Showing papers in "Foreign Affairs in 1978"

Injustice: The Social Bases of Obedience and Revolt

Abstract: De auteur van Injustice, Barrington Moore, heeft zijn faam vooral te danken aan een ander, ongeveer net zo dik boek: Social Origins o f Dictatorship and Democracy uit 1966. Dat is een veel systematischer studie, met een coherente opbouw en conclusies die zich puntsgewijs laten samenvatten. Het twaalf jaar later ver­ schenen Injustice is rommeliger, heterogener, mondt niet uit in een heldere conclusie. Vandaar waarschijnlijk dat dit boek nooit zo’n opgang heeft gemaakt en inmiddels grotendeels in de vergetelheid is geraakt in de recente literatuur over sociale bewegingen bijvoorbeeld wordt het zelden aangehaald. Maar het is, wat mij betreft, zeker zo interessant als zijn beroemde voorganger. Injustice gaat, zoals de ondertitel aangeeft, over ‘de sociale fundamenten van gehoorzaamheid en opstandigheid’ . Mensen beschikken in het algemeen over een groot vermogen zich aan te passen, zich te schikken naar de omstandighe­ den, ook als die omstandigheden inhouden dat ze door anderen worden onder­ drukt, vernederd en uitgebuit. Maar deze aanpassing is niet onbeperkt. Soms worden mensen moreel verontwaardigd over wat hun wordt aangedaan en ko­ men ze in opstand. En soms leidt opstand tot radicale verandering, zij het niet altijd in de bedoelde richting. In Moore’s redenering is er een causale keten die loopt van sociale condities sociale ongelijkheid die menselijk leed veroorza­ ken via morele verontwaardiging naar daadwerkelijk verzet en vandaar naar de geslaagde revolte, waarbij iedere schakel een noodzakelijke maar niet voldoen­ de voorwaarde is voor de volgende. Morele verontwaardiging laait op wanneer de impliciete ‘morele code’ geschonden wordt. In iedere gestratificeerde samen­ leving bestaat volgens Moore zo’n code, een reeks normatieve verwachtingen ten aanzien van politiek gezag, arbeidsdeling en verdelende rechtvaardigheid die de bestaande verhoudingen legitimeert maar de machtige en geprivilegieer­ de leden van de samenleving ook aan zekere verplichtingen bindt. *

The End of Pan-Arabism

Abstract: The story of pan-Arabism’s retreat goes deeper than Sadat’s policy. Pan-Arabism’s retreat began in 1967 after the Six Day War, which marked the Waterloo of pan-Arabism. The leaders in the Christian community who had known the Arab system and made their peace with it lost to those for whom Arabism and Islam were synonymous, and who believed in their own cultural supremacy and the backwardness of the Arabs. The threat of a partitioned Lebanon is yet another serious challenge to pan-Arabism in a decade of setbacks. The universalisai of pan-Arabism derived to a considerable extent from the universalisai of the Ottoman Empire of which the Arab states had been a part for four centuries. Finally, from 1956 until Nasser’s death in 1970, the power of pan-Arabism derived from the power of charismatic leadership. The passing of pan-Arabism means just that: the end of one set of troubles.

The Overthrow of Allende and the Politics of Chile, 1964-1976

Abstract: Paul Sigmund, who has studied Chile for more than a decade, and lived and taught there, offers an exhaustive, balanced analysis of the overthrow of Salvador Allende, and why it occurred. Sigmund examines the Allende government, the Frei government that preceeded it, the coup that ended it, and the Pinochet government that succeeded it. He also views the roles of various Chilean political and interest groups, the CIA, and U.S. corporations.

Nonproliferation: A Long-Term Strategy

Abstract: Major elements of President Carter's non-proliferation policy are analyzed in terms of their possible long-term effects. The policy's goal is seen as one which better addresses the realities of regional instabilities and the balance of world power. The three-decade chronology of nuclear policy is traced to underline the advantages of slowing commercial reprocessing until safer technologies and better international institutions are developed. Six elements of the strategy are identified: (1) safeguards, (2) restraints, (3) incentives, (4) building consensus, (5) domestic nuclear policy, and (6) measures to affect motivation. Challenges, both domestic and international, have developed to the policy, but none of the available alternatives is felt to promote the needed reexamination and redirection as well.

The International Role and Fate of the Dollar

Abstract: 11 Americans are alarmed at the shrinking value of the dollar in their neighborhood supermarkets ?by close to one-half in the last ten years. With the President's announcement in early November ordering a series of dramatic actions to shore up the value of the dollar abroad, more and more Americans have also become conscious of the dollar's declining value in terms of major foreign currencies over the same period ?by more than one-half against the West German mark and the Japanese yen, and by nearly two-thirds vis-?-vis the Swiss franc. But I suspect that no more than one American out of 10,000 realizes that these ?and other ?developments are rapidly undermining what President de Gaulle used to call our "exorbitant privilege" of being able to settle with our own dollar IOUs the growing excess of our expenditures abroad over our receipts from abroad (on capital as well as on current account). Such excess has been to the tune of $300 billion over the last ten years (see line I of Table I). The Bremen summit meeting of July 6 and 7, 1978, of the West European heads of state and government should finally bring home to us the full dimensions of the international dollar crisis. It should awaken us both to the increased dangers of further procrastination in the shaping of sensible and comprehensive U.S. policy responses to this crisis, and to the new opportunities for two way cooperation with the emerging "European Monetary System" outlined at Bremen. Such cooperation is essential in order to avoid a further disastrous collapse of the dollar, and of a world monetary system precariously anchored to it. The Bremen initiative to set up a European Monetary System reflects, at bottom, a desperate desire of the leaders of the Community to make their countries less dependent on the unpredictable vagaries of a shrinking U.S. dollar.

Population growth and economic development: the case of Mexico.

Abstract: A review of events in Mexico since the publication in 1958 of Coale and Hoovers "Population Growth and Economic Development in Low Income Countries" in which they concluded that a low income country with high fertility would achieve better progress if it could reduce its fertility than if it did not do so. India and Mexico were the cases considered. Over the 20 years from 1955-75 the population of Mexico more than doubled slightly exceeding Coale and Hoovers high projections. During that time Mexico saw substantial economic progress: a 72% increase in the proportion of primary school age children actually attending school; a 26% increase in literacy; an 89% increase in per capita income at constant prices; a 38% increase in the urban population; and a 27% rise in the average duration of life. These figures reveal the error of assuming that rapid population increase in a poor country leads inevitably to malnutrition impoverishment and social collapse but also show that economic development does not automatically lead to a slowing of population growth. If Mexican fertility had fallen beginning in 1955 the population under 15 would have been most effected. The income per equivalent adult consumer might have been higher the gains in school attendance and literacy might have covered a larger percentage of the population and declining rather than increasing absolute numbers of persons might have been unaffected by the gains. Creation of employment opportunities for fewer persons entering the labor force would have been easier than for the large number of new entrants who will need work over the next 20 years.