Category: Political Science
The EU is to end passport-free travel?
European nations moved to reverse decades of unfettered travel across the continent when a majority of EU governments agreed the need to reinstate national passport controls amid fears of a flood of immigrants fleeing the upheaval in north Africa.
In a serious blow to one of the cornerstones of a united, integrated Europe, EU interior ministers embarked on a radical revision of the passport-free travel regime known as the Schengen system to allow the 26 participating governments to restore border controls.
Here is the story, which I take to be big news indeed. Addendum: Some of the comments claim that the Guardian’s account is exaggerated. Here is a more balanced story.
Government
Today, Thursday, May 12, 2011, the oversight regime created by the [antitrust] judgement against Microsoft ends.
Here is more.
*Dance of the Furies*
The author is Michael S. Neiberg and the subtitle is Europe and the Outbreak of World War I. This book stunned me, in a positive way. It argues for six main propositions, a few of which can be summarized quickly:
First…few Europeans expected a war and even fewer wanted one. Europe was not a place of white-hot nationalist passions looking for a spark…Virtually no one in Europe sought a war to correct supposed inequities stemming from the turbulent nineteenth century or as a way to adjust borders. Even in France, there was no desire for war as a way to avenge the loss of Alsace-Lorraine…
Third, the people of Europe accepted the necessity of war primarily because they believed their wars to be defensive.
Fourth, disillusion with the war…was well in place by the end of the war’s first year.
Sixth, despite their concerns and suspicions, societies kept fighting. Their reasons for doing so included a desire to avenge the losses of 1914, the quite real threats to their existence which remained from foreign armies, and an awareness that the hatreds unleashed by the war as early as the end of the first month made anything short of total victory or total defeat unthinkable.
I do not have the specialized knowledge required to judge these claims, but I found the evidence cited in the book quite strong and I consider myself provisionally persuaded. For those versed in public choice economics, and behavioral public choice, Neiberg’s account is much more intuitive than the popular analyses one often hears. Definitely recommended.
I also found reading this book to be a depressing experience: Neiberg’s third point implies that a major war in our future is more likely than I had thought. For instance the German government was scheming aggressively, but the German people genuinely believed, and with some justification given the information they had at the time, that they were fighting a war of defense.
The new Florida Medicaid plan
It has passed the legislature, there is a 1/20 summary here, and an ungated piece here. Here are a few salient points:
1.Most of the patients will be moved into managed care.
2. In most cases malpractice awards — for Medicaid patients only — will be capped at $300,000.
3. “Last month, the federal government advised legislators to choose the payment system that would guarantee that a percentage of the money, in this case 90 percent, would go to patient services. Instead, the Legislature chose the other option: to share profits with managed-care companies.”
By what percentage will the real value of Florida Medicaid benefits be eroded? What does this imply about the future political equilibrium of where spending cuts will come? Will Medicaid as we know it survive?
It remains to be seen whether the Federal government, which has the ability to veto the plan, will approve the proposal.
One reason why independence for Scotland would be a bad idea
There is now talk of a referendum, but let’s scroll back to 2008:
The massive bailout of banks has been widely received as welcome and necessary across the United Kingdom. But it has not been lost on Scots that the largest shareholder in Scotland’s two largest banks is now the British government.
…Brown said the $65 billion bailout of the Royal Bank of Scotland and the bank formed by the merger of Lloyds TSB and the Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS) proved that the United Kingdom was “stronger together.”
“We were able to act decisively with 37 billion pounds; that would not have been possible for a Scottish administration,” said Brown, whose own political fortunes have been boosted by his handling of the crisis.
Others have pointed out that the bailout for eight major British banks — including capital for banks and government loan guarantees — is worth a total of almost $700 billion, which is about five times Scotland’s annual gross domestic product.
Here is more. The conceptual point is simple. If you think that the world is now more prone to financial crises (and I do), the optimal size for a nation-state has gone up. Risk-sharing really matters.
Some simple game theory
…if any one euro zone country were to start exiting the euro, there would be bank runs on the other fiscally ailing countries. The richer European Union nations know this, and so they are toiling to keep everyone on board. But that conciliatory approach creates a new set of problems because any nation with an exit strategy suddenly has enormous leverage. Ireland or Portugal [or Greece!] need only imply that without more aid it will be forced to leave the euro zone and bring down the proverbial house of cards. In both countries, aid agreements already are seen as a “work in progress,” and it’s not clear that the subsequent renegotiations have any end in sight, because an ailing country can always ask for a better deal the following year.
That is from me. Today’s Bloomberg headline reads: “EU Finance Chiefs See More Aid for Greece, Reject Euro Exit.” Yet a stable game this is not.
The AV (alternative vote) electoral reforms
The UK is voting on this today. Here is a good survey of social choice approaches to the question, and here is a survey of how AV systems work. The basics are this:
Alternative vote (AV) is a type of preferential voting in which voters are asked to rank the candidates from first to last. The basic idea is that if no candidate is the first choice of 50% + 1 voters, then the candidate who received the fewest first place votes is eliminated. This candidate’s voters then have their votes reallocated to the candidate they ranked second. This reallocation process continues until one candidate achieves 50% + 1 votes (more on this later).
Too often the social choice approaches focus on the formal properties of the voting and do not capture the actual political incentives of electoral systems, which tend to follow from imperfect information and the behavioral tendencies of voters. In this case the key change is that competition for votes becomes messier and less clearly linked to major party identities.
A long time ago I wrote this analysis of related (but not always identical) systems:
Electoral systems based upon the single transferable vote tend to produce the
following effects:
• voters can express preferences for more than simply their favourite candidate
or party;
• representatives are focused towards constituency service and district policies,
rather than national policies;
• political parties are weak, non-ideological, and subject to frequent infighting;
• the ability of the legislature to check the executive is weak;
• most voters are confused by the mechanics of the single transferable vote;
and
• sophisticated voters have an incentive to manipulate the system and vote an
order which is not their true preference.
That is followed by a much more detailed analysis, scroll to p.56 for more. At best such systems are workable, but it is hard to see why they should bring any major advantages.
Did Keynes favor planning?
Barkley Rosser and Brad DeLong say no, but it depends on definition and context. Barkley tries to talk his way out of it, but Keynes in the General Theory did advocate “a somewhat comprehensive socialisation of investment.” “somewhat” — that’s my kind of weasel word! In any case this was not the same as classical central planning circa 1920, but in a rap video I consider that acceptable license. By my count “central plan” comes up once in a ten-minute video and most importantly Keynes does not accept the characterization but rather responds that the debate is about spending. The video is not suggesting that each and every rapped point is true at face value, and if the two characters seem to debate past one another that too reflects the reality at the time.
Also consider another piece of evidence, namely the Keynes-approved preface to the German-language (uh-oh) edition of the General Theory:
Nevertheless the theory of output as a whole, which is what the following book purports to provide, is much more easily adapted to the conditions of a totalitarian state, than is the theory of the production and distribution of a given output produced under conditions of free competition and a large measure of laissez-faire.
Points in response are: a) Keynes does not seem to actually favor the German system, even if he thinks it is better suited to Keynesian doctrine, b) the Nazi system was not “central planning,” and c) this was written in 1936 before the worst acts of the Nazi state, planning or otherwise.
Nonetheless, in Keynes’s time enthusiasm for significant socialistic planning was common. Keynes had it too, at least for a while in the 1930s. It was a milder planning than the worst ideas circulating at the time, but it’s fair game to contrast it with the anti-planning sentiments of Hayek. Can you imagine Hayek writing a preface like that? I don’t think so.
A simple model of a reluctant Fed
Imagine there is incipient downward pressure on real wages, just as real wages have fallen in Japan and male real wages have been flat or falling in the United States, both across longer-run periods of time. Yet for the usual reasons of morale and uncertainty, employers do not wish to cut real (or nominal) wages. An extra three to four percent price inflation would cut real wages by three to four percent for a large segment of the employed. It would accelerate a trend which is already underway, and will eventually happen anyway, yet it will telescope a lot of that trend into pre-2012.
There are more employed than unemployed, by a considerable margin, plus many of the unemployed do not vote or do not vote strategically. The inflation may be a Pareto improvement, desired by benevolent central bankers, but why should an office-holding politician desire this outcome? Which politician wishes to accelerate a decline in real wages?
Most generally, I suspect that electoral opposition to inflation will rise to the extent median wage stagnation is a problem.
Bryan Caplan defends pacifism
In the real-world, however, pacifism is a sound guide to action.
And that includes an unwillingness to kill innocent civilians as collateral damage while acting in defense of one’s country. The original post is here, the defense against critics is here.
There is not enough consideration of specific times and place. Had England been pacifist in 1914, that might have yielded a better outcome. Had England been pacifist in 1939, likely not. Switzerland has done better for itself, and likely for the world, by being ready to fight back. Pacifism today could quite possibly doom Taiwan, Israel, large parts of India (from both Pakistan and internal dissent), any government threatened by civil war (who would end up ruling Saudi Arabia and how quickly?), and I predict we would see a larger-scale African tyrant arise, gobbling up non-resisting pacifist neighbors. Would China request the vassalage of any countries, besides Taiwan that is? Would Russia “request” Georgia and the Baltics? Would West Germany have survived?
And this is the best we can do? It’s much worse than the status quo, which is hardly delightful enlightenment. I don’t see these examples mentioned in Bryan’s post. There is also a Lucas critique issue of how the bad guys start behaving once they figure out that the good guys are pacifist, and I don’t see him discussing that either.
It would be a mistake to add up all the wars and say pacifism is still better overall, because we do not face an all-or-nothing choice. Many selective instances of non-pacifism are still a good idea, with benefits substantially in excess of their costs. Bryan, however, has to embrace pacifism, otherwise his moral theory becomes too tangled up in the empirics of the daily newspaper…
Which is exactly where I am urging him to go.
Why are so many Russian Jews Republicans?
I wouldn’t exactly describe my family this way, but here are some data (do read the whole article):
The most recent data, from the 2004 election, show that Russian Jews preferred Bush to Kerry by a margin of 3 to 1. Israel, national security, and the economy topped the list of concerns among Russian Jews, but there was also a cultural component to their preference; they were among the so-called Values Voters who voted Republican based on cultural wedge issues. A month before the election, 81 percent of Russian Jews supported a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages—nearly the inverse number of Jews nationally. They also expressed heavy opposition to affirmative action and showed less support for on-demand abortion, according to numbers compiled by the Research Institute for New Americans, which tracks the Russian-speaking community.
And here is more evidence. Why might this be? The stronger record of Republicans, in particular Reagan, as anti-communists is one obvious reason, but that doesn’t explain the broader conservative tendency. The Russian Jews are not anti-gay marriage because the U.S. Republicans are. The more hawkish stance of Republicans on Israel is another reason, but again that doesn’t seem to explain why the connection is such a fundamental one. It doesn’t sound as if these Russian Jews are yearning to become Democrats, if only for the Israel issue.
I would suggest that many Russian Jews, compared to American Jews, are much less hesitant to affiliate with the American brand of Christianity found in the Republican Party. Related strains of thought have been prevalent in Russia for a long time, yet for a long while their Christian nature was covered up by communist rule. Furthermore attachment to Israel, rather than a lifelong felt contrast with American Christians, or strict Judaic observance, is the source of Jewish identity for many Russian Jews. So affiliation with a fairly Christian party is not jarring for the Russian Jews and indeed it may be welcomed, especially if it dovetails with pro-Israel attitudes.
The implied prediction is that Russian Jews who assimilate more in American life, and who marry Americans, are less likely to be Republicans.
I found this part of the article interesting:
Theirs is no country-club Republicanism. Russian Jews in New York, the nation’s largest Russian-Jewish community, numbering 350,000, are largely under-employed; a majority earns less than $30,000. (These numbers do not reflect under-education. The average Russian Jewish immigrant has more higher education that his average American Jewish counterpart.)
On related questions, here is Ilya Somin. Here is another opinion:
“Russians respect power,” says Gary Shteyngart, a novelist who emigrated to New York from Leningrad at age 7. “Many immigrants give lip service to democracy but in the end they want some patriarchal white guy to run things with a strong hand. Feelings of oppression that began within the anti-Semitic confines of the Soviet Union are turned from a defensive to an offensive stance under the false perception that the Democratic Party is indistinguishable from the Communist Party of the USSR.”
I thank Natasha, a loyal MR reader, for the pointer.
*Levant* (Smyrna, Alexandria, and Beirut)
That is the new and excellent book by Philip Mansel and the subtitle is Splendour and Catastrophe on the Mediterranean, excerpt:
The Beirut dilemma goes to the heart of the Levant. At certain times — Smyrna in the nineteenth century, Alexandria and Beirut for periods of the twentieth — Levantine cities could find the elixir of coexistence, putting deals before ideals, the needs of the city before the demands of nationalism. Like all cities, however, Levantine cities needed an armed force for protection. This could be provided by the Ottoman, British or French armies, but not by the cities’ own citizens, since they were unwilling to shoot co-religionists. No Levantine city produced an effective police force or national guard of its own. The very qualities that gave these cities their energy — freedom and diversity — also threatened their existence. No army, no city.
Game theory and the budget
Matt Yglesias writes:
…the right is big government’s best friend…You have a government set to steadily increase spending on autopilot as a result of demographic change and rising health care costs. And you have a Democratic President urging congress to enact spending cuts. But you have conservative politicians refusing to make a serious effort to reach an agreement out of some blend of taxophobia and fear of giving the President a win. The result, again, whether the right realizes it or not, is a gift to the wing of the Democratic Party that disagrees with Obama about the desirability of enacting spending cuts.
I tend to agree with this, but it’s always worth trying to solve for the case where one is wrong. The strategy of “no trade” with Obama could be rational for the Republicans if:
1. Not much will happen this time around anyway, so the Republicans are investing in credibility for a future bargain, perhaps post-2012.
2. Republicans think that prevailing economic conditions will turn public opinion in their favor, over time, and so a later bargain is preferable.
3. Republicans think that if a fiscal crisis comes, drastic spending cuts are especially easy to enact, relative to tax increases, and they are willing to risk that crisis. It’s hard to argue that this belief is true (reindexing benefits to a saner level takes a lot of time), although I would not rule out that some Republican Party politicians may hold it.
4. Wait for party leaders to move first, for political cover, and that is a dragons and ballroom dancing game (pdf).
And there is always:
5. Republican politicians are investing in the value of their non-electoral options and that implies group loyalty above other considerations.
None of us know the true model, but we all know the literature on irreversible investment and option value. If you’re not sure of the true model, wait rather than commit. Here is Jeff on deadlines. Another way to put this point is that we can’t, from current Republican inaction, infer much about the likely final outcome.
Chopin’s Sonata #2
Democrats and Republicans are joining to oppose one of the most important features of President Obama’s new deficit reduction plan, a powerful independent board that could make sweeping cuts in the growth of Medicare spending.
There is a growing move to do away with the board and that move enjoys widespread support:
Representative Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin and chairman of the House Budget Committee, called it “a rationing board” and said Congress should not “delegate Medicare decision-making to 15 people appointed by the president.” He said Mr. Obama’s proposal would allow the board to “impose more price controls and more limitations on providers, which will end up cutting services to seniors.”
Here is the article (1/20). Here is Chopin’s Sonata #2. On the brighter side, here are outlines of a budget deal under discussion.
*The Origins of Political Order*
That is the new book from Frank Fukuyama and the subtitle is From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution. A few points:
1. Every page is intelligent and reasonable.
2. It is a useful general overview of what we know about the origins of states, with full coverage given to the non-Western world, most of all China.
3. My single sentence summary would be: “I am showing you how some polities developed workable, strong states, based in accountability, and how others did not.” If that is it, I would rather that the empirical material were more focused on the “model” and less on overall general narrative. Ultimately the organization sprawls. Nonetheless, this book is an important implied revision of public choice economics, with the focus on history and the question of how strong states get built.
4. In its scope and method, this book feels late 19th century.
5. I am not convinced by the discussion of why earlier China did not progress, found in the range of 51% on Kindle. Fukuyama seems to suggest they simply weren’t interested in doing better. I would be happier if so much did not rest on that question.
6. One implication of the analysis is that we should not be very optimistic about the current revolutions in the Middle East.
7. Try this sentence: “The very lateness of the European state-building project was the source of the political liberty that Europeans would later enjoy.”
8. The section on biology could use a major dose of Robin Hanson.
Here is one useful review. Here is a review from The Economist.