public policy: taking sides 1
Apr. 7th, 2007 01:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cb_backuppoli sci links pages:
http://www.rvc.cc.il.us/faclink/pruckman/PSLinks.htm
http://www.polsci.wvu.edu/polycy
http://www.etown.edu/vl/
http://www.emory.edu/SOC/globalization/
Taking Sides: Clashing Views in World Politics
I got this book because I wanted to learn more about public policy, and this was one of the books the library had on the subject. I wouldn't recommend it, though. I liked the introduction, but not the essays, which seemed rather insubstantial. (Though some did have great quotes, like the following from Mahatma Gandhi on cultural diversity: "I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the culture of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.")
Below are my notes on the book.
Introduction:
"Throughout history it has been the inaction of those who could have acted, the indifference of those who should have known better, and the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most that made it possible for evil to triumph." - Ethiopia's emperor Haile Selassie
Technological changes and the shifting axes of international politics highlight the increased role of economics in world politics. Economics have always played a role, but traditionally the main focus has been on strategic-political questions such as military power. One important change in recent decades has been the rapid growth of regional and global markets and the promotion of free trade and other forms of international economic interchange. Many people support these efforts and see them as the wave of the future. But there are others who believe that free economic globalization and interdependence undermine sovereignty and the ability of governments to control their destiny. Also, there is the issue of whether capitalism offers the best economic approach for ensuring continued prosperity among the developed countries and for improving the circumstances of the less economically developed countries.
Policy is formulated on what decision-makers think, not necessarily on what is. Thus, perception becomes the operating guide, or operational reality, whether it is true or not. So it is important to understand objective reality, but also to comprehend subjective reality in order to predict and analyze another country's actions.
Three levels of analysis: system-level analysis, state-level analysis, and human-level analysis. The first posits that world factors (the number of powerful actors, geographic relationships, economic needs, technology) virtually compel countries to follow certain foreign policies, and, as such, a country's internal political system and its leaders do not have a major impact. The second focuses on how states make foreign policy. It is focused on internal politics, such as the relationship of the executive & legislative branch, role of interest groups, public opinion, bureaucracy. The third focuses on the role of individual decision-makers.
At the end of WWII, the world was structured in a bipolar system; with the US and the Soviet Union as the nexus points, and a tightly organized and dependent group of allies clustered around them. Now the system has faded, and the North-South axis has increased in importance and tension. - the divide between the wealthy, industrialized countries and the poor, less developed ones.
Some economic statistics: before WWII, $30 billion in annual world export total; in 2002, $8 trillion. International investment exceeds $20 trillion (real estate, stocks, bonds), flow of currencies so massive that there is no accurate measure, but it is certainly more than $1.5 trillion a day. Huge multinational corps have come to dominate global commerce: the 100 largest MNCs had sales of 4.4 trillion. So, economic prosperity in all countries is increasingly dependent on their imports and exports, on the flow of capital, and on the currency exchange rate fluctuations.
Emphasis, since WWII, on decreasing tariffs; increasingly, however, free trade is being scrutinized, for in some countries, such as those in the African continent, it has arguably lead to greater harm, and there is a trend towards protectionism.
Anne Krueger: Expanding Trade & Unleashing Growth: The Prospects for Lasting Poverty Reduction
Nothing new here. She argues that trade liberalization is the key to global prosperity, that while multilateral trade liberalization is the key even unilateral trade liberalization (in the form of MFN status) yields significant benefits. However, she present no direct evidence for this. She says things like "the evidence shows", but does not present the evidence, which is what I was looking for, and one of the reasons her arguments felt rather insubstantial to me.
* trade tariffs & restrictions deny opportunities to a large number in order to protect a small minority, at expense to consumers & taxpayers
* that there is so much more opposition for trade liberalization because the ones who may lose have a far better idea of who they are than those who are likely to gain from it, because it's nearly impossible to predict where new business & employment opportunities will come from, which sectors and firms would respond best; what is certain is that opportunities will materialize, not who will seize them. one example presented: during negotiations of NAFTA, a mexican manufacturer of refrigerators was one of the main opponents, for they were of very poor quality. It turned out that the fatal flaw was the compressor; mexican-made compressors weren't up to the job, and with NAFTA he was able to obtain American ones at competitive prices and it turned out he gained market share instead of losing it.
* regional trade agreements (RTAs) have long proliferated in Africa, yet they have not yielded benefits - intra-african trade fell in the 70s and only recovered to its 70s level in the mid-90s, and is around 10% of total African trade. RTAs are most effective as a complement to and not a substitute for multilateral liberalization. (but because of poor infrastructure, as she notes later, it costs $5000 to ship a car from Addis Ababa to Abidjan, three times the cost of shipping it from Japan. this makes me think that all the problem can be due to this, and that this evidence doesn't support or refute her claim that RTAs have yielded no benefits there because they weren't a complement to multilateral liberalization.)
Jose Bove: Globalization's Misguided Assumptions
This was even worse than the former! Heavy on rhetoric, weak on facts. What's worse, it used agriculture as a poster-child for why trade liberalization doesn't work, but I don't know how this example is valid when, as it said later, in 2000 America offered subsidies of more than $23 billion (and I know European nations offer subsidies similar to this). This seems to me like another form of protectionism, and it's surprising to me that it's used as an example of the failure of trade liberalization, when it seems more appropriate for it to be an example of the failure of just unilateral trade liberalization. (Another thing that seems strange is that the latter is even an issue. Of course unilateral trade liberalization isn't going to work, especially for developing countries, for in many cases agriculture is their main competitive export, and when developed nations started subsidize their own agriculture they are in effect imposing a form of trade tariff, and developing nations are unable to compete not just in exports but oftentimes also in imports, for the (unnaturally) cheap agricultural goods flood their market too, making their farmers poorer and possibly crippling their agricultural industry. And in this way developing countries became, for all extents and purposes, little more than consumers that cannot afford to consume. This is one of the reasons I can't take people like Anne Krueger who advocate unilateral liberalization seriously.)
The more pertinent question, it seems to me, is how well bilateral and multilateral trade liberalization works, and that's one issue that this article didn't seem to address, which is the main reason I was so disappointed.
A fact I'm going to have to check later: it claimed that world market prices applied to a small fraction of global production & consumption: the world price of milk & dairy products is determined by production costs in New Zealand (New Zealand's share of global milk production averaged 1.63% between 1985 & 1998), world price of wheat is pegged to the price in the US (US accounts for 5.84% of aggregate output from 1985 to 1998). These prices are tantamount to dumping (selling below production costs) and only economically viable for exporters thanks to substantial aid.
It also raised the issue of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). I think GMOs are bad, but I'm not sure what they have to do with trade liberalization? Surely countries have the power to ban them if they think they are harmful, or at least label them so that their populace knows that that is what they're consuming and can consume organic products if they so choose. One thing this reminded me of, though, is this one situation where a biotech corp sold seeds to India (and probably elsewhere, too) that were genetically modified so that they could not reproduce, so that every planting season farmers would have to buy new seeds instead of using ones produced from the crop. It seemed like such a pernicious thing to do, and made me understand why people were so against multinationals.
One thing neither paper addressed was the damage to the environment globalization can cause, as well as the issue of cheap (exploitive?) labor.
Additional reading:
Joseph Stiglitz's Globalization & Its Discontents
Jagdish Bhagwati's In Defense of Globalization
Manfred Steger's Rethinking Globalism
Gary Bland's Getting Globalization Right
http://www.emory.edu/SOC/globalization/
http://www.rvc.cc.il.us/faclink/pruckman/PSLinks.htm
http://www.polsci.wvu.edu/polycy
http://www.etown.edu/vl/
http://www.emory.edu/SOC/globalization/
Taking Sides: Clashing Views in World Politics
I got this book because I wanted to learn more about public policy, and this was one of the books the library had on the subject. I wouldn't recommend it, though. I liked the introduction, but not the essays, which seemed rather insubstantial. (Though some did have great quotes, like the following from Mahatma Gandhi on cultural diversity: "I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the culture of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.")
Below are my notes on the book.
Introduction:
"Throughout history it has been the inaction of those who could have acted, the indifference of those who should have known better, and the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most that made it possible for evil to triumph." - Ethiopia's emperor Haile Selassie
Technological changes and the shifting axes of international politics highlight the increased role of economics in world politics. Economics have always played a role, but traditionally the main focus has been on strategic-political questions such as military power. One important change in recent decades has been the rapid growth of regional and global markets and the promotion of free trade and other forms of international economic interchange. Many people support these efforts and see them as the wave of the future. But there are others who believe that free economic globalization and interdependence undermine sovereignty and the ability of governments to control their destiny. Also, there is the issue of whether capitalism offers the best economic approach for ensuring continued prosperity among the developed countries and for improving the circumstances of the less economically developed countries.
Policy is formulated on what decision-makers think, not necessarily on what is. Thus, perception becomes the operating guide, or operational reality, whether it is true or not. So it is important to understand objective reality, but also to comprehend subjective reality in order to predict and analyze another country's actions.
Three levels of analysis: system-level analysis, state-level analysis, and human-level analysis. The first posits that world factors (the number of powerful actors, geographic relationships, economic needs, technology) virtually compel countries to follow certain foreign policies, and, as such, a country's internal political system and its leaders do not have a major impact. The second focuses on how states make foreign policy. It is focused on internal politics, such as the relationship of the executive & legislative branch, role of interest groups, public opinion, bureaucracy. The third focuses on the role of individual decision-makers.
At the end of WWII, the world was structured in a bipolar system; with the US and the Soviet Union as the nexus points, and a tightly organized and dependent group of allies clustered around them. Now the system has faded, and the North-South axis has increased in importance and tension. - the divide between the wealthy, industrialized countries and the poor, less developed ones.
Some economic statistics: before WWII, $30 billion in annual world export total; in 2002, $8 trillion. International investment exceeds $20 trillion (real estate, stocks, bonds), flow of currencies so massive that there is no accurate measure, but it is certainly more than $1.5 trillion a day. Huge multinational corps have come to dominate global commerce: the 100 largest MNCs had sales of 4.4 trillion. So, economic prosperity in all countries is increasingly dependent on their imports and exports, on the flow of capital, and on the currency exchange rate fluctuations.
Emphasis, since WWII, on decreasing tariffs; increasingly, however, free trade is being scrutinized, for in some countries, such as those in the African continent, it has arguably lead to greater harm, and there is a trend towards protectionism.
Anne Krueger: Expanding Trade & Unleashing Growth: The Prospects for Lasting Poverty Reduction
Nothing new here. She argues that trade liberalization is the key to global prosperity, that while multilateral trade liberalization is the key even unilateral trade liberalization (in the form of MFN status) yields significant benefits. However, she present no direct evidence for this. She says things like "the evidence shows", but does not present the evidence, which is what I was looking for, and one of the reasons her arguments felt rather insubstantial to me.
* trade tariffs & restrictions deny opportunities to a large number in order to protect a small minority, at expense to consumers & taxpayers
* that there is so much more opposition for trade liberalization because the ones who may lose have a far better idea of who they are than those who are likely to gain from it, because it's nearly impossible to predict where new business & employment opportunities will come from, which sectors and firms would respond best; what is certain is that opportunities will materialize, not who will seize them. one example presented: during negotiations of NAFTA, a mexican manufacturer of refrigerators was one of the main opponents, for they were of very poor quality. It turned out that the fatal flaw was the compressor; mexican-made compressors weren't up to the job, and with NAFTA he was able to obtain American ones at competitive prices and it turned out he gained market share instead of losing it.
* regional trade agreements (RTAs) have long proliferated in Africa, yet they have not yielded benefits - intra-african trade fell in the 70s and only recovered to its 70s level in the mid-90s, and is around 10% of total African trade. RTAs are most effective as a complement to and not a substitute for multilateral liberalization. (but because of poor infrastructure, as she notes later, it costs $5000 to ship a car from Addis Ababa to Abidjan, three times the cost of shipping it from Japan. this makes me think that all the problem can be due to this, and that this evidence doesn't support or refute her claim that RTAs have yielded no benefits there because they weren't a complement to multilateral liberalization.)
Jose Bove: Globalization's Misguided Assumptions
This was even worse than the former! Heavy on rhetoric, weak on facts. What's worse, it used agriculture as a poster-child for why trade liberalization doesn't work, but I don't know how this example is valid when, as it said later, in 2000 America offered subsidies of more than $23 billion (and I know European nations offer subsidies similar to this). This seems to me like another form of protectionism, and it's surprising to me that it's used as an example of the failure of trade liberalization, when it seems more appropriate for it to be an example of the failure of just unilateral trade liberalization. (Another thing that seems strange is that the latter is even an issue. Of course unilateral trade liberalization isn't going to work, especially for developing countries, for in many cases agriculture is their main competitive export, and when developed nations started subsidize their own agriculture they are in effect imposing a form of trade tariff, and developing nations are unable to compete not just in exports but oftentimes also in imports, for the (unnaturally) cheap agricultural goods flood their market too, making their farmers poorer and possibly crippling their agricultural industry. And in this way developing countries became, for all extents and purposes, little more than consumers that cannot afford to consume. This is one of the reasons I can't take people like Anne Krueger who advocate unilateral liberalization seriously.)
The more pertinent question, it seems to me, is how well bilateral and multilateral trade liberalization works, and that's one issue that this article didn't seem to address, which is the main reason I was so disappointed.
A fact I'm going to have to check later: it claimed that world market prices applied to a small fraction of global production & consumption: the world price of milk & dairy products is determined by production costs in New Zealand (New Zealand's share of global milk production averaged 1.63% between 1985 & 1998), world price of wheat is pegged to the price in the US (US accounts for 5.84% of aggregate output from 1985 to 1998). These prices are tantamount to dumping (selling below production costs) and only economically viable for exporters thanks to substantial aid.
It also raised the issue of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). I think GMOs are bad, but I'm not sure what they have to do with trade liberalization? Surely countries have the power to ban them if they think they are harmful, or at least label them so that their populace knows that that is what they're consuming and can consume organic products if they so choose. One thing this reminded me of, though, is this one situation where a biotech corp sold seeds to India (and probably elsewhere, too) that were genetically modified so that they could not reproduce, so that every planting season farmers would have to buy new seeds instead of using ones produced from the crop. It seemed like such a pernicious thing to do, and made me understand why people were so against multinationals.
One thing neither paper addressed was the damage to the environment globalization can cause, as well as the issue of cheap (exploitive?) labor.
Additional reading:
Joseph Stiglitz's Globalization & Its Discontents
Jagdish Bhagwati's In Defense of Globalization
Manfred Steger's Rethinking Globalism
Gary Bland's Getting Globalization Right
http://www.emory.edu/SOC/globalization/
