The period of the USA's history known as reconstruction (fairly decent review of it in Wikipedia and a rather thorough introduction to it in Yale Open University Lecture Series)is extremely interesting and should probably be put into a discipline of its own, together with, the Japanese Meiji Era, the handling and the consequences of the great war, the Armenian Genocide, the German, Italian and Japanese reconstructions after WWII, transition from communism to capitalism in Eastern Europe (CEEC - Central and Eastern European Countries and Russia's Glasnost and Perestroika), post 1979 Communist China opening to the world, post-Franco Spain, the aftermath of recent post WWII genocides and atrocities and other civil wars in Africa (Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Liberia Somalia, Eritrea, Congo, etc), Southeast Asia (mainly Cambodia and its infamous Khmer Rouge), the Balkans and the transition from military or otherwise fascist looking and sounding régimes in Latin America (Argentina, Brazil and Chile come to mind, but I'm sure there are others). It's possible that I'm being unfair by leaving out
One thing that becomes quite evident from the reconstruction period in the USA is the problem associated with the concepts of formal and informal rules, as described by North here (for almost all he ever wrote see here and here), that in order for rules to be credible, they need to enjoy enforcement credibility, which can only be guaranteed by a synchronicity between formal laws passed by legislations and informal rules predominantly present in social conventions, or what he refers as the mental models which help us understand the world. I thought at first that it might have been possible to support ungrounded (in public support) legislation through coercion or incentivizing side payments (North does not actually mention these two), but I guess that in such circumstances no one is determined enough to enforce the first and the side payments are not sufficiently large to be effective.
[On a side note, if anybody has ever read the biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, it may become apparent that he was acutely aware of this problem as he always feared to be ahead of public opinion, which caused his delay in entering in WWII )].
This is a big field, which is concerned with understanding the transition from instability to more calm states of nature. In this specific context my interest is larger. It encompasses not mere economic and political instability but also institutional instability as well as the possibility of economic, political, social and institutional stability as the means to achieve North's adaptively efficient economy/society. In this specific case I am very interested in the transaction costs specific to war as well as general economic, political and social strife. I am interested in how societies change their minds or fail to change their minds, and how they move on and deal with prior opposition. How did the unionists deal with the confederalists? How did the Tutsis deal with the Hutus? How did the allies deal with the Germans? How did moderate Germans deal with Nazis and the previous generation? How did Cambodians deal with the Khmer Rouges? How did moderate Spanish deal with the phalangists? How did capitalist Eastern Europeans, Chinese and Russians deal with their communist counter parts (and by the way, vice versa should also be interesting to know)? and more importantly, to which extent did this process of national healing or lack thereof affect economic performance and social and political stability?
Anyway, one thing seems certain, reconstruction failed, and depending on your view of the American Civil war (my apologies to Latin American sensibilities), it probably hindered the unionist war efforts. Now the interesting thing is to understand where and when it failed, and what about the
I've got to finish this dissertation so I can get down and do some reading...
In the mean time, here's an interesting look at contemporary KKK. The little subtitles are at least as interesting as the photos.
From my experience, the way some societies tend to deal with such traumatic shocks is to sort of pretend it never happened. I know this sounds a bit absurd, but I have seen it at least in a couple of places. One good example is Brazil. The Brazilian military dictatorship lasted roughly 20 years (from 1964 to 1984, with free elections being held only in 1989). During this period the clash between the ruling regime and its opposition was tremendous. Both sides took extreme actions to attempt to fulfil their goals. As a consequence, a big divide was created between both sides. Nevertheless, as the support for the military government faded, it was apparent to both sides that the only way democracy could be restored was by the "forgiveness" of the actions of both sides during this period. Consequently, the law of amnesty was created, which exempted all from the political crimes committed during the 20 year period. Given that, the Brazilian society chose for many years simply to forget a lot of what happened then. In many situations talking about it is still a "taboo". Society chose to rebuild, rather then punish those who deserved it, which could have resulted in a lot more turmoil in the transition of governments. The other example I would like to give is Germany. I know some Germans whose parents and grand parents were active members of the Nazi youth, witch at the time was almost the norm. These people truly believed the ideals presented to them and were almost victims of the circumstances of their time. As the war ended with the defeat of the third Reich, this whole generation was desolated and had to live thereafter with the guilt of what they had done. But the point is that for a long time this topic was a taboo in Germany. People also chose to move on. It is true that recently Germany has made apologies, and that the new German society is more prone to openly speak of the subject, but it took time. I guess what we can learn from these two examples is that, given such traumatic events within a society, in order to recover there must be some turning point in which people stop looking back and start looking to the future. I don’t dare explore the effects of this into economic or political issues, but from a purely psychological perspective, I believe it is a natural mechanism of defence. In order to keep from the fabric of society from melting down, society it self enters in a state of general amnesia. The effects of this in the future in many cases can be disastrous, but it seems to have been the short term “bodge” mostly used in the past.
ReplyDeleteSpain, and Liberia (at least) did something similar to Brazil regarding the more turbulent periods of their history. It seems the alternative is either to put a big white sheet of paper over things or to go back and punish everybody...
ReplyDeleteBTW, the USA also forgot (more or less... They actually lost interest more than anything really) after the civil war