Showing papers in "Policy Review in 2008"

Abstract: READING THE HISTORIAN Arnold Toynbee's lectures on the British Industrial Revolution, it is quickly apparent that conditions in England prior to 1760 were in many respects similar to those in developing countries today: Poor infrastructure and communication, lack of technological innovation, no division of labor, a focus on local commerce, and a weak banking system. (1) Surprisingly, the modern study of religion and economics begins with Adam Smith's An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), an examination of conditions leading to the Industrial Revolution. In his book, Smith applies his innovative laissez-faire philosophy to several aspects of religion. However, Smith's fundamental contribution to the modern study of religion was that religious beliefs and activities are rational choices. As in commercial activity, people respond to religious costs and benefits in a predictable, observable manner. People choose a religion and the degree to which they participate and believe (if at all). Smith's contribution to the study of religion is not simply theoretical. He held substantive views, for example, on the relationship between organized religion and the state. Smith argued strongly for a disassociation between church and state. Such a separation, he said, allows for competition, thereby creating a plurality of religious faiths in society. (2) By showing no preference for one religion over others, but rather permitting any and all religions to be practiced, the lack of state intervention (short of violence, coercion, and repression) creates an open market in which religious groups engage in rational discussion about religious beliefs. This setting creates an atmosphere of "good temper and moderation." Where there is a state monopoly on religion or an oligopoly among religions, one will find zealousness and the imposition of ideas on the public. Where there is an open market for religion and freedom of speech, one will find moderation and reason. A contemporary of Smith (though they were not acquainted) and a public intellectual during the British Industrial Revolution, John Wesley had much to say about the relationship between religion and economic development, though his perspective differed radically from Smith's. Wesley (1703-1791), a theologian and the founder of Methodism and the Holiness Movement, championed the two-way causation between religion and economic growth, preaching in 1744, "Gain all you can, Save all you can, Give all you can." Later, in his famous sermon of 1760, "The Use of Money," Wesley expounded upon these three points, emphasizing hard work, self-reliance, and mutual aid. Finally, just two years before his death (he lived to be 88), Wesley berated his congregants from the pulpit for their comfortable lifestyle and urged them to give away their fortunes. In the 45 years between these two sermons, Wesley's followers, by working hard and saving, had raised themselves up into the comfortable middle class. Wesley understood very well the direct causal relationship between religious beliefs and productivity. He also understood well that wealth accumulation could weaken religiosity both in terms of beliefs and participation. Wesley concluded that economic growth was detrimental to religion. Is it? And, if so, must it be? The two-way causation LET US LOOK at the two-way causation and, thereby, the relationship between religion and development. First, how does a nation's economic and political development affect its level of religiosity? When we look at the effects of economic development on religion, we find that overall development--represented by per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP)--tends to reduce religiosity. (3) The empirical evidence supports, to a degree, the secularization thesis which holds that with increased income, people tend to become less religious (as measured by religious attendance and religious beliefs). Economic development causes religion to play a lesser role in the political process and in policymaking, in the legal process, as well as in social arrangements (marriages, friendships, colleagues). …

Abstract: Minimizing a religious explanation for Islamic terrorism, several analysts emphasize political and socioeconomic causes: the Arab-Israeli conflict, which Arabs view as an unendurable humiliation; the extension of Western political power and cultural influence into the Middle East, which is seen as still another humiliation; and the economic hardships that grip the Arab masses, which provide recruits for terrorist organizations. Shmuel Bar, a veteran of the Israeli intelligence community and a senior research fellow at an Israeli think-tank, recognizes the importance of these factors but maintains that they do “not do justice to the significance of the religious culture in which [Islamic terrorism] is rooted and nurtured,” a culture in which there is no distinction between religion and politics. His essay examines the religious-ideological motivation for Islamic terrorism.

Abstract: THESE GRAND WORDS sound like something Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Hu Jintao or Premier Wen Jiabao might say in explaining their agenda of "constructing a harmonious society" as they manage China's "peaceful rise" to great power status In fact, they were spoken in October 1989, just months after Hu's political patron, Deng Xiaoping, ordered the military to suppress a peaceful, nationwide protest movement The occasion was a government-sponsored celebration of the 2,540th year of the birth of Confucius In the brief welcoming remarks quoted above, party elder Gu Mu, an economic reformer under Deng, argued that there was an urgent need to look back to Chinese tradition and its emphasis on "harmony" (in Chinese, hexie) The idea of "building a harmonious society" has a history, one thread of which is very recent and the other thousands of years old A weaving together of the strands places current CCP propaganda and PRC political discourse in a larger pattern of thought Moving between ancient and contemporary meanings, as well as philosophical and political usages, may offer a better understanding of why so many people in China are talking about "harmony" Studying the epiphenomenon of "harmonious society" rhetoric raises important questions about China's current vector in the broad sweep of its remarkable history, marked by revolutionary rupture and continuity with the past The pseudo-Confucianization of the CCP THE CCP PAYS more attention to linguistic nuance than the average political organization On the one hand, this results in a dearth of spontaneous official language Every speech by a party leader and every proclamation by a party organ seems like a recording rather than a performance, as if there are no real-time speech acts, but only recitations of preapproved transcripts Yet this very scriptedness is the hermeneutic key to unlocking CCP discourse Departures from established scripture are easier to identify And because of the care with which the CCP scripts itself, changes in terminology signify shifts in power or policy with greater predictability than is the case in more anarchic linguistic environments, as in countries with less constricted media, better articulated public opinion, or more open political competition An important recent twist in party scripts is the prominence given to words drawn from the classical vocabulary of the Chinese tradition, as opposed to those originating in Western revolutionary discourses Founded in 1921, the CCP drew on Marxist-Leninist theory for its core political concepts Party history also traces its ideological roots back to the May Fourth protest movement that erupted in Beijing in 1919 The May Fourth movement itself, epitomized in the demand for "Mr Science and Mr Democracy," was part of a modernist revolt against traditional Confucian culture Mao Zedong, who determined CCP orthodoxy from the early 1930s until his death in 1976, held classical values in open contempt as he dragged his "new China" down a revolutionary path On those occasions when Mao did invoke heroes from the annals of Chinese history, they were rebels against the Confucian mainstream, like the autocratic founding emperors of the Qin and Ming dynasties or utopian Taiping revolutionaries of the nineteenth century CCP leaders have long insisted on doing things their own way, or, in the well-worn phrase, "with Chinese characteristics" The party's insistence on sinifying the revolution goes back to tensions with the Soviets over leadership of the international communist movement But until recently, if "Chinese characteristics" referred to tradition at all, it was as a yoke to be lifted The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-76) was the last and perhaps most destructive phase in Mao's effort to make China blaze its own revolutionary path by razing its heritage to the ground In the wake of the Cultural Revolution, societal and state actors started picking up the pieces of China's "smashed" cultural inheritance …

Abstract: FRAGILE STATES HAVE marched from the fringe to the very center of U.S. security concerns. Whereas once defense analysts worried only about competing powers such as the Soviet Union and China, now even the weakest of countries is considered a potential threat. "The events of September 11, 2001, taught us that weak states, like Afghanistan, can pose as great a danger to our national interests as strong states," the 2002 U.S. National Security Strategy declared. Poverty may not turn people into terrorists, but "poverty, weak institutions, and corruption can make weak states vulnerable to terrorist networks and drug cartels." In a similar vein, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has declared, "Fragile states ... are now recognized as a source of our nation's most pressing security threats. There is perhaps no more urgent matter facing [us] than fragile states, yet no set of problems is more difficult and intractable. Twenty-first century realities demonstrate that ignoring these states can pose great risks and increase the likelihood of terrorism taking root." (1) We have, at least for the moment, stopped ignoring fragile states. Indeed, everyone seems to have an opinion these days on how to fix fragile states. President and generals, academics and aid specialists, even financiers and business executives are volunteering prescriptions for countries where the only growth industries are violence, corruption, and decay. Yet, for all the talk, there is little understanding of what ails places such as Pakistan and Afghanistan, why past efforts at helping them have failed, and what ought to be done to turn them around. Moreover, despite the increasing awareness of the importance of fragile states to the West's own security and well-being, much of the tens of billions of dollars in aid spent attempting to reform these desperate places is funding policies that actually undermine them. What is lacking is an understanding of, or a readiness to acknowledge, one of the fundamental forces that drives development, which is the key to all state-building exercises. This overlooked ingredient is social cohesion. Rather than deal with this prerequisite for strong states, the West looks the other way and addresses important but essentially secondary issues. The World Bank focuses on economic restructuring, nongovernmental organizations focus on social programs, and aid agencies increasingly focus on administrative changes. All these reforms are desperately needed, to be sure, but all will fail, as they have failed in the past, to transform fragile states unless those states also possess social cohesion. Why this blind spot? One reason is that the economists who dominate the development field are temperamentally disinclined to think that a society's makeup can trump well-designed economic policies. Another reason is that contemporary development theories and practices are deeply colored by the multiculturalism that pervades academia, nongovernmental organizations, and the media; few specialists even consider the possibility that diversity might actually undermine cohesion and might thus be a fundamental cause of retarded development. A third reason has to do with the state-centric international system. Governments and supranational organizations such as the United Nations and the World Bank, which together set the international agenda for failed states, are accustomed to formulating programs around states exclusively, and therefore often fall back upon generic models of analysis that disregard sociocultural forces. And a fourth reason is simply that the development field has become so specialized that few of the people who analyze individual problems or countries ever consider the system-wide factors that bring states tumbling down in the first place. For all these reasons, the international community has repeatedly ignored indigenous identities and social relationships and ha assumed that the structure of the state has little relevance to the problems that plague underdeveloped countries. …

Abstract: "Only when not a single breach is visible in the iron wall, only then do extreme groups lose their sway, and influence transfers to moderate groups Only then would these moderate groups come to us with proposals for mutual concessions" --Ze'ev Jabotinsky, "The Iron Wall," November 4, 1923 ISRAEL HAS BEEN waging a "War on Terror" since before it was established, with a high degree of success However, during most of this period, the conventional wisdom there (as else where) was that terrorists cannot be "deterred" and, therefore, that the strategy against them should focus on prevention, disruption, and offensive action in order to eradicate them Numerous cases of failed deterrence seemed to verify this assumption: the Israeli withdrawal from South Lebanon in May 2000 and the outbreak of the second Intifada in October of that year, the attacks of September 11 and the continuing insurgency in Iraq, the ups and downs in the Indian struggle against the jihadi movement in Kashmir Nevertheless, looking closer at the history of Israel's conflicts with terrorist organizations, we see that a de facto deterrence strategy was employed and often succeeded, achieving periods of relative quiet in both the Lebanese and the Palestinian theaters In this article I will endeavor to draw an outline of the key elements that a strategy of deterrence against terrorists should take into account Relevant attributes of terrorist entities THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN a defending state and a nonstate terrorist organization is inherently asymmetric One successful attack out of tens or even hundreds of disrupted plans is a total success for the terrorist organization, whereas for the state it is a total failure (1) Terrorist organizations also enjoy the advantages of the weaker party In the West Bank and Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq, and elsewhere, they take advantage of the Western commitment to international norms and conventions (constraints on indiscriminate firepower in the vicinity of civilians, the need to tailor operations to minimize civilian casualties, commitments regarding treatment of prisoners); create conditions for a humanitarian crisis that is left at the state's doorstep if it makes use of its superior power; and exploit the Western media to create an image of a terrorist potential which far exceeds what the terrorist organization is really capable of (promises of revenge for targeted killings or the widely publicized Iranian recruitment campaign of "martyrs" in case of an attack on Iran) Finally, they succeed in neutralizing the advantages of the state's superior power by decentralizing their command and control so that military successes of the state enemy in one sector are irrelevant in terms of deterrence for others The degree of state-like attributes of the organization and the extent of links between such an organization and a sovereign state, with all the burdens sovereignty entails, have a significant influence on strategies that can be implemented to deter that organization The most salient of these attributes are (1) the role of culture and ideology--religious tenets, the existence of a "national" or transnational/religious agenda; (2) sources of authority, leadership and instruments of command and control; (3) the ways in which the leadership assesses the nature of the situation it faces as it attempts to fulfill its goals, including (at least) its self-assessment, its assessment of its allies' capability and will to assist, and its assessment of the identity, capabilities, and wills of its immediate and potential enemies (these are not objective, but are influenced by ingrained self-images and images of the "other"); (4) affinity with the "host population" or "host state," actual control over territory and the existence of a social agenda and commitment towards that population; and (5} patron-proxy relationships and financial and logistic dependence and channels of supply …

Abstract: RUSSIA IS BACK on the international stage. After a decade of eroding political and economic power, the domestic economy flourishes and, as state budget revenues grow, so do egos in the Kremlin and Russia's global aspirations. The Russian resurrection is mainly attributed to high oil prices, which have enabled the country to overcome the 1998 meltdown, to maintain an average rate of economic growth of 6.7 percent for the past decade, and to build a $1 trillion economy, the basis of its new strength. At the same time, Russia's energy policy has become the subject of increasing controversy. Western observers regard energy as the Kremlin's major foreign policy tool, as countries like Ukraine or Georgia have come recently and painfully to learn. Fears have emerged that a looming Sino-Russian alliance, glued together by oil and gas deals, could challenge existing power structures--and U.S. dominance--on the international scene. In other words, as conventional wisdom reckons, the Western world is faced with a "corporate Russia" which is economically fueled by oil and gas, steered by a semi-authoritarian government with a clear geopolitical agenda, able to lubricate political alliances by oil and gas deals, and equipped with a foreign policy arm called Gazprom. These common perceptions of Russia are understandable at first sight. Russia owns 26.6 per cent of the world's proven gas reserves, and 6.2 per cent of the world's proven oil reserves. In 2005, the country accounted for 21.6 per cent of global gas production and for 12.1 per cent of global crude oil production. (1) In that respect, Russia could in fact be perceived an "energy superpower." However, conventional wisdom is wrong on five counts. First, Russian energy is not primarily about geopolitics. Its rhetoric to the contrary, the Kremlin does not dispose of an effective "energy weapon." Second, the rationale behind Russia's recent "gas disputes" with its neighbors is to a large extent profit maximization, rather than punishing renegade governments in the neighboring Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Third, Moscow will not subordinate its economic interests in the name of a geostrategic Sino-Russian alliance. Fourth, Russia will have a hard time retaining the status of an "energy superpower" as it risks running out of gas instead. Finally, Russia is less reliant on oil and gas than assumed, at least as regards the drivers of its recent economic success story. In a nutshell: Western excitement about the Russian "Energy Inc." appears to be caused largely by a well crafted piece of Russian PR. By examining the five greatest "myths" of Russian energy, this article challenges some of the key assumptions underlying Western policy towards Russia. It reveals the limits of the prevalent argumentative lines on Russian energy, and offers an alternative explanation for some recent Russian policy choices. Finally, it draws some conclusions on foreign policy implications for the U.S. and the Western world. Myth 1: Russia has an energy weapon THE TRUTH IS: The Kremlin has only a limited ability to use Russian oil and gas as a "weapon." The Russian market is dominated by ten vertically integrated oil companies, which control 95 percent of Russia's crude production and more than 80 percent of its refining capacity. While the Russian state now controls a significantly higher share of the domestic oil industry than it did during the 1990s, state-controlled companies at present make up only around 25 percent of the country's oil production and around 16 percent of its refining capacity, thanks to a series of takeovers of private companies by state-owned Rosneft and Gazprom. (2) The domestic Russian oil market is fairly competitive, with prices determined by world markets and by the taxation policies of the Russian government. From these few facts, three simple considerations can be deduced. First, given that the Russian state does not hold a majority in domestic oil production despite recent takeovers, the Kremlin is able to "steer" the oil industry for political purposes only indirectly, i. …

Abstract: WE ARE FACING a threat that is catastrophic in its scale. (1) The damage that even a single attack with weapons of mass destruction would wreak could run into the millions of lives, and do egregious damage to American economic, political, and social structures. There is no graver threat to the United States. This threat is only going to get more serious. The progress of technology and the increasing interconnectedness of global systems are driving both productive and destructive power down, to lower and lower levels of agency, and outwards, to the fringes of society. Accelerating advances in computing, biotechnology, nanotechnology have democratized destructive power--up to the point at which a single individual may have the power to do enormous damage. (2) Today we see this peril most plainly in the justified fears about the use of the first and greatest absolute weapon--the nuclear bomb. But the threat of biological and biotechnological weaponry, powered by the highly diffused and swiftly advancing progress of the life sciences, may be even graver. Similar dangers are growing in the fields of nanotechnology, computing, and the like. The proliferation of massively destructive technologies can and should be retarded, but it cannot be prevented. We must accept both that the threat is very real and that it cannot be "solved," only managed. The United States has begun to respond to this grave threat through a "layered defense" that includes military, intelligence, diplomatic, political, public diplomacy, homeland defense, and humanitarian components. This policy commendably seeks to integrate all elements, hard and soft, of American and allied power to stave off disaster. And all elements of this layered defense are important in preventing attacks, including efforts to stem proliferation and "soft power" strategies designed to address real root causes of terror. Unfortunately, the current policy is insufficient. Prevention and defense, while clearly central, cannot alone address our problem. An attempt to prevent the proliferation of all potentially catastrophic technologies or to build effective defenses against them would be far too costly, both in terms of resources and political capital. More important, the advent of the nuclear weapon and now, in its wake, of comparably destructive technologies has finally decided the age-old struggle between offense and defense in favor of the former. It is not that defense cannot be effective; it is that, given the destructive power of the weapons in question, defense must be perfect. And no policy of prevention and defense can promise that. Toleration is another critical element in our response. We balance the needs of a free society that can produce and distribute goods and ferry people efficiently against the costs of car accidents, plane and train crashes, and pollution. But, obviously, any significant incidence of catastrophic attacks cannot be tolerated, certainly not if we wish to maintain our society as we currently enjoy it. Another pillar is the positive incentive structure associated with sociable behavior. The forces of habit, social conformity, ritual, and morality suffice to draw most people into the system. Unfortunately, terrorists are precisely those who are not susceptible to these positive incentive structures. While any effective counterterrorist or counterinsurgency strategy must include carrots, there is invariably a group of those resistant to any reasonable offers. Furthermore, some contests are zero-sum and therefore there may be an irresolvable tension between what some of our opponents want and what we can give. Likewise, direct deterrence against terrorists is an important tool, and is the cornerstone of law and order both in the domestic and international contexts. But, as many have pointed out, terrorists are hard--and sometimes impossible--to deter directly. Clearly, people willing to kill themselves in order to conduct terrorist attacks are unlikely to be deterred by direct threats. …

Abstract: A central tenet of the Islamist position is that Shari'a (or sometimes the Qur'an and Sunna) can function as a constitution in Islamic states, promoting good and for-bidding evil, ensuring, when embodied institutionally, that law is in accord with Muslim precepts. This viewpoint runs counter to post-Enlightenment legal positivism, where constitutional provisions are reduced to procedures and where parliaments, perhaps representing the people, may pass any law that is justified procedurally. I argue that the positivist position is misguided, that valid laws must be both procedurally justified and legitimated in light of constitutional values and where the procedures themselves are legitimate. If this argument is sensible, the Shari'a might well make up a set of substantive values and still be able to constitute constitutional principles. The substantive regulation of legislation does not, in itself, rule out an "Islamic constitution." This conclusion is not, however, dispositive of the question of the viability of a constitution rooted in the Shari'a. We have to ask whether there are structural constraints on the type of substantive regulation consistent with a constitutional system. If so, is Shari'a consistent with these structural constraints? To some degree, our answer to these questions depends on our characterization of constitutions and constitutionalism. If we associate the two and suggest that they require the construction of a limited government accountable to the people, we may be limiting "constitutionalism" to a form of governance found in the "West," and we may preclude, by definition, the possibility of any other form of constitutionalism. This model of a "liberal constitution" appears to be "culture bound." The regulation of political activities by Shari'a might entail a different form of "constitutionalism" from the one found in the West. In contrast to arguments for a robust model of liberal constitutionalism, this paper argues for a minimal notion of constitutionalism, one that is not culture bound. Constitutionalism minimally enables the "constitution"/construction of a procedural system where new law is accepted as valid. If the capacity to validate new law is a necessary attribute of a constitutional government, a Shari'a grounded in, even if not always manifesting, the sovereign and unalterable will of God is incapable of fulfilling this universal constitutional task. Some will criticize even this second argument as presupposing, if only implicitly, the type of liberal constitutionalism found in the modern West. I argue, in contrast, that if we are to label a regime constitutional, the regime must enable a positivist legal system, one where legislation, the formulation of new laws that are accepted as procedurally valid, is both possible and legitimate. While the cultural content of these laws is variable and might well differ in Christian-dominated and Islam-dominated states (or in the umma), the possibility of lawmaking, and not simply law finding, is a universal requisite for a constitutional system. All constitutional regimes constitute mechanisms allowing for reasoned legislation and adjudication, where the procedures regulating them must be legitimate in terms of the legal regime's constitutional values and the society's conscience collective, the society's civil religion, if they are to justify successfully. (1) Simply, constitutions must legitimate the capacity to create new law in a manner akin to the positivist portrait of legislation. To make this argument, I distinguish between political legitimation, the subsumption of norms and activities under value commitments, and political justification, where appropriate procedures are followed, where due process is manifest. The latter, justification, is fundamental in the positivist conceptualization of the law and is manifest most clearly in H.L.A. Hart's notion that legal duties are constituted through secondary, procedural, rules; any primary rule constituted through the due process application of such secondary, procedural, rules is a valid obligation. …

Abstract: WHAT DO RUSSIA, China, Afghanistan, and Iraq have in common? In nations where an authoritarian regime has collapsed, liberation is typically followed by explosive increases in anti-social behavior. This fact, which holds irrespective of whether the regime was militantly secular or theocratic; communist or Islamic, is rarely discussed in the Western media or during political give and take on "regime change" and related subjects. Some presume that these destructive behaviors will go away on their own, that the disturbed condition of society following liberation will correct itself. Others dismiss these pains of transformation as simply a price a society must pay for gaining liberty. Explosive increases in anti-social behavior (details follow) do not naturally subside by themselves. Such behavior has been at a high level for years in many liberated and failing states (e.g., more than 15 years in Russia). After surveying some statistics and trends in several newly liberated societies, I confront the question of how such conduct can be curbed. Enhanced law enforcement may do so initially, but, in the longer run, a rather different kind of authority must become the major source of social order if it is to be considered legitimate, which, in turn, is essential for sustained stability. Religion (in its moderate, nonviolent expressions), I will show, is a major source of such authority. Several assumptions found in both political as well as popular discourse obstruct the recognition of this basic but crucial fact: the extensive focus on extremist expressions of religion; the tendency to view religions monolithically; and a tendency to treat the need to export the separation of state and religion as an equal priority with establishing peace and security. The recognition of religion's role as a major source for stability points the way towards a new approach to U.S. policy in newly liberated societies. Newly liberated, newly anti-social RUSSIA PROVIDES AN especially important and troubling example of the social consequences of liberation. In the period immediately following the fall of the communist regime (from 1989 to 1993), the murder rate rose by 116 percent and assaults rose by 81 percent. Especially indicative of the breakdown in the social fabric was that 63 percent of reported physical assaults were committed by a friend or relative of the victim. Twelve years later the situation showed no improvement; nearly 3.5 million crimes were registered in 2005, compared with 2.8 million in 1993. In 2005 Russia's prosecutor general, Vladimir Ustinov, estimated that the true number of crimes committed was closer to 9 million. Russia is rife with organized crime and corruption has infiltrated business, municipal government, police forces, and the judiciary. Murders often remain unsolved because the police are bought off, and judges are intimidated into delivering the "correct" verdicts. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the number of drug addicts in Russia has skyrocketed. Between 1991 and 1995 their numbers doubled; over the next five years they quadrupled. By 2005, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reported that there were between 1.5 and 4 million drug abusers in Russia. Dramatic increases have also been seen in rates of alcohol consumption and suicide, although these were already comparatively high in earlier periods. The WHO estimated that about 62,000 people died of alcohol poisoning in 2004 alone. In addition, the suicide rate increased from 26 per 100,000 people in 1990 to 40 per 100,000 people in 2000 (three times the world average), and has only just begun to decrease to 3 5 per 100,000 as of 2004. It is true, the impact of such increases in anti-social behavior and criminality pales in comparison to the crimes systematically committed by the state during the communist era, when victims numbered in the many millions. Liberation has largely eliminated this form of crime. …

Abstract: HUMAN TRAFFICKING IS the slavery of our time. Exactly 200 years ago, Britain and the United States formally outlawed the transatlantic slave trade. A few decades later the practice of slavery was expunged from North American (with a heavy dose of justice enforced by the British Navy and of bloodshed in the American Civil War). While much has changed since the days of the transatlantic slave trade, the lie which fueled that horrific chapter in history is at the root of sex trafficking and slave labor today--a belief that some people are less than human. Consider Carlo, a 27-year-old man from a rural area of the Philippines, recruited along with ten other men and women for a highly valued job in an American Midwestern hotel. The men were promised higher wages, reasonable hours, and benefits. Filipino recruiters charged each worker $1,200 as a "processing fee" for securing the jobs. Hotel mangers added new non-negotiable charges for "rent." This debt was used to coerce Carlo and the others to work endless hours. Carlo's passport was confiscated by the traffickers to keep him from fleeing, which also rendered him undocumented and subject to potential arrest and deportation if caught by immigration officials off hotel premises. Toiling for 16 to 18 hours a day, Carlo and the other Filipinos endured total control by hotel managers over every aspect of their lives--what they ate, where they lived, and the hours they worked. Debt bondage CARLO'S STORY INCLUDES several threads which I increasingly see in my work at the State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons Carlo is a migrant. His nightmare began at the hands of a recruiter who used fraudulent offers of employment and extracted a large recruitment fee which Carlo could only pay by taking a loan. Carlo was uniquely vulnerable to exploitation once in the destination country, the U.S., due to the debt he carried as a direct result of recruitment. This home-country debt exacerbated by fraudulent expenses, such as "rent," added by an exploitative U.S. employer. Carlo's debt led to debt bondage. Lacking any form of power, not to mention identification, in a country not his own, Carlo was robbed of his dignity as a victim of forced labor. Current trends fleshed out in the 2008 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report released by the Secretary of State in June, and produced by my office, paint a grim picture of the diffuse and diverse factors which contribute to the vulnerability of more than 175 million migrants in the world today--vulnerability not just to minor labor infractions but to gross exploitation. Among these factors is the flagrant use of excessive debt as a tool of manipulation, the fraudulent practices of some middle-men brokering the movement of millions across international borders, weak laws--and weak enforcement of laws--governing labor exploitation, some aspects of sponsorship laws in Persian Gulf states, and a fundamental lack of understanding about human trafficking. Debt bondage is a frequent form of forced labor. Too often, people are enticed into fraudulent offers of work abroad that require a steep payment up front for the services of a labor agency arranging the job or a payment that goes straight to the future employer. To pay such fees, workers in poorer counties either become indebted to the recruiter, or take out a formal or informal loan in their country of origin, with the expectation of payment based on future wages earned abroad. Often, worker expectations and repayment terms are based on exaggerated and false representations by recruiters regarding wages the workers can expect to earn in their new jobs. Once at an overseas worksite, such high levels of indebtedness can make workers vulnerable to exploitation by unscrupulous employers who subject workers to terms much less favorable than promised at the time of recruitment (such as much longer hours, less pay, and harsher conditions). …

Abstract: Several French nationals or residents have fought with the Taliban in Afghanistan and the insurgency in Iraq Zacarias Moussaoui, the most famous French jihadist, is now serving a life sentence in an American prison for his connection to 9/11 In the following selection, John Rosenthal, who writes on European politics, analyzes a published collection of interviews of suspected members of al Qaeda and fellow travelers in French prisons by social scientist Fared Khosrokhavar Almost all these inmates were either born in France or were long-term residents of France who came originally from the Mahghreb, the North African area that had once been under French control French was either their native language or they spoke it fluently One theory challenged by Khosrokhavar is that jihadists are poor and uneducated As the research shows, “jihadists are largely recruited from relatively more privileged social strata in their countries of origin As a rule, the inmates interviewed are highly educated, well-traveled, and multilingual”

Abstract: MOSQUE-STATE SEPARATION and religious freedom appear to have stalled in Muslim-majority countries, leading scholars, theologians, and policymakers to conclude that a theocratic model of governance is inevitable for the Islamic world They argue that Islam is distinct from religions like Christianity because Islamic states have a duty to implement Shari'a, and therefore require a government with joint religious and civil authority (1) Muslim publics are presumed to be deeply attached to this belief, which is why they have rejected the notion of a secular-based rule of law An objective look at the facts, however, uncovers quite a different picture Recent surveys indicate that the populations of many major Muslim-majority countries are almost evenly divided on such hot-button issues as whether Shari'a should serve as the primary foundation for laws and whether clerics should be involved in political questions These new data challenge previously held assumptions about the values and attitudes of Muslim publics concerning mosque-state separation As important, history informs us that the current debate surrounding separation of religion and politics is not a historic anomaly; nor is it unique to Islam In other parts of the world, including the West, it took great efforts to replace the "age-old assumption" that it is "right and justifiable to maintain religious uniformity by force" (2) The debate occurring in the Islamic world today should be viewed in the context of other countries' transitions to separation of religion and politics, which offer valuable lessons that can help supporters of mosque-state separation become more effective Among the most interesting precedents for the Islamic world, and most surprising, is colonial America To establish church-state separation and religious freedom in the United States, the Founders had to convince a devout and deeply skeptical populace that such a system posed no threat to religion What today seems like a natural and obvious development was in fact a hard-won paradigm change with astonishing parallels to the issues dominating the debate in the Islamic world today The Founders' experience provides a template for those who seek to advance mosque-state separation in Muslim-majority countries Religious freedom in the Islamic world In the battle between supporters and opponents of mosque-state separation, there can be little doubt that the Islamic fundamentalists are currently winning Most countries in the region do not separate religious and political authority The Saudi Arabian constitution, for example, declares that it is the state's duty to protect Islam and implement Shari'a The result is a country where a typical year sees roughly 50 public beheadings, many for petty crimes such as marijuana possession, in accordance with strict interpretations of Shari'a Women are not allowed to drive cars and the Muttaween (religious police) patrol public spaces to punish conduct or styles of dress they deem too liberal Infamously, this has included an intervention in which they drove young schoolgirls back into a burning school building to die, because in fleeing they had neglected to properly don their veils In Iran, too, the theocratic regime in power since 1979 operates a virtual police state Minorities, such as Baha'is, have been largely driven out of the country Flogging is a common penalty for personal "transgressions," and adultery is still punishable by stoning In 2004, a mentally handicapped 16-year-old girl was hanged in public for "crimes against chastity" These two countries are among the more extreme examples, but even the more enlightened constitutions in the region have reserved a significant role for Islam in lawmaking and governance Article 2 of Iraq's constitution--one of the most recently ratified in the Islamic world--states that "Islam is the official religion of the state and it is a fundamental source of legislation …

Abstract: UNTIL RELATIVELY RECENTLY, students of politics and ideas generally regarded Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan (16 51) as the outstanding work of political philosophy in the English language. Over the past several decades, however, professors of political science and philosophy have largely relegated Hobbes's masterpiece to the back shelves. At best, they tend to view Leviathan as an historical artifact, an early and influential stepping stone on the way to the development of those Kantian-inspired theories--Rawlsian and Habermasian at the forefront--that aim to vindicate the rights-based, progressive welfare state and dominate academic teaching and research. This demotion of Hobbes's masterpiece is unwarranted and impedes understanding of Leviathan. The demotion rests on the assumption, common among today's scholars of political ideas, that after millennia of confusion and error they have at long last constructed the complete and adequate--or soon-to-be-complete and very nearly adequate--theoretical approach to politics. It also is grounded in their belief that the issues of immediate concern to them are alone of moral and political significance, while the issues that occupied thinkers of earlier generations are at best of antiquarian interest. Accordingly, if they turn to it at all, professors tend lazily to ask of Hobbes's Leviathan--as they lazily ask, if they turn to them at all, of other classic works of political philosophy--how it anticipated or failed to anticipate the contemporary agenda. An alternative, obscured by today's methodological doctrines and moral blinders, is to read Leviathan on its own terms, open to its assumptions and arguments and alive to the possibility that Hobbes's agenda is of interest in its own right. Of course, interest in Hobbes's agenda is not to deny Leviathan's contemporary relevance. To the contrary. To read Hobbes on his own terms is to discover a provocative rival to contemporary perspectives on morals and politics, one that challenges widely shared assumptions about the roots of our rights and calls into question common conclusions about the scope of political authority in a society based on the consent of the governed. At the same time, it is to encounter a complement to contemporary perspectives on the liberal state, one that offers a distinctive and powerful basis for a political order that conforms to reason and secures the conditions under which human beings with differing conceptions of the best life can pursue happiness as they each understand it. To be sure, what it means to read a thinker on his own terms is subject to dispute. Of the small number of scholars who continue to devote themselves to the serious study of Hobbes, a substantial proportion contend that priority should be given to understanding the historical context in which Hobbes lived and wrote. Despite their tendency to exaggerate it, they have a point. For example, one is likely to be baffled by the intellectual energy Hobbes devotes to the critique of religion in Parts I and IV of Leviathan and to his alternative derivation of the true principles of politics from biblical sources in Part III if one fails to appreciate that he lived in a deeply Protestant political culture, the governing beliefs of which he was forced to pay deference to even as he interpreted them innovatively and elaborated opinions about the natural world and human nature that undermined them. One cannot properly understand Hobbes's critique of Aristotle without being aware that his target was in many cases the decayed version of Aristotelianism--in Chapter XLVI Hobbes mockingly calls it "Aristotelity"--that had prevailed in English universities for centuries, rather than the actual doctrines of Aristotle's Ethics, Politics, and Metaphysics. And one will miss the mixture of bluntness and circumspection with which Hobbes writes about human nature, politics, and ultimate questions if one lacks knowledge of the dangers to which he was exposed during the English Civil War as a defender of the Crown who nevertheless antagonized both sides by criticizing divine-right monarchy as well as parliamentary supremacy. …

Abstract: PICK UP THE mission statement of almost any college or university, and you will find claims and ambitions that will lead you to think that it is the job of an institution of higher learning to cure every ill the world has ever known: not only illiteracy and cultural ignorance, which are at least in the ball-park, but poverty, war, racism, gender bias, bad character, discrimination, intolerance, environmental pollution, rampant capitalism, American imperialism, and the hegemony of Wal-Mart; and of course the list could be much longer. Wesleyan University starts well by pledging to "cultivate a campus environment where students think critically, participate in constructive dialogue and engage in meaningful contemplation" (although I'm not sure what meaningful contemplation is); but then we read of the intention to "foster awareness, respect, and appreciation for a diversity of experiences, interests, beliefs and identities." Awareness is okay; it's important to know what's out there. But why should students be taught to "respect" a diversity of interests, beliefs, and identities in advance of assessing them and taking their measure? The missing word here is "evaluate." That's what intellectual work is all about, the evaluation, not the celebration, of interests, beliefs, and identities; after all, interests can be base, beliefs can be wrong, and identities are often irrelevant to an inquiry. Yale College's statement also starts well by promising to seek students "of all backgrounds" and "to educate them through mental discipline," but then mental discipline turns out to be instrumental to something even more valuable, the development of students' "moral, civic and creative capacities to the fullest." I'm all for moral, civic, and creative capacities, but I'm not sure that there is much I or anyone else could do as a teacher to develop them.--except Moral capacities (or their absence) have no relationship whatsoever to the reading of novels, or the running of statistical programs, or the execution of laboratory procedures, all of which can produce certain skills, but not moral states. Civic capacities--which mean, I suppose, the capacities that go along with responsible citizenship--won t be acquired simply because you have learned about the basic structures of American government or read the Federalist papers (both good things to do). You could ace all your political science and public policy courses and still drop out and go live in the woods or become the Unabomber. And as for creative capacities, there are courses in creative writing in liberal arts colleges, and colleges of fine arts offer instruction in painting, sculpture, pottery, photography, drafting, and the playing of a variety of musical instruments. But even when such courses are housed in liberal arts venues, they belong more to the world of professional instruction--if you want to make something, here's how to do it--than to the world of academic interrogation. I'm not saying that there is no connection at all between the successful practice of ethical, social, and political virtues and the courses of instruction listed in the college catalogue; it's always possible that something you come across or something a teacher says may strike a chord that sets you on a life path you might not otherwise have chosen. But these are contingent effects, and as contingent effects they cannot be designed and shouldn't be aimed at. (It's not a good use of your time to aim at results you have only a random chance of producing.) So what is it that institutions of higher learning are supposed to do? My answer is simple. College and university teachers can (legitimately) do two things: I) introduce students to bodies of knowledge and traditions of inquiry that had not previously been part of their experience; and 2) equip those same students with the analytical skills--of argument, statistical modeling, laboratory procedure--that will enable them to move confidently within those traditions and to engage in independent research after a course is over. …

Abstract: IN THE PAST few years Moscow's increasingly assertive foreign policy posture has been underscored by signs of improvement in the military realm. Several pundits have argued that the Russian army is "back," that it is once again an effective force, having endured humiliating conditions through much of the post-Soviet period. Some recent developments have undoubtedly supported this contention. After all, in 2007 alone Russia resumed regular long-range bomber missions after a 16-year hiatus, conducted a military exercise with the People's Republic of China and other members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (a.k.a. "The Dictators' Club") that included 6,500 troops and over 100 aircraft, increased defense spending by more than 30 percent, announced a new rearmament program, and began planning the reclamation of the old Soviet naval base at Tartus, Syria in order to reestablish a Mediterranean naval presence. These events are in concert with the longstanding Soviet-Russian tradition of emphasizing the armed forces as the state's most important foreign policy instrument while designating lesser roles to diplomatic, economic, and other means. Still, those familiar with the magnitude of the Russian defense establishment's post-Cold War privations cannot but wonder whether it could have recovered quite so quickly. To be sure, the military's situation has improved in some respects in the past several years. At the same time, reversing the army's decline and regaining its former might will take many years, and the Russian armed forces will not be able to challenge America's military supremacy for decades. Indeed, my main argument here is that reports of the Russian army's imminent resurgence, like those of Mark Twain's death nearly a century ago, have been greatly exaggerated. I will focus on three closely related aspects of Russian defense policy--reform, manpower, and expenditures--under Vladimir Putin's reign to show that the U.S. and the West have no cause for alarm in the foreseeable future. Before proceeding further, it ought to be acknowledged that reality remains often at odds with the propaganda emanating from the Kremlin. "Soviet statistics" was an oxymoron, as "hard data" originating from the USSR were notoriously unreliable. Though matters have improved somewhat since then, Russian figures, particularly on defense and security issues, should still be treated with caution. A recent example should suffice. In a January 11, 2006 Wall Street Journal article then-Defense Minister Sergey Ivanov boasted that in the armed forces "the number and level of large-scale exercises ha[d] grown to more than fifty" in 2005. In fact, only 31 of these were held at the regimental level and just one involved an entire division, even though the Russian military contains more than 20 divisions and hundreds of regiments. (1) The point is that, given the authorities' full control of television--the news source for most Russians--and their expanding grip on radio and print media, the information for domestic public consumption, let alone that intended for foreign audiences, is routinely manipulated and distorted. The contradictions of defense reform SIXTEEN YEARS AFTER the collapse of the USSR, the Russian military remains fundamentally unreformed. The critical problem of defense policy is that the failure of political and military elites to sort out what type of conflicts the country should prepare for inevitably prevents the formulation of a consistent grand strategy and doctrine. In other words, politicians and generals seem not to have reached a solid consensus on who their enemies are and how to fight them in a potential future war. Nevertheless, the vast majority of Russia's top brass and many leading politicians are stuck in Cold War mode and continue to insist that the main threat to their country remains the United States. (Curiously, both political and army leaders seem to be bothered little by the rapidly increasing military power of neighboring China. …

Abstract: THE "RACE CARD" was once an effective ploy in electoral politics. Southern Democrats long used it to rally white voters. In the wake of the civil rights movement, the Republicans took possession of the race card. Nixon used it to strike fear in the minds of white voters, helping to transform a solid South into a Republican bastion. That card still gets played on occasion. But with white voters receding into the minority in so many jurisdictions, the race card is increasingly viewed as not just an unfair play, but an inefficient one as well (as Hillary Clinton learned). The preferred ploy of Democrats these days is the "class" card. Democrats have increasingly tried to redefine the "them vs. us" struggle in terms of class rather than color. As they tell the story, economic prosperity is a zero-sum game. Income gains attained by the "rich" come at the expense of the "poor." Corporations bestow lavish compensation on executive insiders while cutting salaries, benefits, and jobs for hard-working Americans. A massive flow of campaign contributions assures that elected officials will protect and serve the rich, while simultaneously cutting holes in the social safety net. Tax cuts for the rich not only fuel conspicuous indulgence among the elite, but diminish spending on health services, school, and the safety of the poor. It all boils down to "them" (the rich) vs. "us" (the poor and middle class). All three candidates for the Democratic party nomination played the class card. John Edwards was the most blatant, enshrining his "Two Americas" vision as the central platform of his campaign. That vision became blurred in the glare of his multi-million dollar mansion and $400 haircuts. Hillary Clinton picked up the Two Americas theme, tirelessly railing against the Bush "tax cut for the rich" while bemoaning the stagnation of the working class. Even though she donned working-class duds and even sipped beer in a tavern, her credibility as the standard-bearer for the middle class was not helped by the revelation that she and Bill had taken in over $100 million in just five years. The "class card" has been passed to Barack Obama. He has used it relentlessly to enlist and energize his supporters. In fact, he has made the Bush tax cuts one of the central contrasts between his and McCain's policy platforms. Ending the Iraq war and reversing the Bush tax cuts, Obama promises, will cure all of America's problems. Republican rebuttals THE REPUBLICAN REBUTTALS to the "tax-cuts for the rich" charge have been anemic. President Bush himself has emphasized that the 2001-03 tax cuts were a timely and much needed stimulus to an economy that was in recession at that time. A "reversal" of those tax cuts would now constitute a tax increase that the macro economy can ill afford. With the economy barely treading water amid vast uncertainty in the financial sector, the weight of a tax increase on aggregate spending could easily plunge the economy into the depths. Even the expectation of a tax increase could put a damper on spending plans, as both Bush and McCain have stressed. Virtually every economist in the land would agree with these macro assessments. Liberals would have preferred more progressive tax cuts--or even increased social spending--as stimulus tools. But there is no question that the Bush tax cuts were stimulative and that ending them would have a contractionary impact on the economy. Unfortunately, the intricacies of macro theory don't resonate with the general public. There is still a tendency to view the tax take-back as a free lunch, paid for by the overindulgent and undeserving rich. So the otherwise compelling macro agreement for leaving the tax cuts in place doesn't win the electoral pr battle. The second Republican rebuttal is equally true but just as anemic. President Bush has argued repeatedly that the 2001-03 tax cuts were proportionately greater for the middle class than the rich. …

Abstract: THERE'S BROAD AGREEMENT that America should reduce its dependence on imported oil, but far less agreement on why. Are we combating global warming, or are we distancing ourselves from hostile and unstable regimes? The popular reply is that it hardly matters--we need to do both and the goals reinforce each other. But these two national energy goals are not only different but frequently in conflict, and effective policy will not be forged until those conflicts are addressed. Meanwhile, we'll continue to see watered down legislative efforts similar to the Energy Act of 2007 and its predecessors. When dependence on foreign oil first became a major issue in 1973, the country imported less than a third of its petroleum; it now imports over 60 percent. It was never easy to convince the public that we should curb oil use for security reasons alone. As foreign sources grew more numerous, credible energy experts insisted that this diversity of supply provided ample security. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, it was widely accepted that no single country, nor even the entire OPEC cartel, could pose a real threat. The fact that America was devoting increasing military resources to protecting the international oil trade was viewed as just another consequence of being the "sole remaining superpower." So in pleading the case for lowered oil consumption, energy security advocates gratefully accepted a new rationale--concerns about climate change. In 1973, those concerns were barely a blip on the political radar screen, but they have grown steadily since about 1988. "Stop global warming" has become a remarkably effective rallying cry, even inspiring award-winning documentaries and TV specials. Commercial interests have also latched onto this movement. Automobile makers find it easier to market gas-electric hybrid cars in the interest of saving the planet from excessive warming than in saving the country from Middle Eastern extremists. The ethanol lobby, too, identifies its raison d'etre more with greening the planet than with energy security. Combating climate change somehow seems more inclusive and less confrontational than mere energy security. For all these reasons, advocates of the latter (let's call them the "oil independents") have eagerly accepted a strategic partnership with the climate change establishment (the "climate greens"). Unfortunately, however, the partnership rests on unstable ground. Three fault lines THERE ARE THREE conspicuous fault lines between the positions of oil independents and climate greens. The first and most obvious is that mitigating climate change requires curtailing not just consumption of oil and gas, but also of coal, which has even higher carbon dioxide emissions. Since CO2 is fingered as the main culprit in man-made global warming, it isn't surprising that coal becomes continually less welcome. But America has far more coal than it has oil or natural gas, and from the viewpoint of energy independence, that can't be ignored. The partners' attempts to bridge their differences on coal are not yet promising. Second, oil independents and climate greens face conflict over oil substitutes that emit no carbon at all. Climate-change activists have deep environmentalist roots. These often lead them to oppose large hydroelectric dams and even wind and solar projects. And one important noncarbon fuel--nuclear energy--remains anathema to the environmental establishment. The most recent report of the UN's International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) halfheartedly notes nuclear energy's positive attributes, but few climate greens concur. This is more typical view: "We believe that the financial and safety risks associated with nuclear power are so grave that nuclear power should not be a part of any solution to address global warming. There is no need to jeopardize our health, safety, and economy with increased nuclear power when we have cleaner, cheaper solutions to reduce global warming pollution. …

Abstract: IN EARLY JUNE, Barack Obama clinched the Democratic Party's nomination for president, besting Hillary Clinton in the most amazing primary battle in the contemporary era. The immediate cause of Clinton's departure from the race was probably Obama's lead in pledged delegates--which, by the end of the primary season, stood at a small-but-significant 106, out of 3,406 total pledged delegates. (1) It was simply impractical for Clinton to count on the so-called "superdelegates" to close the gap between the two. Meanwhile, Obama's lead in the actual vote count was vanishingly small, just 150,000 votes out of 35 million cast for the two, without Michigan having fully participated. Thus, by the end of the primaries, Obama had amassed a 3.1 percent lead in pledged delegates, compared to a 0.4 percent lead in votes. This implies that Obama's voters were more efficient than Clinton's voters at producing delegates. Indeed, for every Obama delegate, there were 10,788 Obama supporters. For every Clinton delegate, there were 11,727 Clinton supporters. This efficiency advantage probably made the difference for the junior senator from Illinois. If Clinton's voters had been as efficient at producing delegates as Obama's voters, his lead in pledged delegates would have shrunk from 106 to a paltry 14, which would have placed Clinton well within striking distance of the nomination. Thus, it behooves us to ask how it was that Obama supporters produced more delegates. This essay will argue that Obama was favored by the delegate allocation system. In other words, Obama won not simply because he had more supporters, but also because the "rules of the game" made those supporters better at generating delegates. To see how this occurred, we will first review the voting coalitions that Obama and Clinton forged over the course of their five-month primary battle. Then, we will investigate the rules of the delegate allocation process to see how they translated each candidate's votes into delegates. First, though, comes some theoretical background--a frame of reference for understanding the importance of the rules of delegate allocation. The puzzle that we are faced with relates to a general subject matter that social scientists refer to as "social choice." Processing preferences THE DEMOCRATS' DELEGATE system is designed to aggregate the individual preferences of primary and caucus voters into the choice of the party as a whole, or a social choice. Voters vote; delegates are selected according to those votes; those delegates select a nominee at the party's convention. Thus, the nomination process can be understood as a social choice mechanism that translates the preferences of Democrats nationwide into an outcome. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] We should not assume that the middle step, where individual preferences are processed by the social choice mechanism, is a purely efficient one. Indeed, following Arrow's Theorem, we cannot make such an assumption. No social choice mechanism is always able to satisfy even a basic set of normative criteria. In other words, there is no "perfect" voting system. Every conceivable system has ways that the particular rules can influence the outcome, depending upon how preferences are arranged. Thus, it is often profitable to evaluate the rules of a social choice mechanism to see how they have influenced the outcome. We shall do that for the Democratic nomination process, which is a social choice mechanism like any other. It takes the preferences of individual Democrats and translates them into a choice of all Democrats. Our argument will be that the particular rules of the process were very important in determining the party's nominee, that there were features of the system that favored Obama over Clinton, and that slight, uncontroversial changes in the rules could have produced a different outcome. If we were to compare the nomination process to a translator acting as an intermediary for two conversants who speak different languages, we would be arguing that the translator himself influenced the course of the conversation. …

Abstract: FRUSTRATION WITH U.S. foreign aid is widespread. The left complains that the United States does not provide enough money to developing countries. The right laments that aid is an inefficient use of resources. Both sides are to some degree correct. While the United States distributed $23 billion in 2006-more than any other country--it was still very little for the billion people living on less than one dollar a day. And for every dollar given to sub-Saharan Africa, less than 44 cents reached the ground, partially because of inefficient spending and corruption. Given the justifiable frustration with the current system, there have been surprisingly few attempts to fundamentally alter the architecture of foreign aid. Suggestions for change usually take the form of either advocating for more aid or calling for a different distribution of existing resources. Typifying the first of these approaches, Barack Obama recently suggested that the United States double its aid spending to $50 billion a year. Epitomizing the second is the Millennium Challenge Corporation, a government initiative touted by President Bush in his 2007 State of the Union address that distributes a portion of U.S. foreign aid based on the political and economic environment in the recipient country. This focus on either growing the pie or distributing it differently takes as a premise that the current system of government-to-government aid is the best way forward. We suggest a different path. Rather than providing aid according to the wishes of foreign governments, the United States should provide incentives to encourage corporations and individuals to distribute development dollars. In 2006, $380 billion of foreign direct investment flowed to developing countries and $220 billion in remittances was sent home by developing-country migrants. As figure 1 indicates, these numbers far surpassed the $104 billion in official foreign aid flows. Government policy can act to shape the direction of these dynamic flows of private development capital rather than solely relying on the old model of government-to-government transfers. [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] One simple way to provide incentives for private development finance is to give tax credits to American companies that invest in developing countries. We will argue that shifting money from government-to-government aid to tax credits would allow more total dollars to be distributed without increasing the cost to the taxpayer (addressing the critique of the left); would reduce money lost to mismanagement and corruption (addressing the critique of the right); and would more effectively foster the building of institutions necessary for sustainable economic development. We will outline how such a system can be put into operation, addressing the types of investments that should qualify for tax credits and which countries should be eligible to benefit from them. A second way to channel private development finance is to give tax breaks to individuals working in the United States who remit money home. It is easy to forget that the most effective unit of redistribution is the family. Frequently, families are straddled across poor countries and rich countries like the United States. Tax breaks can increase the amount of intra-family redistribution and therefore contribute to global poverty reduction. And by restricting remittance tax breaks to certain countries, U.S. policymakers can involve poor-country diasporas in lobbying for positive political change in their home countries. Fixing foreign aid is vital to the U.S. national interest. Not only does aid play an essential humanitarian role, but it provides a number of direct benefits to Americans, from opening new markets to alleviating conditions that aid terrorist recruitment. The current system has proven over the past half century that it faces serious challenges. Tax credits for companies, and tax breaks for individuals offer a pragmatic, incremental solution that should appeal to both sides of the aisle. …

Abstract: THE SOVIET FLAG was lowered from atop the Kremlin on December 25, 1991 It is doubtful this event will ever be memorialized in Russia, whose current prime minister characterizes it as the "greatest political disaster of the twentieth century" The political end of the USSR was the final step in the destruction of the Soviet system The nail in the coffin of its primary pillar dates three years earlier, to September 1988, as Mikhail Gorbachev disbanded the industrial-branch departments of the central Committee, the last vestiges of central control Fall 2008 marks the twentieth anniversary of the end of the Soviet administrative-command system As the most significant experiment of the twenti- eth century, it is appropriate to perform a post mortem on it, armed with memoirs, interviews, and open archives The collapse of the Soviet system was a rare event in human history Regimes, administrations, and governments come and go regularly, but there are no precedents for a comprehensive socio-political-economic system to disappear quickly and with little warning after 50 years of existence Economic systems change throughout their history, but they usually evolve gradually through hundreds of thousands of Hayekian human actions Only in rare cases, where human design dominates, are changes visible to the human eye (such as the creation of the European Union or peace settlements after wars) The Soviet system was created by human design, and its collapse was also engineered by human design This explains the speed of collapse and why we are more likely to make sense of it despite its recent vintage In this essay, I attempt to explain why the Soviet system collapsed, and its timing I use a simple human design, model that synthesizes a number of models: (1) It assumes that an elite of "system electors" (the Soviet nomenklatura, the Central Committee, or some was also other authoritative grouping) periodically decides whether to continue the status quo (the administrative command system) or "defect" to an "outside option" (replacement of the administrative command system with another system) The choices may be represented by different leaders, such as a choice between Leon Trotsky and Josef Stalin or Mikhail Gorbachev and Yegor Ligachev for the party leadership, or between organized groups, such as the military-industrial complex versus agricultural interests Elite "electors" use cost-benefit analysis to assess whether they are better off with the status quo or the outside option If there is sufficient support for the outside option, system change will occur In defining my task, I must be careful to state what I am trying to explain The collapse of the economic system differs in substance and in timing from the collapse of the USSR, the Soviet bloc, or the "leading role" of the communist party The Soviet administrative-command system ended when its three pillars--administrative resource allocation by industrial ministries, property rights vested in the Soviet state, and direction of economic activity by a monopoly party--collapsed The ministerial resource allocation began to crumble with the anti-bureaucracy campaign of May 19 8 6 and culminated with the implementation of the enterprise law of June 1987 The communist party's direction of economic activity ended in September 1988 with the abolition of the sectoral departments of the Central Committee The de facto transfer of property rights from the Soviet state was more gradual The November 1986 law on individual labor activity and the March 1988 law on cooperatives lifted restrictions on earnings, and the March 1989 law on leasing promoted the transfer of state assets to individuals (2) My task, therefore, is to explain why the administrative-command system was destroyed and why it was destroyed when it was Notice that I have not yet defined the "outside option" The outside-option choices ranged from an economic system designed to maximize rent-seeking and corruption, to a Chinese-like market socialism, to an economic system of transparency, secure property rights, and a rule of law …

Abstract: And as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all. --Luke 17:26-30 FOR THE JUDEO-WESTERN inspiration, it is a mistake of the first magnitude to place too much value on the things of this world. Those who busy themselves with the meaning-less ideologies of politics, or with the interminable drama of human soap operas, or with the limitless accumulation of wealth, are losing sight of the impending catastrophe that may unfold towards the end of history. The entire human order could unravel in a relentless escalation of violence--famine, disease, war, and death. The final book of the Bible, the Book of Revelation, even gives a name and a place: The Battle of Armageddon in the Middle East is the great conflagration that would end the world. Against this future, it is far better to save one's immortal soul and accumulate treasures in heaven, in the eternal City of God, than it is to amass a fleeting fortune in the transient and passing City of Man. For the rationalists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as for all those who consider themselves cosmopolitan today, this sort of hysterical talk about the end of the world was deemed to be the exclusive province of people who were either stupid or wicked or insane (although mostly just stupid). Scientific inculcation would replace religious indoctrination. Today, we no longer believe that Zeus will strike down errant humans with thunderbolts, and so we also can rest peacefully in the certain knowledge that there exists no god who will destroy the whole world. And yet, if the truth were to be told, our slumber is not as peaceful as it once was. Beginning with the Great War in 1914, and accelerating after 1945, there has re-emerged an apocalyptic dimension to the modern world. In a strange way, however, this apocalyptic dimension has arisen from the very place that was meant to liberate us from antediluvian fears. This time around, in the year 2008, the end of the world is predicted by scientists and technologists. One can read about it every day in the New York Times, that voice of the rational and cosmopolitan Establishment. Will it be an environmental catastrophe like runaway global warming, or will it be murderous robots, Ebola viruses genetically recombined with smallpox, nanotech devices that dissolve the living world into a gray goo, or the spread of miniature nuclear bombs in terrorist briefcases? Even if it is not yet possible for humans to destroy the whole world, on current trends it might just be a matter of time. The relentless proliferation of nuclear weapons remains the most obvious case in point. The United States became the first nuclear power in 1945; by the 1960s and through the 1980s, at the height of the Cold War, five declared nuclear states (the U.S., the UK, France, the USSR, and China) maintained a semi-stable equilibrium (at least as recounted by the historians who know ex post that the Cold War remained cold); as of today, there are two more known nuclear states (India, Pakistan) and perhaps even more (Israel, North Korea). And what if there are 20 nuclear powers in 2020, or 50 nuclear powers in 2050, armed with Jupiter missiles that can rain down destruction on enemies everywhere? We suspect the answer to this question, for we know that there exists some point beyond which there is no stable equilibrium and where there will be a nuclear Armageddon. A scientific or mathematical calculus of the apocalypse has replaced the mystic vision of religious prophets. (1) ON THE SURFACE, the world's financial markets remain eerily complacent. For the most part, they remain firmly rooted in the nineteenth century, when the march of History and Progress were more optimistic and certain. Although it encounters perturbations and larger corrections, the climb of the Dow Jones continues on an inexorable north-easterly path. …

Abstract: SHORTLY AFTER TAKING office, Chief Justice John Roberts embarked on a campaign within the Court and, unusually, in the press, to revive the tradition of unanimity in Supreme Court decisions. He has spoken of his concern that the Supreme Court is losing its legitimacy in the public's mind because of the frequency of dissenting opinions, arguing that this diminishes the respect and acceptance its decisions receive, and that the Court's public standing is enhanced if its decisions are unanimous, or nearly so. For example, in a lengthy interview with legal journalist Jeffrey Rosen published last year in the Atlantic, he suggested that "the Court is ... ripe for a ... refocus on functioning as an institution, because if it doesn't it's going to lose its credibility and legitimacy as an institution." The chief justice harked back to the early days of the Supreme Court under the leadership of John Marshall who, among other things, led the Court to adopt as consistently as possible the practice of speaking with a single voice. Not infrequently, the voice was that of Marshall himself, but the point is that the Court decided cases unanimously, without dissents and concurrences. The chief justice's campaign is conservative in the strict sense: There can be no dispute that fractionated decisions used to be a rarity and have become commonplace on the Court. Until the early 1940s, there were fewer than ten dissenting opinions for every 100 issued by the Court; after 1941, that figure increased sevenfold, and has remained at that level or higher ever since. The justices' work product increasingly consists more of composing dissents and concurrences than of writing opinions for the Court: until 1941, 80 to 90 percent of all opinions were opinions for the Court; now the number is less than 50 percent. More than a third of its 68 rulings in 2006-07 were decided by a 5-4 margin--and others by less lopsided, but still nonunanimous, votes--with separate opinions proliferating like mushrooms after a summer rain. At the extreme, this proliferation of opinions makes a joke of the Court's core function, "to say what the law is," in Chief Justice Marshall's phrase. Better than any statistics is the following verbatim excerpt from the Supreme Court's reports, published some years ago by the New Yorker, without comment, under the heading "The Jurisprudential Life": Blackmun, J., announced the judgment of the Court and delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Parts III-A, IV, and V, in which Brennan, Marshall, Stevens, and O'Connor, JJ., joined, an opinion with respect to Parts I and II, in which O'Connor and Stevens, JJ., joined, an opinion with respect to Part III-B, in which Stevens, J., joined, and an opinion with respect to Part VI. O'Connor, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment, in Part II of which Brennan and Stevens, JJ., joined. Brennan, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, in which Marshall and Stevens, JJ., joined. Stevens, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, in which Brennan and Marshall, JJ., joined. Kennedy, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part, in which Rehnquist, C. J., and White and Scalia, JJ., joined. This was how the modern Court "decided" a case involving important issues relating to when a Christmas creche could be displayed on public property. In calling for consensus on the Court, Chief Justice Roberts has on his side the overwhelming majority of the people who have served as justices during its history. Indeed, so much was consensus the norm prior to the 1940s that there was a flavor of ethical breach associated with dissent. For example, Canon 19 of the 1924 Canons of Judicial Ethics directed the members of "courts of last resort" to "use effort and self-restraint to promote solidarity of conclusion and the consequent influence of judicial decision. …

Abstract: SINCE ITS INAUGURATION, the 110th Congress and its Democratic majority have been searching for additional revenue to pay for a controversial expansion of the state children's health insurance program (or S-CHIP), increased education subsidies, and costly adjustments to the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) To that end, Congress has considered two bills that increase taxes on private equity firms The Baucus-Grassley bill, S 1624, was introduced on June 14, 2007, and would ensure that publicly traded partnerships providing investment advice pay the corporate tax A week later, Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel and Congressman Sander Levin introduced HR 2834, which would explicitly treat carried interests as "ordinary income," not capital gains Neither of the bills appeared to be attracting enough support, and so on October 25, Congressman Rangel introduced the controversial Tax Reduction and Reform Act of 2007, HR 3970, which would reduce corporate tax and gradually repeal the AMT, among a host of other changes--all paid for by a new surcharge on high-income earners This bill also included the substantive entirety of Rangel's earlier bill, HR 2834, although it did not incorporate the Senate bill None of these bills had been passed in either chamber, but by December 12, both Senate and House had passed a far more modest tax bill, HR 3996, the Temporary Tax Relief Act of 2007 This latter legislation made no changes to private equity taxation, dealing instead with the routine "patching" of the AMT The fundamental problems highlighted by the original Senate and House bills, however, remain unresolved The usual melodrama has accompanied the bills' proposal Proponents cite the 25 private equity managers whose additional tax under the bills could pay 80,000 New York school teachers for three years (1) Another likens the US income distribution to that which preceded the French Revolution (2) Opponents explain how private equity funds benefit pension funds, (3) while others, including "Magic" Johnson, fear a setback for black rights if private equity funds pay more tax (4) The bills are potentially popular Private equity firms employ few people relative to other industries, and publicity surrounding the large incomes of some fund managers has arisen amid a general disquiet at the supposedly rising level of income inequality in the United States But the bills have academic origins too; a widely cited piece by Professor Victor Fleischer has framed the policy debate (5) Because the bills relate to the application of current tax law, as opposed to a new tax or rate change, the usual tax-change protagonists have been conflicted or absent The Business Roundtable and the Financial Services Forum, for instance, have stood on the sidelines, while current and former treasury secretaries and economics professors have publicly disagreed about the bills (6) Moreover, because the bills are complicated--relating to definitions of income, the tax requirements of different business entities, and the role of capital gains tax--many commentators mistakenly conflate the two bills' provisions But they are actually quite different, regardless of their genesis In short, the Senate bill is about taxing businesses, while the House bill is about taxing people (7) This article discusses the provisions of the two bills from an economic perspective, assuming no prior knowledge of private equity Both bills draw attention to the excessive ambiguity and complexity of the US tax code Private equity loophole? BUSINESSES CAN ORGANIZE themselves in different ways Smaller businesses tend to be sole-traders, larger firms partnerships, and the very largest companies (companies traditionally have a legal identity of their own, meaning owners cannot lose more than they have invested) Most people know of these three broad classes, but probably not the wide range of types within each (8) One of these types is known as a "publicly traded partnership" (PTP), or sometimes as a "master limited partnership …

Abstract: THE ELECTION OF Barack Obama as president of the United States marks a dramatic victory for the progressive left in America and a resounding repudiation of George. W. Bush's presidency and the Republican-controlled Congress with which he governed for six years. Obama's election also represents an historic moment for the United States. Many have been celebrating throughout the nation, and for good reason, because America, by electing a black man to the highest office in the land, has taken another impressive stride to overcome the last, lingering legacies of slavery and Jim Crow. To be sure, it would have been better if more progressive had bothered to notice, let alone take pride in, how far their country had come when George. W. Bush--white, southern, and conservative--named in his first term Colin Powell secretary of state and Condoleezza Rice national security advisor, and his second term elevated Rice to secretary of state. But the stirring fact remains that Obama's triumph crowns a half century of steady progress in fulfilling the Declaration of Independence's grand promise of freedom and equality for all, and in realizing the Constitution's aspiration to build a more perfect union through representative government. At the same time, Obama's election reaffirms the reality, frequently denied or derided by progressive ani-American sentiment at home and abroad, that the United States is a land of golden opportunity. But winning elections is one thing. Governing is another. One reason for apprehension about whether Obama and the congressional Democrats are prepared for the enormous power they will exercise is structural. Obama's substantial victory and the Democrat's sizeable gains in the House and Senate mean that they will govern without the benefit of the pressure to accommodate competing positions and compromise with rival principles that comes from divided government, or at least from a robust minority party with a share of responsibility for formulating public policy and making law. The structural temptation for Obama and his party to take their principles to an extreme is especially worrisome given the propensity for extreme positions and principles that the left of late has shown. To be sure, beginning with his breakthrough speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention and echoed in his 2008 Democratic Convention acceptance speech, and his election nigh victory address in Chicago's Grant Park, Obama has frequently presented himself as a pragmatic, post-partisan politician and, with gripping rhetoric, has summoned all Americans, red and blue, to recognize their shared value and cooperated for the common good. But there is little in his record--as community organizer, education foundation chair and board member, Illinois state senator, U.S. senator, and Democratic Party primary candidate--to match his conciliatory words. Perhaps encouragements to moderation will come from other quarters. With President Bush's departure from the White House, Bush hatred, along with its many ugly symptoms, may subside. The constraints of office and the realities brought home by daily intelligence briefings on America's enemies may effectively counsel caution and sobriety. And the centrist Democratic candidates who decisively contributed to victory in 2006 congressional elections and who, with election 2008, now represent a conservative bloc within the Democratic Party, may exercise a restraining influence on the Obama administration. Unfortunately, the likelihood is small that Obama will receive encouragement from the intellectual class to reach out to the elected representatives of the 46 percent of the country who, on November 4, voted for John McCain and Sarah Palin. Dominated by left-of-center partisans, the mainstream media in Election 2008 frequently abandoned its traditional watchdog function, ignoring, deflecting, or suppressing even reasonable criticism of Obama and his running mate, Joe Biden, while pursuing and amplifying even trivial criticisms of McCain and Palin. …