant to be descriptive of the world, or does it say what leaders of countries ought to do to advance their nation's interests?
Ha'aretz tend to start wanting you to pay for articles in old issues fairly quickly, so if you want to read that piece you'd better hop to it.
Anyway, if you are interested in all that stuff, may I refer you to this article in Ha'aretz by one Ned Lazarus? the great thing about it is that it is written by someone who understands what Realism is, and appreciates the irony of Realists ciriticising US policy towards Israel, given that Israel's actions seem largely to be dominated by Realist ideas. In some ways this reminds me of one of the central problems with Realism - is it meant to be descriptive of the world, or does it say what leaders of countries ought to do to advance their nation's interests?
Ha'aretz tend to start wanting you to pay for articles in old issues fairly quickly, so if you want to read that piece you'd better hop to it.
26 March, 2006
Realists, the USA, and Israel (slight return)
A couple of things have struck me about that article by John Mearsheimer & Stephen Walt (now that I have actually read it properly):
i) Mearsheimer & Walt are International Relations experts. It's odd, therefore, that in this article they primarily apply themselves to domestic US politics. It might have been better if they had written a long article outlining why they feel the US-Israel alliance is not in the USA's interests, and then left it to others (like people whose specialities are the process of government policy formulation or interest group action or that kind of stuff) to analyse why this apparently dysfunctional policy had been adopted.
ii) Mearsheimer & Walt are Realists, whose views can be simplified as meaning that they believe states in the long run always act in their own interest. Yet in their article they are talking about how a state has adopted a policy inimical to its own interests for internal political reasons. This is odd, and it suggests that Mearsheimer & Walt's views are evolving towards those of the Social Constructivists, who see states as evolving "interests" through interaction with the world, rather than their having actual objective interests per se. Arguably the giving of unequivocal support to whatever Israel fancies doing is a core interest of the United States, simply because all its policy makers think it is.
iii) The emerging campaign against the two is entertaining, given that it seems to amount to saying "They say X, as do certain bad people, therefore they are bad". The removal of the Harvard logo from a study by one of their star academics is probably a better testimony to the strength of the pro-Israel lobby in the USA than anything in their article.
i) Mearsheimer & Walt are International Relations experts. It's odd, therefore, that in this article they primarily apply themselves to domestic US politics. It might have been better if they had written a long article outlining why they feel the US-Israel alliance is not in the USA's interests, and then left it to others (like people whose specialities are the process of government policy formulation or interest group action or that kind of stuff) to analyse why this apparently dysfunctional policy had been adopted.
ii) Mearsheimer & Walt are Realists, whose views can be simplified as meaning that they believe states in the long run always act in their own interest. Yet in their article they are talking about how a state has adopted a policy inimical to its own interests for internal political reasons. This is odd, and it suggests that Mearsheimer & Walt's views are evolving towards those of the Social Constructivists, who see states as evolving "interests" through interaction with the world, rather than their having actual objective interests per se. Arguably the giving of unequivocal support to whatever Israel fancies doing is a core interest of the United States, simply because all its policy makers think it is.
iii) The emerging campaign against the two is entertaining, given that it seems to amount to saying "They say X, as do certain bad people, therefore they are bad". The removal of the Harvard logo from a study by one of their star academics is probably a better testimony to the strength of the pro-Israel lobby in the USA than anything in their article.
25 March, 2006
The International Monetary Fund
A lot of people do not like the IMF. I have decided that it is important to work out what these hataz want done about it - do they want it abolished, or do they want its lending rules changed?
To this end I have issued an e-mail to the Helicopterview mailing list , and started a thread about all this on ILX. You can read the ILX thread yourself (already derailed into discussion of some lamer pop group from the early 1990s), and if the Helicopterview list generates anything interesting I will summarise it.
To this end I have issued an e-mail to the Helicopterview mailing list , and started a thread about all this on ILX. You can read the ILX thread yourself (already derailed into discussion of some lamer pop group from the early 1990s), and if the Helicopterview list generates anything interesting I will summarise it.
19 March, 2006
Realists, the USA, and Israel
Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer are the leading academics of the Realist school of International Relations. They have written an article appearing in the London Review of Books, contending that the USA's blank cheque support for Israel is not in the USA's interests. The article is entertaining on a number of levels. Not least is the way they finger US domestic policy reasons for the USA's pro-Israel foreign policy - Realists typically regard domestic policy as not being a significant determinant of a state's foreign policy. My understanding is also that Realists do not believe that a state can indefinitely pursue a policy that does not pursue its interests.
I have problems with the idea that there is such a thing as an objective and knowable national interest, so I don't know if you can straightforwardly say that a given state's policy advances it or not. However, the article does a good job of suggesting that the United States would do well to pursue a substantially less pro-Israel policy.
I have problems with the idea that there is such a thing as an objective and knowable national interest, so I don't know if you can straightforwardly say that a given state's policy advances it or not. However, the article does a good job of suggesting that the United States would do well to pursue a substantially less pro-Israel policy.
12 March, 2006
The Democratic Peace hypothesis (part two)
Read part one of this fascinating analysis here.
So the point really is to try and explain this observable phenomenon. Obviously, it could just be coincidence, and maybe in a couple of years' time German soldiers will be marching on Paris once more. But that seems a bit unconvincing and an attempt to retreat from systematising world events. Yet the Democratic Peace is not readily explainable in Kantian terms either. Kant reckoned that republics would be pacific because a politically engaged citizenry would not send themselves off to be butchered. That's all very well, but would lead to republics being equally pacific towards both other republics and authoritarian states. However, in real life, the Democratic Peace only seems to extend between liberal democracies, and they remain perfectly willing to lay into other types of country.
One of my Helicopterview correspondents attempts to explain the Democratic Peace by saying that the open media of liberal democracies makes it easy for them to engage in virtual war with each other, undermining each other's hostile regimes through media subversion. This is an interesting proposition, and does at least have some basis in unique features of liberal democracies. However, I don't think it works. If you look at actually existing liberal democracies, it is hard to see cases where liberal democracy A has bent liberal democracy B to its will by subverting B's media. And given the plurality of views on major international issues held among the leaders of liberal democracies, one could not credibly say that they have all had their consent manufactured in one particular direction (see France & Germany's willingness to engage in symbolic resistance to the US invasion of Iraq, or the Western Europeans' willingness to buy Soviet gas in the early 1980s over the vitriolic resistance of the Americans).
So I think the Democratic Peace has to have another explanation. I am developing ideas as to what that explanation might be, but I may cheat and consult the extensive academic literature on the subject. One way or another I think Helicopterview will be back to this.
One side point made on the mailing list was that over how research on the Democratic Peace can be misapplied. The NeoCons, in their muscular über-liberalism have married the Democratic Peace thesis to their quest for US dominance, and produced a wonderfully simplistic idea - that if the USA goes around invading countries and blessing them with pliant democratic regimes then the world will be at peace for ever, and Fukuyama's dream of history's end will finally have arrived. This NeoCon idea is basically a pipe-dream - history is not over-run with examples of countries where democracy was successfully installed at bayonet point.
I am suspicious, though, of the idea that because research into the Democratic Peace can be misused it is therefore dangerous. There is nothing dangerous about the truth, save to those who profit by lies, even if such people are the rulers of this world. Academia should never let itself by dissuaded from lines of inquiry for fear of how the fruits of research could be applied. Gangsterish politicans will always find excuses for doing whatever they want, whether or not there is available research that can be twisted to their purposes. Moreover, any research into anything can be misused by the powerful, so avoiding lines of inquiry that are twistable by the overlords would kill academia.
So the point really is to try and explain this observable phenomenon. Obviously, it could just be coincidence, and maybe in a couple of years' time German soldiers will be marching on Paris once more. But that seems a bit unconvincing and an attempt to retreat from systematising world events. Yet the Democratic Peace is not readily explainable in Kantian terms either. Kant reckoned that republics would be pacific because a politically engaged citizenry would not send themselves off to be butchered. That's all very well, but would lead to republics being equally pacific towards both other republics and authoritarian states. However, in real life, the Democratic Peace only seems to extend between liberal democracies, and they remain perfectly willing to lay into other types of country.
One of my Helicopterview correspondents attempts to explain the Democratic Peace by saying that the open media of liberal democracies makes it easy for them to engage in virtual war with each other, undermining each other's hostile regimes through media subversion. This is an interesting proposition, and does at least have some basis in unique features of liberal democracies. However, I don't think it works. If you look at actually existing liberal democracies, it is hard to see cases where liberal democracy A has bent liberal democracy B to its will by subverting B's media. And given the plurality of views on major international issues held among the leaders of liberal democracies, one could not credibly say that they have all had their consent manufactured in one particular direction (see France & Germany's willingness to engage in symbolic resistance to the US invasion of Iraq, or the Western Europeans' willingness to buy Soviet gas in the early 1980s over the vitriolic resistance of the Americans).
So I think the Democratic Peace has to have another explanation. I am developing ideas as to what that explanation might be, but I may cheat and consult the extensive academic literature on the subject. One way or another I think Helicopterview will be back to this.
One side point made on the mailing list was that over how research on the Democratic Peace can be misapplied. The NeoCons, in their muscular über-liberalism have married the Democratic Peace thesis to their quest for US dominance, and produced a wonderfully simplistic idea - that if the USA goes around invading countries and blessing them with pliant democratic regimes then the world will be at peace for ever, and Fukuyama's dream of history's end will finally have arrived. This NeoCon idea is basically a pipe-dream - history is not over-run with examples of countries where democracy was successfully installed at bayonet point.
I am suspicious, though, of the idea that because research into the Democratic Peace can be misused it is therefore dangerous. There is nothing dangerous about the truth, save to those who profit by lies, even if such people are the rulers of this world. Academia should never let itself by dissuaded from lines of inquiry for fear of how the fruits of research could be applied. Gangsterish politicans will always find excuses for doing whatever they want, whether or not there is available research that can be twisted to their purposes. Moreover, any research into anything can be misused by the powerful, so avoiding lines of inquiry that are twistable by the overlords would kill academia.
11 March, 2006
The Democratic Peace hypothesis (part one)
I mentioned the Democratic Peace hypothesis in my second posting on Liberalism. Some of my pals on the Helicopterview mailing list took issue with the idea, but I think they have got the wrong end of the stick and started talking about whether so-called democratic states are actually democratic, given their elitist nature and the role of the media in manufacturing consent etc. etc.. My own feeling is that for the purposes of the Democratic Peace hypothesis, such ideas are irrelevant. The point of the theory is not to get into a discussion of whether country A is more democratic than country B - anyone who has studied democratic theory knows that democracy is a scalar rather than binary concept, and also that modern liberal democracies are far less democratic than what might be considered an abstract ideal of what a democratic society should be like. The point really starts from an awareness that there are a certain type of country in the world which have been dubbed "liberal democracies". Maybe the name is not fully descriptive, just like the People's Democracies that once flourished in Eastern Europe, so think of it as a label attached to a certain kind of society... basically the countries of Western Europe, North America, Australasia and Japan. The Democratic Peace hypothesis is based on one simple and observable fact - that as the governmental systems of these countries have converged, they have shown less and less inclination to go to war with each other.
And again, in world historical terms, this is very strange. There has never previously been any sense in which countries with similar social systems resolved their difference through non-violent means while reserving war for those countries with different systems. The observation also runs counter to the Realist theory of International Relations which so many people are taken with, that states act in accordance with their interests, and that these interests exist independently of the internal political system of a country. To a Realist, a democratic Germany should have the same interests as a fascist or authoritarian Germany, yet the years after 1945 did not see Adenauer gearing up for a third crack at the French.
(The German-French example is slightly unfair, but only slightly. Realists would talk about erstwhile enemies uniting against a common foe, and arguably that's what West Germany and France did in the face of the USSR. However, with the removal of the USSR's threat, a Realist would assume that Germany and France's conflicting interests would drive them back to hostility)
Join me soon, when I will discuss explanations for the Democratic Peace.
And again, in world historical terms, this is very strange. There has never previously been any sense in which countries with similar social systems resolved their difference through non-violent means while reserving war for those countries with different systems. The observation also runs counter to the Realist theory of International Relations which so many people are taken with, that states act in accordance with their interests, and that these interests exist independently of the internal political system of a country. To a Realist, a democratic Germany should have the same interests as a fascist or authoritarian Germany, yet the years after 1945 did not see Adenauer gearing up for a third crack at the French.
(The German-French example is slightly unfair, but only slightly. Realists would talk about erstwhile enemies uniting against a common foe, and arguably that's what West Germany and France did in the face of the USSR. However, with the removal of the USSR's threat, a Realist would assume that Germany and France's conflicting interests would drive them back to hostility)
Join me soon, when I will discuss explanations for the Democratic Peace.
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