January 10th, 2011 Us and them: The enduring power of ethnic nationalism Americans generally belittle the role

the role of ethnic nationalism in politics Americans also find ethnonationalism discomfiting both intellectually and morally Immigrants to the US usually arrive with a willingness t fit into their new country and reshape their identities accordingly Creation of a peaceful regional order of nation-states has usually been the product of a violent process of ethnic separation History argues that nationalism twice led to war, in 1914 and then again in 1939 In Europe the separatist project has not so much vanished as triumped Ethnonationalism has played a more profound and lasting role in modern history than is commonly understoof, and the process es that led to the dominance of the ethnonational state and the separation of ethnic groups in Europe are likely to reoccur elsewhere Two major ways of thinking about national identity o People who live within a countrys borders are part of the nation, regardless of their ethnic, racial, or religious origins o Hat nations are defined by a shared heritage, which usually includes a common language, a common faith, and a common ethnic ancestry Ethnonationalism draws much of its emotive power from the notion that the members of a nation are part of an extended family When modern states began to form political boundaries and ethnolinguistic boundaries largely coincided in the areas along Europes Atlantic coast Most people at most times have lived in empires, with the nation-state the exception rather than the rule Rise of ethnonationalism was propelled by some of the deepest currents of modernity: o Military competition o Economic growth Speakers of the same language came to share a sense that they belonged together and to define themselves in contrast to other communities By creating a new and direct relationship between individuals and the government, the rise of the modern state weakend individuals traditional bonds to intermediate social units, such as the family, the clan, the guild, and the church Much of the history of the twentieth century Europe has been a drawn-out process of ethnic cleansing and disaggregation WWI was the demise of the three great turn-of-the-century empires, unleashing an explosion of ethnonationalism in the process Nationalist governments openly discriminated in favour of the dominant community Nazi regime tried to reorder the ethnic map of the continent by force Millions of people were expelled from their homes and countries after WW2, with at least the tacit support of the victorious Allies Five million ethnic Germans from the eastern parts of the German Reich fled westward to escape the conquering Red Armypostliberation regimes in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Yugoslavia expelled another seven million Germansthese measures constituted the largest forced population movement in European history Ethnonationalist ideal was largely realized: for the most part, each nation in Europe had its own state, and each state was made up almost exclusively of a single ethnic nationality For much of the developing world, decolonization has meant ethnic disaggregation through the exchange or expulsion of local minorities

As societies in the former colonial world modernizethe force that gave rise to ethnonationalism and ethnic disaggregation in Europe are apt to drive events there, too Important benefits have come about because of ethnic separation Efficiencies of competitive markets tend to increase with the markets size Most of subsequent European history has involved attempts to overcome this and other economic fragmentation, culminating in the EU Triumph of ethnonational politics has meant the victory of traditionally rural groups over more urbanized ones, which possess just those skills desirable in an advanced industrial economy Proved to be a source of cohesion and stability Liberal democracy and ethnic homogeneity are not only compatible; they can be complementary Most dramatic transformation of European ethnic balances in recent decades has come from the immigration of people of Asian, African, and Middle Eastern origin, and here the results have been mixed Ethnonationalism is a direct consequence of key elements of modernization, it is likely to gain ground in societies undergoing such a processit remains one of the most vital but disruptive forces in many parts of the contemporary world More or less subtle forms of ethnonationalism are ubiquitous in immigration policy around the globe Insistence on universalist criteria seems provincial Wealthier and higher achieving regions might try to separate themselves from poorer and lower achieving ones, and distinctive homogenous areas might try to acquire sovereignty courses of action that might provoke violent responses from defenders of the status quo Partion may thus be the most humane lasting solution to such intense communal conflicts Ethnonationalism corresponds to some eduring propensities of the human spirit that are heightened by the process of modern state creation, it is a crucial source of both solidarity and enmity, it will remain for generations

Prisoners of the Caucus North Caucus in Russia prone to attack; experienced largest carnage known to Russia The turbulence between central Russia and these attackers have the potential to ruin the governments legitimacy These attackers were nationalists and targeted Muslims living in Russia Beslan siege: Russias worst episode of carnage Many recent terrorist attacks/bombings in Russia from 2004-present; situation is getting worse regardless of rehabilitation acts by the government such as the Chechen wars, intelligence agents sent in from Moscow etc North Caucus in Russia experiences many acts of violence due to internal political problems Fear that the North Caucus will disrupt the legitimacy of the government; believe that if Kremlin cannot contain the attacks of these Russian nationalist groups, they will eventually take over the government Attack against Muslims living in Russia Upsurge in violence disrupting Russias move into democratic politics due to avenging victims, punishing terrorists etc Hindering military enforcement/making cooperation with North Korea and Iran difficult: Increased nationalism Increased authoritarianism Russia is ultimately experiencing major problems with accepting multiculturalism

Russia wanted to build political structures over looking the Caucus to restore order but there were geographical problems hindering this plan as well as the absence of true governmental powers due to the monarchy in place In the 1920s there was turmoil in the Caucus as well leading into the Communist Revolution of Russia and WWII; always rebelling against the government in this area Caucus experienced many cases of oppression by Russia authorities causing the political unrest and therefore rebellions against government that commenced in this part of Russia Russian authorities tried to pay the rebels in the North Caucus into not rebelling against the government because they were a legitimate threat, but it was a fragile deal because there was no true rehabilitation so once the next generation came in, they wanted to break the deal and rebel again The people of the North Caucus are unreliable due to their religious beliefs, and their deference in culture in comparison to the rest of Russia The North Caucus is not the responsibility of Russia until it affects Russians Unemployment and corruption as the main sources of instability according to Medvedev only works if Moscow gives power use in ways that it would increase public confidence When the leaders turn out corrupt and do things incorrectly, this allows for even more instability of government than before the attempt at rehabilitation Local leaders in politics try to keep themselves in government for as long as possible and do this by any means possible allowing for corruption The local leaders are from peripheries so they prioritize their own needs which not always tie into the center Corruption, unemployment and poverty as the main sources of corruption and unrest Rise of radical Islam is seen as the single root cause for the upheaval and violence in the North Caucasus New president brought in through assassinations showing the illegitimacy of the North Caucus governmental structure; governmental leaders that are not liked are vitally threatened North Caucus stopped Moscow from sending in help because it angered the nationalistic people within this state even more Corruption within Russia wants to oppress the people within the North Caucus by targeting them if they travel abroad and are successful because they are somewhat jealous; many of the attacks made on the Caucus is to avenge deaths or bullying on people dear to them by Russia security forces Nationalism as negative North Caucus is somewhat detached from Russia due to their security problems and the fact that it is so out of control, there is no ruling Will the North Caucus ever truly become part of Russia in the sense of culture and ruling? January 17th, 2011

January 24th, 2011

Weber: Religious Affiliation and Social Stratification Business leaders and owners of capital, as well as the higher grades of skilled labour, and even more the higher technically and commercially trained personnel of modern enterprises, are overwhelmingly Protestant. (1)

Wherever capitalism, at the time of its great expansion, has had a free hand to alter the social distribution of the population in accordance with its needs, and to determine its occupational structure. (1) Participation in the above economic functions usually involves some previous ownership of capital, and generally an expensive education; often both. (1) Majority of the wealthy towns went over to Protestantism in the sixteenth century the results of that circumstance favour the Protestants even today in their struggle for economic existence. (1) Emancipation from economic traditionalism appear, no doubt, to be a factor which would greatly strengthen the tendency to doubt the sanctity of the religious tradition, as of all traditional authorities. (1) Reformation meantsubstitution of a new form of control for the previous one. (1) Rule of Calvinismmost absolutely unbearable form of ecclesiastical control. (2) Reformers complained of in those areas of high economic development was not too much supervision of life on the part of the Church, but too little. (2) Greater participation of Protestants in the positions of ownership and managementresult of the greater material wealth they have inherited. (2) Differencein the type of higher education which Catholic parents, as opposed to Protestant, give their children. (2) Catholic prefer the sort of training which humanistic Gymnasium affords. (2) Among journeymenthe Catholics show a stronger propensity to remain in their crafts, that is they more often become master craftsmen, whereas the Protestants are attracted to a larger extent into the factories in order to fill the upper ranks skilled labour and administrative positions. (3) national or religious minorities which are in a position of subordination to a group of rulers are likelyto be driven with peculiar force into economic activity. (3) True of the Poles in Russia and Eastern Prussiatrue of the Huguenots in France under Louis XIVthe Jew for two thousand years. (3) The Protestantsboth as a ruling classes and as ruled, both as majority and as minority, have shown a special tendency to develop economic rationalism which cannot be observed to the same extent among Catholics either in the one situation or in the other. (3) One might be tempted to express the difference by saying that the greater otherworldliness of Catholicism, the ascetic character of its highest ideals, must have brought up its adherent to a greater indifference toward the good things of this world (3) Catholic is quieter, having less of the acquisitive impulse; he prefers a life of the greatest possible security, even with a smaller income, to a life of risk and excitement, even though it may bring the chance of gaining honour and riches. The proverb says jokingly, either eat well or sleep well. In the pre sent case the Protestant prefers to eat well, the Catholic to sleep undisturbed. (4) Catholics of France are, in their lower ranks, greatly interested in the enjoyment of life, in the upper directly hostile to religion. Similarly, the Protestants of Germany are today absorbed in worldly economic life, and their upper ranks are most indifferent to religion. (4) Connection of a religious way of life with the most intensive development of business acumen among those sects whose otherworldliness is proverbial as their wealth, especially the Quakers and the Mennonites. (5) In East Prussia Fredrick William I tolerated the Mennonites as indispensable to industry, in spite of their absolute refusal to perform military service. (6)

Spirit of hard work, of progressthe awakening of which is inclined to ascribe to Protestantism, must not be understood, as there is tendency to do, as joy of living nor in any other sense as connected with the Enlightenment. (6)

Chapter 2 Money is of the prolific, generating nature. Money can beget money (2) Nothing contributes more to the raising of a young man in the world than punctuality and justice in all his dealings Philosophy of avarice appears to be the ideal of the honest man of recognized credit, and above all the idea of a duty of the individual toward the increase of his capital, which is assumed as an end in itself. (3) Wanted to make money as long as he could (3) Spirit of modern capitalism (3) Honesty is useful, because it assures credit; so are punctuality, industry, frugality, and that is the reason they are virtues (4) According to Franklin, those virtues, like all others, are only in so far virtues as they are actually useful to the individual, and the surrogate of mere appearance always sufficient when it accomplishes the end view. It is a conclusion which is inevitable for strict utilitarianism (4) Summumbonum of his ethic, the earnin more and more money, combined with the strict avoidance of all spontaneous enjoyment of life, is above all completely devoid of any eudaemonistic, not to say hedonistic, admixture (4) Man is dominated by the making of money, by acquisition as the ultimate purpose of his life. Economic acquisition is no longer subordinated to man as the means for the satisfaction of his material needs. This reversal of what we should cal the natural relationship, so irrational from a nave point of view is evidently as definetly a leading principle of capitalism as it is foreign to all peoples not under capitalistic influence. (4) Earning of money within the modern economic order is, so long as it is done legally, the result and the expression of virtue and proficiency in a calling. (4) Social ethic of capitalistic culturefundamental basis of it. (5) Forces the individual, in so far as he is involved in the system of market relationships, to conform to capitalistic rules of action (5) Educated and selects the conomic subjects which it needs through a process of economic survival of the fittest (5) Peculiarly calculating sort of profit seeking in New England, as distinguished from other parts of America, as early as 1632.(5) New England colonies were founded by preachers and seminary graduates with the help of small bourgeois, craftsmen and yeomen, for religious reasons. In this case the casual relation is certainly the reverse of that suggested by the materialistic standpoint (6) Spirit of capitalismhad to fight its way to supremacy against a world of hostile forces (6) The greed of the Chinese Mandarin, the old Roman aristocrat, or the modern peasant, can stand up to any comparison. (6) Universal reign of absolute unscrupulousness in the pursiuit of selfish interests by the making of money has been a specific characterisitic of precisely those countries whose bourgeois-capitalistic development, measured according to Occidental standards, has remained backward. (6) At all periods of history, wherever it was possible, there has been ruthless acquisition, bound to, no ethical norms whatever. (7)

capitalistic acquisition as an adventure has been at home in all types of economic society which have known trade with the use of money and which have offered it opportunities, through commenda,, farming of taxes, State loans, financing of wars, ducal courts and office holders (7) Now just this attitude was one of the strongest inner obstacles which the adaption of men to the conditions of an ordered bourgeois-capitalistic economy has encountered everywhere (7) Opponent with which the spirit of capitalismattitude and reaction to new situations which we may designate as traditionalism (7) Oppurtunity of earning more was less attractive than that of working less (8) efficiency of labour decreases with a wage which is physiologically insufficient, which may in the long run even mean a survival of the unfit. (9) Low wages fail even from a purely business point of view wherever it is a question of producing goods which require any sort of skilled labour, or the use of expensive machinery which is easily damaged, or in general wherever any great amount of sharp attention or of initiative is required. (9) Labour mustbe performed as if it were an absolute end in itself, a calling (9) Backward traditional form of labour is today very often exemplified by women workersthey are almost entirely unable and unwilling to give u methods of work inherited or once learned in favour of more efficient ones, to adapt themselves to new methods, to learn and to concentrate their intelligence, or even to use it at all. (9) it was by no means the capitalistic entrepreneurs of the commercial aristocracy, who were either the sole of the predominant bearers of the attitude we have here called the spirit of capitalism. It was much more the rising strata of the lower industrial middle classes. (11) Leisureliness was suddenly destroyed, and often entirely without any essential change in the form of organization, such as the transition to a unified factory, to mechanical weaving, etc. (12) Turned them from peasants into labourers (12) Ability to free oneself from the common tradition, a sort of liberal enlightenment, seems likely to be the most suitable basis for such a business mans successany relationship between religious beliefs and conduct is generally absent, and where any exists, at least in Germany, it tends to be of the negative sort. (13) business with its continuous work has become a necessary part of their lives (13) He gets nothing out of his wealth for himself, except the irrational sense of having done his job well. (14) Whoever does not adapt his manner of life to the conditions of capitalistic success must go under (15) Development of the spirit of capitalism is best understood as part of the development of rationalism as a whole, and could be deduced from the fundamental position of rationalism on the basic problems of life. (16)

Chapter 5 Wealth as such is a great danger; its temptations never end and its pursuit is not only senseless as compared with the dominating importance of the Kingdom of God, but it is morally suspect. (2) Hence he permitted them to employ their means profitably (2)

Real moral objection is to relaxation in the security of possession, the enjoyment of wealth with the consequence of idelness and the temptations of the flesh, above all of distraction from the putusit of a righteous life. (2) Saints everlasting rest is in the next world; on earth man must, to be certain of his state of grace, do the works of hum who sent him, as long as it is yet dayactivity serves to increase the glory of God (2) Waste of time is thus the first and in principle the dealiest of sins (2) Inactive contemplation is also valueless, or even directly reprehensible if it is at the expense of ones daily work (2) Baxters principal work is dominated by the continually repeated, often almost passionate preaching of hard, continuous bodily or mental labour. (2) He who will not work shall not eatUnwillingness to work is symptomatic of the lack of grace. (3) Wealth does not exempt anyone from the unconditional command. Even the wealthy shall not cat without working, for even though they do not need to labour to support their own needs, there is Gods commandment which they, like the poor, must obey. (3) Gods commandment to the individual to work for the divine glory. This seemingly subtle difference had far-reaching psychological consequences, and became connected with a further development of the providential interpretation of the economic order which had begun in scholasticism (3) Differentiation of men into the classes and occupation established through historical development became for Luther, as we have seen, a direct result of the divine will. The perseverance of the individual in the place and within the limits which God had assigned to him was a religious duty (4) The specialization of occupations leads, since it makes the development of skill possible, to a quantitative and qualitative improvement in production, and thus serves the common good, which is identical with the good of the greatest possible number. (4) A man without a calling thus lacks the systematic, methodical character which is, as we have seen, demanded by worldly asceticism (4) What God demands is not labour in itself, but rational labour in a calling. (4) If that God, whose hand the Puritan sees in all the occurrences of life, shows one of His elect a chance of profit, he must do it with a purposetaking advantage of opportunity. (5) Wealth is thus bad ethically only in so far as it is a temptation to idleness and sinful enjoyment of life, and its acquisition is bad only when it is with the purpose of later living merrily and without care. But as performance of duty in a calling is not only morally permissible, but actually enjoined. (5) To wish to be poor wasthe same as wishing to be unhealthy (5) The Oriental quietism, which appears in several of the finest verses of the Psalms and in the Proverbs, was interpreted away, just as Baxter did with the traditionalistic tinge of the passage in the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians, so important for the idea of the calling. (6) Jews stood on the side of the politically and speculatively oriented adventurous capitalism; their ethos waspariah-capitalism. But Puritanism carried the ethos of the rational organization of capital and labour. It took over from the Jewish ethic only what was adapted to this purpose (7) asceticism turned with all its force against one thing: the spontaneous enjoyment of life and all it had to offer (7) It attitude was thus suspicious and often hostile to the aspects of culture without any immediate religious value. (8)

Great men of the Puritan movement were thoroughly steeped in the culture of the Renaissance. (8) Puritanism included a world of contradictions, and that the instinctive sense of eternal greatness in art was certainly stronger among its leaders than in the atmosphere of the Cavaliers. (9) Worldly Protestant asceticism, as we may recapitulate up to this point, acted powerfully against the spontaneous enjoyment of possessions; it restricted consumption, especially of luxuries. (9) Asceticism was the power which ever seeks the good but ever creates evil what was evil in its sense was possession and its temptations (10) Asceticism looked upon the pursuit of wealth as an end in itself as highly reprehensible; but the attainment of it as a fruit of labour in a calling was a sign of Gods blessing. And even more important: the religious valuation of restless, continuous, systematic work in a worldly calling, as the highest means to asceticism, and at the same time the surest and most evident proof of rebirth and genuine faith, must have been the most powerful conceivable lever for the expansion of that attitude toward life which we have here called the spirit of capitalism. (10) When the limitation of consumption is combined with this release of acquisitive activity, the inevitable practical result is obvious: accumulation of capital through ascetic compulsion to save. (10) Puritan outlookonly consistent influence in the development of that life. It stood as the cradle of the modern economic man. (11) religion must necessarily produce both industry and frugality, and these cannot but produce riches. (12) Intensity of the search for the Kingdom of God commenced gradually to pass over into sober economic virtue; the religious roots died out slowly, giving way to utilitarian worldliness (12) Bourgeois business man, as long as he remained within the bounds of formal correctness, as long as his moral conduct was spotless and the use to which he put his wealth was not objectionable, could follow his pecuniary interests as he would and feel that he was fulfilling a duty in doing so. (13) Ascetic literature of almost all denominations is saturated with the idea that faithful labour, even at low wages, on the part of those whom, like offers no other opportunities, is highly pleasing to God. (14) Treatment of labour as a calling became as characteristic of the modern worker as the corresponding attitude toward acquisition of the business man (14) This attitude played a large and decisive part in the development of the industries which grew up in spite of and against the authority of the State. (14) The modern man is in general, even with the best will, unable to give religious ideas a significance for culture and national character which they deserve. (16)

January 31st, 2011 Friedrich List: Political and Cosmopolitical Economy Quesnay (from whom the idea of universal free trade originated) was the first who extended his investigations to the whole human race, without taking into consideration the idea of the nation (48)

Cosmopolitical Economy: science which teaches how the entire human race may attain prosperity; in opposition to political economy, or that science which limits its teaching to the inquiry how a given nation can obtain (under the existing conditions of the world) prosperity, civilisation, and power, by means of agriculture, industry, and commerce. (48) Advocates of free trade ignored the concept of nations We areof the opinion that political economyshould also be developed scientifically, and that it is always better to cal lthings by their proper names than to give them significations which stand opposed to the true import of words (50) [Free market economic theories] assumes the existence of a universal union and a state of perpetual peace, and deduces therefrom the great benefits of free trade. (51) All examples which history can show are those in which the political union has led the way, and the commercial union has followed. Not a single instance can be adduced in which the latter has taken the lead, and the former has grown up from it. (51) It is not true that population increases in a larger proportion than production of the means of subsistence (52) Nature will not allow industry, civilization, wealth, and power to fall exclusively to the lot of a single nation, or that a large portion of the globe suitable for cultivation should be merely inhabited by wild animals, and that the largest portion of the human race should sunk in savagery, ignorance, and poverty. (53) All England woud thus be developed into one immense manufacturing cityIn time a world of English states would be formed, under the presidency of the mother state, in which the European Continental nations would be lost as unimportant, unproductive races (53) In order to allow freedom of trade to operate naturally, the less advanced nations must first be raised by artificial measures to that stage of cultivation to which the English nation has been artificially elevated. (54)

Alexander Hamilton: Classical Mercantilism Early Mercantilist political economy boldly asserts the centrality of politics. (35) Hamilton is most concerned with national economic development. (35) Although he recognizes the importance of agriculture, he sees industry as providing additional dynamism to the American economy. (35) Diversificationwill lessen the nations vulnerability to external economic forces (35) The state, Hamilton argues, must take an active role in developing a manufacturing economy. (35) The state must promote and protect emerging U.S. industries, because this is common practice in the competitive international system (36) Hamilton thus draws on key mercantilist concepts (i.e., national security and selfreliance) but modifies other (the significance of a trade surplus). (36)

Report on Manufactures The utility of Artificers of Manufacturers, towards promoting an increase of productive industry, is apparent. (39) Manufacturing pursuits are susceptible in a great degree of the application of machinery, than those of Agriculture. (39) TO maintain between the recent establishments of one country and the long matured establishments of another country, a competition upon equal terms, both as to quality and price, is in most cases impracticable. The disparity, in the one or in the other, or in both,

must necessarily be so considerable as to forbid a successful rivalship, without the extraordinary aid and protection of government. (42) The undertakers of a new manufacture have to contend not only with natural disadvantages of a new undertaking, but with the gratuities and remunerations which other governments bestow. To be enabled to contend with success, it is evident that the interference and aid of their own government are indispensible. (42) In a national view, a temporary enhancement of price must always be well compensated by permanent reduction of it (43) Not only the wealth, but the independence and security of a country, appear to be materially connected with the prosperity of manufactures (44) Every nation, with a view to those great objects, ought to endeavour to possess within itself all the essentials of national supply. These comprise the means of Subsistence, habitation, clothing, and defence. (44) Possible government acts: o Protecting duties o Prohibitions of Rival Articles, or duties o Prohibitions of the exportation of the materials of manufactures o Pecuniary Bounties o Premiums o Exemption of the material of manufactures from Duty o Drawbacks of the duties which are imposed on the materials of manufactures o The encouragement of new inventions and discoveries, at home, and the introduction into the US of such as may have been made in other countries; particularly those which relate to machinery o Judicious regulations for the inspection of manufactured commodities o The facilitating of pecuniary remittances from place to place o The facilitating of the transportation of commodities

G. John Ikenberry: Creating Yesterdays New World Order: Keynesian New Thinking and the Anglo-American Postwar Settlement - Agreements reached by the United States and Britain during the war and ratified at Bretton Woods in 1944 marked a decisive move toward openness a bit astonishing given and ravages and dislocation of war and competing postwar interests (57) This group of British and American experts intervened at a particularly fluid moment in history to help the British and American political establishments identify their interests, therby creating the bases of postwar economic cooperation. (58) this argument involves several claims: o (1)American officials at the State Department, who wanted to reconstruct an open trading system, and British officials in the wartime cabinet, who wanted to ensure full employment and economic stability, and who, as a consequence, contemplated the continuation of the imperial preference system and bilateral trading (58) o (2) new thinking of these experts transformed the way people thought of or framed the issue of postwar economic order and, as a consequence, changed the outcome (59) o (3) What ultimately mattered in the ratification of the Bretton Woods agreement was not that it was based on policy ideas advanced by an expert community but that the policy ideas resonated with the larger political environment. These ideas ultimately carried the day because they created the conditions for larger

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political coalitions within and between governments coalitions that themselves reflected a more general postwar reworking of socio-political order in Western capitalist democracies (59) Shared view that past economic failures could be avoided by innovative postwar economic arrangements, led their respective governments toward agreement by identifying a set of common Anglo-American interests that were not clearly seen by others. This episode reveals that particular historical moments can provide expert groups wielding new policy approaches and philosophy with opportunities to decisively shape a governments conception of the national interest. (59) Uncertainty of war and its aftermath provided opportunities for policy specialists to shape the resolution of debates, particularly those that involved complex issues of monetary policy. (59) The postwar economic order reflected the efforts of the United States, as an ascending hegemonic power, to build a system congenial with its interests. (60) Why did an American government with a State Department that championed laissezfaire and free trade end up backing a system more concerned with safeguarding the emerging welfare state? (62) The underlying structure of interests set the broad parameters around which an agreement could be built, but they were not imperatives that inevitably produced the agreement (63) A hemispheric bloc would not be sufficient to protect American economic and geopolitical interests. (63) Attack on Pearl harbour only strengthened this evolving view: that the United States would need to work with Great Britain to reintegrate as much of the world economy as possible. (63) Keynsian economists within the National Resources Planning Board, were interested in an expanded role for government in the management of the economy in the service of full employment and social welfare. (66) In both Britain and the United States, most of the ideas that made their way into Bretton Woods agreement were widely shared among what could be called liberal-minded international economists, many of whom were Keynesians, and whose views reflected, more than anything else, lessons learned from recent historical experience as well as the ongoing evolution in professional economic thought. (69) Common belief in the desirability of currency stability and the convertibility of currencies. (69) American and British experts agreed that some form of international reserves would need to be available as short-term assistance so as to allow expansionary solutions to balance-of-payments deficits (70) New techniques of international economic management should be devised that could reconcile the movement of capital and trade with policies that promoted stable and fullemployment economiesneed for new levels of international management and supervision of national monetary and trade policies (70) International investment, capital movements, exchange rate parities, and commodity prices were all potentially legitimate means for solving economic problems. (71) Innovations in economic and social policy allowed politicians to promise more to the electorate, but they also would need to deliver the socioeconomic goods. (71) economic health of every country is a proper matter of concern to all its neighbours, near and distant (72)

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Overriding view of British economists in government during the war was that social welfare and economic management must dictate postwar international economic plans, rather than the other way around. (74-75) Keynes argued that to maintain economies in balance without great excesses of imports or exports, countries in the postwar period would need exchange controls, precisely the types of measures that seemed to be prohibited by Article VII (76) Clearing Union would have the authority to create and manage an international currency that would be used to manage intercountry balances (77) The embedded liberal ideas of the Anglo-American monetary experts paved the way for agreement between the two governments (78) British were looking for a middle ground between bilateralism (and the imperial preference system) and laissez-faire (79) In both Britain and the United States, the onset of war stimulated and widened political debate on the future of world economic order. (79) In Britain and the United States the Bretton Woods proposals represented a middle way that generated support from both the conservative free-traders and the new prophets of economic planning. (80) British and American officials differed over the desirable level of trade openness and national autonomy. (80) United States wanted to move immediately to lower tariff barriers and re-establish a multilateral trading system. Britain, concerned with its fragile economy and trade imbalances and not wanting to lose national control over economic management, resisted such moves. (80-81) New thinking of British and American treasury officials served to break this stalemate by transformed the choices for postwar economic, and consequently debate over it. (81) Agreement on postwar monetary order was fostered by the efforts of a group of monetary experts who, despite the many differences between them, shared a set of evolving ideas about the desirable organization of monetary relations and the world economic order. (82) Free-trade-oriented State Department (83) It was the British (Keynes in particular) who were most intent on finding a middle ground (84) Policy ideas matter because they provide opportunities for elites to pursue their interests in more effective ways. This may be the most profound way in which ideas matter. (84) Full employment, economic stabilization, and social welfare these were words that repeatedly found their way into discussions of postwar economic order during the 1940s (85)

February 7th, 2011 Lenin: Imperialism as a Special Stage of Capitalism Imperialism emerged as the development and direct continuation of the fundamental attributes of capitalism in general (101) Monopoly is the exact opposite of free competition; but we have seen the latter being transformed into monopoly before our very eyes (101) Imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism (101) Imperialism is capitalism in that stage of development in which the dominance of monopolies and fianc apital has established itself; in which the export of capital has

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acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun; in which the division of all territories of the globe among the great capitalist powers has been completed (102) Imperialism is, in general, a striving towards violence and reaction. (103) The characteristic feature of imperialism isfinance capital (103) The characteristic feature of imperialism is precisely that it strives to annex not only agricultural regions, but even highly industrialized regionsbecause an essential feature of imperialism is the rivalry between a number of great powers in the striving for hegemony (103) Evolution is proceeding towards monopoly (104) [R. Calwer] divides the world into five main economic areas as follows: 1) Central Europe (the whole of Europe eith the exception of Russia and Great Britain); 2) Great Britain; 3) Russia; 4) Eastern Asia; 5) America (105) Three states which dominate the world: Germany, Great Britain, the United States (105) [T]he development of railways has been more rapid in the colonies and in the independent (and semi-dependent) states of Asia and America (106) Capitalism is growing with the greatest rapidity in the colonies and in overseas countries (106)

Peter B. Evans: Predatory, Developmental, and Other Apparatuses: A Comparative Political Economy Perspective on the Third World State The state bureaucrat, strangling the golden age of entrepreneurship and lining his pockets with unproductive rents, has again become the central villain (562) That incumbents sometimes use the state apparatus to extract and distribute unproductive rents is undeniable. That all states perform certain functions indispensable to economic transformation is equally so. That both characterisitics are randomly distributed across states is very unlikely, yet we have only a hazy sense of the range of variation, to say nothing of its causes. (562) Some states may extract such large amounts of otherwise investable surplus and provide so little in the way of collective goods in return that they do indeed impede economic transformation. It seems reasonable to call these states predatory (562) Other states, however, are able to foster long-term entrepreneurial perspectives among private elites by increasing incentives to engage in transformative investments and lowering the risks involved in such investments. They may not be immune to rent seeking or to using some of the social surplus for the ends of incumbents and their friends rather that those of the citizenry as a whole, but on balance, the consequences of their actions promote rather than imeding transformation. They are legitimately considered developmental states (563) Balance between predatory and developmental activities is not clear-cut but varies over time, and depends on what kind of activities are attempted (563) Neoclassical econonmics always admitted that the existence of the state is essential for economic growth, but the essential state was a minimal state, restricted largely, if not entirely, to protecting individual rights, persons and property, and enforcing voluntarily negotiated private contract (563) Public choice version of the state makes no prejorative assumptions about stupidity, traditional attitudes, or lack of expertise within the state apparatus. To the contrary, it assumes only that incumbents in public office (564)

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It is hypothesized that competition for entry into government service is, in part, a competition for rents (564) Symbiotic relationship for entry into government service is, in part, a competition for rents (564) As states expand their size, their range of functions, and the amount of resources they control, the proportion of economic activity that becomes incorporated into rental havens will increase correspondingly and economic efficiency and dynamism will decline. (564) Sphere of state action should be reduced to the minimum, and bureaucratic control should be replaced by market mechanisms wherever possible. (564) Neoutilitarian vision captures a significant aspect of the functioning of most statesrent seeking conceptualized more primitively as corruption has always been a well-known facet of the operation of Third World states. (564) The neoutilitarian assumption that state policies reflect vested interests in society partially recaptures some of Marxs original insights into biases likely to characterize state policy. (565) Even the minimal state requires that incumbents redefine individual aims in ways that motivate them to pursue corporate goals (565) Falling back on ideology and legitimacy may not suffice to solve the problem, but it does acknowledge that a vision of the state built only on a model of individual maximizers joined by exchange relations is not adequate (565) Neoutilitarians see any kind of state intervention on behalf of economic transformation as likely to have the perverse effect of impeding the very transformations desired. (566) If less is good and least is best, than anything that diminishes the ability of the state to act may be a good thing. (566) neoutilitarian view seems to come closest to that of the structural Marxists (566) Scholarship, which goes back at least to List incluce some ardent defenders of the proposition that a determined and effective state apparatus is an essential ingredient in successful industrialization. White and Wade argue, for example, that the phenomenon of successful late development should be understoodas a process in which states have played a strategic role in taming domestic and international market forces and harnessing them to a national economic interest. (566) Polanyi reminded us that Smiths natural propensity to truck and barter had not sufficied to produce the rise of the market in England, Polanyi argued The road to the free market was opened and kept open by an enormous increase in continuous, centrally organizaed and controlled interventionism. (567) Weberargued that the operation of large-scale capitalist enterprise depended on the availability of the kind of order that only a modern bureaucratic state could provide. (567) Webers bureaucrats were concerned only with carrying out their assignments and contributing to the fulfilment of the goals of the apparatus as a whole (567) The states ability to support markets and capitalist accumulation depended on the bureaucracy being a corporately coherent entity in which individuals see furtherance of corporate goals as the best means of maximizing their individual self-interest. (567) Weber saw construction of a solid authoritative framework as a necessary prerequisite to the operation of markets (567) Late industrializers confronting production technologies with capital requirements in excess of what private markets were capable of amassing, were forced to rely on the

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power of the state to mobilize the necessary resources. (568) (Gerscenkrons model, state plays active role) The crux of the problem faced by late developers is that institutions allowing large risks to be spread across a wide network of capital holders do not exist, and individual capitalists are neither able nor interested in taking them on. Under these circumstances the state must serve as surrogate entrepreneur. (568) If maximizing induced decision-making is the key as Hirschman argues it is, then the states role involves a high level of responsiveness to private capital. (568) For the insulated state to be effective, the nature of a project of accumulation and the means of implementing it must be readily apparent. (569) Zaire is, in short, a textbook case of the sort of predatory state we should expect to be pervasive if neoutilitarian logic held (570) Most descriptions of the Zairian state seem to vindicate Weber. Callaghy emphasizes its patrimonial qualities the mixture of traditionalism and arbitrariness that Weber argued retards capitalist development (570) One of the most striking aspects of the Zairian state is the extent to which the invisible hand of the market dominates administrative behaviour, again almost as a caricature of the neoutilitarian image of how state apparatuses are likely to work. (570) Personalism and plundering at the top destroys any possibility of rule-governed behaviour in the lower levels of the bureaucracy, giving individual maximization free rein. (570) Mobutu provides only a weak test of the limits to which individual maximization can be allowed to rule without undermining even the repressive apparatus necessary for regime survival (571) Zaire confirms our initial suspicion that it is not bureaucracy that impedes development so much as the lack of capacity to behave like a bureaucracy, but it poses some problems for conventional definitions of state autonomy. (571) Autonomy is a necessary prerequisite for effective state action. (571) Combination of weak internal organiztion and individualized external ties produces an incoherent absolutist domination that in no way enhances the states transformative capacity. (571) By the end of the 1970s, the economic success of the major East Asian NICs Taiwan and Korea was increasingly interpreted as depending in important ways on the active involvement of the state. (571) Central role of the state in Koreas rapid industrialization. (572) None of these states are paragons in virtue. In certain periods their regimes have appeared more predatory than developmental. (572) In the capital-scarce years following World War II, the Japanese state acted as a surrogate for a missing capital market while at the same time helped to induce transformative investment decisions. (572) The willingness of state financial institutions to back industrial debt/equity ratios at levels unheard of in the West was a critical ingredient in the expansion of new industries. (572) The states centrality to the provision of new capital also allowed it to implement industrial rationalization and industrial structure policy (572) MITI, given its role in the approval of investment laons from the Japan Development Bank, its authority over foreign currency allocation for industrial purposes and licenses to import foreign technology, its ability to provide tax breaks, and its capacity to articulate administrative guidance cartels that would regulate competition in an industry, was in a perfect position to maximize induced decision-making (572)

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Japans startling postwar economic growth occurred in the presence of a powerful, talented and prestige-laden economic bureaucracy. (572) There is clearly a Weberian aspect to the Japanese developmental state (573) Individual maximization must take place via conformity to bureaucratic rules rather than via exploitation of individual opportunities presented by the invisible hand (573) All descriptions of the Japanese state emphasize the dispensability of informal networks, both internal and external, to the states functioning. (573) Overall result is a kind of reinforced Weberianism, in which the non-bureaucratic elements of bureaucracy reinforce the formal organizational structure in the same way that Durkheims non-contractual elements of contract reinforce the market (573) Centrality of external ties has led some to argue that the states effectiveness emerges not from its own inherent capacity but from the complexity and stability of its interaction with market player (574) MITIs relative autonomy is what allows it to address the collective action problems of private capital, helping capital as a whole to reach solutions that would be hard to attain otherwise, even within the highly organizaed Japanese industrial system. The embedded, which is precisely the mirror image of the incoherent absolutist domination of the predatory state, is the key to the developmental states effectiveness. (574) WWII and its aftermath provided all of them with highly unusual societal environments. Traditional agrarian elites were decimated, industrial groups were disorganized and undercapitalized, and foreign capital was channelled through the state apparatus. Thus, what were, in terms of domestic dynamics, largely exogenous events qualitatively enhanced the autonomy of the state. The combination of historically accumulated bureaucratic capacity and conjuncturally generated autonomy put these state apparatuses in a very exceptional position. (575) Commitment to industrialization motivated attempts to promote the growth of local industrial capital. Their exceptional autonomy allowed the state to dominate the formation of the ties that bound capital and the state together (575) Private capital has become less dependent on the resources provided by the state and the relative dominance of the state diminished. (575) For nonelite social actors making new demands on the state, both existing forms of embeddedness and the existing insulation of the bureaucracy are likely to be seen as disadvantages rather than advantages (576) Most developing states offer combination of Zairian kleptopatrimonialism and East Asian embedded autonomy.(576) Difficulty that Brazil has experienced in instituting meritocratic recruitment procedures that approximate the Japanese or Korean ones, even in the temporary period. (576-577) Brazilian state is known as a massive [source of jobs], populated on the basis of connection rather than competence and correspondingly inept in its developmental efforts (577) The BNDE (National Development Bank), favoured especially by Kubitschek as an instrument of his developmentalism in the 1950s, was, at least until recently, a good example of a pocket efficieny. Unlike most of Brazils bureaucracy, the BNDE offered a clear career path, developmental duties and an ethic of public service (577) Because the BNDE was a major source of long-term investment loans, its professionalism was a stimulus to improving performance in other sectors. (577) As long as these pockets [of efficieny] are surrounded by a sea of traditional clientelistic norms, they are dependent on the personal protection of individual presidents. (577-578)

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It is a structure that not only makes policy coordination difficult, but encourages resort to personalistic solutions. As Schneider puts it, personalism is now made indispensible by bureaucratic fragmentation (578) just as the internal structure of the Brazilian state apparatus limits its capacity to replicate the performance of the East Asian developmental states, the character of its embeddedness makes it harder to construct a project of industrial elites. (578) rather than being able to focus on its relationship with industrial capital, the state has always had to simultaneously contend with traditional elites threatened by the conflictual transformation of rural class relations. (578-9) Lack of a stable bureaucratic structure makes it harder to establish regularized ties with the private sector of the administrative guidance sort, and pushes public-private interaction into individualized channels. (579) The structure and operation of the Brazilian state should prevent it from fulfilling even minimal government functions (579) The Brazilian state has in fact been entrepreneurially effective in a variety of industrial areas, ranging from creation of infrastructure to the installation of the automotive industry (579) Brazils state-owned steel companies have no only increased local capacity sevenfold over the course of the last 20 years, but produced steel at internationally competitive costs and enabled the country to become a net exporter (580) These successes are, as we would expect, found in areas where the immediately involved state organizations had exceptional coherence and capacity. In areas of success, more coherent state organization also enabled a more institutionally effective set of linkages with the private sector, with results akin to the embedded autonomy of the developmental state. (580) Difference between the Brazilian state and the archetypal developmental state is that embedded autonomy is a partial rather than a global attribute in the Brazilian case. (580) most effective states are characterized by embedded autonomy, which joins welldeveloped, bureaucratic internal organization with dense public-private ties. In the least effective states, the mirror image incoherent absolutist domination combines undisciplined internal structures with external ties ruled by the invisible hand. Intermediate states occasionally approximate embedded autonomy, but not sufficiently to give them the transformative capacity of developmental states. (581) East Asian developmental states have followed Geschenkronian/Hirschmanian paths in their strategies to a striking degree. (581) Neoutilitarian claims that a state run by a predatory monster are plausible, but it is patently false that some natural law of human behavior dictates that states are invariably constructed on this basis. (582) A differentiated view of states suggests that policy should be two pronged, aimed at increasing the selectivity of taks undertaken by the state apparatus but devoting equal attention to reforms that will help reconstruct state apparatuses themselves. (583) The idea of embedded autonomy provides a good illustration. It grew out of previous work on the concepts of autonomy and capacity and by several excellent studies of the social context of the developmental state in Japan. It seems to help summarize difference between developmental states and intermediate cases like Brazil. (583)

February 14th, 2011

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February 28th, 2011 Life is unfair: Inequality in the World Average family in the USA is 60 times richer than average family in Ethiopia; this rate has risen dramatically from the 1970s to what it is today The wealth gap between the poor and the rich is very wide The loss of communism has made this gap ever widening in Eastern Europe and Latin America Democracy as a vicious circle of inequality and injustice due to the fact that it gives capitalists an upper hand over the laborers creating a widening wage gap that allows a low standard of living for laborers Democracy as the cause of poor distribution of wealth: communism better? Technology as a contributor to inequality due to the fact that it is bought, created and used by the wealthy and the educated; makes income gaps wider The poor are at a disadvantage because to get a good job, you need a good education which costs a lot of money to attain Convergence: poor countries will catch up to the rich Although poor countries like China and India are getting richer, it will be long before they catch up to the USA due to the lack of equality concerning the distribution of wealth Causes of inequality within countries: History: politics and the history of the country in question outlines the values and therefore practices; history is an inspiration of how economics work The poors rational decisions: Poor people marry other poor people and tend to have a lot of children meaning there is less money for each child and they do not tend to receive adequate educational training hence a cycle of the children of the poor also being poor; fertility change can break this cycle Prosperity: This can produce inequality due to the uneven distribution of wealth, but the fact that the exchange rates are stabilized allows for countries to have a chance in the world market when selling their goods because they would make fair amounts of profit Bad economic policy: Poor economic policies allows inflation and it devastating for the poor, failure to invest in education and skills of the poor is a fundamental cause of inequality, therefore creating an ever widening gap between wages of the rich and the poor Self-defeating policies: Protectionism: Protection from global competition is bad because wwithout foreign investment and foreign trade, developing countries would not have a chance to make money and would therefore remain poor and inactive in the global market; perpetuates high inequality

March 7th, 2011 The New Cocaine Cowboys How to Defeat Mexicos Drug Cartels Mexico is in a battle against powerful drug cartels

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Government is intertwined in criminal organizations, hindering Mexicos ability to become a first world country This happened in Columbia too, but with the help of the American government, the drug cartels were defeated In Mexico, if the cartels win, criminal enterprises will continue to operate, undermining the states democratic stature The US is affected as well if the cartels win considering a drug state with drug rulers would be within a short distance

The Mexican Connection Rise of Mexican Drug Cartels: o Pre-existing Corruption o Inability of weak law enforcement institutions to counter them o Demand for illegal drugs in the US Columbians were stopped by US officials from smuggling drugs into the US, so they joined with Mexico and had them smuggle in their drugs for a portion of their profits Mexico began to make a lot of money off of this and exported vast amounts of cocaine into the US; in doing this, the drug lords gained power Mexico extended their networks throughout the US and in Europe, replacing Columbian influence Trafficking of drugs led to other criminal activities including human trafficking, kidnapping and extortion Mexicans killed a US Drug Enforcement Administration Agent to scare the US which demonstrated the height that the drug problem was at in Mexico o The entire political structure was corrupted as the majority of governmental officials participated in trafficking of cocaine The political party in power allowed for drug trafficking therefore reaping enormous profits from cocaine; governments were controlled by the cartels and were too weak to go against them Drug lords had money and bribed everyone; money was an especially influential tool in a third world country like Mexico, in doing this they expanding their influence and lived beyond the laws This vast drug trafficking lasted from the 1980s-2000

The Pain in Juarez Turning point, 2000: PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) lost power and the PAN (National Action Party) came into power; the end of a one party rule allowed for democracy, where federal government could not be taken for granted Ciudad Juarez: the site of one of the most violent confrontations between rival cartels; many deaths of drug dealers have occurred since Calderon took office, cracking down on drug cartels Many drug dealers have been caught and killed in Mexico, lowering the trafficking problem although a lot of corruption still remains; the way in which Calderon is going about taking care of the drug problem is very violent, classifying Mexico as out of control Most of the drug-related homicides have occurred in six of Mexicos 32 states therefore it is not a failed state; Chihuahua had the most murders o Although unfortunate, the number of killings of drug cartels is a sign of progress

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Cartels are killing each other and police, police are killing cartels; once these cartels are broken, public security and safety will follow

From Medellin to Michoacan In Columbia, the most powerful drug cartels were Cali and Michoacan; dominated world cocaine trade o Made of 3-4 large drug trafficking organizations Rebel groups such as FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia), got much of their funding from drug cartels o Cartels worked by bribing the police, politicians and judges; those who could not be bribed were intimidated Today, both cartels are gone in Columbia showing that it is possible to rid these drug lords o Mexicos cartels cannot be eliminated unless they are attacked from both within and outside the country o In Columbia the goal to dismantle and destroy these cartels was clear; although there are still cartels in Colombia, they are far less harmful o Divide and conquer strategy: defeated one cartel at a time o US and Mexico must rely on proven strategy such as the kingpin strategy: identifying, locating and capturing the kingpins and key lieutenants of the organizations; weaken criminal organizations to the point that their leaders can be removed o Law enforcement and judicial institutions must be reformed; before these reforms, judges lived in fear; Columbian government began paying their officers more money so that they would not succumb to bribery o Limits on the usefulness of the military must be understood; military was important in attacking and destroying cocaine labs and battling corrupt parliamentary groups In Mexico, military is leading in taking action against drug cartels; it will take more time until the Mexican Federal Police are strong enough to take over Washington is sending money as part of the Merida Initiative; most of their funding is being spent on military equipment; it is more important in the long run for the US to concentrate its assistance on making a Mexican FBI Trial and imprisonment in the US is the only thing drug cartels feared

Endgame Columbia had advantages that Mexico did not; Columbia was a democracy while Mexicos democracy is still evolving Mexico will soon have a federal police authority parallel to the US Border Patrol, permitting rapid exchanges of information between the US and Mexico; spreading information technology infrastructure US should use more of its merida spending to build the Mexican federal and state police US should attempt to lower the demand for drugs through education and treatment programs There are only three years left in Calderons term, will the next president keep up his work? Tactic deal: governments deal with drug cartels that would allow them to operate illegal business in exchange for no public violence

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This is detrimental; the public will never believe in the rule of law if the government continues to permit itself to these groups o Government should enforce peace and public safety, not organized crime enterprises Victory can be achieved; if Mexico follows Columbias example, they will continue to show leadership and political will, and with the help of the US, will be able to defeat drug cartels

In the Beginning, There Was Somalia Somalia was historys first failed state; US troops attempted to address this failure Somalia: raging Islamist insurgency, government without control and African Union peacekeepers with no peace to keep The fact that countries like Somalia cannot protect their people, creates a moral dilemma and a security challenge to the West; Obama wants to help failed states establish good government and rule of law and influence Islamic worlds to become Americanized Obama believes that addressing poverty in remote places is a US national interest, he legitimizes this claim by stating that weak states are usually those who inflict terrorism attacks on other states (such as 9/11 on the US), therefore if we help them create a democratic liberalistic government, it will save us in the long run Afghanistan: US is attempting to inflict a national-building plan that puts development in a place equal to security; development must be understood less in terms of aid, and more in terms of building governmental capacity o New template for the US policy towards failing states: US has poured a lot of money into this state, while nation building is almost impossible to do in this state, they are trying to tell Afghans that their government is worth saving Diplomacy needed when attempting to restore failed and fragile states o Fixing failed states requires large commitments of money, people and time o State Department or the US Agency for International Development (USAID): hired people willing to work to jumpstart the economy Civilian Response Corps: an active force, ready to be dispatched within 48 hours, and a standby force, employed by the federal government o Utilized as a civilian response to natural disaster or political crisis Failed states matter; US interests can no longer be extricated from those of faraway countries Failed states index: reproach to Americas faith in progress and its own capacity to solve the worlds problems Somalia and Afghanistan are both failed states that need attention which is in the best interest of the US, because they will not attack them based on their Islamic ideals; however, this mission in changing their viewpoint, will be a hard one that has never before been attempted o Instead of using a fully militaristic method, they are using intervention

Where Autocrats Dont Fear to Tread Zimbabwe elected to chair the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development Leader of Zimbabwe commission destroyed his country, but was supported by Zimbabweans, therefore the UN could not do anything to stop him Autocracy: one person with absolute control

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UN has openly-supported democracy after the Cold War, although they still offer legitimacy that dictators cannot find elsewhere UN Charter: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want and freedom from fear o Democracy was never on the list because the goal of the UN was to resolve conflicts, not to meddle in countries internal affairs Countries that decolonized were considered to be sovereign and invited to join the UN; this worked very well New member states of the UN did not have many rules to follow and their members were not condemned if they violated human rights When the UN tried to abolish the African Apartheid system, they failed and were kicked out by African countries o This failure represents the change in the nature of conflict; internal conflict and poor governance are a much greater risk to the developing worlds people-The UN was built to stop such disputes o Getting rulers to be good to one another requires institutional skill The UN cannot be at fault for persistence of dictators because they do not have the means to create the end; dictators come to power on their own as a result of internal affairs of their state The UN could potentially do more, but that would require the consent of the great powers and they do not want to get involved

Why Bad Guys Matter Sani Abacha, Nigerian dictator: stole $4 billion from Nigeria; they had an oil boom after he died making a lot of money that, had he been alive, he would have laundered Bottom Billion: a number of which crowd the Failed States Index Bad leaders actively avoid building the economy o One leader wanted to build no roads so that it would be harder for the citizens to mobilize and rebel Bad guys matter, they make weak states weaker In democracies, changing the leader does not change growth, but in autocracies, the growth rates are as unpredictably varied as the leaders personalities At the extreme of greed are kleptocrats At the extreme of preference for getting their own way are the tyrants At the extreme of insensitivity to the pain of others are psychopaths Among the many varieties of badness, political tyranny is surely the most destructive Politically ambitious crooks do not just fritter away the money they make from corruption; they invest it in future power

March 14th, 2011 The Poverty of Reform Reformers of the World Bank adopted contradictory goals The reform program was strongly shaped by its bureaucratic and cultural environment, which propelled change in a path-dependent direction that was not always congruent with the interests of external actors or even the intentions of internal reformers

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Shift in preferences of major donor states regarding their financial support for, and demands on, the Bank Donor states; demands on the bank multiplied Welfare-oriented and state-led industrial policies of these latter states clashed with the US promotion of neoliberal, laissez-faire policies considered critical to opening up emerging markets to US trade exports and foreign investment United States and its European and Japanese counterparts split over the purpose of lending Potential borrowers were unhappy with strict loan conditions and poor evaluations of, and social opposition to, prior structural adjustment lending Increasing competition from other international development organizations and trends in private capital flows Tremendous increase in capital flows to developing regions of the world Failure of the past structural adjustment policies to ender equitable and sustainable growth, particularly in Africa, converged with attempts to find viable theories for addressing the former Soviet Unions economic transitions Concern also grew surrounding aid fungibility and the prevalence of corruption Cumulative effect of the rapidly changing normative environment was a number of substantially different development issues that challenged the economic, apolitical, and technical rationality underlying the Banks traditional approaches Most critical source of outside pressure for reform in the early 1990s came from watchdog and advocacy groups NGO and CSO mocement has effectively pushed for reforms to make the Bank more open, transparent, and accountable for its practices Number of unsatisfactory projects jumped Wapenhans Report specifically attributed declining performance to the Banks organizational culture, particularly the preoccupation with blueprint models, the clientitis of staff, approval culture, and disbursement imperative The Strategic Compact promised a renewal of development ideas and practices to improve the effectiveness of aid, to make the Bank more responsive to borrowing governments, and to enhance its transparency and accountability o Core element was a dramatic decentralization of management and staff away from the Washington headquarters to the mission offices in the field o Reinvigorate demand for Bank Country directors would be set to have more control of the administrative budget Second aim of the Compact Retooling the Development Agenda was designed to reallocate resources away from traditional lending areas toward neglected sectors now given priority, such as social, environmental and governance-related projects Third component of the Compact envisioned a shift in the persona of the Bank from a lending institution to a knowledge Bank Last objective of the Compact redrew the basic lines of administrative authority within the Bank in a complex matrix management system designed by a team of consultants o Included decentralization of staff Compacts official assessment pointed to a more client-focused organizational culture Decentralization enabled staff to improve coordination with other aid agencies and focus more on local capacity-building exercises, both of which were connected to the improved potential of countries to sustain development objectives past completion of the project Compact led to extensive layoffs and budget constraints Reform goals themselves contained inherent contradictions, sending conflicting signals to staff and management

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To streamline the bureaucracy and become more attuned to borrowing governments interests by decreasing the cost (in time and money) of project design, appraisal, and oversight o To be more responsive to the critical demands of vigilant NGOs, civil society organizations, and their attendant national parliaments in donor states One such example is the rapid decentralization of the Bank, which increased the total number of individuals in field offices to one-third of total staff Example of the difficulty in realizing the goals of the matrix system concerned the internal market system of work program agreements Matrix system backfired and created stress, job insecurity, and poor morale as staff competed with each other for work Culture grew where the staff understands that environmental impact assessments and other safeguard policies are boxes to be checked off not worthy of significant resources and time Efforts to increase accountability standards and compliance associated with safeguard policies have worked against incentives to appear more client focused One of the primary complaints of watchdog NGOs during the years since the Compact is that the meticulous tracking of NGO and CSO involvement amounts to a rhetorical move, in which the increase quantity of participation masks the rather minimal quality of participation Gap between desired and actual results of the Compact Tension in the Compact reform process resulted from the juxtaposition of Wolfensohns desire to project an image of the Bank as an open, self-critical organization eager to engage in debate with the pervasive intolerance of dissent under his administration A hypocritical gap between a punitive environment and the espoused ideal of ideological debate and open dissent is a problem endemic to the entire organization, particular between levels of management and staff While it is not difficult to reach agreement on the need for reform writ large, it is highly improbable that the Banks many political masters are going to reach a clear consensus on what exactly future reform should look like

The challenge of catalytic leadership for long-term change The Copenhagen Accord is a three-page political document that affirms a goal of limiting warming to 2 degrees above preindustrial levels The accord appears to overcome the North-South stalemate that blocked US ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, because it opens the door to commitments from all major economies Dont underestimate the importance of legitimacy in multilateral climate negotiation o Ultimate agreement requires the legitimacy of the wider UN processes Dont let the politics of multilateral climate negotiations undermine progress elsewhere o Even when UN negotiations have floundered, the parallel growth of carbon markets and other experiments in climate policy development demonstrate enormous potential to capitalize on and scale up policy innovation Success on both fronts is inexorably linked o While emissions trading is poised to become the central piece of the global response to climate change, cap-and-trade initiatives need a policy commitment to create demand for carbon as a commodity and they must have enforcement o Enforcement ensures the integrity of carbon markets

Copenhagens accomplishments

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Much credit goes to developing countries who set up plans Goes to show value of international cooperation

March 21st, 2011

March 28th, 2011 Case Studies of Infectious Disease Outbreaks in Cities: Emerging Factors and Policy Issues Sapir Introduction Cities are growing rapidly due to economic opportunities, thus people are migrating from rural communities in hopes of economic gain In the move to the cities, there is increased competition Heterogeneity in relation to the health status of urban populations has influenced health policies: Concentration of people: Health facilities are more available to those who are better off; health systems are created to serve the upper socio-economic classes thus, health service for minorities is shifted to the rural areas which is hard for minorities in the urban centers to get to Better health in urban areas: This is misleading because there is a lot of money in health care due to the large quantities of the economically advantaged contributing to health care, because the wealthy are contributing to it, they are the ones that it is available to; poor people in urban centers usually do not have doctors at all therefore they are not included in surveys of health care so the surveys are biased by the rich saying that health care is great Housing and habitation influence the susceptibility of disease: Poverty by postal code The poor usually live in areas that are cheaper because they are dirtier, inflicting health problems on those who breathe in the air etc. Background The urban centers in the developing worlds are witnessing an increase in their urban poor The high number of poor is a result of the growth of natural increase (the number of people born in relation to those who die) The conditions of life for the urban poor due to high populations, is a breeding ground for disease and epidemics; between open sewers etc. and pollution etc. Urban life allows for crowding and promiscuity which makes even more diseases In third world countries, the families in urban centers are as big as those in rural centers, yet the traditional support structures fail to support these large family sizes Working hours of the parents change from rural to urban centers so there is less supervision of the children, this leads to fast food and lack of changing diapers, no breastfeeding etc. Lack of maternal care can lead to lack of childcare therefore leading to more child deaths Lack of health care to those who work in the informal sectors (no benefits) further promote disease Urban patterns of infectious disease: an overview from mortality data Cities have different diseases that cause the most deaths

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Third world country cities have the youngest death rate The lack of equal distribution of medical services is detrimental Diarrhea diseases usually break out due to lack of sanitation and is very prevalent in the urban centers of third world countries; this shows the living conditions of the poor Lack of sanitary water is often a cause Intra-urban differences are said to be greater than rural-urban differences, showing the differences of health care determined by where you live Death rates are lower in rural areas Lack of data form the slum populations and their marginalization from social, legislative and welfare systems bias this information making it worse than what it appears to be Cholera epidemics in urban agglomerations: the case of Dhaka, Bangladesh Geography of Bangladesh: many people are below sea level (floods are frequent occurrences), the area is prone to cyclones, droughts etc. When floods occur, they are often followed by diarrhea diseases Population is continuing to boom although conditions are terrible; parents fear that they will lose children, so they have many Cholera epidemics arise after monsoons and floods War of Independence: severe food crisis and heavy floods on top of warfare led the homeless to flock to the government for support that they were in no economic position to give; water was not available, so rivers were used for communal bathing and drinking which led to more epidemics If one person in the family got Cholera, it would commonly be passed on to members of their family People who ate at charitable feeding centers were more at risk for Cholera in the epidemic of 1974 than those who ate at home; risks of urbanization and urban centers In urban areas, young males were most susceptible to disease, however it is very possible that this statistic is the result of many young males being hospitalized; Adult females are at special risk due to their domestic duties they can catch it very easily, yet avoid hospitals because they have to tend to the home Sanitary conditions and lack of water are principal risk factors Jerusalem: people from the urban centers went back to the rural centers, bringing Cholera with them; as they cultivated food the vegetables were contaminated and selling them created an epidemic Low economic status and inadequate diet were noted as principal characteristics of cholera patients in Manila Cholera: unhygienic and unsanitary conditions related to fecal habits and waste disposal Crowding results in this Contamination of water sources Mass food distribution/commercial feeding centers (unsanitary handling of food) Migration into cities and settlement into poor areas carries infection and can infect the area In caring for the sick, women are at a particularly high risk Breastfeeding decreases the chances of getting cholera, yet urban lifestyles disallow for women to have the time and health to be able to breastfeed Meningitis epidemic of 1988 and 1989 in sub-Saharan Africa: the cases of Addis Ababa, Khartoum and NDjamena Meningococcal Meningitis: infection is an epidemic which creates emergency situations not only in the country where the epidemic occurs, but in the neighboring countries and beyond Sub-Saharan Africa is known as the meningitis belt because epidemics break out so often Major problems that result to the outbreak of meningitis

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No prediction of the outbreak No early warning indicators Meningitis is most likely to break out in urban centers Sudan: Khartoum Meningitis is prominent in Sudan, there is even a Central Epidemiology Unit for disease surveillance During one of the epidemics, there were 50 000 reported cases After the first epidemic of meningitis, the rapidity of its spread throughout the country was seen therefore awareness was brought to the community through the media, the government provided vaccination to vast amounts of its population However, the urban poor who migrated to urban centers for employment opportunities and food, were not supplied with vaccinations as the centers for them were not in their vicinity; since there were no centers near them and there was no way of getting to them, there were many more poor casualties than rich The detection of the epidemic was rapid but response was slow Government was not prepared for such an epidemic, therefore no data was collected and there was a limited about of instruments for curing it The inadequate assessment of the first epidemic resulted in another full-blown epidemic Ethiopia: Addis Ababa Active case detection began in small administrative units within the city, but the government became more aggressive with it and immunized all high risk groups (less than 20 and in school, prison and military camps, health workers) Chad: NDjamena Took a while to declare the epidemic because there was one hospital treating patients and they were too busy Government attempted to contain the epidemic and opened up other health care facilities to accommodate for the infected, although resources were only at the Central Hospital and the other facilities opened up did not have doctors, so they were useless Instead of vaccinating the rich, the government gave vaccination to high risk groups which caused violent upheaval This targeting was not well-directed and there was another outbreak Leptospirosis outbreak following floods in Sao Paulo Risk of an outbreak increases with floods, population density, rats, cats, dogs and animal leptospirosis Uncontrolled urban sprawl and population continues to grow exponentially Due to growth, fertile lands have been covered by concrete so there is no where for the rain to go (it would usually absorb into the land) The pollution and geophysical conditions linked to the vast populations altered microclimate and meteorological pattern in the region (these are two of the biggest threats in modern society) Most of the infected were males showing the distribution of work Floods are the most common trigger and they are very common The hospital treated everyone who came to them which was very costly for the city Sao Paulo looked at the triggers of leptospirosis and found methods of control Tried to eliminate rats, cats and dogs to rid long-term effects so that it would be cheaper to cure next time Other factors mediating risk of disease outbreaks in urban settlements Inequalities in distribution of health resources within cities Few studies are conducted to relate the health care available to the poor v. that of the rich Studies must control for differentials related to income, housing quality and standard of living

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Mexico: Among the urban poor, there are many respiratory diseases such as bronchitis, tuberculosis etc. as well as intestinal infections were common Mainly due to poor water supply and lack of sanitation The distance from the poor to a health center was one of the main problems Those living in irregular settlements were especially sensitive to poor water supply and sanitation Need for the increase of medical facilities Acute respiratory infections and indoor air pollution 4-5 million children under the age of 5 die from acute respiratory infections Most in developing countries In developing countries the air itself is polluted Most dominant occurrences in urban centers In India, many of the children are malnourished therefore their immunity systems are low, making them more prone to respiratory illness Parental smoking habits increase the risk India: people would house 2 families in an area meant for one, eating where they slept therefore increasing respiratory illnesses Common fuel used in India contains carcinogenic gasses Higher lung abnormalities among women because they are the ones cooking therefore ingesting these fumes Indoor air pollution is a major risk factor for acute respiratory infection Conclusions Health experiences are similar throughout the major cities of the developing world Not many studies have been completed in relation to outbreaks The problem must be properly identified and defined before it can be treated Urbanization, environmental concerns and psychosocial health problems influence health conditions In future policy development... The Influx of new people: People who move into the city create environmental pressures that the city cannot handle, therefore creating disease Food Contamination: Common eating places are a part of everyday city life; women should breastfeed to decrease probability of infants getting a disease; contamination in food centers is catastrophic Women: have multiple responsibilities including domestic work; in tending to their families and cleaning up after them they are more susceptible to disease Lack of sufficient parental care: Inadequate care especially in single parent homes (common among the urban poor) allows for a lack of hygiene Health surveillance and monitoring systems: Surveillance systems, if available, only come about after the epidemic has spread; sometimes health actions miss the areas where the problem resides; urban health is very different from rural;if people who are infected travel, they bring the disease with them thus spreading it; housing, population densities and sexual promiscuity increase the risk of disease; animals and garbage create bacteria Fundamental measure that should be considered for the success of epidemics or infectious diseases is social legislation Recognition of authorities of populations that are most susceptible to disease Infectious disease and epidemics are highest among people that should not even be there such as refugees; as population grows, so does the problem of infectious disease Equitable health services are crucial Problem is rooted among the urban poor; social legislation to legitimize their existence is

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fundamental to a working health plan Awareness and surveillance systems are crucially important Doctor training Geographic methods: mapping out of where diseases occur and planning health services in those areas Haitis reconstruction, natural disasters and the climate change challenge Climate change is one of the greatest risks of our time, and it is increasing, therefore natural disasters will continue to threaten the world; people living in poorer countries are at the greatest risk, but we can reduce the number of people that will die Although threats will remain, they do not have to be disasterous The earthquake that hit Haiti was devastating causing a huge amount of deaths and injuries, women and children are always most affected Internationally, a lot of money was raised to help Haiti Haiti is at risk of more hazards due to geographical location Entails the destruction of crops, deforestation, death and economic and ecosystem devastation High risks in water (flooding due to heightening of sea levels) and climate Risks are increasing as the climate warms Food production and economic development cannot proceed unless actions are taken by the UN, reducing casualties due to natural disaster Human vulnerability turns hazards into disasters Can prevent this by education in the form of awareness and risk assessment Action to reduce disasters and adapt to climate change are successful, but also are not widely available to poorer countries Chilean earthquake: not many casualties, more buildings were demolished but the humans are the first priority rebuilding infrastructure in a way that will help them to survive earthquakes is secondary US and UN came together to make a guide for overcoming natural disasters Long-term recovery from disaster relies on the strength of the people after such a disaster in springing back up; these disasters are inevitable Disasters leave economic disparity and deaths which is hard to overcome in itself, building back up in that state is even harder Impact of disaster includes lower intelligence for the generation after the disaster (less resources and drive to attain education) Collectively, governments must address hazards, reduce disaster risk and stress the number of disasters in the face of climate change and other threats - Awareness and ways to overcome inevitable problems A Tale of Two Dystopias Fukuyama Technology v. the essence of man Information Technology: central to the success of the totalitarian empire to be able to overlook everything sent between households for collective security, yet invading personal security; Big Brother system Orwells 1984: Cage made by the government to hurt the citizens; tyranny empowered by technology Orwell believed that this would lead to tyranny and centralization, but it turned out to be the democratic access to information and the decentralization of politics

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Governments were driven to publish more information on their activities through the internet so that people could monitor them 1989: Collapse of the Soviet Union and the vanishing of the threat of totalitarianism Biotechnology: Medical elements that allowed the government to tamper with the minds of society through injecting people with certain drugs for desired reactions Can make many changes in the modern world Medical advancements are making the impossible, possible - Brave New World: no one is hurt and everyone gets what they want through evil means such as changing the thought processes of the citizens without their consent, although adhering to the common good; utmost governmental control What is wrong with this? Although people are healthy and happy, they are no longer human beings as they no longer aspire to love, feel pain, make choices, have families and other things that are milestones in ones life; no characteristics of human dignity We have felt pain, loved etc. throughout history, therefore it seems to be important to keep this alive; how important is human nature as a source of values? The most significant threat of biotechnology is the possibility that it will alter human nature; this is detrimental because humans would cease to exist, being like robots, therefore, liberal democracy would cease to exist because the people are being controlled by their rulers (tyranny) Biotechnology mixes benefits with harms We have created machines that can be detrimental, however, we know how to control them Things such as nuclear weapons that pose a threat, we know to look out for, therefore they are straightforward threats that we can deal with Drugs for depression: frees you from depression, but takes away creativity - New Drugs: Drugs have unwanted side effects, they are being individually created now so that side effects do not occur; people can make themselves happier without worries of addictions, hangovers or brain damage due to these drugs - Regeneration of parts of the body: Scientists can replace organs for longer life, however they cannot stop minds from getting old; older people refuse to get out of the way of their children and grand children as it is hard to accept that they are no longer young; many people do not have children at all therefore can only watch the demise of tradition - Wealthy screen embryos before birth to see what kind of children they are going to have: The wealthy look at how their children will physically appear as well as their mental capacities at birth in order to change things that will get in the way of social acceptance - What will happen to political rights once we are able to make super humans? A Straightforward Solution - Potential benefits and threats due to biomedical technology should be regulated by the power of the state - We need to build institutions that discriminate between good and bad uses of biotechnology - In biotechnology, there is the debate of one side saying that scientists should be able to create anything that they can, while the other side says there should be large restrictions - We need to make decisions to ensure that technology remains mans servant rather than master; middle ground is needed - Institutions have been created to deregulate sections of every nations economy and reduce the size of government; from this, an efficient global economy has emerged from wealth and technology - This will be used to get human biotechnology under political control - Discriminations between technologies: - Information technology has many social benefits and few harms therefore there is not much governmental control on it

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- Nuclear material/toxic waste is highly regulated because unregulated trade poses so many threats on human security - It is impossible to stop technological advance even if we wanted to - Since technology is supported in many places of the world, people could move to another jurisdiction and continue experimentation if their country did not allow it - A lot of competition in the world for biotechnology; makes nations wealthier and stronger - It is not necessary to stop technological advance because we can control it - We must put in place a regulatory system to control biotechnology; if people abuse it we will punish them just like under the criminal code - These rules will be hard to make, especially at the international level due to differences in ethical and cultural views Biotechnology and the Recommencement of History - Many of the discrepancies over biotechnology are between scientists and advocators of religion - Not all anti-biotechnological views are religious - Aristotelian view: We cannot distinguish between right and wrong (human rights) are without human nature; human nature has been stable throughout history and has had serious political consequences; humans are cultural beings, meaning that through experience, they learn and pass on their learnings - Human nature determines how society is shaped - Many modern thinkers are beginning to believe that human beings are plastic, meaning that they can be shaped through social environment - French Revolution: beginning a series of utopian political movements trying to shape society in changing human nature to create heaven on earth; socialist revolutions - FAILED: liberal democracies were founded due to human nature; human behavior is plastic, however, only to a certain extent - In oppressing the people by taking private property, weakening the family, etc. ends in revolution as this is against human nature and creates unhappiness - Nazi regime v. Communism: Nazis believed that biology was everything, Communists believed that it should be used for nothing - Liberal democracy: avoids either extreme by shaping politics according to historically created norms of justice, but not interfering with natural patterns of behavior - Basic drivers of the human historical process has been the development of science and technology, as it determines economic production (Industrial Revolution), thus the characteristics of societal structure (Capitalism) - Technology has also reduced human freedom - Created capitalistic societies that used slavery in order to accumulate utmost wealth - The end of history can not be achieved without an end of modern natural science and technology, thus we are not at the end of history especially due to the rise of biotechnology - Biotechnology and the greater understanding of the human brain will implement politics - Reopen possibilities for social engineering; drugs to determine intelligence, aggression, sexual identity etc. will produce particular social ends - If the wealthy are able to make their children more intelligent, stronger, etc. it will create a class war as they would dominate and possibly become corrupt - Would become a political issue - Biotechnology has the ability to... - Increasing knowledge about the brain and the biological sources of human behaviour - Neuropharmacology and the manipulation of emotions and behaviour - The prolongation of life - Genetic engineering

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- Philosophical issues raised due to this newfound ability to manipulate human nature: - Human nature of understanding right v. wrong - Developing human dignity without implications of religion - If we are worried about long-term consequences of biotechnology, we can establish a regulatory framework to separate legitimate and illegitimate uses - Technology is advancing rapidly, therefore we need to create institutions to deal with it - This challenge is both political and ethical - The political decisions will determine whether or not we enter a post-human future Why we should worry about biotechnology? - Categorial opposition: Medical benefits - Eugenics: breeding of people for certain heritable traits - Encouraging people with desirable traits (intelligence) to have many children - Nazis eugenics policies eliminated categories of people; Europe is now against it - Demise of eugenics: - Eugenics could not achieve what they wanted to - Eugenics were state-sponsored: states that invoked eugenics, such as the US, did not even know what was a genetic trait from a non-genetic trait; state sponsorship was seen as the biggest problem of eugenics because it was forced ** Genetic engineering allows for the possibility of working eugenics; however in the modern world, eugenics would not be pursued as they were in history due to advances in liberalism and human rights - Gentle eugenics: individual choice, parents make decisions when they see their child developing in the womb and see if they are susceptible to disfigurements or mental problems - This can lead to abortion which is why many religious people are against technology - In the future, we will likely be able to selectively breed people by selecting genes that can be passed onto our children - Those who will likely object gentle eugenics: - Religious people - Utilitarians - Philosophical principals Religious Considerations - Man is created in Gods image - Human v. non-human creation: Humans have moral choice, free will and faith - Eugenics, birth control, in vitro fertilization, abortion, cloning etc. are violations of Gods will - Believe that even though the reasons for using these biotechnologies may be good, the use of them replaces God with humans - Fail to respect human dignity - Religion is not the only anti-biotechnology: - Some people are ethically skeptical - Atheists can be against it too such as natural scientists that are rational materialists - Religion creates a solid argument against biotechnology, but since it is moralistic and not rational, it is not very persuasive Utilitarian Concerns - Utilitarian: primarily economic; future advances in biotechnology may lead to high costs or negative consequences which can outweigh benefits - Individuals are free to do as they please as long as they do not impede on the rights of others - Genetic therapies will pose difficult challenges because gene interaction becomes hard to predict - Side effects can be lifelong if something is done wrong therefore harming someone more than helping them

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- Economically, there may be costs that are inflicted on people that do not take part in biotechnologies which would harm societal peace - Children who are results of genetic modification do not consent to it; libertarians argue that the parents are allowed to pick because the child cannot and they only want what is best for their children, however, the selection could prove to be advantageous to the parents but inflict harm on the child Politically Correct - There are socially implemented elements that may influence the choice of the parents creation of their child ex. in society now, thin is in therefore, parents may choose to make their children skinny; these ideals could fall our of favor in the coming generation - Parents inflict many values in their children, but due to our ability to think, the children could rebel against these values, whereas they would never be able to get rid of a genetic trait - Drugs: you can always stop giving a child drugs if you do not like their effects, generic engineering is embedded - Parents can easily make mistakes concerning genetic engineering as they rely on the advice of doctors and scientists as well as using their own incentive - Ex. having to decide if your child should be male or female based on them being born with distorted genitals - Cultural Norms: parents in China want to have boys, but in doing this, they limit the number of girls that the boys can mate with causing unnecessary violence and crime - Dying v. prolonging life: many people pick to prolong life although it is generally not a good life as you still have problems; this choice is costly for society who has to keep up with a large dependency load leading to a decline in the standard of living - Harms younger people from taking their positions in the work force - Sex and reproduction become activities engaged in by minorities - Postponing death had constraints on the birth rate; elderly parents displacing a child because they need to be cared for too, so it is just like having a baby - Intelligence: people want to have smart children in order to get the best jobs, however, if everyone is smart then the competition will go up making schools even harder for children who are not genetically modified; those who do not want to genetically modify their children will fear putting them at a disadvantage Deference to Nature - Environment: ecosystems are interconnected wholes whose complexities we do not always understand; human intervention in ecosystems disrupt relationships and destroys balance without meaning to - Social organization created by humans struggling against one another without intervention - Human competitiveness and human cooperativeness are balanced in a symbiotic relationship - Societies that face no competition or aggression fail to innovate; people who are too trusting and cooperative are vulnerable to those who are bloodthirsty - Family stands as an obstacle to achieving social justice - Children always want to please their parents therefore Plato argues that it is better not to know who your parents are so you do not have to please anyone but yourself; institutions are created for this so that someone will love the child - We would never want to change human personality in fundamental ways because human nature makes its own continuity - We should be skeptical of libertarian arguments that say that as long as eugenic choices are made by individuals rather than the states we do not have to worry about it

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- Sometimes there is the need for government intervention due to the possibility of greed and corruption; especially in pertaining to genetic engineering, the rich could create a superior army to overthrow the government and destroy society The Limitations of Utilitarianism - All utilitarian arguments have a limitation that makes them flawed - Utilitarians do not usually take into consideration the effects on the soul ex. arguing that cigarettes are bad for the body can be proven, but arguing that Prozac negatively effects the character is hard - Views everything in the sense of material rather than looking at the moralistic implications that are a huge determinant - Ex. Utilitarians would say that criminals are motivated by money, however they could not explain why a mother would not kill her child for money - Deepest fear about biotechnology is that it will cause us to lose our humanity - What is the human essence that we might be in danger of losing? - Religious people: divine gift that all humans are born with - Secular people: species-typical characteristics of humans that make us human - Human nature + human justice=natural rights which are a crucial aspect to our society - Natural rights have been replaced by the term human rights as it is not proven in our scientific society that human nature and human justice determine right from wrong; social creation - Human nature gives us moral sense, provides us with social skills and allows us to determine rights, justice and morality through discussion - What is ultimately at stake with biotechnology is the human moral sense that has existed throughout history and created the society we live in today - If we are to move beyond this moral sense that is so rooted in our society and reasoning, we would have to accept the consequences - We need to understand modern theories of rights; what role does human nature play in political order? April 4th, 2011 The Clash of Civilizations? Huntington The Next Patter of Conflict End of history as the return of traditional rivalries between nation states and the decline of the nation state due to globalism and tribalism Believes that the dominant division between nation states will be culture Clash of civilizations as battles of the future Conflicts of civilizations have created nation states, and the evolution of conflict in the modern world is the conflict of civilizations pertaining to their cultural values Ex. Islam v. Secularism Conflict of nations of the past has revolutionized into conflict of ideologies Mainly Western Civil Wars, but now we are seeing wars between the West and the non-West; the West is shaping history The Nature of Civilizations Cold war: first, second and third worlds; these distinctions no longer exist, as now we group countries relating to their culture and civilizations rather than politics and economics Civilization: cultural entity in the form of religion, ethnicity etc. that allow countries to identify with their parts

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Ex. northern and southern Italy do not have the same traditions, although they do have a common Italian culture that makes them different than Americans Civilization is the highest cultural grouping of people and it is the broadest level of cultural identity people have Civilizations are distinguished through: Common objective elements: language, history, religion Subjective self-identification of the people: I am German v. I am European Identifying with a civilization is the broadest level of identification; civilizations change as people change their own identities therefore changing the civilization itself Civilizations blend and overlap and therefore include subcivilizations Ex. Western civilization: European and North American values Civilizations rise and fall, divide and merge Westerners think of nation states as principal actors in global affairs but this has not always been Why Civilizations Will Clash The most important conflicts will occur along the cultural fault lines which seperate civilizations from one another Religion is the most important reason for the clashing of civilizations Ex. USA v. the Middle East The way civilizations view how things should be run due to moralistic ideals that have evolved over time, will not disappear soon World is becoming a smaller place meaning that the interactions between people of different civilizations are increasing therefore allowing for more conflict Interactions between people of different civilizations enhances civilizationconsciousness which distributes differences Economic modernization and social change through the world separate people from local identities Weakens the nation state as a source of identity World religion has filled in this gap which is seen to be fundamentalist Religion is both the uniting and dividing factor of civilizations Civilization-consciousness is enhanced by the dual role of the West West is at the peak of power The West wants all other parts of the world to be like them Western ideals are becoming more popular although the West is indigeonous Cultural characteristics and differences are harder to ignore; since they are moral obligations and ways of life, they are harder to defeat than problems in politics or economics Sometimes hard to be half and half ex. half Catholic and half Muslim; these parallels are hard to combat Economic regionalism is increasing Successful economic regionalism will reinforce civilization consciousness Economic regionalism will succeed only if it is rooted in a common civiliization because the cultural problems between two civilizations is ground for not wanting to trade with each other etc. - Common culture facilitates rapid expansion of economic relations - Extensions of traditional clans (ex. in Asian countries) makes them all come together and trade with one another making a superior continent because the resources are pooled - Countries are beginning to be pooled by tradition ex. non-Muslim countries making the Economic Cooperation Organization; trading and helping each other because they want to see countries that are like them succeed, this is like USA wanting everyone to be Westernized

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- Restrictions put on countries that do not identify with them; ex. EU excluded Turkey because they were not rich enough and did not act in the right way - Us v. Them as people continue to define their identity on ethnicity and religion - Differences in culture and religion promote differences in policy - Clash of civilization occurs at two levels - Micro level: Civilizations struggle with control of territory - Macro level: Different civilizations compete for military and economic power The Fault Lines Between Civilizations - Fault lines are replacing the political and ideological boundaries of the Cold War - Cold war began as Europe was divided politically and ideologically - Cultural division made this war and created other divisions as it ended such as those of Europe v. Western Christianity - History makes divisions as well ex. those involved in the Renaissance are still dominantly Catholic or Protestant - Those parts of Europe advanced by the Enlightenment are generally democratic and richer than other parts who did not go through these radical events and are therefore traditionalist and less rich (identify less with the super powers) - West v. Islam: When the Islamic countries got rich they bought weapons and fought with the West; the clashing of ideals is catastrophic as both ends want each other to switch to their view of how the world should be - Islamic countries are now beginning to sway towards democracy as teh West has all the money therefore to trade, they need to adhere to some of their most common values to identify with them - Religion reinforces ethnic identities and fear/conflict - As some countries are adapting to Western philosophies, other countries near them are not therefore creating civil conflict - Historical clash - Ex. Jews v. Christians is a never ending struggle - China v. America: new cold war in the sense that their ideals conflict in the areas of human rights; with these conflicting ideals it is hard to properly run trade - Cultural differences=economic conflict - Interactions between civilizations differ based on how violent they are or can prove to be - Islam has bloody borders; fight with others and with themselves on the basis of religion Civilization Rallying - When civilizations are in war, they tend to rally support from other members of their civilizations making wars more vast than they have to be - Kin-country syndrome: Civilization commonality is replacing political ideology with traditional balance of power - Like nationalism; countries in the vicinity are persuading those in their region to fight with them as they embody the same cultural values - Civilization rallying becomes more important as conflict continues - Islamic fundamentalist movements supported Iraq against Westerners - Iran: holy war against the West - As Iraq trades with the US, Iran gets mad that a civilization that they are common with is adopting values contrary to theirs - A world of clashing civilizations is a world of double standards - People apply one standard to this kin-countries (common civilizations) and another standard to others - Dying in war to save their fellow Muslims - Conflict and violence will also occur within civilizations - Less likely to expand and are less intense than conflict between civilizations

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- However, in fault lines between civilizations, major civil wars will ensue - If there is another world war, it will be between civilizations The West v. The Rest - West is at a peak of power in relation to other civilizations - Western military power is unrivaled, apart from Japan the West faces no economic competitors, dominates international economic institutions - Non-western countries are excluded from the powerful states that have the most to do with worldly affairs - UN decisions or those of the international monetary fund have to do directly with the interests of the West - World community: influenced by the west - The West uses international institutions, military power and economic resources to run the world in ways that will maintain Western predominance, to protect Western interests and to promote Western political and economic values - Struggles for military, economic and institutional power are the source of conflict between the West and the rest, whereas differences in culture is the second source of conflict - The West as a Universal Civilization fitting all parts of the world - Western concepts differ from concepts of other civilizations; individualism, liberalism, constitutionalism, human rights, equity, liberty, rule of law, democracy, free market, separation of the Church from the state etc. are very different than the ideals of Islamic, Confucian, Japanese etc. cultures - West v. the rest - Nations can reject the western ideologies - Band-wagoning: attempt to join the West and accept its values and institutions - Balance the West by developing military power and cooperating with other non-western societies against the West; to modernize but not westernize The Torn Countries - Countries that are vast therefore incorporate many different ideals within one are most likely to band-wagon to reaffirm stability and homogeneity throughout their country - These countries, ex. is Turkey, historically embody non-western ideals such as Islam, however, cohere to Western society in order to pursue wealth; new identity - Instead of opposing the US and western ideals, countries are succumbing to it for fundamental political and economic change - Most important torn country is Russia; they were once communist but were defeated so now they are becoming western in order to be normal - Russians are divided on this; to go towards muslim and Asia or the US? - To redefine its civilization identity, torn countries must.. - Its political and economic elite has to be generally supportive of the move - Public has to be willing to accept the ideals of the move - Dominant groups have to embrace the convert - Democracy v. Marx-Leninism - Ultimate goals of freedom, equality and prosperity The Confucian-Islamic Connection - Those who cannot join the West try to be like the West by creating their own military, economic and political powers by promoting internal development and cooperating with other countries in their same non-western state - Confucian-Islamic connection has come about to challenge Western interests, values and power - Western countries are reducing their military power while other countries are expanding theirs - Weapon states: Non-western states

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- Embodying western values of arms control in order to stabilize the western and the nonwestern - Conflict between the west and confucian-islamic states is largely focussed on nuclear, chemical and biological weaponry and the guidance, intelligence etc. for acheiving this goal - West wants less war and less militarization as it can be used irrationally and destry; the west focuses their sanctions of ill-use of military on non-western countries because they cannot control them - China is exporting nuclear weaponry or the means to attain it to non-western countries which is a potential threat - West is attempting to limit the arms while reducing its own military while the confucius islamic countries are trying to increase their arms to match that of the western world; this is problematic because these weapons in states of conflicting interests has the potential to lead to a big war Implications for the West - Differences between civilizations are real and important in the sense taht civilization consciousness is increasing and conflict between civilizations has the aspirations to be dominant global conflict - Successful political, security and economic international institutions are likely to develop within civilizations, whereas the conflict between different nations is to be the most common and will hinder the most violence and destruction - West v. the Rest (West c. Islamic-Confucian states such as the Middle East and Asia) - In the interest of the West to promote cooperation between western-run states, limit internal conflict, bring more nations into western ideology, limit military of Islamic-Confucian states, strengthen institutions that help run the western state and promote the involvement of nonwestern countries in these institutions to harmonize them into western ideology or at least, into accepting western ideology - Western civilization is modern whereas non-western civilizations are generally not with the exception of Japan - Non-Westerners will try to acquire wealth, technology, skills, machines and weapons through being modern, but not western - Modernity through traditional culture and values; increasing military to be competitive with the West; therefore the west, to protect itself, will have to maintain military and economic power so that these powers do not exceed them - Commonality between the west and non-west; west has to start to accept the goals of the nonwesterners in order to have a world where the west and non-west can co exist in peace - No universal civilization The End of History? Fukuyama - Rebirth of a new era of conflict after the peace marking the end of the Cold War - The century that began in the triumph of Western liberal democracy is not the end of ideology, but the victory of economic and political liberalism - Western ideas are fluid through means of consumerism; Western ideals are fluid through the media and are therefore influencing the world - There is no viable alternative to Western liberalism - Not just the end of the Cold War, but the end of history in the sense that there is no more ideological universalization and evolution as Western liberal democracy is seen as the final form of human government - Victory of liberalism marks the end of history although ideas surrounding it are still developing - Liberalism will govern the material world in the long run

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Nature of Historical Change - Marx was the first one to introduce the end of history - History developed through material forces and would come to an end when communist utopia was achieved - Hegel said that history had a beginning middle and end; this was succeeded by Marxs theories - Believed that history ended in 1806 with revolutions and such marking liberalism and freedoms - History influenced our social organization; without historical events we cannot understand the modern man - Man for Hegel was the product of historical and social environment - Mans natural environment has been transformed through science and technology - History made an absolute moment in which rational form of society and state became victorious; this is liberalism - French Revolution was a revolution of ideals; universalization of the state embodying principles of liberty and equality - Vanguard (forefront) of civilization was to implement liberalism more fully therefore forcing societies in Europe and North America to take on liberalism - The state that emerges from the end of history is liberal in the sense that it protects mans universal right to freedom and it is democratic in the sense that it exists only with consent of the citizenry - These fundamentals are seen in todays society showing that this theory is somewhat true in the sense that freedoms are always promoted - Universal homogenous state: The state that emerges at the end of history is liberal in the sense that it is liberal and protects the rights to freedom under a system of law - In this state, all human needs are satisfied therefore there is no struggle over large issues and there is no need for generals - Contradictions: mans quest for mutual recognition (slave wanting to be recognized and respected by the master); these contradictions are resolved through human rights Hegel Idealism - The contradictions that drive history exist at the level of ideas; ideas that are unifying world views - Ideology includes religion, culture etc. underlying any society - Ideal v. material worlds - Believed that human consciousness made materialism; materialism created by societal ideals through consciousness of history - All human behaviour in the material world throughout time is rooted in a prior state of consciousness - Because this is passed down throughout time, it creates the material world - The underlying aspect of current events is the history of ideology - Marx believed the opposite of Hegel, that the realm of consciousness was made into the material world - Marx uses the material world to explain historical phenomena - Decline of great powers due to economic overextension - Societys political priorities are determined by the realm of consciousness in the sense that they determine spending and where the spending goes ex. using more spending on military than social security nets - Wall Street Journal school of deterministic materialism: says that ideology and culture are not important as man is a rational, profit-maximizing being - Explains the rise of Asia; Asia rose like this by allowing their population to pursue their material self-interest freely - Free markets and stable political systems are necessary to capitalist economic growth

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- Weber, Protestant Ethic: Differing performance by Catholics v. Protestants; this cannot be explained through the materialistic view point, but come out of the state of consciousness - Weber believed (in contrast to Marx) that material mode of production was a superstructure in itself, rooted in religion and culture in which modern capitalism strived - Consciousness of the elites and leaders ruling over the citizens; they either chose the Protestant root of economic wealth or the Catholic/religious root of econoimc disparity - This was not rooted in material conditions, but the result of one theory being a victor over the other in the conscious realm - Mankinds ideological revolution (through events such as the Enlightenment, revolutions etc.) created the ideals of the world today - Mans perception of the material world is shaped by historical consciousness of it - Americans see the Middle Easterners as bad due to historical troubles - Universal homogenous state as liberal democracy in the political sphere combined with consumerism Have we reached the end of history? - Are there any contradictions in human life that cannot be solved by modern liberalism? - Common ideological heritage of mankind - Two major challenges to liberalism: - Fascism: believed that liberalism was political weakness, materialism, anomie and lack of community which were contradictory to liberalism attempting to solve it by a strong state that forged a new people based on national exclusiveness; idea was defeated by WW2, people destroyed it materially which led to its destruction on the conscious level as well - Communism: More serious impact than fascism; liberal society had a fundamental contradiction that could not be resolved, this contradiction was that between capital and labor and has been the chief accusation against liberalism - America is said to have somewhat solved this as the root causes of economic inequalities are cultural rather than political as legislation attempts to solve this gap - Communism developed in the Western world but has gone down every since the end of WW1 due to revisionist programs - Major ideological transformations are mainly present in the non-European world - Asia imported many Western ideologies - Liberal democracy was imposed in Japan (although it did not stick) after the Pacific war where Japan took up German Fascism - Desire for action in the consumer culture creates economic liberalism therefore promoting political liberalism as well - Victory of the idea of a universally homogeneous state through the fact that political liberalism has been following economic liberalism - Power of the liberal idea is seen in China; they were a communist society that has now been heavily influenced by liberalism as they try to drive their people to work, creating a bourgeoisie v. proletariat society in order to succeed economic gain - Chinese children are studying in Western worlds and will inevitably bring back with them democratic ideals - Political system is still dominated by communism which is internally democratizing - In the sphere of ideology and consciousness, many transformations such as this one are occurring - In Russia, policies of communism are being replaced, although the laws coming out of them are not entirely liberal, they are connected by liberalism - Exists mainly due to economics

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- Creating a political policy that is more tolerable and pluralistic - At the end of history, it is not important that all societies become successful liberal societies, but that their elements represent liberal values Are there any other challenges to liberalism? - Religion: Revival of religion in some ways advocates for unhappiness - Modern liberalism derived from the weakness of religion-based societies cause religion could not decide on conditions for peace and stability - Only Islam has offered the theoretical state as a political alternative for liberalism and communism; other religions that are not as organized are incorporated in the personal lives of people in liberal societies - Nationalism/racial and ethnic consciousness: Nationalism was a threat historically in Germany and continues to be one in the isolated parts of post-historical Europe today (places that have not yet been modernized and live traditionally) - Only systematic nationalism can qualify as formal ideology that can go against liberalism - Nationalism does not normally rise out of liberalism; the worlds ethnic and nationalist tensions can be explained in terms of people who are forced to live in unrepresentative political systems that they have not chosen ex. nationalism in the Middle East going against liberalism because their religions do not want liberalism - Present world seems to confirm that the fundamental principles of sociopolitical organization have not advanced much since 1806 - Wars have occurred that were thought to be liberal ideologies but they were just pretensions that came about due to historical values that still reside in the states these wars have helped to spread the universal homogenous state to the point that it could have a significant effect on international relations What are the implications of the end of history for international relations? - Third world is strongly rooted in history - Under the ideologies that make politics in societies such as Russia and China, there is a great power of national interest - Conflict between nations is based on structure of the system; aggression and insecurity are universal characteristics of human society that have more influence than historical circumstance; countries will join whichever political ideology necessary to avoid conflict - Is ideology is a superstructure? - Questionable: it has sculpted many societies ex. Chine being communist, however, it is changing with recent developments in economics - Since Hitler took on imperialism, stating that Germany should rule over all other states, it has been discredited, changing ideological values - Since WW2, European nationalism has no relevance to foreign policy - International life for the part of the world that has reached the end of history is more preoccupied with economics than politics and strategy - We are more likely to see the common marketization of world politics rather than the disintegration of liberalism; non-Western states are becoming less likely to use force than Western world (more liberalistic) - China: competitiveness and expansionism on the world scene have disappeared, (do not support Maoist ideals), however they still have some troublesome aspects such as selling militia to the Middle East - Abandoning Maoist ideals: product of commercial motives while selling militia is based on ideologically-based rivalry (history) - Components of liberalism, but not completely - Which Soviet elites have assimilated the consciousness of the universal homogeneous state?

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- New political thinking driven by a world dominated by economic concerns where there is no room for ideologic grounds for major conflict between nations therefore, the use of military force has become less legitimate and less used - Marxism-Leninism is no longer the driving force; it does not make people work harder and it has lost confidence in itself due to the wide-spread success of liberalism - This passing of Marxism-Leninism is important to Western society because they have strong military and are vast in geographical size The Passing of Marxism-Leninism - Means the death of the ideological world; if there are not any large states that believe in communism, its threat evaporates - This death of ideology means the growth of common marketization of international relations and the muting of large-scale conflict between states - However, this does not mean the complete end of political conflict - Conflict between states that are at the end of history and in history will still arise - High level of ethnic/nationalist violence due to unresolved historical grievances (terrorism and wars of national liberation can continue) - Large scale conflict will cease because they have reached the end of history and can identify with one another - The end of history will be sad - Struggle for recognition - Risk ones life for a abstract goal - Worldwide ideological struggle towards consumer demands and economics rather than towards moralistic ideals - Post-historical era will focus on economics rather than art and philosophies of the historical world; people may become bored with this and slip back into history which will restart the cycle End of history as an American Way of Life Hegel: difference between the ideal and material worlds is only apparent as it is overcome by the self-conscious subject; material world is only an aspect of the mid Man is not always a profit-maximizer, but there are other goods that can be maximized as well such as leisure Culture and consciousness are crucial in explaining every important aspect of life Modern historians would not believe that people fought over religion, rather that they fought due to conflict between social classes or economics Japan: its culture is based on formal arts therefore the universal homogeneous state is not victorious in this state showing that history has not yet ended

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