Applying Social Science Concepts to Business: E-Book Edition

[Cross-posted at bill | petti]

Sunday's Wall Street Journal reported that Amazon has stopped selling Kindle versions of all Macmillan titles. John Sargent, Macmillian's CEO, recently went to Amazon's headquarters to try and negotiate new terms for the sale of e-books published by his company. In general, the publishing industry has been unhappy with Amazon's insistence that most books be priced at $9.99. Apparently, the discussions resulted in Amazon pulling all Macmillan e-books from it's website.

I am a firm believer that the historical knock on the social sciences is unwarranted and that many of the theories, frameworks, and concepts found in the various disciplines are widely applicable in the real world, business in particular. So when I read about the Amazon-Macmillan dispute I was struck at how a number of social science concepts shed quite a bit of light on these developments; namely Albert Hirschman's concepts of exit, voice, and loyalty as well as signaling and the indirect use of force.

So what do these concepts have to do with e-books? Glad you asked.

In his classic Exit, Voice, and Loyalty, political economist Albert Hirschman provided an elegant framework for analyzing the options available to individuals when they become displeased with actions of an organization. According to Hirschman, individuals have three options: they can be loyal to the organization, they can exercise voice (e.g. protest, negotiation), or they can exit the organization (e.g. join a new group, shop at a new story, etc). The framework is quite elegant and can easily be applied to both explain and predict the behavior of consumers in a market or citizens in a political system.

Since the launch of Amazon's Kindle, book publishers have tried to exercise their voice vis-a-vis Amazon and their pricing requests, but to little avail. Until now, voice and loyalty seemed the only realistic options. Sure, there are other e-book retailers out there, but success of Amazon's Kindle and the attractive prices they set for their customers provided the retailer with a huge advantage in terms of a distribution channel. However, with the launch of Apple's iPad, book publishers now have a more realistic exit option. Not only is Apple a potentially powerful sales channel, but they have agreed to pricing terms that are more favorable to publishers than Amazon (Apple will take 30% of whatever price publishers choose to charge, leaving the price point up to individual publishers).

When individuals have the option of exit, we should see typical market dynamics at work--i.e. customers can shop around to various suppliers to find the products they want at the price they want, with competition among those suppliers driving the quality of products higher and the price for goods lower. This is why we generally abhor monopolies, since by nature they stifle market dynamics and leave customers with only the options of loyalty or voice, meaning they lack much leverage. With the launch of a new and potentially powerful sales channel, publishers now have a more realistic exit option that can be brought to the table in negotiations with Amazon.

However, rather than alter the current pricing terms with Macmillan as a result of this new exit option, Amazon stopped distributing Macmillan's e-books altogether. The question, of course, is why? I would posit that Amazon was trying to send a signal to dissuade other publishers from also trying to renegotiate terms. Now I have no information as to what Sargent may have proposed and if any ultimatums were given, so what follows is purely an intellectual exercise.

We can view Amazon's move as a deterrent threat to other publishers who, emboldened by Apple's entry into the market, may attempt a similar renegotiation. By harshly punishing one actor (i.e. refusing Macmillan access to a valuable and dominant sales channel) that attempted to change the status quo (Amazon's preferred pricing structure), Amazon hopes to send a signal to other potential actors to not attempt something similar. This is a great example of signaling and the indirect use of force, two related concepts that economists (such as Michael Spence and Thomas Schelling) and political scientists (such as Robert Jervis and James Fearon) have fleshed out over the past 40+ years. Rather than having to expend resources forcing every potential adversary to either change their behavior or maintain the status quo, an actor can choose to send a signal to all potential adversaries by making an example of one of them. Not only can an actor make a threat to punish their adversaries, but they can also demonstrate that they have both the capability and the will to do so by carrying out such a punishment on one adversary.

This dynamic is accentuated in systems where one actor faces challenges from many potential actors versus just one. Barbara Walter has looked at why some states decided to deal with separatist groups and factions in a violent manner versus through negotiations. The key variable: the number of potential separatist groups that may also seek self-determination. As the number of potential adversaries increases the probability of solving these disputes through negotiation decreases. When faced will many potential challengers, governments will choose to demonstrate their willingness and ability to put down rebellions in order to deter other separatists groups from similar challenges. In other words, having reputation for resolve when dealing with adversaries becomes more important when you face many potential threats than just one.

In the case of Amazon, it could be that seeing the potential for many actors to attempt to renegotiate the current pricing structure it was decided that they should send a signal to the rest of the publishing world that attempts to change the status quo would not only fail, but would result in sever punishment (i.e. the loss of a popular sales and marketing channel). My guess is that this likely won't work for two reasons: 1) as mentioned earlier, the publishers actually have someplace else to go--they can exit the current relationship and cast their lot with Apple; and 2) Amazon is heavily reliant on the book publishers. Without their titles the allure of a Kindle decreases. The threat may not be credible, or at least sustainable for long.

Thoughts?

Open Thread on "Caprica"

Isn't All Politics Global?

Dan Drezner is among those who today bemoaned the absence of foreign policy content in President Obama's State of the Union Speech. He's not the only one. Max Boot calls foreign policy "AWOL" from the speech. Eric Ostermeir at Smart Politics has quantified the foreign policy content at only 13.9%. Whether they were very worried or not about Obama's foreign policy message, most commentators agreed it was a weak one relative to the domestic policy content in the speech.

My off-the-cuff reaction to the speech echoed this concern as well. But then I began thinking about the assignment I have my World Politics students doing right now, which is to write about their lives using a global perspective. Lots of them are struggling with it as they always do: if they haven't traveled abroad, served in the military, supported a global social movement, or watched BBC regularly, they don't feel like they are really participants in world politics. I challenge this thinking by asking them to reflect on the ways in which their everyday lives are impacted by, and in turn impact, the world beyond our borders.

The purpose of the assignment is to get them thinking past their identity as Americans and situate themselves globally. However the assignment - and the era of globalization we live in - begs the question about the entire notion of the domestic politics / international politics divide. One way to look at the distinction we draw between domestic and foreign policy is as a boundary-maintenance project that is part of the practice of sovereignty. If we make the choice to suspend this practice for a moment, we might realize that Obama's speech had more foreign policy in it that we may have recognized.

For example Foreign Policy's Josh Rogin, whom I linked to earlier describes the Obama's foreign policy talking points as consisting of "trade, export controls, Afghanistan, Iraq, nukes, North Korea and Iran" and says he touched on all of this for only "a couple of minutes at the end." Rogin categorizes energy policy, jobs and financial reform as domestic issues. So do those who have tallied the foreign policy content of the speech and found it wanting.

Yet what could be more global - in their impetus and impact - than a turn toward clean energy and alternative transportation in the US, which until recently led the world in global carbon emissions per capita? Given the global impact of the US banking crisis, is not financial reform a global issue? And is not a policy of "ending subsidies for firms that ship jobs overseas" a foreign policy as well as a domestic one? Certainly it will impact individuals abroad who rely on manufacturing jobs with US companies as a stepping stone out of poverty. This in turn will affect those individuals' abilities to consume the products Obama also wants to export in greater volume. I'm not saying this is good or bad, just that these things are interconnected.

And actually, Obama said as much. Consider his rationale for financial, education and energy reform:

China is not waiting to revamp its economy. Germany is not waiting. India is not waiting. These nations -- they're not standing still. These nations aren't playing for second place. They're putting more emphasis on math and science. They're rebuilding their infrastructure. They're making serious investments in clean energy because they want those jobs. Well, I do not accept second place for the United States of America.

We think of foreign policy as that subset of policy that is directed at relations with other countries. But since so much of what happens here affects (and can be affected by) what is happening elsewhere whether we intend it or not, perhaps this perspective is behind the times. Drezner concludes his post by saying:

"I would have liked to have seen a more robust effort to link foreign policy priorities to domestic priorities - because the two are more linked than is commonly acknowledged."

What would it mean to our practices of citizenship if our policymakers and pundits routinely thought past that distinction entirely? As Drezner himself once said, in today's world "all politics is global."

Or maybe this is all bunk. But it sure is a useful teaching tool. Thoughts?

[cross-posted at LGM]

Thinking about gender and foreign policy

I am, perhaps, the world's worst guest blogger. I do it rarely, if at all, and in a scattered way. I keep meaning to, but then ... Perhaps I am not suited for this medium of communication. Or maybe I am just distracted. With apologies to my colleagues for my flawed posting habits, however, I am not quite ready to give up on myself-as-blogger, and feel like weighing in on this question of "what to read on gender and foreign policy" might be a good place to make amends for my otherwise neglectful blogging (even if I have not managed to be timely even in this endeavor).

First, I'd like to agree with Charli both that it is a very positive development that Foreign Affairs is showing a commitment to including gender issues and gender analysis in their coverage of foreign policy issues. I am encouraged both by that as an epistemological commitment on the part of the journal as well as as a reflection of changes in the policy world.

Despite the positive directions in the academic world and the policy world as concerns gender issues, I remain only cautiously optimistic, given what I read as still largely missing: critical, complex, dialectical approaches to that gender analysis. Given that, I will accept Charli's invitation to talk about what to read in gender and foreign policy, and through that conversation, perhaps (briefly), give a sense my hopes and fears for the field.


While I don't disagree that a number of the books that Charli lists are important ones likely to have an impact on the field and potentially also on the policy world, I worry both about the message some of them send individually and their collective omissions. I suppose, as a segway into this discussion, I should tell you that I was inspired to go to graduate school by the question of the policy relevance of feminist theorizing (a curiosity inspired by my engagement with policy debate). Feminist theorizing has done a lot of work to analyze and demonstrate its policy relevance, but there remains a tendency for some of the nuance and complexity of gender analysis to be lost in the work read in the policy world.

For example, there is a lot of work in Feminist IR specifically and feminist theorizing generally critical of the sort of approach taken in Kristof and WuDunn's Half the Sky. While there is no denying both the density and quality of information about women's human rights, postcolonial feminist scholars like Chandra Mohanty (in Feminism without Borders) and Geeta Chowdhry and Shelia Nair (in Power, Postcolonialism, and International Relations) have cautioned us against understanding a radical division between "Americans" and the "Third World" where "Americans" fail to be conscious of both genderings in their relationships with the "Third World" and position ourselves as helpers of victims rather than understanding agency, power, desire, and subjectivity in more complicated ways (perhaps as is evidenced in Christine Sylvester's Feminist International Relations: An Unfinished Journey).

Along similar lines, while Tara McKelvey's volume includes an unprecedented amount of empirical information and some important theoretical accounts (particularly those by Eve Ensler, Angela Davis, and Cynthia Enloe), several of the accounts of feminism in the book (particularly those by Barbara Ehrenrich and Katharine Viner) betray both an oversimplified understanding of gender analysis and a partial, politically interested view of what gender emancipation would look like. Other work (not least Caron Gentry and my Mothers, Monsters, Whores, but also, and closer to the empirical evidence, Miranda Alison's Women and Political Violence) identifies gender hierarchy not as a result of (in Charli's words) foreign policy institutions that incentivize manliness, but instead, as a structural feature of global politics reproduced not only in the incentivization of manliness in foreign policy institutions, but in gendered hierarchies within most if not all domestic and international institutions in international relations.

I'm also concerned with the potential orientalist (see Edward Said's Orientalism) and gender essentialist (see discussions in Brooke Ackerly, Maria Stern, and Jacqui True's Feminist Methodologies for International Relations implications of Hudson and Den Boer's Bare Branches. Much gender analytical work in foreign policy, security, and International Relations more generally provides a more sophisticated account of states' gendered violence that does not rely on naturalizing the sex/gender dichotomy or blaming men for gendered violence (see, for example, Ann Tickner's Gendering World Politics or Jane Parpart and Marysia Zalewski's Rethinking the Man Question).

To stop from going on for too long, I will turn to the things I would include in such a list that are not included in Charli's as perhaps a suggestion of how I see the field. While my citations above give some indication of the sort of work that I find relevant to "reading about gender and foreign policy," there are a couple of books explicitly on point that I think are important. First, I don't think one can read about gender and foreign policy without reading Laura Shepherd's Gender, Violence, and Security. This book is a feminist post-structuralist account of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, with important implications for national security policy-making and international organization constitution and effectiveness. I suggest this because I think it is important, when reading about gender and foreign policy, to pay attention not only to "women" and "gender" as material, but also in the relationship between gender, foreign policy, and violence that crosses the material/symbolic/performative divide. Along those lines, I would call Natalie Florea Hudson's book on human security, gender, and the UN essential reading as well. The new (third) edition of V. Spike Peterson and Anne Sisson Runyan's Global Gender Issues includes not only a sophisticated account of "feminization as devalorization" in the making of foreign policy, but also of (not only sex but gender) analysis of a number of crucial issues in 21st century foreign policy, including development, globalization, militarization, and migration.

This is just the start of a conversation on these issues, I suppose. I am happy that we've gotten to a place where there is an essential reading list for gender and foreign policy at all, but I'd like to push the envelope and argue that complex, non-essentialist, culturally sensitive, perhaps even post-colonial and post-structuralist, work on gender and foreign policy should make the "must read" list for those interested in the subject matter.

My IR Theory Syllabus, FWIW

Many of you were kind enough to share your thoughts on what I should assign in my IR Theory Seminar this year. Now that I've got something on paper, thought I'd provide the link so that those interested can see the current draft. Comments on this thread will no doubt be studied closely by my IR students as empirical evidence of ongoing debates about the constitution of our field. ;)

Macro rap -- who knew?

I think I'm speechless:

The Afghan Detainee Abuse Scandal in Canada

For those of you who may be following the issue of detainee abuse of prisoners of war in Canada (or any other country than America), I have an editorial piece with Dr. Grant Dawson (Deuputy Director of the David Davies Memorial Institute at Aberystwyth) in the Ottawa Citizen today.

A quick summary is that two different detainee scandles (one in the aftermath of the Somalia Intervention in the 1990s and the current Afghan one) are being confused. Where as the "Somalia Inquiry" was used to shield the government from responsibility and criticism, an Afghan inquiry might actually hold the government accountable.

The issue was the subject of my second blog post here.

Defining Corruption

So the U.S. Supreme Court has decided that limits on direct corporate spending for political campaigns violate the First Amendment rights of corporations (hey, corporations are people too!). The New York Times has a good overview, plus links to the actual decision. Since I've done some work on corruption in the past, and regularly teach a seminar on Corruption and Global Governance, this decision has resonated with me and I can't help being shaken up.

Let's consider a commonsense definition of corruption: the abuse of public power for private gain, or the use of private means to shape public decisions so that they conform to narrow private or sectoral interests. The definition depends on our being able to draw a line between public good and private interest. The idea of corruption not only means that it is wrong for public officials to take bribes, but also more broadly that some things, like justice, should not be bought. If money becomes the primary determinant of public outcomes, public trust in governance, the rule of law, and the overall system of justice is corroded. But the primary focus of anti-corruption discourse emanating from the U.S. has been on corruption in the developing world. We consider ourselves to have the most advanced anti-corruption legislation in the world, thanks to the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits U.S. corporations from bribing foreign public officials. Equating corruption with flat out bribery allows us to ignore the bigger question of the role of money in politics, and especially of private, corporate money. By shaping global anti-corruption discourse to focus on bribery (see the OECD Convention on Bribery) we have managed to generate a relatively "clean" identity for the U.S. (though not entirely so, according to Transparency International's rankings) and keep the focus on the developing world as the hotbed of corruption. While it would be silly to deny that corruption is a problem for development, the discursive maneuvers emanating from the U.S. prevent adequate reflection on the health of our own political system. The role of corporate money in the U.S. political system was of course already a concern before this latest Supreme Court decision, but even so, the blow that has now been dealt to campaign finance reform (a bipartisan issue, by the way) is staggering. And now we hear the word "corruption" being thrown around a great deal more than usual in discussions of the U.S. political process. So the silver lining may be an increased propensity to reflect on the corruption of our own system, not just on corruption as a problem for those under-developed Others.

Hamiltonian Failure?

Yesterday, my class on U.S. Foreign Policy considered Walter Russell Mead's Hamiltonian School -- ostensibly an American realism grounded in the aligned interests of the state and business.

The Hamiltonians have their roots in Alexander Hamilton. They have always believed that the American national strategy should be modeled on the British system: use your trade to make money through commerce; government should support large business; your trade policy should be an instrument of your economic development, however that benefits you most; and then, the revenues from your international trade will support your military expenditures and interests while preserving political stability at home.

For most of U.S. history, argues Mead, Hamiltonians were mercantilists -- favoring "open door" trading policies over "free" trading policies. However, after World War II, the Hamiltonians became free traders and thus embraced GATT, then WTO, NAFTA, etc.

After outlining Mead's arguments to the class, I also presented some data that questions whether the new laissez-faire Hamiltonians have made the right call. Does the free trade system they've helped create build American wealth?

Dan Drezner might disagree with the limited analysis I provided, but many of the students shared the concerns I was raising.

I started the challenge with the question famously raised by Robert Reich: "Who is us?" Then, I asked the students to consider (from the Hamiltonian position) if the American state has perhaps gone too far in removing itself from global capitalism -- effectively benefiting transnational corporate interests (and mercantilist states) at the expense of U.S. interests.

Essentially, the U.S. trade deficit has ballooned to historic levels, a substantial portion of that deficit is linked to trade with China. A huge problem is the loss of America's manufacturing base:

the U.S. manufacturing sector never emerged from the 2001 recession, which coincided with China's entry into the World Trade Organization. Since 2001, the country has lost 42,400 factories, including 36 percent of factories that employ more than 1,000 workers (which declined from 1,479 to 947), and 38 percent of factories that employ between 500 and 999 employees (from 3,198 to 1,972). An additional 90,000 manufacturing companies are now at risk of going out of business.

The "continental realist" John Mearsheimer argues that the U.S. has had a flawed China policy for a very long time. Yet, as the data reveal, the U.S. is helping to make China a stronger future great power competitor.

In the long run, the U.S. might be able to survive the loss of its manufacturing base -- thanks perhaps to its innovative information technologies. However, in the midst of a deep recession (with real unemployment at near 20%) and huge trade deficits, the current situation seems troubling -- at least it should for Hamiltonians worried about American national interests.

Sam Eagle: The Original Neo-Con

If you’re asking me if I’m a little upset right now, you’d be right. The Economist has just reported what I’ve been saying for years. The Muppets have a secret conservative agenda.

“What?!” You must be exclaiming. “Miss Piggy is a Palin Predecessor?”

No. It’s not so simple. Jim Henson was no fool and I’m sure Kermit does not believe that Obama is a secret communist socialist muslim agent. Or at least I really hope so.


According to the article (which is chronicling a debate on the issue as a break from the never-ending nightmare of the healthcare “debate”):

... the Muppets are temperamentally conservative. While they value education, for example, their interest in the subject is implicitly linked to their desire for children to adopt the norms of bourgeois society, and thereby to take their place as productive citizens. Mr Henson wanted everyone to count by numbers, in the order in which those numbers traditionally appear. Although Muppets occasionally dabble in the arts, notably Rowlf at his piano, Mr Henson had little appreciation for free-form intellectual endeavour. Among his earliest Muppet sketches two curious characters appear. One, "the philosopher", is described as scatter-brained and often quoting things inappropriately or inaccurately. Another, depicted variously as an octopus and a sea-monster, is described as big, happy, and "normal-thinking".

But I think it goes far beyond this. Exhibit A: Sam Eagle.

Sam Eagle, the protector of “American” values, who hammers on and on and on about culture. Who uses the show to deliver address against “namby-pamby” liberals who want to put a halt to industry to protect endangered species... like American bald eagles.

Sure, Jim Henson may have supported liberally-oriented civil rights in public(remember Roosevelt Franklin?) He arguably introduced tv’s first gay (albeit closeted) couple. But let’s face it – Sam was the dark heart of the Muppet Show. The Col. Nathan R. Jessep (“protecting these walls”) so that the show may go on. The true side of felt-based American television entertainment.

And who else could we add to this list?

• The Count – Clearly the man loved to count. I’m thinking capitalist.
• Wayne and Wanda – Possibly secret Canadians, but were clearly in on Sam’s agenda.
• Miss Piggy – I have always seen Miss Piggy as someone who would (hi-ya! *chop*) fight for women’s lib. But with her lust for the lime-light, willingness to trample over others for it and love of clothing and shoes, could we indeed have another Palin on our hands?

I leave it for blog readers to suggest their own candidates for a “vast rightwing sing-along variety hour conspiracy”.

Congratulations to "Kinshasa Symphony"

Congratulations to Claus Wischmann, Martin Baer, and the performers of the Kinshasa Symphony Orchestra for their work on the documentary of the “Kinshasa Symphony.” The film has been selected to premier at the 60th Berlin International Film Festival “Berlinale Special” on February 17th 2010, 21:45h (rerun February 18th, 18:00h, Cubix 8)

This is a beautiful project about the only symphony orchestra in central Africa - the “Orchestre Symphonique Kimbanguiste.” The film will be shown in cinemas all over Germany later this spring. I hope it migrates over here to the US soon. Here's a short clip of it:

Le seul Orchestre Symphonique de RDC à Kinshasa
Uploaded by pollux91. - See the latest featured music videos.

Type rest of the post here

Scott Brown and the end of the Transatlantic Security Community?

One thing that hasn't really been addressed about our little election here in Massachusetts this week is the degree to which Scott Brown openly campaigned on his support for waterboarding, his opposition to any constitutional rights for terrorists, and his opposition to closing Guantanamo. His main campaign commercial ended with the line "I believe the constitution was designed to protect our nation and does not give rights to terrorists."

Brown is a Lt. Colonel (Reserve) in the Judge Advocate Generals (JAG) Corps (National Guard) but apparently he didn't subscribe to the views of his superiors. The JAG Corps consistently opposed the Bush administration's torture policies and specifically objected to the CIA's use of waterboarding.

Nonetheless, Brown ran heavily on these views and I think his campaign tapped into a level of populism that is not simply economically-driven,but is also driven by an increasing acceptance of Jack Bauer's view of the world -- every threat is existential and torture is needed to keep us safe.

This all strikes me as further evidence of a growing divide between the United States and its transatlantic partners. I just finished reading The End of the West? Crisis and Change in the Atlantic Order edited by Jeffrey Anderson, G. John Ikenberry, and Thomas Risse. Coming from a variety of theoretical perspectives, each of the contributors agrees that the transatlantic security community took a direct hit during the Bush years and most conclude that while the intensity of the crisis over the Iraq War may have receded, the shared values, collective identities, and common interests embedded in the transatlantic security community may well continue to decline. With a significant number of Americans, even in the bluest state, seeming to have a dismissive attitude toward international law and the Geneva Conventions (and, at the very least a casual acceptance of torture) it strikes me that we are in the midst of a significant transformation of what we call the West.

Online Security Jam

I know I was asked to comment here on international political economy issues, but how can I pass up the opportunity to point you all to the Online Security Jam?

Yes, on February 4, you too can participate in an online discussion of important security issues. You will "help make the world a safer place...online." The Jam is being co-produced by the European Commission and NATO, who are just so..so..cutting edge, yes? Well, ok, it's actually being organized by Security and Defence Agenda, a think tank, and IBM. The goal is to engage literally thousands of experts and non-experts alike in "widening the debate" beyond military concerns. As they say, "No one person has the solution. We all do." They even have a "Guide to Jamming," complete with a video, for those of us who are not so of-the-moment, not so part of the online social community.

Actually, I do applaud the idea of widening the debate. And the organizers are sensitive to the increasing influence of NGOs in security issues, which has not always captured the attention of the powers that be. I will be interested in seeing what comes out of the Jam session. Although, frankly, I am not confident that crowdsourcing is the way to solve security issues, even in the 21st century.

"What to Read on Gender and Foreign Policy"

Over the break, Foreign Affairs posted my picks on which gender literature the foreign policy community should take seriously. Here's how the piece begins:

Feminists have long argued that it is wrong to ignore half the population when crafting policies meant to secure a stable world order. Now foreign policy experts are beginning to grasp a different point: a "gender perspective" is relevant not only to those concerned with making the world better for women, but also to anybody who cares about military effectiveness, alliance stability, democracy promotion, actionable intelligence, the stem of pandemic disease, or successful nation building. The following sources are essential reading for anyone interested in the connections between gender relations -- norms and assumptions about men and women, masculinity and femininity -- and the practice of foreign policy.

You can argue with how I framed it or which works I chose out of the volumes of good scholarship on gender and IR. But if you ask me, it's fabulous that FA is starting to include gender issues among its must-reads - and, if the latest issue is any suggestion, mainstreaming them in its print edition. Go check it out and tell me what you think.

[cross-posted at LGM]

Politics and Infographics

Cliff Kuang at Fast Company points to a short, interesting talk by Alex Lundry of TargetPoint Consulting.

Lundry quickly runs down the importance of infographics and data visualizations in the political realm. Bottom line: people are hard wired to learn through visualization, and infographics can be very powerful tools in political battles over ideas and policy:



It amazes me that we haven't seen a faster uptake among professional politicians of data visualization, especially considering the sheer number of political operatives, consultants, and strategic communication firms. All it takes is about five minutes watching C-SPAN to realize that these folks are due for a major upgrade in the infographics department.

I also love Lundry's updating of a famous H.G. Wells quote

Visual Statistical thinking will one day be as necessary for efficient citizenship as the ability to read and write.

Personally, I think you need both visual and statistical in there, but in general I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment.

[Cross-posted at bill | petti]

Breaking News: ISA Enters 21st Century With New Powerpoint Policy

Amazing but true. Social scientists presenting at the International Studies Association's "Theory v. Policy" Conference this winter will be able to use Powerpoint projectors without shelling out for and packing their own. And not only will you be able to use a projector free of charge (unheard of as late as last year) but ISA will provide projectors and laptops in every room to actually make this easy! (In an exciting twist on this story, overhead projectors are no longer being encouraged; now you have to ask for one of those.)

Welcome to the new century, my esteemed colleagues. I look forward to your many-varied, dynamic and visually exciting presentations.

Better yet, this unprecedented move would seem to mark a decisive shift at the ISA toward more technological savvy in general. Who knows? Maybe this means they'll manage to get wireless access throughout the conference as well.

Now if our "theories" will just follow ISA "policy" in catching up to the technological changes in the world around us...

Academics Probably Make Bad Spies

This is off-topic from Haiti, and while I am very much concerned about the situation there, an article in the Times of London yesterday raised an issue important enough that I thought I should blog about it. I am generally a fan of the Times, but I was very disappointed to wake-up and read this article declaring that an “Extreme preacher lectures at the LSE”.

This, sadly, is not a new issue. The government and the media have been concerned about radicalization (let’s be specific – Islamic radicalization) on university campuses for a number of years now and they have put in new measures to “deal” with the situation. We are now required to do unprecedented monitoring of our students, particularly, foreign students, including reporting their failure to show for class and their attendance at all levels.

Nor is the first time the LSE has been accused of being the “London School of Terrorists”. For years it was rumored that Carlos the Jackal went to the LSE (not true – but Mick Jagger did!) And accusations flew after the murder of Daniel Pearl when it emerged that the mastermind of his death had attended the LSE in the 1990s. One of Kaddafi’s sons was doing a PhD in the government department while I was there as well, but last I checked, Libya is supposed to be on our side now. Combine this with the fact that the “pants bomber” went to University College London (a different institution, but down the way from LSE) and I guess you have yourself one hot story.




I’m not a fan of Hizb ut-Tahrir or radicalization in general. Nor do I really want to see either of these things on campus.

But this Times article raises several concerns for me as a member of the profession in the UK

1. The article sensationally proclaims that a radical terrorist teaches at the LSE – but it is a PhD student who might, at best, be in charge of 15-20 students for maybe one hour per week. (This brings up another issue about teaching quality at the LSE but that is another story…)
2. This article is making an incredibly serious accusation against said PhD student – putting his picture up for the world to see. I don’t know what evidence they have for such a claim – a lot of it seems to come from fellow students who are unnamed. Is that it? Is that the smoking gun? Who are these students and what grudges might they have? There are never any shortages of grudges on campus.
3. The article seems to be clear that there are no complaints from the students he is actually in charge of. So what is the big deal? That he is saying dodgy things on campus? Where does the campus begin and end? Is it the classroom, the geographical territory that marks the LSE? The issuing of a student card?
4. If making some bizzaro suggestions about an Islamic caliphate state is enough to warrant a front page article in the Times, what else is considered to be risky enough for us academics to report? The School of Advanced Studies (SoAS) has a daily rally to smash capitalism; free Palestine; and demonstrate solidarity with Cuba (sometimes all at the same time… while eating the free vegetarian food handed out by some guy on a fancy tricycle.)
5. The article ends with yet another claim that universities in the UK are not taking the issue of terrorism on campus seriously.

This last point is particularly interesting because it is full of some loaded assumptions about what our responsibilities are as academics. First, that it is our responsibility to be aware of our students views. Secondly, if we are concerned with these views we must report them.
Most of my interaction with students is in the classroom – and I have a hard enough time getting them to speak in the first place. I don’t think I will suddenly have my apparently radicalized students suddenly issue a proclamation to wage war against crusader states in Week Three of term.

But let’s say this student does make such a suggestion. What is my best option as a lecturer? Reporting him immediately to the administration? Or would it be to question his views and have other students do the same. I suppose one answer is that these options do not have to be mutually exclusive, but the second option, in my mind, would probably be more effective than the first. If nothing else, having a bunch of eager third-year students (anxious to make their seminar participation mark) let loose on some nutty ideas, would probably have more of an effect (even if it only came down to peer-pressure) than making a claim that would be probably lost or ignored by a university administration trying to deal with the recent budget cuts announced by the Labour government.

To be fair, I would probably report something that seemed to be causing an immediate threat – such as students who suddenly took an interest in bringing a ton of fertilizer or armed weapons to campus. Additionally, I firmly believe that the beliefs of HT and other radicalized groups should be challenged in an open (and hopefully informed) debate. So this is not a call for academia to put its head in the sand.After all, I remember being shocked when I arrived at the LSE in 2001, seeing warnings on the walls that were warning about bombs in the post. There was also an anthrax scare at the BBC next to campus.

But it must be said that in terms of radicalization the only thing I ever saw was a very well sewn sign that was occasionally raised by the ever diminishing Socialist factions (and they spent more time fighting each other rather than capitalism) which read “One Stock Broker is one stock broker too many.”

Oh, and I guess there were all of those investment societies – who probably went on to fill the ranks of Goldman’s, AIG, etc – institutions that went on to bring about more havoc than this perhaps slightly delusional PhD student could probably bring.

In speaking about these issues with my friend Nick Anstead (blogger, lecturer at the University of East Anglia and fabulously more knowledgeable on UK politics than I am), he pointed out to me that the really interesting point here is the dividing line over public and private. The student preaches on Fridays in a room at the far end of campus to a university club/religious group. The rest of the week he is teaching students and (hopefully) working on his PhD. Is there a relationship between these two activities? Is it that they happen to both happen on a campus? And is that enough for the university to intervene?

What are our responsibilities as academics to national security while they are on campus? I am included to believe it is encouraging students to question views, teaching them how to read critically and widely. We are not trained to recognize radicalism in the ways that the government (and apparently The Times) wants us, nor would I ever want to be. I have papers to mark, office hours, a book manuscript to finish, a text book to propose and an article to revise and resubmit. I do not have the time to attend meetings where a student may, or may not, call for the over throw of the system. Oh, and then there are the very real “everyday” emergencies and tangibly more real problems of students dealing with death in the family, substance abuse and eating disorders.

Besides – most of us are wearing dirty jeans and wrinkled tweed. James Bond would not be amused.

Unfolding Lessons of Haiti

First, as posted at LGM, I predict this book is going to sell a whole lot of copies this year. Unlike many ongoing crises that suffer from lack of aid money, in Haiti the relief lag we are seeing is due not to compassion fatigue (text message donations surpassed $10 mil today, equal to the amount pledged by Brazil or Switzerland) but rather to sheer logistical strain caused by poorly built or now-destroyed infrastructure.

(You simply can't offload supplies from ships without dock cranes. You can't land planes full of relief shipments and inflatable hospitals without a functional control tower. To save lives, search and rescue crews must get their equipment from tarmac to disaster zone efficiently. Helicopters need landing zones not decimated by rubble. And most importantly, military folks with the choppers need to be able to communicate with the civilian aid agencies who have the supplies.)

A lesson for human security specialists may be: is some level of international governance over basic infrastructure going to be necessary to resolve coordination problems like this in the future? There's a lot of talk in the MDGs about development aid for food, vaccinations, school supplies, but how about for construction of roads, ports and control towers that can withstand natural disasters? This would seem to be a prerequisite for effective civilian-military response in such scenarios. An international community that can trace nuclear materials or close an ozone hole could establish and implement such standards if it chose - half the problem is lack of political imagination.

Second, my bet is the US military is thinking hard about what its prominent (yet inevitably sluggish) role in this disaster means for its maritime force posture. Climate disasters like this may become more prevalent and the humanitarian fall-out presents security risks if they occur in areas near US borders; the US is positioning itself as a global humanitarian hegemon bent on rebuilding nations ravaged by state failure and disaster. All this has important implications for naval readiness as well as strategic communication. Galrahn at Information Dissemination made a cogent set of points in this regard:

There have been 3 Admirals on C-SPAN in the last 6 months, and only once was it on an issue related to the sea - that was the BMD change. Every other time you see an Admiral on C-SPAN it is Mullen or the topic is prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. The media is focused on Haiti, and the symbol of American power is going to be the largest thing everyone can see - USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70). Be visible, take pictures from the air that include the carrier, and turn USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70) into a symbol of hope. The Navy doesn't have a single Admiral actually in a Navy post today (which means Stavridis and Mullen don't count) who is recognizable by the average American, but every American knows what a Nimitz class aircraft carrier looks like - as does the rest of the world. Showcase the ship, because it is a symbol and symbolism matters in soft power. The whole world is watching.

Haiti

If you are trying to follow the news about Haiti, I recommend reading Mark Leon Goldberg's UN Dispatch. If you are looking to donate to the relief effort, then check out The Daily Beast's rundown of NGOs operating effectively in Haiti.

Goldberg and I agree that Reverend Pat Robertson is a fool. Media Matters transcribed his January 13 comments about the Haitian tragedy:

PAT ROBERTSON: And, you know, Kristi, something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, "We will serve you if you will get us free from the French." True story. And so, the devil said, "OK, it's a deal."

And they kicked the French out. You know, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other. Desperately poor. That island of Hispaniola is one island. It's cut down the middle. On the one side is Haiti; on the other side is the Dominican Republic. Dominican Republic is prosperous, healthy, full of resorts, et cetera. Haiti is in desperate poverty. Same island. They need to have and we need to pray for them a great turning to God. And out of this tragedy, I'm optimistic something good may come. But right now, we're helping the suffering people, and the suffering is unimaginable.

I've previously blogged about Robertson's idiocy, but this latest comment is truly abhorrent given the circumstances. Haitian leaders are estimating between 100,000 and 500,000 dead, but nobody really knows right now.

Juggling Blog-spots

Beginning tomorrow, I'll be kicking off a blogging stint over at Lawyers, Guns and Money, where I'll post material regularly on foreign policy, pop culture and human security. My IR theory-related posts will remain exclusively at the Duck.

UPDATE:

OK, LFC might be onto something. From an LGM commenter:

"human security?"

from aliens? from TSA? ?? from politicians promising hope & change but delivering bags o'crap?

Hmm, this should be fun.

How to Win the War on Terror

It's not that earth-shattering - people have been saying this for years - but I haven't seen it put this well, for mass consumption, in a long time. Phil Bobbitt writing in Newsweek:

It is often asked, "How can we win a war against terror? Who would surrender? How can we make war against an emotion (terror) or a guerrilla technique (terrorism), neither of which are enemy states?" These questions assume that victory in war is simply a matter of defeating the enemy. In fact, that may be the criterion for winning in football or chess, but not warfare. Victory in war is a matter of achieving the war aim. The war aim in a war against terror is not territory, or access to resources, or conversion to our political way of life. It is the protection of civilians within the rule of law.

But Newsweek's editors seem to have taken a different message from his argument - that it's impossible to define victory. Instead of taking seriously the idea of how to measure victory on Bobbitt's terms, their latest issue features a long, admittedly interesting but ultimately distracting conversation about how ambiguous the concept of "victory" is today. That whole discussion misses Bobbitt's point, I think. Victory on conventional terms is no longer possible in asymmetric wars. Instead of belaboring that, let's redefine our terms and create some valid metrics to go with them.

More ruminations on that score at Current Intelligence.

The Real Climate Negotiations

Bill McKibben has a long interview on the public radio show Speaking of Faith, which you can listen to here. An insightful quote from the transcript:

The negotiation that's underway, we think is between China and the U.S. and the EU. It's really not; the real negotiation underway is between human beings on the one hand and physics and chemistry on the other. We're going to have no choice but to adapt, whether it's gracefully or in violent and ugly fashion to that demand of basic bottom line of the planet.

Food for thought as news of the devastation in Haiti from yesterday's earthquake trickles out of Port-au-Prince this morning. For an easy way to help, see here.

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg: "We Decided That These Would Be the Social Norms Now"

I am so prepped already for social constructivism day in my World Politics 121 class. Check out Zuckerberg's answer to the second question (about 3:00). Zuckerberg claims that the new changes to FB privacy settings - which make it impossible to protect your photos and extremely difficult to prevent "everyone" from knowing your current affiliations and other information previously shared only with those you choose - are simply FB's efforts to reflect [Zuckerberg's understanding] of "current social norms" on the Internet:

"We view it as our role in the system to constantly be innovating and be updating what our system is to reflect what the current social norms are... We decided that these would be social norms now, and we just went for it."

So instead of allowing the social norms to evolve naturally through user choice, Zuckerberg has decided what they will be and imposed them architecturally on millions of users. But is justifying them based on the idea that they were already there. Fascinating.

Zuckerberg has been widely misquoted as saying "the age of privacy is over," which I don't hear in this clip. However he does seem to imply that since people are choosing to share more information than ever, that they don't care about the ability to make that choice themselves. On whether this is indeed a "social norm," Zuckerberg needs to go read some basic social theory. Constructivists would say that the evidence as to whether a social norm exists is whether people react badly when you break it. I think the uproar over the FB privacy changes is enough to prove him wrong on this point.

Fueling the fire in Yemen.

My friend, Stacey Philbrick Yadav, has just posted an interesting take on American policy in Yemen at Foreign Policy. She writes:

I've been traveling regularly to Yemen since 2004, conducting research on the relationship between Islamists and leftists in Yemen's opposition parties. Throughout this time, I have maintained correspondence with Yemeni journalists and political activists from a wide range of ideological positions. They are united in their concern about expanding U.S. involvement in Yemen, understanding just how badly it is likely to turn out for them and their country.

In part, Yemeni reformers are wary because such assistance has already contributed to radicalization. The use of unmanned drones, for example, goes back to 2002 at least. The combination of the perceived infringement on Yemeni sovereignty and high civilian death tolls caused by drone strikes has unquestionably helped fuel anti-American sentiment. Now, my Yemeni sources worry the Saleh regime will use additional military funds to crack down on legitimate political dissent and pad its coffers, rather than fighting actual terrorists and providing desperately needed services and infrastructure....

...The United States' interest in Yemen has clearly been piqued. But information and analysis lag far behind this interest. As a Yemeni official told me, "The guys in D.C. aren't creative"; they throw money at the problem rather than working to solve it. In Yemen, Saleh is part of the problem. Clear policy alternatives might not be available yet -- but writing a blank check will certainly do nothing but fuel the radicalization the United States seeks to fight.

I think the last point is telling. We've now seen a lot of the "War on Terror" talking heads follow the headlines to the Yemen situation peddling their standard fare: more U.S. military assistance and support. But the early reporting on Yemen in the past few weeks reveals how little the US seems to know about the country.

Mark Landler wrote a piece over the weekend in the NYTimes and added this:

In an overburdened State Department, there are only a handful of Yemen experts, compared with 30 people from nine government agencies who are assigned just to the administration’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard C. Holbrooke.

Washington’s limited insight into Yemen was on display Thursday, when the White House’s chief counterterrorism adviser, John O. Brennan, expressed surprise that Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was sophisticated enough to carry out a plot against an American jetliner. In fact, Mr. Brennan, a onetime C.I.A. station chief in neighboring Saudi Arabia, is widely regarded as one of the administration’s most knowledgeable officials about the country.

I'm sure we'll see more of the standard talking heads surface and repeat the last thing they heard on Yemen. For my money, I'll be waiting to read more from Stacey and from Gregory Johnsen and Brian O'Neill over at Waq Al-Waq. Stacey is a gifted scholar and Johnsen and O'Neill have been blogging on Yemen for the past couple of years and know the country and region well.

Good news on Iran?

Haaretz.com is reporting that Iran is suspending its uranium enrichment program for two months. This news arrives amidst a flurry of other related reports about Iran and its nuclear program.

Many political pundits have been blasting the Obama administration for its "total dud" diplomatic efforts towards Iran, noting that the U.S. deadline for Iran to make a deal about uranium enrichment elapsed in December. During the 2008 campaign, then-candidate Barack Obama repeatedly said he would talk to Iran without preconditions.

Did Obama say what would happen if the talks failed to produce results?

Is there any reason to believe the talks might still succeed?

Yesterday, General David Petraeus reminded the world what could happen if negotiations fail -- Iran could "certainly be bombed" if necessary:

"It would be almost literally irresponsible if Centcom were not to have been thinking about the various 'what ifs' and to make plans for a whole variety of different contingencies."

I doubt this comment was made flippantly as it echoes statements Senate candidate Obama made as far back as 2004. In 2007, Obama said "I don’t think the president of the United States takes military options off the table."

The U.S. has also been talking about expanding the sanctions against Iran, though Chinese (and European) reluctance has made that threat seem perhaps even less credible than the idea of a U.S. strike on Iran.

I do not think Iran has been bullied into making an important concessions, but I do suspect that the Iranian government realizes the gravity of the situation. As Marc Lynch noted at the end of December, even the New York Times recently ran an op-ed calling for strikes against Iran. U.S. military leaders for some weeks have been saying that they do not see good military options vis-à-vis Iran and they support ongoing diplomacy. However, of course, they acknowledge their preparation to implement military options if the President orders their use.

Laura Rozen reported over the weekend that Iran has made a new offer in the ongoing negotiations:

While the Obama administration has stepped up talk of expanding sanctions on the regime’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, Iranian news reports and U.S. official sources say that Iran has recently returned a formal counter offer to swap low enriched uranium, or LEU, in exchange for nuclear fuel cells produced in the West...

One source told POLITICO that an agreement between Iran and the “P5+1” - as the group composed of China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the U.S. is known - could be announced in “the very near future.”

Reportedly, the deal would ship LEU to Turkey rather than Russia, as the west proposed. However, the key point is that Iran would be left without enough nuclear material to construct a bomb -- thereby creating more time for additional negotiations on broader issues.

That seems like a good deal for now.

Sailing up stream....

Last week appeared to be Development Week at Foggy Bottom. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave her long-promised "Development" speech. The next day, Dr. Rajiv Shah was sworn in as the new administrator for USAID. In his speech, he identified four key priorities for his tenure:

1. To improve lives and fight poverty,
2. To expand human rights and economic opportunities,
3. To build democratic institutions and improve governance
4. To advance U.S. foreign policy to enhance our own prosperity and security.

Both Clinton's speech and Rajiv's appointment seem to me to strike the right notes, i.e, that development and diplomacy are as essential as defense in the conduct of American foreign policy.

Of course, as my friends at the National Priorities Project (based here in Northampton, MA) routinely point out, development and diplomacy aren't even in the same league with the Pentagon.

Take the Afghanistan surge, for example. Jo Comerford, the head of NPP wrote an analysis of it over at TomDispatch.com. She notes that Obama's decision for 30,000 additional troops will cost roughly $1million per soldier -- about $30 billion total (that would be $57,077.60 per minute for us taxpayers). She writes:

For purposes of comparison, $30 billion -- remember, just the Pentagon-estimated cost of a 30,000-person troop surge -- is equal to 80% of the total U.S. 2010 budget for international affairs, which includes monies for development and humanitarian assistance. On the domestic front, $30 billion could double the funding (at 2010 levels) for the Children's Health Insurance Program and the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. (My emphasis)

Or think of the surge this way: if the United States decided to send just 29,900 extra soldiers to Afghanistan, 100 short of the present official total, it could double the amount of money -- $100 million -- it has allocated to assist refugees and returnees from Afghanistan through the State Department's Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration.

Leaving aside the fact that the United States already accounts for 45% of total global military spending, the $30 billion surge cost alone would place us in the top-ten for global military spending, sandwiched between Italy and Saudi Arabia. Spent instead on “soft security” measures within Afghanistan, $30 billion could easily build, furnish and equip enough schools for the entire nation.

Given the deeply embedded domestic structural factors (political and organizational) that routinely fuel increases in defense spending and ridicule development assistance, it's hard to find much promise in Clinton's proclamation that:

It's time for a new mindset for a new century. Time to retire old debates and replace dogmatic attitudes with clear reasoning and common sense. And time to elevate development as a central pillar of our foreign policy and to rebuild USAID into the world's premier development agency.

Yeah, well, good luck with that....

Gitmo

According to the Department of Defense, many of the captives released from the U.S. prison on Guantánamo Bay "return" to extremist activity -- and the rate is increasing. This is from the LA Times story of January 7:

A new report estimates that one-fifth of the detainees who have been released from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have resumed extremist activity, a Defense Department official said Wednesday, a figure that intensifies the debate over the prison.

The Pentagon report on the released detainees remains classified and officials refused to discuss it publicly. But Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell acknowledged the numbers had risen since April, when the department said about 74 former detainees -- about 14% of those released -- had returned to hostile action against the United States.

Readers might recall that President Obama promised nearly one year ago to close the prison within a year.

Dan Froomkin has a thorough takedown of the Pentagon study and I'd encourage everyone to read it. Note that most of his arguments are based on the work of Seton Hall researchers directed by Law Professor Mark Denbeaux. The Seton Hall team has repeatedly debunked DoD claims about Guantánamo and effectively spanked the media for reporting on the official claims without some degree of journalistic skepticism.

So, what's wrong with the Pentagon reports and claims?

• The Pentagon refuses to provide names, making it virtually impossible for researchers to verify their claims.


• By DoD's definition, “returning to the fight” apparently includes detainees speaking out publicly against their incarceration at Gitmo.


• Officials, if pressed, acknowledge they don’t really track former detainees, so their conclusions are largely speculative.


• Most detaines cannot "return" to the battlefield since the arrested weren't ever really combatants and were never charged with anything

Clearly, the Pentagon continues to signal that it's not going to watch silently as the President's team works to close the Guantánamo prison. They're obviously picking a political fight and domestic political allies in Congress will help them -- remember the silly NIMBY debate about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? What Froomkin suggests is that a malleable media with a poor short-term memory will help them.

Paul Campos: "Stop Playing Terrorball"

Paul Campos of Lawyers, Guns and Money has an op-ed in the Washington Post Wall Street Journal that everyone should read on how the US government, media and citizenry can stop handing political victories to even the most incompetent of transnational criminals by over-reacting to the supposed "threat" posed by global "terrorism." I like it so much I've reprinted large amounts below:

I'm not much of a basketball player. Middle-age, with a shaky set shot and a bad knee, I can't hold my own in a YMCA pickup game, let alone against more organized competition. But I could definitely beat LeBron James in a game of one-on-one. The game just needs to feature two special rules: It lasts until I score, and when I score, I win.

We might have to play for a few days, and Mr. James's point total could well be creeping toward five figures before the contest ended, but eventually the gritty gutty competitor with a lunch-bucket work ethic (me) would subject the world's greatest basketball player to a humiliating defeat.

The world's greatest nation seems bent on subjecting itself to a similarly humiliating defeat, by playing a game that could be called Terrorball. The first two rules of Terrorball are:

(1) The game lasts as long as there are terrorists who want to harm Americans; and

(2) If terrorists should manage to kill or injure or seriously frighten any of us, they win.

These rules help explain the otherwise inexplicable wave of hysteria that has swept over our government in the wake of the failed attempt by a rather pathetic aspiring terrorist to blow up a plane on Christmas Day.

As to the question of what the government should do rather than keep playing Terrorball, the answer is simple: stop treating Americans like idiots and cowards.

It might be unrealistic to expect the average citizen to have a nuanced grasp of statistically based risk analysis, but there is nothing nuanced about two basic facts:

(1) America is a country of 310 million people, in which thousands of horrible things happen every single day; and

(2) The chances that one of those horrible things will be that you're subjected to a terrorist attack can, for all practical purposes, be calculated as zero.

Consider that on this very day about 6,700 Americans will die. When confronted with this statistic almost everyone reverts to the mindset of the title character's acquaintances in Tolstoy's great novella "The Death of Ivan Ilyich," and indulges in the complacent thought that "it is he who is dead and not I."

Consider then that around 1,900 of the Americans who die today will be less than 65, and that indeed about 140 will be children. Approximately 50 Americans will be murdered today, including several women killed by their husbands or boyfriends, and several children who will die from abuse and neglect. Around 85 of us will commit suicide, and another 120 will die in traffic accidents.

No amount of statistical evidence, however, will make any difference to those who give themselves over to almost completely irrational fears. Such people, and there are apparently a lot of them in America right now, are in fact real victims of terrorism. They also make possible the current ascendancy of the politics of cowardice—the cynical exploitation of fear for political gain.

It's a remarkable fact that a nation founded, fought for, built by, and transformed through the extraordinary courage of figures such as George Washington, Susan B. Anthony and Martin Luther King Jr. now often seems reduced to a pitiful whimpering giant by a handful of mostly incompetent criminals, whose main weapons consist of scary-sounding Web sites and shoe- and underwear-concealed bombs that fail to detonate.

Terrorball, in short, is made possible by a loss of the sense that cowardice is among the most disgusting and shameful of vices. I shudder to think what Washington, who as commander in chief of the Continental Army intentionally exposed himself to enemy fire to rally his poorly armed and badly outnumbered troops, would think of the spectacle of millions of Americans not merely tolerating but actually demanding that their government subject them to various indignities, in the false hope that the rituals of what has been called "security theater" will reduce the already infinitesimal risks we face from terrorism.

Indeed, if one does not utter the magic word "terrorism," the notion that it is actually in the best interests of the country for the government to do everything possible to keep its citizens safe becomes self-evident nonsense. Consider again some of the things that will kill 6,700 Americans today. The country's homicide rate is approximately six times higher than that of most other developed nations; we have 15,000 more murders per year than we would if the rate were comparable to that of otherwise similar countries. Americans own around 200 million firearms, which is to say there are nearly as many privately owned guns as there are adults in the country. In addition, there are about 200,000 convicted murderers walking free in America today (there have been more than 600,000 murders in America over the past 30 years, and the average time served for the crime is about 12 years).

Or consider traffic accidents. All sorts of measures could be taken to reduce the current rate of automotive carnage from 120 fatalities a day—from lowering speed limits, to requiring mechanisms that make it impossible to start a car while drunk, to even more restrictive measures. Some of these measures may well be worth taking. But the point is that at present we seem to consider 43,000 traffic deaths per year an acceptable cost to pay for driving big fast cars.

What then is to be done? A little intelligence and a few drops of courage remind us that life is full of risk, and that of all the risks we confront in America every day, terrorism is a very minor one. Taking prudent steps to reasonably minimize the tiny threat we face from a few fanatic criminals need not grant them the attention they crave. Continuing to play Terrorball, on the other hand, guarantees that the terrorists will always win, since it places the bar for what counts as success for them practically on the ground.

I should add, however, that I'm not among those who think, as Campos seems to imply, that the government shouldn't be doing more to address traffic fatalities. In fact, this is one of those preventable "human security" problems that interestingly attracts way too little attention from policymakers, in my view. Maybe they could redefine the concept of "homeland security" and put some of that invasive digital imaging money to work on highway safety.

Campos' original post on "Terrorball" here.


Editor's Note: Error fixed, thanks to reader comment.

James Fowler: Formidable Opponent

It's always great to see fellow political scientists on late-night talk shows. Last night it was James Fowler of UC San Diego. This is the guy I blogged about last year when he published an article in a leading political science journal on whether the Colbert Bump was actual or real. (His conclusion: the alleged bump is "more truthy than truth.")

But Fowler's main research agenda is social networks. In his interview last night, he discusses the many surprising ways they affect our lives. Check it out below.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
James Fowler
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Economy

Is the jury out on universal jurisdiction?*

The two different countries I call home (Canada and the UK) have recently had to deal with universal jurisdiction in relation to war crimes.

First, as I’ve written about here, it has come to light that Canadian officials likely knew that Afghans captured by Canadian forces and subsequently transferred to Afghan prisons were being tortured. Failure to react to such allegations and relevations is a crime under the Third Geneva Convention Relative to Prisoners of War. Yet, what is interesting about this particular issue is that the Geneva Convention is quite clear that it is the government (as opposed to the military) is responsible for the violation of the law.



Yet the Canadian government has so-far refused to open up an investigation into the allegations (made by a Canadian diplomat, Mr. Colvin who served in Kabul and now does so in Washington). Instead, the issue is being handled by the Military Police Complaints Commission. The question is whether or not this is sufficient for the International Criminal Court - of which Canada is a party - who could potentially begin an investigation if they felt that the actions of Canada were insufficient. That the ICC prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo has previously indicated this year that he willing to open up investigations into Western governments, does seem to leave the Canadian government in a potentially vulnerable position.

Second, a judge in the UK recently issued an arrest warrant for the former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni for war crimes at the request of Palestinian plaintiffs. The allegations made against Livni were that she was responsible for war crimes committed during the Israeli offensive in Gaza last year. The warrant was revoked when it was announced by a very angry Israeli government that Livni would no longer be visiting the UK for her scheduled meeting with UK government officials. Additionally, the warrant was the cause of significant embarrassment for the UK government whose role in the Middle East peace process is now in some doubt (particularly as Israeli officials will now not be particularly likely to visit the UK). But the Court which issued the warrant has the right to do so at its own discretion. As war crimes have universal jurisdiction, the court felt that it was free to act.

For advocates, of universal justice, the implications of both of these cases are clear: it is about promoting the rule of law and addressing grievances so that real peace can be built. More simply, it’s the idea that justice should not stop at a national border. Officials, whether they are the Canadian Minister of Defence, the President of Sudan or the former Israeli Foreign Minister should all be susceptible to indictment.

And clearly, for the governments of these countries, it is about pragmatism. International legal arrangements which effectively damage diplomacy, or the ability of officials to do their job, is of benefit to no one.

But in reality, such concerns may also extend to the international legal institutions themselves. Although Ocampo may be a fan of universal jurisdiction, this may be tempered by a degree of realism. As the ICC and the US government under the Obama Administration are slowly working towards a new understanding (if not an entirely improved relationship), any attempt to prosecute Canadian officials may actually scare away the American government even further from the ICC - particularly given its skittishness about "activist" lawyers, politicized cases under the banner of universal jurisdiction.

To some extent it comes down to the old (clichéd?) question of "Order vs Justice" in International Relations - whether we should let justice be done though the heavens fall, or whether order without justice can really be considered any order at all. Perhaps more simply, it is at what cost international institutions (or even domestic ones) are willing to demonstrate their power - even perhaps at the risk of losing it. If they do act, they may be limited by politics; but if they don't, they already have been.

*See what I did there? That's the kind of skill you learn in a quality grad school.

The sources of Uganda's anti-gay bias

The NY Times ran a story this morning on how three American evangelical Christians influenced the gay death penalty bill now pending in Uganda.

While the emphasis in the story is on the influence of the American evangelical Christians, there is a line in the NYTimes article that deserves more attention:

Many Africans view homosexuality as an immoral Western import, and the continent is full of harsh homophobic laws. In northern Nigeria, gay men can face death by stoning. (my emphasis)

Likewise, Andrew Sullivan picks up the story and blasts the Americans. But he too has a line that is added without comment:

...in Africa, the public consensus is so anti-gay already that the consequences of this demonization are felt much more immediately and brutally.

This begs the question: Where do all these laws and the anti-gay public consensus in Africa come from?

In his 2002 book titled The Next Christendom: the coming of global Christianity, Philip Jenkins from Penn State University noted that nearly one third of the planet (just over 2 billion people) are Christians with the most rapid growth in past several decades coming in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. He notes that by 2025, both Africa and Latin America likely will have more Christians than Europe and all three continents will far outpace North America.

Because of the degree of poverty in the global south, for the past several decades many American commentators have simply assumed that the religion of the developing world would move toward a more fervent liberation theology with a focus on global redistribution of wealth.

Yet, Jenkins finds a different trend:

At present, the most immediately apparent difference between the older and new churches is that South Christians are far more conservative in terms of both beliefs and moral teaching. The denominations that are triumphing all across the global South are stalwartly traditional or even reactionary by the standards of the economically advanced nations. The churches that have made most dramatic progress in the global South have been either Roman Catholic, of a traditionalist and fideistic kind, or radical Protestant sects, evangelical or Pentecostal....

...These newer churches preach deep personal faith and communal orthodoxy, mysticism and Puritanism, all founded on clear scriptural authority. They preach messages that, to a Westerner, appear simplistically charismatic, visionary, and apocalyptic…..On present evidence, a Southernized Christian future should be distinctly conservative.

While we may be able to trace the specific influence of this pending legislation to the visit of three American evangelical Christians, the broader trend of anti-gay bias throughout the continent is almost certainly rooted in the rise of more traditionalist, conservative theology. And, if Jenkins' demographic projections are correct, the rise of this traditionalist theology throughout the global South will have much broader socio-political effects throughout the world in the years to come....