Why we do Social Science the way we do

Some of us here at the Duck would put ourselves into the "relational" camp when it comes to how we approach Social Science. Among other things, this approach looks at social and political actors based on their relations to other actors and position within a social network rather than as autonomous entities.

Dan's work, for example, has made excellent use of social network theory to talk about empires and such.

Today's Washington Post points out that

a growing body of evidence is suggesting that traditional social networks play a surprisingly powerful and underrecognized role in influencing how people behave.

In particular, a team of researchers has found that social networks strongly influence your health, with profound personal and political consequences:

obesity appeared to spread from one person to another through social networks, almost like a virus or a fad.

In a follow-up to that provocative research, the team has produced similar findings about another major health issue: smoking. In a study published last week in the New England Journal of Medicine, the team found that a person's decision to kick the habit is strongly affected by whether other people in their social network quit -- even people they do not know. And, surprisingly, entire networks of smokers appear to quit virtually simultaneously.

Taken together, these studies and others are fueling a growing recognition that many behaviors are swayed by social networks in ways that have not been fully understood. And it may be possible, the researchers say, to harness the power of these networks for many purposes, such as encouraging safe sex, getting more people to exercise or even fighting crime.

"What all these studies do is force us to start to kind of rethink our mental model of how we behave," said Duncan Watts, a Columbia University sociologist. "Public policy in general treats people as if they are sort of atomized individuals and puts policies in place to try to get them to stop smoking, eat right, start exercising or make better decisions about retirement, et cetera. What we see in this research is that we are missing a lot of what is happening if we think only that way."

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No Torture, No Excuses.

Anthony Arend at Georgetown University reports on a new campaign that many of us will want to support. Its promotional video, culled from the film Taxi to the Dark Side:



Unlike many anti-torture activists who base their arguments on consequentialism (e.g., we shouldn't torture because it's ineffective, we shouldn't torture because it puts our troops at risk), this campaign reminds us that human rights law forbids torture even if - perhaps especially if - it costs us nothing and we have everything to gain. To quote Senator McCain, who in the olden days put his money where his mouth was, "It's not about us, it's about them."

Get involved here.

Another useful website.

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Election Fun

NY Times: "Worries in G.O.P. About Disarray in McCain Camp"

Politico.com: "GOP strategists mull McCain ‘blowout’" (as in he blows Obama out of the water in a huge win by like 50-100 electoral votes)

So, which is it? Good year for McCain or good year for Obama?

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Who said it?

Can you tell the difference between the views expressed by a human rights activist who worries mostly about humanitarian emergencies in Asia and those stated by a prominent neorealist American academic?

1: Realist thinking versus liberal talk:

A. "...oil and strategic interests are what dictate Western policies, not their professed liberal values. All the talk of humanism or humanitarianism is just for public relations."

B. "...public discourse about foreign policy in the United States is usually couched in the language of liberalism. Hence the pronouncements of the policy elites are heavily flavored with optimism and moralism...Behind closed doors, however, the elites who make national security policy speak mostly the language of power, not that of principle...In essence, a discernible gap separates public rhetoric from the actual conduct of American foreign policy."

2: What should be done about humanitarian emergencies?

C. "Now I chime in on the side of those who want to invoke the "Responsibility to Protect" doctrine or humanitarian intervention because the suffering on the ground is massive and the regime leadership responded with extraordinarily mad behavior—holding this referendum on the graves of at least 70,000 Burmese cyclone victims."

D. "...the Clinton administration...was filled with people who extolled the virtues of human rights regimes and the importance of the international community intervening to prevent mass murder, and so forth and so on. In the event, when there was evidence pouring in that a genocide was taking place in Rwanda, a real genocide, they behaved in the most despicable fashion. And this is consistent with how we have behaved over time. The fact of the matter is...states talk a good game when it comes to values, but they actually behave in a...rather cold and calculating manner when the money is on the table."

3: American interests and intervention.

E. "Human rights interventions in the developing world...tend to be small-scale operations that cost little...The American intervention in Somalia between 1992 and 1993 is a case in point. Furthermore, the United States could have intervened to stop the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, which certainly would have been the morally correct thing to do, without having jeopardized American security."

F. "I do not believe that under any circumstances should the United States go to war for the purposes of protecting the United Nations or simply making sure that United Nations' resolutions are carried out. The United States should go to war under one set of circumstances, because you want to remember here, we're talking about sending Americans to die. Right? We go to war when it's in the American national interest. Right? When there are good, strategic reasons to put American lives on the line."

Answers:

For 1 and 2:

A & C are from "Zarni, a former Burmese activist who founded the Free Burma Campaign in the US and led the successful PepsiCo/ Burma boycott that resulted in Pepsi cutting all ties with the Burmese regime in 1997. He now lives in England where his research at Oxford University is focused on Burma’s political and economic developments."

B and D are from Professor John Mearsheimer, a realist political scientist at the University of Chicago.

For 3:

It's a trick. Both E & F are from Mearsheimer.

For more fun with neorealism, see this.

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The stupidity, it burns

Via Matthew Yglesias and a quick google search I learn that the right-wing blogsphere is all in a tizzy over the fact that the Decemberists played at Obama's Portland speech. This apparently matters because:

1. The left-wing mainstream media isn't reporting that some percentage of people clearly attended to hear the Decemberists rather than Obama. Ergo, Obama's not really all that popular. Or something.

2. The Decemberists often play the Soviet National Anthem before their concerts. Given that they named themselves after the participants in an 1825 anti-absolutism rebellion in Russia and that (I kid you not) The Crane Wife contains a duet involving a dead confederate soldier and his pregnant lover/wife, this proves they're some sort of anti-Americans.

There's no doubt that the Decemberists are very left-wing. But if this is the kind of stuff that Obama's going to face rom the right-wing blogsphere during Presidential campaign, I suspect he can rest easy.

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Foreign Policy and Presidential Elections: Appeasement Part Deux

How do electoral politics influence US foreign policy? Look no farther than Miami Dade County and US relations with Cuba. Cuban-Americans remain a highly mobilized electoral block in that state's largest county, and they tend to be single-issue voters, supporting the candidate who is tough on Fidel's Cuba. So, you have a history of candidates talking about the need to crack down on Castro to curry favor in the Cuban community and put Florida in play. Do a few hundred more votes in Florida really matter? Well, since 2000, making this point is like shooting fish in a barrel. Recall that Clinton signed the Libertad Act in early 1996 on his way to re-election, winning Florida.

So of all the countries that McCain could accuse Obama of "appeasing," its not surprising to see at the top of the list Iran (stoke fears of terrorism, still a Republican strong issue), closely followed by... Cuba. Yes, McCain is now saying that Obama's statements that he would consider loosening the Embargo and initiate talks with the Cuban Government constitutes appeasement. We've already been over why McCain's statement is nonsense. But, given electoral politics, is it any surprise why he'd try to bring Cuba into play?

Or, put differently, you'd have to wonder if the Republican party was already dead (and maybe they already are...)* if they didn't play the appease Cuba card.



*Really, this parenthetical is an excuse to link to the Packer article that is a very good read on the state of conservativism in America--it is worth a read and deserves its own post, but I just couldn't resist tossing in the link.

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You Can't Appease Chris Matthews

If you haven’t heard about or seen the clip of Chris Matthews dressing down one of his guests, a conservative talk show host, you might wan to take a look. Aside from the sheer entertainment value of the thing, it might, maybe, be a turning point for the fall election.

Matthews was in his regular Hardball segment where they have a conservative and a liberal radio talk show host to spin the issue of the day. They were discussing the Foreign Policy back and forth between Bush and Obama. The conservative guest launched into Obama as soon as Matthews started the segment, talking about how Obama would be horrible for the country because he was an “appeaser.” Annoyed, Matthews asked him if he knew what appeasement meant—in particular, what did Chamberlain do that was so wrong in 1938? The guy finally had to admit he didn’t know, and Matthews schooled him on some pre-WWII history. I don’t think the liberal guest got to say any more than when you’re in a hole, stop digging. It is high political theater, or, cable news at its worst.

At the core of the discussion was the deployment of “Appeasement” to delegitimate the foreign policy of an opponent. In this case, the accusation was that Obama’s position to talk to foreign leaders with who the US has policy differences would appease them, weakening the US and emboldening America’s enemies. Appeasement, as the Lesson of Munich, has a long been one of the most important analogies used in defining, evaluating, and legitimizing foreign policy choices. Rodger’s post has an excellent discussion of the use and mis-use of the concept, and I recommend you check it out.

What Matthews did was to call the conservative on his mis-use of the term. Rather than simply allow his deployment of the appeasement trope remain unchallenged, Matthews asked: what was it that Chamberlain did that was so objectionable? Its comical to watch the guest stammer and stall, like a student who hasn’t done the readings for class, before Matthews finally gives the class the answer: Appeasement came not from talking to Hitler, but from giving him half of Czechoslovakia. Talking to the enemy is not appeasement. Giving the enemy what he or she wants with no significant concession in hope that the enemy is thus satisfied, that is appeasement.

The Matthews moment means that it may be, might be harder in the future to use such analogies so far out of context. He created an opening to challenge the deployment of such broad analogies and labels, and has forced those who want to use labels such as appeasement to augment their statements by adding the offending act. Now, this could all be for naught, if everyone lets it drop, but it could also be a subtle but important shift in the way this powerful label is used. To pass the Matthews test, anyone on his show now needs to show the dangerous concession. Matthews had defined a rhetorical space in which simply talking to another actor cannot constitute appeasement, and anyone who tries to suggest as much will look like a fool.

Now, this is by no means guaranteed. Matthews could let it drop (but I doubt it, given his tenacity on issues such as this). Moreover, MSNBC has become a much more important player in election coverage (really, its gotten quite good. Olberman is in rare form, Matthews is always fun, and its impossible to top Rachel Maddow). So, if Obama’s opponents want to deploy the appeasement label for him, they are going to have to figure out how to go on Hardball and make it stick. Otherwise, the attack loses some of its steam.

Yet another reason that MSNBC has become must-see TV.

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Appeasement Anecdotes

Conservatives have a fundamental misunderstanding of appeasement. While it should refer to specific concessional policies offered to aggressors in order to avoid war, conservatives use the phrase haphazardly as a political bludgeon against domestic foes who favor negotiation and arms control instruments over more hawkish policies. The inevitable comparison is to Neville Chamberlain and Adolph Hitler.

Everyone knows how that turned out.

In 1988, even conservative icon Ronald Reagan was attacked by right wing critics for his successful negotiation of an Intermediate Nuclear Force agreement with the Soviet Union. Keep in mind that negotiation can lead to the reduction of mutual threats, which is what Reagan tried to do in 1988 and what Barack Obama would presumably attempt vis-a-vis Iran. Presumably, it is why the Bush administration negotiated with North Korea.

In any event, Hedrik Smith wrote an interesting piece about Reagan's critics for the NY Times Magazine, January 17, 1988:

The table talk, recalled one participant, was full of frustration, and focused on the question of "what to do about summit fever, what to do about Reagan's relationship with Gorbachev - the idea being that Reagan was appeasing liberals in Congress, appeasing the Communists, caving in on taxes, putting moderates like Frank Carlucci at Defense, and cutting deals with the evil empire."

I wonder which action they opposed more strongly -- appeasing liberals or appeasing Soviets? Smith has more:

A sharp split developed over strategy. Howard Phillips, chairman of the Conservative Caucus, and Richard Viguerie, the direct-mail specialist, wanted the conservative movement to break openly with Reagan....Phillips charged that Reagan was "fronting as a useful idiot for Soviet propaganda."

....Phillips's knock-out punch will be a full-page ad scheduled to run this month in such conservative-minded newspapers as The Washington Times and New Hampshire's Manchester Union-Leader. Under the headline, "Appeasement is as unwise in 1988 as in 1938," photos of Reagan and Gorbachev are paired with photos of Neville Chamberlain and Hitler, followed by the appeal: "Help Us Defeat the Reagan-Gorbachev INF Treaty."

The conservatives mentioned in the article ended up setting up an "Anti-Appeasement Alliance" to fight Reagan and the INF Treaty.

More recently, readers may recall that members of the right in 2002 and early 2003 frequently labeled opponents of the proposed Iraq war as appeasers. William Kristol penned "The Axis of Appeasement" in The Weekly Standard, August 26, 2002:

President Bush's policy is regime change in Iraq. President Bush believes that regime change is most unlikely without military action. He considers the risks of inaction greater than the risks of preemption. No doubt he and his administration could have been doing a better job of making that case in a sustained and detailed way. But that is not why an axis of appeasement--stretching from Riyadh to Brussels to Foggy Bottom, from Howell Raines to Chuck Hagel to Brent Scowcroft--has now mobilized in a desperate effort to deflect the president from implementing his policy.

Since these conservatives are so fond of recalling history, I wonder why they are never held to account for their own stupidity:

Reading the Scowcroft/New York Times "arguments" against war, one is struck by how laughably weak they are. European international-law wishfulness and full-blown Pat Buchanan isolationism are the two intellectually honest alternatives to the Bush Doctrine. Scowcroft and the Times wish to embrace neither, so they pretend instead to be terribly "concerned" with the administration's alleged failure to "make the case." Somehow, Vice President Cheney's fine speech in San Francisco on August 7, or Condoleezza Rice's superb August 15 interview with the BBC, to say nothing of Donald Rumsfeld's impressive press briefings and President Bush's strong statements--these don't count.

Delusional, right?

Incidentally, most realist critics of the proposed Iraq war thought that Saddam Hussein could be deterred, which is quite a different policy than appeasement. I recommend readers go back and look at that Brent Scowcroft piece from 2002 and decide for yourselves if he accurately predicted what would happen if the US invaded Iraq. Then, just for laughs, compare that to the Kristol piece.

For more examples from the Iraq debate, see here, here and especially here.

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Human Wrongs

This month I am teaching (for the first time) an intensive summer course. Since the topic is the "Politics of International Human Rights," and since I'm forcing my students to blog, all my blog posts for this month will concern human rights in one way or another.

Let's begin with news from the American Political Science Association. APSA, which had contracted with New Orleans for its 2012 convention, is under pressure from a number of APSA sections to boycott the city because the state of Louisiana amended its Constitution to ban gay marriage or the recognition of "marriage-like incidents." Although international human rights instruments do not explicitly refer to sexual orientation rights, many human rights organizations interpret discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation as a violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which the U.S. is a party.

The APSA Council is now inviting member comment on the issue until May 30, and heated discussion is also taking place on several APSA listservs and this blog. APSA's notice on its homepage reads:

"The APSA Council is considering policy about selecting sites for our Annual Meeting and other conferences related to state laws about rights afforded same-sex unions legally recognized in other states. We are also considering the situation of the 2012 Annual Meeting already contracted for New Orleans, Louisiana. The Council welcomes member feedback on these issues. "

The logic behind this deliberation: APSA siting rules include a clause intended to insure that all its members are welcome in any conference venue, which allows it to terminate contracts if "the city in which the hotel is located establishes or enforces laws that, in the estimation of APSA, abridge the civil rights of any APSA member on the basis of gender, race, color, national origin, sexual orientation, marital status, physical handicap, disability, or religion."

The law in question is a state law, not a city ordinance, but the APSA Committee on the Status of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and the Transgendered in the Profession (LGBT Committee) proposed in July of last year that the APSA Council alter the rules to include state laws prohibiting gay marriage; and this is what is now being considered. Were the Council to change its rules, Louisiana (including New Orleans) would qualify as a target for such APSA guidelines; such rules if generalized would govern similar site decisions in the future.

Is this appropriate? One argument I've heard is that APSA should seize the opportunity to take a principled stance as an organization in favor of sexual orientation rights. But there is no consensus on this within APSA. Even within the Human Rights section, where most including myself share the values the boycott would represent, significant dissent exists as to whether this action is the measured response.

One argument against is that it would unfairly penalize New Orleans for a measure undertaken at the state level. The city is home to the largest GLBT population in the state, and was actually voted #2 for Gay-Friendliness in "Travel and Leisure's" 2007 readers' poll. While the amendment was supported 55-45 in Orleans Parish, this was by far the closest margin in the state, and occurred in the context of significant voter irregularies that may have disenfranchised as many as 58,000 residents .

There may also be significant rights conflicts here. In a letter to the section, Anthony Pereira of Tulane University pointed out:

"New Orleans is a beleaguered city trying to rebuild after Katrina. There are an estimated 12,000 homeless. Dozens of people live in a tent city in the middle of the downtown area – a sight reminiscent of the “Hoovervilles” of the Great Depression. The working poor of New Orleans have suffered a massive violation of their human rights because many of them lost their homes and have been basically abandoned by the government. APSA 2012 would inject hundreds of thousands of dollars into the local economy and give work to taxi drivers, maids, waitresses, bartenders, parking lot attendants, dishwashers, and other low-paid workers. If we care about human rights we should care about these people. This is why APSA’s Committee on the Status of Blacks in the Profession supports the siting of the conference in New Orleans because, among other reasons, "the black and poor communities of the City of New Orleans are still in the process of rebuilding their neighbourhoods after the devastating Hurricane Katrina" [and] "the APSA Annual Meeting would contribute to the economic recovery of the city".

To this, Michael Goodhart offers a dissenting view at Human Rights and Human Welfare.

Irrespective of rights conflicts, or how much consensus may eventually develop among the membership, it seems to me there may be an important procedural problem: APSA rules, outlined in Article II(2) of its Constitution, prohibit it from taking general policy positions as an organization. However, it must be noted that APSA has sometimes done precisely this in the past.

Even if the organization could and should do so, why single out anti-same-sex-marriage laws in revisions to the site rules? Why not boycott cities in any jurisdiction where any human right is violated in law? Even if APSA limited itself to cases of pure legal discrimination, as opposed to the myriad of other "progressively realizable" human rights such as the right to health care, this still leaves things like state-sanctioned beating of children in America's public schools (Louisiana is one of 26 US states that permits this punishment). As a child right advocate, I'd boycott the state on this basis - but how many of my colleagues would join me? Or why not boycott the 50 states entirely on account of Guantanamo Bay, extraordinary rendition, and our racist death penalty, and move the conference on up to Canada?

Perhaps for this reason: the goal of APSA is to promote the study of political science, not human rights per se. It seems justifiable to limit its attention to issues that genuinely affect its members.

In this vein, however, there may still be a case for a boycott of Lousisiana, on behalf of GLBT APSA members who reside in or are citizens of that state. But then, why would APSA not make similar stands against any number of other laws in the US that affect political scientists as well as the general public and fall short of human rights standards? So then child-spanking wouldn't count as there are no under-18 APSA members to my knowledge, but GLBT rights is only one of ten issue areas in which Human Rights Watch considers the US to fall well short of its global human rights commitments, and this potentially affects adults in the country including all US-based APSA members, if not always in our capacity as political scientists. For example, APSA members are as likely as any other US citizens to fall victim to violations of privacy rights associated with national security policies, to various forms of racial or gender profiling, or to be detained arbitrarily under the PATRIOT act.

Probably, this too would be a Pandora's Box. Free speech violations generally might fairly be viewed as less of an APSA priority than the very important issue of academic freedom per se. But APSA is on much firmer ground with respect to New Orleans if the case can be made that GLBT persons in the profession would genuinely be discriminated against in connection with the conference. After all, the law doesn't just refuse marriage licenses in the state of Louisiana, it refuses to recognize "incidents of marriage" as legally valid. As one APSA member has put it:

"If a gay APSA member becomes ill and has to go to a hospital, will his partner in New York be allowed to make medical decisions for him? If a lesbian graduate student who has insurance benefits through her partner's job has an accident, will the hospital recognize her coverage? If a non-married couple's child travels with them to the meetings and has an emergency, will city officials respect both parents' legal relationship as a form of parental authority?"

This fear may be overblown: there is legal precedent in the state of Louisiana suggesting the amendment would not be interpreted to override pre-existing legal arrangements of this type. Still, this shifts the burden to GLBT couples to make such legal arrangements, which are taken for granted by heterosexual couples. Since this increases the costs of attending the conference at all, a strong argument can be ade that this does in fact discriminate against our GLBT colleagues as professionals and provide APSA with a rationale for acting.

I agree with this. In that case, however, APSA should be prepared to be far more proactive in other respects besides sexual orientation discrimination. APSA does not have nor is it considering a policy, for example, of boycotting states with laws allowing employers to ask job candidates whether they are married at all - another discriminatory practice that negatively affects all couples, but particularly women in the profession. Nor has it taken actions to address the IRS' non-recognition of childcare costs as reimbursable business expenses, which drastically increases the logistical and financial costs for families to attend professional conferences, another practice that disproportionately harms women. If siting policies are to be based on states' laws affecting APSA members' professional lives - and I support this in princple - the criteria considered should go far beyond sexual orientation, and APSA should be prepared to respond consistently across a range of concerns.

Is it? Consider: if even the sexual orientation rule were generalized, and applied to states with statutory rules against gay marriage as well as constitutional amendments (and why shouldn't it be?) it would limit future APSA sitings to Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, Rhode Island and as of today California. To add many other types of discrimination into the mix would vastly complicate our ability to meet as an Association in the US. To not do so would itself represent a marginalization of a host of equally valid human rights concerns.

Even if this were feasible, there is a question of how effective it would be. Are the human rights of Louisiana's citizens really best served by a boycott, or by thousands of social-justice-minded scholars showing up and bringing their perspectives with them?

I'm willing to be convinced, and I'm interested in hearing others' ideas before I submit my comment to the APSA Council. But I'm leaning toward the view that while this cause is noble, the benefits of an organizational boycott are negligible, the slope slippery, the implications uncertain and the approach generally inconsistent.

Perhaps we should act as citizens here, and choose to boycott the state ourselves by not attending APSA 2012, or Mardi Gras, or by writing the appropriate policymakers and generally getting involved in advocacy on this and many other important civil rights issues in our country today. These forms of activism might be more meaningful, effective and just.

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The Golf War

According to President George W. Bush, the U.S. has been engaged in a "war on terrorism" for almost the entirety of his presidency. Indeed, he frequently laments the fact that he's been a "war President" despite not knowing in 2000 that that would be his destiny.

Critics have often bashed the President for failing to urge the American people to make common sacrifices in support of that war. Even sympathetic voices say that soldiers have made virtually all the major sacrifices in this war.

Indeed, rather than make sacrifices, the President has long encouraged the American people to live their lives as if the war did not require personal hardship. Go shopping, he often said:

the American people have got to go about their business. We cannot let the terrorists achieve the objective of frightening our nation to the point where we don't -- where we don't conduct business, where people don't shop.

As recently as December 2006, Bush said "I encourage you all to go shopping more."

Now that his term in office is about over, however, the President has revealed the personal sacrifice he's making. From today's Washington Post:

President Bush said yesterday that he gave up golfing in 2003 "in solidarity" with the families of soldiers who were dying in Iraq, concluding that it was "just not worth it anymore" to play the sport in a time of war.

"I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf," Bush said in a White House interview with the Politico. "I feel I owe it to the families to be as -- to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal."

Bush said he decided to stop playing golf on Aug. 19, 2003, when a truck bomb in Baghdad killed U.N. special representative Sergio Vieira de Mello and more than a dozen others.

I'm sure the parents of the troops must feel much better about the commander-in-chief.

Scratch that. I'm sure we'll see that quote in a future Michael Moore film

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SecDef to Military: Buy weapons you can use

In a clear case of what would be called stating the obvious if it were said by the leader of any other organization other than the Pentagon,

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates issued a clear warning to the military and its industrial partners on Tuesday that expensive, new conventional weapons must prove their value to current conflicts, marked by insurgency and terrorism, if they hope for a place in future budgets.

because the headline "Gates Wants Weapons Useful in Current Conflicts" sure sounds obvious to me.

More Gates:

“I have noticed too much of a tendency towards what might be called ‘Next-War-itis’ — the propensity of much of the defense establishment to be in favor of what might be needed in a future conflict.... Overall, the kinds of capabilities we will most likely need in the years ahead will often resemble the kinds of capabilities we need today.”

Its hard to miss the clear reference to mega-programs like the F-22--billions of dollars for a next-generation air superiority fighter that is all but useless in the conflicts like Iraq, Afghanistan, or the whole GWOT (honorable mention might also be the Army's FCS or any number of Navy ships).

Rob at LGM has done some excellent posting on recent Air Force tomfoolery. As Rob has documented, this is not the first time Gates has called out the services on spending and mission priorities.

I think, though, two elements of the speech and NYT report are notable above and beyond the trends Rob has pointed out.

1. Gates' neologism of "Next-War-itis." The military has long used the fear / threat of a future war with a peer competitor (read China--for an example, see here) to justify weapons acquisitions programs. This new rhetorical commonplace (dap to ptj) opens a space to challenge that narrative (by ridicule) and legitimate a different set of policies, programs, and budget priorities. Buying the FCS or F-22 is 'Next-War-itis' while the MRAP or a Predator is the weapon we need today and will probably need tomorrow as well.

2. The lead of the article notes that Gates was speaking to "the military and its industrial partners." As is well known, the services are supported by a fantastic lobbying organization known as the Military Industrial Complex. While the Army or Air Force can't officially lobby Congress to insert yet another plane or tank into the budget that wasn't requested, the military contractors have no problem making that case. Any reform in military acquisitions will necessarily involve dealing with those who build the stuff, and Gates is letting them know that they too are On Notice.

As a friend of mine might say, you wonder if a Democrat could get away with saying these things....

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New "crimes against humanity"?

A few weeks ago, ABC News (Australia) reported the following from AFP:

"Producing biofuels today is a crime against humanity," UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to Food Jean Ziegler told Bayerischer Runfunk radio.

Here's the logic: Using biological materials (like corn) for energy production increases global food prices because it increases market demand. Biofuel production also increases competition for arable land and potentially encourages developing states to grow crops for profitable energy production instead of necessary foodstuffs. Some American farmers are apparently switching production from soy and wheat to corn.

Incidentally, this is not a new claim by Ziegler. He expressed the same view at UN headquarters last October, as reported by the BBC. At that time, Ziegler called for a 5 year moratorium on biofuels so that new technologies can use agricultural waste instead of crops.

Play around with google for a short time and it is apparent that various political figures are starting to play fast-and-loose with the phrase "crime against humanity." On April 16, AFP reported:

"The real crime against humanity would be to just cast aside biofuels and push countries struggling with food and energy shortages towards dependency and insecurity," [Brazilian President Luiz Inacio] Lula told the conference in Brasilia.

So, in this case, an action and its opposite are both described as a "crime against humanity."

The Rome Statute, which created the International Criminal Court, provides a broadly agreed definition of "crimes against humanity." While the scope of the Statute is fairly comprehensive, I don't see that it would include biofuel production -- or nonproduction, for that matter. Even the catch-all category covers merely "acts when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population":

Other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.

Over the years, domestic and international critics of American use of "depleted uranium" weapons have characterized this practice as a "crime against humanity."

Hmmm. That actually seems like a more serious place to start a debate.

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A reasonable commute

Recent days have seen a number of articles like this one from the New York Times, in which it is claimed that people are changing their commuting patterns because of the high price of gas. The equation is pretty simple: higher gas prices = more expensive to drive to and from work = more use of mass transit. Although the article also cites increased urban congestion and the availability of wireless connections (and hence to ability to do online work while traveling) on mass transit trains as reasons for this change in commuter behavior, the main logic claimed involves cost-benefit calculations revolving around the price of gasoline.

I'm skeptical of this argument -- and not just because of my knee-jerk opposition to rationalist models of individual decision-making. (Although admittedly that opposition does play a role here; I do think that there's something quite immoral about reducing human social action to a set of instrumental choices based on calculations about expected values, but that's another argument for another time and place.) In this case, I have two problems with the argument as presented. I don't think that there's a problem with the claim that "higher gas prices cause mass transit ridership numbers to go up"; I think there's a problem with the purported causal mechanism driving that association. I don't think that the rational calculation actually or unambiguously supports a greater use of mass transit, and I don't think that people determine their commutes based on such calculations.

Take the calculation itself. If I am driving to work, the commute cost is not just the price of gas and tolls and parking, and not just the wear and tear on my car and whatever estimate of the cost of the stress associated with driving in traffic I can come up with (and this is a not inconsiderable technical measurement problem -- how do you quantify the cost of stress? Estimated average medical bills? Surveys of peoples' attitudes? Self-reported feelings of frustration? Incidents of road rage?). The cost of driving is also the earnings foregone by driving instead of working, or the utility sacrificed by driving instead of sleeping in or staying home or watching a morning episode of Star Trek or whatever. And then there's the fact that in most cases taking mass transit adds to the commute time . . . sum all of that up and, well, the balance of costs and benefits is at the very least ambiguous. It is far from clear that taking the train to and from work actually does save you money. Thttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifhe fact that here in DC it costs me about $8/day between the commuter bus and the Metro to get to and from work, plus the effective doubling of my commute-time when I take the train, makes this a far from straightforward slam-dunk connection between the higher price of gas and a more affordable mass transit commute.

So I'm skeptical that the cost-benefit calculus actually points towards a greater use of mass transit. That said, mass transit numbers are up, and I think that does have to do with the higher price of gas; I just think that the mechanism is different. I think that the superior causal story here involves two factors: conservation consciousness, and emulation. "Conservation consciousness" catches up all of the recent popular concerns with natural resource depletion, global warming, ecological awareness, and a growing sense that unusual weather patterns are the result of aggregate human action; these themes have been a lot more prominent lately, as have the number of arguments linking these cultural commonplaces with particular courses of action like buying eco-friendly (if we ignore the mercury content of these items) lightbulbs. "Take the train instead of driving" extends the general "think globally, act locally" theme of the modern environmental movement in advanced industrialized societies, so it's not surprising to see such claims in mass circulation. What do these claims do? I don't think that they persuade people as much as they legitimate a course of action, render it a socially acceptable thing to do. Combine that kind of legitimation with the interrelated provision of infrastructural capacity to support such a course of action (i.e., the actual presence of a commuter rail system, which is "interrelated" with the legitimation strategy because the provision of the infrastructure is generally tied to the legitimation strategy itself -- we have a commuter rail system because it was rendered a publicly acceptable course of action, possibly in similar eco-friendly terms) and you have a channel along which social action can easily flow.

But legitimation is only part of the story. Equally important, I'd posit, is the mechanism of emulation: someone who drives to work is complaining about the cost of gas, someone else who takes the train suggests that the driver ought to switch to mass transit, and uses her or his own example as a successful mass transit commuter as evidence that such a course of action is viable. The conversation, I think, isn't about costs and benefits rationally calculated, even though the rhetoric of costs and benefits might be tossed around; vaguely reckoning with broad notions of "cost" and "benefit" is not, in my opinion, anything like an approximation to a rational cost-benefit calculation. Rather, it's a conversation about acceptable courses of action, and it tells us a lot about our present-say culture that we feel the need to justify courses of action by referring to their "costs" and "benefits" even if we have no clear or defensible sense or estimate of what those costs and benefits are! What I think is going on in that hypothetical conversation is not a shared calculation, but a sharing of cultural commonplaces and examples -- a sharing that just might make the mass transit option an acceptable and legitimate one.

That's why I think that we are seeing increased mass transit ridership. When and if gasoline prices decline, it will be interesting to see how sticky the new commuting patterns are; if I'm right, they might survive a drop in prices for longer than a straight rationalist would expect.

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A Protection Paradox

It is always wonderful, at this time of year, when grading a student’s paper teaches a professor something and leaves him/her thinking anew about ethical ironies in world politics.

My MPIA student, Christopher Farnsworth, who is now being recruited by the US Department of Defense, just wrote a fascinating analysis of Congressional policy on the sale of precision-guided munitions for my class on the “Rules of War.” (The paper, which is still in draft form as these things go, nonetheless contains a wealth of information on this issue, and is available here for those who know as little about this policy process as I did before I read it.)

Here's the ethical irony his analysis raises. The US is generally committed to more bloodless war for primarily humanitarian reasons (hence the development of smart bombs and non-lethal weapons to avoid killing enemy civilians) but is highly selective as to which governments it will share this technology with so that they, too, can avoid hitting foreign civilians in their various wars. Why?

Farnsworth points out that humanitarianism would be better served by relaxing the rules for the dissemination of smart bomb technology. Yet he concludes it this option - selling our most precise weapons to those governments we trust least - would be politically unpopular. Americans, he thinks, are unlikely to support handing our potential adversaries advanced weapons, merely on the grounds it might save innocent lives elsewhere.

But I wonder. Why shouldn’t the US public support open sales of PGMs – that is, putting smart-bombs in the hands not only of our allies but also our enemies, out o sel-interest? Why would we (civilian voters) want to prevent our adversaries from having the capacity to avoid hitting our homes in an assault if someday they so chose? Shouldn’t our government want to extend us this protection?

Instead, the Presidential criteria for a country’s eligibility for Foreign Military Sales includes “strengthens the security of the United States and promotes world peace.” (World peace being very unlike jusr war.) In other words, we sell smart bombs to our allies (sometimes) but want our enemies – those likeliest to attack us – to use dumb bombs; and we associate this policy with national security and world peace. Why?

The paper (which is mostly about whether to ban dumb bomb sales) only speculates as to the logic here, but to me it seems like a puzzle that could be thoughtully investigated.

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Why not invade Burma?

With the unfolding of the humanitarian tragedy in Burma following the cyclone, people are once again (re)learning how awful that regime is (by one popular account, the 3rd worst dictatorship in the world—don’t laugh, even Drezner loves the list).

Back in The Day, when the Axis of Evil (you remember that—Iran, Iraq, North Korea) came out, I used to go through a little exercise with my students called what makes a country Evil? In particular, I would ask them why not include Burma on the list? An “evil” regime by all accounts that is certainly not friendly to the US, but it gets nary a mention by the President. In fact, he seems to have sub-contracted Burma policy to the First Lady.

The Junta is supremely isolationist, concerned with its own hold on power, but largely staying out of world affairs. As far as we know, they don’t really involve themselves in the wild world of weapons of mass destruction or international terrorism. They generally don’t bother the US, and as a result, we generally don’t bother them.

One might even ask, why not invade Burma? After all, they do have a civil society looking to engage in a democratic transition, a relatively peaceful religious community, and a leader in waiting (with a Nobel no less). They even have some natural gas that is supposed to be valuable.

Interestingly enough, given the Junta’s poor performance after the cyclone and steadfast refusal to accept the international aid offered, a French proposal emerged to force aid into the country. The idea was quickly rejected, but it was revealing in that it showed just how limited international influence can be on a stubborn regime with little connection to the rest of the world, absent the threat of military force.

From the Junta’s perspective, as many have noted, this whole situation is a danger. The poor response to the disaster threatens their legitimacy on the eve of a sham vote to legimate their hold on power. However, allowing in hundred of international aid workers and thousands of tons of international assistance is also a danger, in that it not only questions the legitimacy of the government, unable to care for its own people, it also creates a social structure outside of government control. Aid distribution networks, moving materials and information, are the very sorts of civil society that a totalitarian regime must quash to prevent opposition movements from capitalizing on these tools to further threaten the government. An interesting point of reference are the North Korean famines of the mid 1990’s. After severe weather (and poor government planning and response) wiped out crops, the country had no food. It too resisted offers of assistance, similarly threatened by the potential ‘contamination’ to its domestic society that international aid workers and distribution networks might bring. North Korea eventually did get some aid, but much of it came in the context of the nuclear negotiations and subsequent Sunshine diplomacy with the South.

In that case, two things were important. First, the US led the international response. Fully engaged in the process, the US was able to lead the international community in negotiating with the DPRK. The US is again playing a lead role in Burma, but is somewhat, shall we say, distracted by Iraq, Afghanistan, and the whole GWOT thing. Second, North Korea and the US were engaged in a larger game at the time, the nuclear negotiations, and that provided an opening for the food aid. The DPRK was already trying to extract some sort of payment from the US, and the US had several things it wanted from the DPRK. So, food aid could enter into the discussion at some point. Burma has nothing we want, really, and we have had nothing substantive to say to them in quite a while.

So, unless the US and the “international community” want to force their way into Burma to deliver a planeload of high energy biscuits, there is unfortunately very little they can do to get aid to those in need. It reaffirms the importance of the state—even a weak state such as Burma—to set its own tone for its domestic affairs when the big boys of the neighborhood (China, the US, the EU) are unwilling to play hardball.

Moral of the story: if you’re evil, we’ll go to the mattress to take care of business. If you’re just plain bad, you’re probably in the clear.

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Narrating the Democratic Primary

An interesting thing happened late Tuesday night and into early Wednesday morning. The narrative that had driven the Democratic Presidential primary contest unraveled before our eyes and a new narrative was cast.

Going into the Tuesday primaries in IN and NC, the story was Obama has the lead, Hillary is making a move, and they will probably split the two states with the contest continuing on through June 3. And, the predicted outcome did in fact come to pass. Obama won NC, and Hillary won IN. And yet, it was how they won and how those ‘victories’ were given meaning that shifted the narrative. Over the course of several conversations between Chris Matthews and Tim Russert, Wolf Blitzer and John King, the story of the race was taken apart and re-told, and the race took on a new meaning.

Two important things happened.

First, Obama is now the presumptive nominee. The math really didn’t change all that much. The candidates haven’t really changed what they are doing (both are still continuing to campaign). But, once Russert said it, it was so. Its not because Tim Russert is all powerful and can re-shape American politics, on MSNBC no less. Rather, its because Russert and his media colleagues started a new narrative that rapidly took hold not just in the media but the blogosphere and everywhere else people talk politics.

Second, the so-called split in the party that the so-called divisive primary battle was creating instantly healed. Both Obama and Clinton gave speeches chock-full of appeals to the party faithful, contrasting their positions not with each other, but with the Republicans and McCain. And people picked up on these themes, discussing how the repairing of the party had begun. The story moved to how Democrats would deal with McCain, not how the two Democratic candidates were splitting from each-other.

This episode should serve to remind us of two things. First, campaigns, like all politics, are narrative events. You win the nomination politically by establishing the narrative of “winner.” The rest follows (delegates, the actual nomination). Second, these narratives are highly unstable and can shift rapidly. Indeed, the hard work is to get any one narrative to stick around long enough to shape a race and produce electoral outcomes. The surprise is not that the race changed so fast, but that it was anchored in a particular narrative for so long. Each campaign throws out a campaign narrative each and every day, and most of them fall flat on their face—they are lucky to survive a news cycle or two. The Obama – Clinton stand-off story seemed to last for quite a while, despite the delegate counts, primary victories (and losses), and such. The story lasted long enough to seem “the way things are,” and started to drive other narratives out of play. And yet, in one night, those participating in and following this race dropped the old narrative in favor of the other, and things suddenly shifted, and that which was seemingly so strongly entrenched vanished.

Its kind of like the end of the cold war, in a slightly different context. Imagine if there were more relational, discourse-oriented political scientists doing American Politics.


(as a parenthetical, I never put much faith in the Discord among Democrats story. If you remember, that same story was told about the Republicans way back when. Oh, the Romney people hate McCain. Conservatives don’t see McCain as a ‘real’ Republican. Well, guess what—McCain won the context and started running against all things Hillary, and guess what, the party closed ranks behind him. My guess is that Democrats will do the same—once the contest is over, the party will come together and realize that it really doesn’t want a McCain presidency, and support whoever wins. Of course, that depends on someone ‘winning….’)

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Serenity Now

At the urging of a friend, I have recently finished consuming the complete box-set of Joss Wheddon's now-defunct Firefly TV series plus the feature film Serenity. (Totally missed this show in 2002 while writing my dissertation.)

Though my partner can't quite see what I like about Firefly/Serenity(and didn't accept my claim that I was viewing it as a mere artifact of popular culture - really), truth is it's a damn cool series that should have survived beyond one season.



If you're unfamiliar with Firefly, here's the premise: humankind has colonized a new solar system, characterized by a strong, centralized, bureaucratic, quasi-authoritarian "Alliance" that governs the central planets through an elaborate system of surveillance and benevolent but Orwellian incentive structures. However the Alliance struggles to maintain control over the outer planets, which are largely characterized by tribalism and vigilante law akin to the U.S. Wild West or, for those on whom the metaphor is not lost, ungoverned spaces of today's globe in which criminal networks, banditry, slavery and insecurity thrive. In other words, the political geography of the series rather resembles Thomas Barnett's distinction between the "Functioning Core" and the "Non-Integrating Gap."

Perhaps surprisingly, the "good guys" of the show are not the Alliance civilizers, keen to spread rule of law throughout the fringe, but rather the crew of a smuggling ship captained by a one-time anti-Alliance insurgent and his sidekick, plus various crew and passengers picked up for utilitarian reasons along the way. The series follows their everyday life skirting Alliance officials, bartering, smuggling, and shooting when necessary.

But the series seems less about a band of criminals than about survival of kin-groups under failed state systems. Of particular interest to people concerned with governance under anarchy is the complex way in which honor codes come to check otherwise self-interested rationality.

I haven't (yet) delved into the considerable fan writings on Firefly/Serenity, but I did discover a brilliant gender analysis of the series published last year in the British Journal of International Relations. (It came to my mind as I considered the bleg PTJ posted recently about how to teach globalization and security.) Christina Rowley writes:

"[Joss] Whedon's vision appears to share much in common with Cynthia Enloe's (1996) appeal that we focus more of our analytical attention on the 'margins, silences and bottom rungs' of world politics, in order to illuminate the amounts and varieties of power that are required to be exerted in order to keep the world functioning as it does.... The Issues with which F/S engages - e.g. travel and migration, trade and smuggling, crime and terrorism, prostitution and sex work, individual and societal security - are simultaneously local and international - or, rather, post-national."

The show is also, Rowley argues, "post-feminist" insofar as:

"the individuals who comprise Serenity's crew and passengers, and the situationg in which they find themselves, provide critiques and alternative visions of what it means to be gendered."

She fleshes out this claim with reference to Zoe the warrior wife, Kaylee the sweet, sensitive ship's mechanic, Inara the high-class Companion (geisha/prostitute) and various other protrayals of women and gender issues in the show. (Rowley spends only one paragraph on the men of Firefly, unfortunately, although in my mind different constructions of good and bad masculinity underpin the show, and Jayne Cobb's gradual conversion from greedy, Neanderthal-esque cretin to good guy sidekick is one of the most interesting themes.)

At any rate, perhaps partly due to the misfit between "post-feminist" narratives and an increasingly retro gender culture characteristic of post-9/11 US political culture, the series failed after one season. But thanks to the show's strong and growing cult following, this could change. Fan organizations such as Browncoats.com and Fireflyfans.net are dedicated to "keep[ing] the fandom growing" not just in its own right but also to bring back the show by demonstrating that "we Browncoats are a mighty force of consumers."

One site exhorts fans to "throw a conversion party," "make your own bumper-stickers," "call Universal" or (two of my favorites):

"Any time you rent a sci-fi, western or action movie, put a small flyer or sticker on the case underneath the DVD. Where the renters will see them, but employees inspecting the cases won't.

Type in www.whatisfirefly.com into any public access Internet computer you come into contact with (libraries, computer stores, cyber cafés, etc) and leave it on the screen when you leave."

(Geez, the SaveDarfur coalition could take some pointers from this movement.)

Such efforts (and this blog post should in no way be construed as guerilla marketing of this type) have not yet succeeded at either reviving the series or securing the right to produce Season 2 informally, but they did result in a major feature film.

As Americans grow weary of the US government's Alliance role, might there may indeed be more mass support for pro-libertarian shows of this type? I suppose that depends on your estimate of the relationship between foreign policy and popular culture, on which I'm no expert. Thoughts?

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