Reconstruction, Transition and all that mess

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 Oceania, but it seems that these were rather uncontested situations, where the majority crushed the minority and there was no reconstruction, only annihilation. There was no contest.

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 USA made this possible, and whether this was inevitable.

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.

German Ruling on the Lisbon Treaty's Constitutionality: Legitimacy and Shared Sovereignty

Interesting days for European Integration...

Ireland sets a date for its referendum (2/10/09), the German Supreme Court ruled on the constitutionality of the Lisbon treaty ( check here for the full but only preliminary version of the ruling. BTW kudos must go to the German Supreme court for publishing its rulings in English as well as in German) and I, for lack of imagination and choice, seem to continue to engulf myself in the economic effects of budget deficits and their implication in the analysis of the credibility of the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP). It's fiscal policy analysis with budget deficits, cyclical budget deficits (the potential output version, please...) and their determinants and their effects on Repo rates, flying all over the place.

Here's an interesting article about the German ruling and it's potential consequences. I haven't yet had the opportunity to read the entire ruling and I doubt that I will have the time until September, but based on this article, here's what I its seems to say:

1) That sovereignty rests with the state according to article 23 of the Basic Law

2) That the European Parliament is not a genuine legislature

3) It clearly states what policy areas should not be covered by European Integration, one of which is fiscal policy (ie:fiscal policy is national not European)

I know nothing of Common or Civil Law, much less of the specificities of the German Basic Law, but here's what one can make out.

1) seems to be self evident in explanation, ie: sovereignty rests with the national state because it is said so in the German basic law. The ruling does not specify that all sovereignty rests with nation-states, but only specifically in Germany and as far as stated by article 23 (which for lack of knowledge I will just assume that it is absolute within the boundaries of common sense, ie: as absolute as it is permitted and more or less customary in a developed liberal democracy). This is interesting because all that seems required to change this is to change article 23 of the Basic Law. If it is changed in a manner that ensures that sovereignty can be "pooled" or that recognises European legislative mechanisms as not jeopardising German sovereignty, it shouldn't be much more difficult to solve this problem in the future, than to get the necessary super majority to change the German Basic Law. I don't know why probably because of Munchau's sentence: “Power may be shared, but sovereignty may not", I keep on remembering that sentence I heard about the competing views of the EU. Proponents say that the EU pools resources while opponents claim it uproots sovereignty by sharing it with other nations, and allowing them to have a say in their decisions.

This then brings us to the second point, the EUs lack of legitimacy. I will limit the discussion as the court itself did to input legitimacy, as only that rightly seems to make sense in judicial decisions (however the Chinese would probably like to see this included, at least if they want to legitimise their state on anything else than brutality and raw ability to keep u quiet...). 2) is justified on an interesting basis. One point that keeps on creeping up is the fact that the EU legislative process is not legitimate because of the electoral rule guiding the European Parliament and the assignment of seats. There seems to be a problem of "electoral equality" (II.cc). This is interesting... I've spent the best part of the last 2 years trying to learn about the EU its perks and its problems and I swear to god this never showed up... at least not in any relevant manner. The only time I heard a discussion about it was during the discussion itself of the Lisbon treaty where the Polish president or his brother wanted an electoral rule that accounted for the dead poles of WWII... The courts talk is in exactly thr opposite direction. The other two problems of legitimation are indeed more common. the complainants argue that the Commission is not a representative body, that there is no European political competition and that the commission's monopoly of power to initiate legislation is unconstitutional. I wonder what the court has to say about all this.

I still havent come accross the reason for the different reasons of all policy areas. However it seems plausible that the court goes through all of them individually and at length.

For the decision it really gets interesting only from heading "C", which is about half way through the paper. But again, I'll go through it later.

Finally I must say I do like the mess that it might have created with the SGP and how there might be some problems coming up...

Here's what's interesting: Munchau complains that everybody is cheering that the Lisbon Treaty can be ratified, but nobody realises the constraints that have just been put on future European integration. I believe that this is true, but quite irrelevant for now. The truth is that right now the priority is to get the treaty ratified. It's been 5 years, closer to 6, everyone is fed up with this and its about time to get things moving! We keep on talking about process, not substance, and really process, unless it is corruption, bores people. It's too technical, too confusing. (I just witnessed this today when I tried to explain to a friend the application process for jobs at the EU). Anyway, to go back to the point, European and National officials just want to get this over with. The motto is: "tomorrow, we'll worry about tomorrow". This approach is actually benefitted from this ruling and its meanders. As a matter of fact it helps that someone came along and said: "listen, the EU has problems. It's decision making is not ideal and actually parliaments ought to have a bigger say. Moreover if you want to delegate more powers, to the extent that a delegation of legitimacy will occur, you can't do through the back door. The UK and France won't simply leave one day the UN security council and be replaced by a EU rep due to backstage plotting. If you want the USE (the united states of Europe), you have to do it right. You have to change the constitutions and to properly address issues of where sovereignty lies." Specifically this helps the case of pro-Lisbon in Ireland a lot. Here's a ruling from a pretty pro-European country, saying explicitly that the Lisbon treaty does not delegate power in all those policy areas which spooked the Irish electorate, with images of Irish soldiers fighting and dying for Italy (god forbid), while their one-night-stands were forced by Brussels to abort their unwanted children, and their unwanted children were taught Esperanto in school, so that they could fill up their Esperanto European tax revenue form. According to Cerniglia and Paganni (2007: 12-14), there is a pretty decent match between present delegation of policy areas to the EU and the preference of Europeans for such delegation. Actually, it would seem that there is even some room left for further European integration in defence, humanitarian aid, the environment research and development and foreign policy. But I lose myself... The point here is that this ruling may help the cause of the Lisbon treaty for the reasons that Munchau thought it would hurt European integration. If only the Irish pro-Lisbon side can get properly organised and if their dumb politicians can shut it, we might get a chance to have this thing over and done before David Cameron comes to power and messes it all up for everyone (him included)...

As to the rest, I'm sure that the nation state will be as less fashionable in 25 years as it is today in comparison to 25 years ago...

BTW, another interesting issue for me is the idea repeatedly (6 times) stated of "the will of the people". This is interesting for someone like me who has studied political economy for a while because we get used to talk about majorities and minorities, not "the people" and much less "the will of the people". Obviously I suppose that it is implied in the courts language that "the will of the people" is proxied by "the will of the majority of the people". A Rousseauian reminiscence...

Economic Development and Political Stability: Africa Vs South East Asia

Why is Africa less developed than South East Asia?

Because it is less stable? (remmember both were colonies)

Fair enough, but why is South East Asia more stable?

Aha! That's where the crumbling of the cookie gets interesting...

Here's some food for thought:

Because ethnic tensions were stonger in a Africa as a result of the more artificial division of borders. By the way, South East Asia was pretty unstable in the early years of independence... China, Laos, Cambodja and Vietnam went at it pretty hard. There's always Myanmar (or Burma... how did that name change happen anyway?) and I don't know how developped these countries are. Hum...

Ok it seems I'm stuck in the typical Social Sciences conandrum... I'm stuck with more questions than answers and it's likely that my question might simply be fallacious and based on a wrong assumption. "Scientific methodology... Ah, What a pain you are!"

So ok... I guess that now I need to check if my basic assumption is correct and focus the analysis.

New question: "Is Africa more or less economically developed than South East Asia? , and if so why?"

Not that it wouldn't be interesting to check whether it is more or less legally, politically or socially developped, but one must start somewhere...

This should make my life easy. I pick a number of economic variables and then look at their determinants and understand what caused the differences in values between Africa and South East Asia.

Potential Variables:

1. GDP and its growth (Capital stock and its growth, Size of labour force and its growth, depreciation of capital stock and its growth and their productivity, for a Solow growth approach to the issue; or initial GDP, social and political stability measured as number of murders, terms of trade, and human capital for a New [ie endogenous] growth theory approach à la Barro; finally for just the GDP I may wanna compare the accounting variables: Y=C+I+G+X-M)
2. GDP per capita and its growth
3. Gini Index (for some idea of the income inequality) and its growth
4. Inflation and its growth
5. Unemployment and its growth

so I guess I'll have to look into it...

By the way, I should mention this all started because someone told me they had studied many things during their master's, one of which had been conflict resolution. The question seemed relevant at the time, but I feel like I'm not really running towards it... It seems as though the issue started as one of political stability and now, by refocusing the question I've completely removed it from its original purpose... Oh well! What are you gonna do?

But the original question is still relevant and probably easier to assess... "Is South East Asia more politically stable than Africa? If so why?"

Political stability

1. number wars in a certain period of time
2. number of governments in a certain period of time
3. level of control/authority projected by the government throughout its geographical jurisdiction
4. number of politically motivated aggressions (from the simple vandalism to political assassinations)

Causes

1. Heterogeneity of population (this kind of fits into the Cleavage structure)
2. Lack of functional institutions to mediate conflicts and legitimise decisions from the majority This is a huge heading: incorporates the recognition of specialization and sphere of influence of one institution by all the others (Executive, Legislative, Judicial, Military, Police, Central Bank), has to do with number of veto players (Horizontal executive power sharing through the electoral system and cleavage structure and vertical executive power sharing presidential vs parliamentarian and federal vs unitary), possibility of exit and of exercising voice, legitimation (input or output) processes,
3. External interference
4. Geography and the geographical organisation of resources/capital (physical and human)

Fortunately I don't have a dissertation to write...

Links and list of all online courses from Yale

All courses from Yale available here

Courses are:

Death

Financial Markets

France since 1871

Frontiers of Biomedical Engineering

Frontiers/Controversies in Astrophysics

Fundamental Physics

Game Theory

Introduction to Ancient Greek History

Introduction to Political Philosophy

Introduction to Psychology

Milton

The American Novel since 1945

The Civil War and Reconstruction

Iran until now

There are a lot of interesting things about the ongoing turmoil in Iran.

Firstly, it is amazing to see that whether you are French, Czech, Hungarian, Portuguese, Spanish, Iranian, Russian or Chinese, it does not matter. Everybody wants to have money, live confortably, and anything can trigger unrest. We do not want to be literate or numerate. We don't naturally crave for philosophy or politics. We want to live fairly happily and hopefully for as long as we can. Skills are only useful as a means to an end. Double digit inflation is not hyperinflation, but it still stinks! Lagging economic growth is not just a measure of some abstract concept and mathematical creation. It is indeed a useful tool to measure welbeing.

Secondly it is moving to see the lengths to which Iranians are willing to go to express their discontent. I wasn't there, but I dont remmember chinese citizens charging against the police. Check the Huffington Post.

Thirdly, some Political Economy.

Who are the Veto players?

Khamenei The Supreme Leader), the council of the wise men, the Revolutionary Guard and the Police. Also at this stage the opposition leader, given the amount of informal support also seems to have become a veto player. Informally, I suppose one may consider the parliament (though lightly so), but more importantly, (Urban) the merchants from the bazars, the middle class educated students, the university professors, and (Rural) the poor, and the uneducated, and the religious establishment.

What is the political system like? Centralised or decentralised? Likely the first... not sure

What about the welfare state? I would suppose that health care is provided by the state, in a rather poor manner, given corruption, and the toll taken on the budget by international sanctions. Pensions outside the public sector must be fairly inexistent. The same must apply to unemployment benefits. Education however seems to be rather good, from what I hear. That seems to be one of the reasons ppl go on the streets. They have all these skills and nobody lets them use them for anything, because the elite care little about the economy.

Fourthly it has to do with the nature and the organisation of the protests.

Reza Aslan on the daily show, with Jon Stewart proposed that both sides (Ahmadinejah and Mousavi) know how to dance this tango, because they were the ones dancing it during the Islamic Revolution. The idea is that this is kind of the same as what happened then, but now the players know what's goind on, where as then they were feeling the field. Aslan proposes that the protestors are going to alternate between taking to the streets and mourning for their deads, like they did in the past. And that in each period of mourning they organise better. It will be interesting to see whether this is the case. Either way, for our short term attention span western society it will probably take too long.

Fifthly, there are signs that some of the religious leaders in the council are trying to remove Khamenei. I cant come accross his name... anyway, 3 things seem possible.

1. Either they remove Khamenei
2. Either there's a Tienamen like bloodbath
3. Or there's a government of unity

1 Seems unlikely, unless Mousavi is able to get the support of the army and the other religious clerics or that the opposition organises into militias that can fight at first the basij and then the police. For this they need guns, which unless they take them from the police, it seems unlikely that it will work. 3 seems unpractical as the interests of Mousavi and Ahmadinejah may not intersect. Then again it is possible that they do and that Mousavi is just leveraging a return to politics. Its hard to tell, though he seems too arty and sophisticated for Ahmadinejah's rhetoric and brutish style. The only thing stopping 2 from happening is the fact that the opposition may be too large. If they go in with tanks it may lead to a face off which could lead the army to join the ranks of the protestors and that the ball game. What if instead of one guy sanding up to a tank, 1 million or a counple of thousands do at once and peacefully? From what I hear, Iran did something similar to that during the revolution, putting flowers in the canon of guns.

So in conclusion: 1 is logistically impossible, due to the lack of guns. It is also difficult due to the existence of the revolutionary guard. However, if the system does not change too much and they are left with their percs it is possible to get to that. A changing flied bu similar crap kind of scenario. The worst case however, would involve the army breaking ranks with the clerics or breaking up into opposing camps some of which might oppose the revolutionary guard and the rest of the army which has not changed allegiances.

2 could actually serve as a catalist for the fall of the regime. This would depend on the determination of the iranian ppl and on the number of times the military are willing to go in and kill ppl.

3 is no good because a unity government without unity or at least equality does not work. Mugabe and Tsvangirai taught us that.

Lastly, and on a lighter note, this has been a rather voyeuristic experience for me. The access to information and footage is just unbelievable. There's more now, without a large press presence, then ever before. I guess the opportunity cost of not sending the press has become really too high with youtube, and "viewer"(more like citizens) generated content. Also, media truly is changing. It seems like it is turning into more of a comentary than a matter of obtaining facts. This is not good, because the press then retrenches itself in a subjective field, and distances itself even more from factual reporting. Also, it's lazy! There's something to be said about the reporter having been present in the midst of the events. "...and now just posted on youtube, in what seems to be a large street, we have a large number of individuals, screaming loudly at what seems to be the police, for some important reason." Where is it? why is it there? What moves the ppl protesting? is it just a bandwagon effect. Are they behaving like a herd? or do they identify some cause for the existing malaise which they must voice. Is it the election? the economy? the lack of freedom?

...

Oh and is the rest of the region saying?

BTW: The media was already tiring of covering the protests. Now that Michael Jackson died, I wonder whether the coverage is not going to disappear altogether. After all it's not like there are that many journalists in the field...