Kate Weaver on the State of International Political Economy (IPE)

At Duck of Minerva, "State of the Field, Redux: What's Wrong with IPE?"



What caught my attention about Weaver's post is that she cites Dr. Benjamin J. Cohen's book, International Political Economy: An Intellectual History. Professor Cohen is on faculty at UC Santa Barbara's Department of Political Science. He was a key mentor to me during my years there in graduate school, and we still communicate by e-mail. I posted an essay from Professor Cohen last year, "'Are IPE Journals Becoming Boring?'"



In any case, check over at Duck of Minerva for the post.



I'm starting my Fall 2011 World Politics course on Monday.

The U.S. Still Has a Promising Future?

Well, I certainly hope so.



But check Michael O'Hanlon, at Los Angeles Times, "Despite Problems, the U.S. Still Has a Promising Future":

Amid all the talk of gloom and doom in the United States, with the stock market's near-crash and the renewed threat of a double-dip recession, it is worth pausing to remember that the United States remains the greatest country on Earth. It is also the country with the most promising future. I make these assertions not as a matter of national pride, but as an analytical conclusion.

And he makes an excellent argument. The problem --- and I know it's a problem, because I'm just like O'Hanlon on this --- is that his analysis is almost completely structural. That is, O'Hanlon's looking at all this recent turmoil from a comparative power analysis interpretation, which almost systematically excludes internal political determinants. We can extrapolate from past patterns of America's remarkable exceptionalism and global preponderance and expect things to flow along fairly well simply because for all our troubles, no single other nation matches America's bounty or prospects. But the debt downgrade, as Danial Henniger points out today, is the ultimate signal that American hegemony is shrugging. To use Mark Steyn's analogy, we're like a prize fighter who's been hammered, and the opponent's sitting at the opposite stool, counting the seconds until the bell rings to come over for another round of pummeling. That's to say, for example, when Britain fell from preeminent status after WWI, and most definitely at the conclusion of WWII, the mantle of global political and eocnomic leadership passed to a benign power across the Atlantic, the United States. The U.S. had not only resisted the hegemonic role during the 1920s, but after WWII we did just about everything in our power to restore the defeated European nations and Japan to economic vitality and competitiveness. As America declines now --- and I'm using decline now for the first time really in agreement --- there's is no commensurate situation of the leading power passing the baton to a friendly rising power, as we experienced in 1945. China and Russia cooperate where possible but will seek advantage from America's weakening position, as power politics dictates, and that's while at the same time China is paradoxically hemmed in further from America's debt problems (mutual vulnerability forms a trace element of U.S. power internationally). And of course toss into the mix President Obama's hellbent agenda of making the United States the unexceptional nation, and well, let's just hope he's out in one term, November 6th, 2012. And the key factor for the electorate is the massive Democrat debt overhang. We're heading into a double-dip recession, some say. The Fed, for example, promised zero percent interest rates until 2013 because it expects no growth. The only thing good about this is that it almost guarantees that the Democrat ticket will lose next November. Even then, Republicans have been nearly as addicted to spending as the Democrats, with G.W. Bush's Medicare prescription drug expansion being Exhibit A. And the debt overhang will accelerate the collapse of U.S. world leadership unless two things happen: (1) we cut spending, and (2) the economy grows at a sustained pace of growth, say at three percent annual GDP for a decade or two, and then some. I can't see things turning around unless we have a combination of those two things, and without that we'll see a steady erosion of both U.S. global influence and a decline in the U.S. standard of living at home.



So, yes, Michael O'Hanlon makes a good case for continued optimism, but a more thorough analysis must consider the current failures of the American political system, and most importantly, the epic failures of the Democrat Party's expansionist, economic-killing social welfare policies.



More on this later ...

Ross Douthat, Political Scientist

Douthat draws on political science research at New York Times, "Waiting For a Landslide." And for a second I thought he'd blow it, because "realignment theory," which he discusses, hasn't accurately explained, much less predicted, partisan trends for decades. But Douthat adds this, which is just right:

In reality, the next election may be no more transformative than 2008 turned out to be. The next Republican president may find himself as hemmed in and frustrated as President Obama has become. Meanwhile, America will still have a credit rating to fix, and a deficit to close.

More at that link at top, and Douthat had a great piece a few days ago on the debt deal, "The Liberals’ Dilemma." Note especially:

... American liberalism risks becoming a victim of its own longstanding strategy’s success. Because yesterday’s liberals insisted on making universal programs the costly core of the modern welfare state, on the famous theory that “programs for the poor become poor programs,” today’s liberals find themselves defending those universal (and therefore universally-popular) programs at the expense of every other kind of government spending — including, yes, programs for the poor. It’s a classic example of putting liberal political interests ahead of liberal policy priorities. In the short term, the insistence on ring-fencing Medicare and Social Security has left Democrats defending a system that often just ends up redistributing money from the younger middle class to the older middle class while accepting caps on programs that might do more (both directly and indirectly) to help downscale Americans get ahead. In the long term, by postponing any reckoning with the cost of entitlements, it’s making it more likely that the inevitable crunch will hit the poorest recipients of Medicare and Social Security harder than it should.

Read that whole thing. Basically, progressives will never cut entitlements because gargantuan socialist welfare states form the core of socialist existentialism.



Douthat's coming of his own as a New York Times columnist, by the way. He had cold feet or something after leaving The Atlantic, but he's been more consistent in posting some excellent commentary of late.

Chronic Misperception and U.S.-Iraq Conflict

A powerful and very interesting study from Charles Duelfer and Stephen Benedict Dyson, at International Security, "Chronic Misperception and International Conflict: The U.S.-Iraq Experience."

Some may recall that Duelfer led the Iraq Survey Group investigating Iraq's WMD programs, which issued a report, "Comprehensive Revised Report with Addendums on Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction." And check the criticism of Duelfer from Christopher Carson, "What Charles Duelfer Missed."

Opinions are pretty much set in stone on the causes of war with Iraq. That said, the Duelfer and Dyson study at International Security is valuable for its perspective on the dyadic dynamics of U.S.-Iraq conflict. Theories of misperception delve into the psychological biases of decision-making. There's an outstanding theoretical discussion at the essay, and that alone is worth taking a few minutes. From the U.S. perspective, the main problem was an essentially irreversible enemy image of Iraq's Saddam Hussein, an image that over time became resistant to new stimuli that might have provided better information on Iraqi intentions and capabilities. But perhaps even more interesting is Saddam's own failures of misperception, and how these virtually guaranteed a U.S. military response. Here's this from the study:

As deputy head of the UNSCOM inspections from 1993 to 2000, and again as the chief investigator into Saddam’s WMD programs after the 2003 invasion Duelfer had a unique opportunity to develop an understanding of how the Iraqis viewed UN weapons inspections and resolutions. During one of the first inspections, while Iraq was still surrounded by the massive forces used to expel it from Kuwait, UNSCOM staff was blocked and various materials were secreted away. This blatant obstruction of the UN inspectors was reported to the Security Council and, after debate among its fifteen members, the council dispatched the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Hans Blix, and the head of the UNSCOM inspection team, Rolf Ekeus, to Baghdad to resolve this dispute over access afforded under the UN cease-fire resolution.

This response—the dispatch of two Swedish diplomats—was seen by Saddam as indicating a weakness of will in the Security Council. He had violated the terms of the cease-fire resolution, and the response was neither regime threatening nor even punitive in nature. The weak response communicated a lesson that shaped Saddam’s attitude toward the UN process. The Security Council would not recommence the war to enforce compliance with disarmament requirements, in spite of whatever some members may have said at the time. Saddam came to regard the UN process not as one wherein he would be obligated to comply categorically, but as one of testing and bargaining. He would give up what he had to give up to convince the Security Council to lift its UN sanctions, but no more.

Over time, Saddam and senior Iraqis came to find the broader UN process vexing and confusing. The collective Security Council position as codiªed in its resolutions seemed straightforward: sanctions would remain in place until Iraq satisfied weapons inspectors that all of Iraq’s WMD capabilities had been eliminated and monitoring systems were put in place to detect any attempts to reconstitute them in the future. Very different messages were sent from individual council members, however. During the Bill Clinton administration, public comments by the president and by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright stated that Washington’s policy was containment of Saddam with an eventual goal of regime change. Albright, in a speech at Georgetown University in March 1997, responded to a question on lifting sanctions by not ing not that Saddam could have them lifted if he complied with UN resolutions, but that “a dialogue” would be possible with a “successor regime.”

To the Iraqis, Albright’s statement seemed to contradict Security Council resolutions. Containment depended on a permanent retention of sanctions, but the resolutions contained the provision that if and when Iraq satisfied weapons inspectors, then sanctions would be lifted. Saddam and senior Iraqis therefore questioned whether Washington would ever agree to lift sanctions, even if Iraq could satisfy the inspectors. They put this paradox to senior UNSCOM staff as well as to officials of Security Council member nations such as France, Great Britain, and Russia, and received assorted and contradictory opinions in return ...

The full study is at the link.

VIDEO: Gabrielle Giffords Returns to Congress

This is good.

At New York Times, "Giffords Return Marks Moment of Unity in Divided House."

Representative Gabrielle Giffords made a surprise appearance Monday evening on the floor of the House of Representatives, the first time she has returned to Washington since she was shot earlier this year in Arizona.

With two minutes remaining on the voting clock, Ms. Giffords entered the chamber through a side door. Her arrival prompted a standing ovation that lasted throughout the remainder of the vote on the compromise to raise the debt ceiling. She was among one of the last representatives to cast her ballot, voting yes on the measure as other affirmative votes put the bill over the top.

See also, "House Passes Bill on Debt Ceiling." (At Memeorandum.)

Digby's Hullabaloo, Progressive Libel Blogger, Attacks Pamela Geller as Anders Breivik's Muse

That's Big Mama Digby (Heather Parton) at the picture. She's one sick bitch.

Here's the post: "The Murderer's Muse." Digby feigned a retraction by writing:

I was wrong to compare Geller to Tim McVeigh and I apologize for doing it. She has personally committed no violence and can't stand next to him for sheer evil. I do think the genocidal rants on her blog are worthy of condemnation and since she wrote them and featured those of others, she does bear responsibility for them.

Nope. Sorry. That's not gonna cut it. Should've just deleted the post and moved on. The progressives are obviously too stupid to actually read what Pamela wrote. See, "SUMMER CAMP? ANTISEMITIC INDOCTRINATION TRAINING CENTER." Following the links takes us to The Anti-Mullah, "ANOTHER LOOK AT THE NORWAY LABOR PARTY PALESTINIAN AFFILIATION."

I saw photos of the Labor Youth camp's "Boikott Israel" banners within hours of the shooting. Norway's Labor Party is a classic new-left Israel-bashing organization. See, "Norwegian campsite Utoya was socialist and anti-Israel." I personally ignored this angle because the killings went beyond normal political differences, and I thought it better to simply highlight what I could about the psychology of Anders Breivik. It bears repeating that Breivik is a deranged criminal acting outside the normal bounds of reason. No movement or ideology can possibly be blamed for the actions of this sick loser. He's insane. But progressives continue to exploit the dead for their cheap attacks on conservatives and counter-jihad. Folks should see over at Pamaela's now. She's documented the campaign of death against her, including an endless stream of vicious email invective that might as well been sent by the Antichrist himself. See, "EVIL UNLEASHED":

"We are witnesssing the complete breakdown of rational society."

Melanie Phillips has made the same point repeatedly, calling the attacks on her as the latest in the left's totalitarian inquisition:

They [progressives] are in the same mould as the religious and political totalitarian tyrannies of the past; they make in this respect common cause with the Islamists whose agenda poses a mortal threat to their own lives and liberties and most cherished beliefs; and they share the characteristic of a closed thought system which is totally impervious to reason and destroys all who challenge it with the monsters of history and Anders Behring Breivik.

That is surely why the left seized upon the Norway atrocity with demented joy and detonated a terrifying eruption of distortion and demonisation, irrationality, hatred and sheer blood-lust as it saw in the ravings of Anders Behring Breivik the mother and father of all smears which it could use to crush those who refuse to surrender to cultural totalitarianism. So those of us who fight for life, liberty and western civilisation against their enemies found ourselves – and by implication, the many millions who share these mainstream views – grotesquely damned as accessories to mass murder by those who actually cheer on religious fascists and genocidal madmen and who are set upon silencing all who resist.

The appalling actions of a Norwegian psychopath tell us next to nothing about our society. But the reaction to that atrocity tells us a great deal more.

Time for Institutional Reform? Well, Only When Democrats Are Losing

Leave it to the bright lights of the political science profession to call for major structural reforms on the heels of the debt deal. It reminds me of all the useless handwringing over the filibuster once Obama-the-Socialist was elected. Progressives lost. And the losers are screaming foul! See Jacob Hacker and Oona Hathaway, at New York Times, "Our Unbalanced Democracy" (via Memeorandum):

OUR nation isn’t facing just a debt crisis; it’s facing a democracy crisis. For weeks, the federal government has been hurtling toward two unsavory options: a crippling default brought on by Congressional gridlock, or — as key Democrats have advocated — a unilateral increase in the debt ceiling by an unchecked president. Even if the last-minute deal announced on Sunday night holds together, it’s become clear that the balance at the heart of the Constitution is under threat.

The debate has threatened to play out as a destructive but all too familiar two-step, revealing how dysfunctional the relationship between Congress and the president has become.

The two-step begins with a Congress that is hamstrung and incapable of effective action. The president then decides he has little alternative but to strike out on his own, regardless of what the Constitution says.

Congress, unable or unwilling to defend its role, resorts instead to carping at “his” program, “his” war or “his” economy — while denying any responsibility for the mess it helped create. The president, on the defensive, digs in further.

This is, to say it plainly, pure bull. The system's working just the way it's supposed to. The electorate voted for a GOP House majority in 2010. And the Republicans stuck to their guns, to the shock of the old establishment, both Democrats and Republicans alike, who have historically, in previous rounds of debt "negotiations," faked spending restraint while hiking taxes. We have a presidential system and the separation of power. Each office is elected individually, with elections staggered every two years between the House (two-year terms, the entire membership up for reelection every two years), the Senate (six year terms of office for political insulation, with one-third of senators elected every two years), and the president (four year terms of office, term limited since 1951 to prevent cults of personality). Thank the Framers of the Constitution. They built a system that effectively prevents tyranny of the majority. If the voters are unhappy, they get to pick the government they want in 2012. That's how it works. No one's taking hostages. The system's not dysfunctional. If you don't like the filibuster, elect 60 senators from your own party to the majority in the Senate. That solves the problem. If you don't like Republican backbone in the House, take back the chamber in 2010. That's how it works. Amazing how progressives whine about how the sky is falling when folks say we ought to live within our means. It's all going to work out, and in the end the average voter will have demonstrated more influence than the upper-crust academics sneering from their ivory towers.

Image Credit: The People's Cube.

Progressives Hell-Bent on Bullying Millions Into Silence

From Melanie Phillips, at London's Daily Mail, "Hatred, smears and the liberals hell-bent on bullying millions of us into silence":

The baleful effects of the recent attacks in Norway, where Anders Breivik bombed Oslo’s government district and then gunned down teenagers at a Labour party camp, murdering at least 77 people, have not been limited to that horrific carnage.

For the atrocity has produced a reaction among people on the political Left in Britain, Europe and the U.S. that is in itself shocking and terrifying.

Former Norwegian prime minister and current chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize committee Thorbjorn Jagland has said that, in response to the violent attacks, David Cameron and other European leaders should use a more ‘cautious’ approach when talking about multiculturalism.

Cameron has said multiculturalism (the doctrine that gives the values of minorities equal status to those of the majority) has failed, and has also talked about ‘Islamist extremism’ as a cause of terrorism.

Jagland, however, said leaders would be ‘playing with fire’ if they continued to use rhetoric that could be exploited by extremists such as Breivik.

This is because Breivik’s so-called manifesto shows that he is violently against mass immigration, multiculturalism and Islamisation — and that he wants the forced repatriation of Muslims from Europe and the murder of all who have promoted multiculturalism.

But to connect such abhorrent ravings with Cameron’s comments is simply grotesque.
First and foremost, this is treating Breivik as if his words deserve to be taken seriously and at face value.

As of now, however, we don’t know whether Breivik is psychotic, a psychopath or under the influence of all the drugs he claims to have taken.

We also don’t know what part, if any, his political views actually played in this atrocity.

After all, since his target was his country’s Labour party one might just as well surmise that he was motivated by hatred of his father, who was a Labour party supporter and who was divorced from Breivik’s mother when the killer was a baby.

In any event, someone who travels to a teenagers’ summer camp and invites them all to gather round so that he can kill them all cannot be considered rational.

Yet the former Norwegian premier is treating Breivik as if he is a political terrorist whose words have the authority of a sane and coherent creed.

Still more at the link.

Wall Street Journal Weekend Interview: Theodore Dalrymple, 'Unraveling the Mystery of Murderous Minds'

From Brian Carney's interview:

Some have sought to link Breivik's violence to his political thinking. The New York Times ran a story Monday about Breivik's fondness for certain American anti-Islamist blogs. And a parade of politicians on the European right have felt compelled to step forward and condemn Breivik's killing spree—as if afraid that silence might somehow imply sympathy. Dr. Dalrymple himself, he says, is quoted indirectly "several times" in Breivik's manifesto, "and that," he says, "is slightly anxiety-provoking." In the first place, it's never pleasant to find yourself in the company, however unwillingly or unwittingly, of a man like Breivik.

He has another worry, "that what he's done will be taken as a reason to close down all kinds of debate," or to delegitimize the views of anyone who, as Dr. Dalrymple puts it, "question[s] anything that the current prime minister of Norway says or believes."

Emerging Democratic Majority?

Michael Barone debates Ruy Teixeira on Capitol Hill, August 18th. My money's on Barone. Teixeira's been forecasting a coming Democrat majority as long as I can remember. Here's this report, shortly after the "Hope & Change" election of 2008: "New Progressive America: Twenty Years of Demographic, Geographic, and Attitudinal Changes Across the Country Herald a New Progressive Majority."

Teixeira's not quite as confident today, "Key Socialist Fears “White Working Class” Could Defeat Obama."

Freakin' commie douchenozzle.

Professor Daniel Drezner Five Years After University of Chicago Tenure Denial

I first started reading blogs seriously around 2002 or so, when Professor Daniel Drezner published an essay on academic blogging at Foreign Policy. He's now a blogger at Foreign Policy, and there's no way I can find that old article through search. I have the hard copy in my office somewhere, so I'll go find it and search by exact title later. Anyway, he's got a new essay at the Chronicle of Higher Education, published with his wife, to commemorate his denial of tenure at the University of Chicago in 2005: "A Professor and His Wife on Absorbing the Shock of Tenure Denial."

In 2005, Drezner wrote a blog post on the news that he'd been turned down, "So Friday was a pretty bad day...." This was a pretty big sensation at the time, especially the hypothesis that he was denied tenure because he was a blogger (and hence not a serious scholar, etc.). I knew Drezner wouldn't have a hard time landing a new post, and in fact he was hired right away at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. I started my own blog shortly after this time (my first blog was Burkean Reflections, which I retired after I figured out I wasn't Burkean). I was tenured by then, but I was hesitant and tentative in my blogging, primarily because I hadn't figured out my own identity as a political scientist. Once I'd started American Power I'd figured out what I was doing in both blogging and life. And I don't worry about any backlash from blogging because blogging's my identity now, and teaching and activism. I couldn't have gotten to this point in my writing and commentary without being tenured, so if young untenured scholars come across this post my advice is don't do it --- especially if you're conservative (the academic neo-communist intelligentsia will seek to destroy you for deviating from the accepted narrative).

Anyway, read the essay from Drezner's wife Erika, "My Confident Husband, Suddenly Full of Self-Doubt." I like this part:

Things turned out well for us. We were lucky—my husband found a job, with tenure, and we moved to Boston, which just happens to be my favorite city. Our kids were young enough to move without much difficulty. I know that other people have had it a lot harder. They've struggled to find work, relocated to less desirable places, and have painfully disrupted family life. This is particularly difficult for couples in which both are academics. Those of us in more "portable" careers should be grateful to have avoided the two-body problem.

Exactly. Things have turned out better for them having Daniel been denied. (But of course it's gotta be an extremely painful experience, and academic tenure review is one of the most stressful experiences in anyone's career.)

Side Note: I stopped reading Daniel Drezner's blog years ago, when I noticed that he refused to stand up for Israel in his writing. He'd post the news but wouldn't offer any opinion, obviously worried about alienating powerful colleagues and fellow political scientists across the academy. He also co-authors academic papers with communist political scientist Henry Farrell, and thus Drezner's revealed he'll put professional mobility above moral clarity. I don't do that. It's costly, but I don't have to worry about peer recognition from inbred academic committees who hate America and disdain the real world.