One down 52 to go! As promised, I finished Chomsky’s Hopes and Prospects. The topics presented in this extremely well argued collection of essays, which brutally critique US foreign policy is nothing new to me. After all I studied International Relations at university (twice!). It covers wide ranging issues examining US foreign policy in Latin America, the Middle East and the Israel- Palestine conflict. Chomsky takes a Marxist viewpoint suggesting US foreign and domestic policies are driven almost entirely by the demands of investors. In his view this explains the US support for dictatorial regimes around the world and the lack of reform at home in areas such as national healthcare. The overarching theme is this collusion of big business and government erodes real democracy and sovereignty. He is particularly scathing of Obama for his continuity of these policies and suggests the lack of financial regulation reform in the US is because of the sizeable donations to his 2008 election campaign came from the likes of Goldman Sachs etc. I won’t go into much more detail but this is a must for anyone who wants an excellently written Marxist perspective on US foreign policy. 

This is a very convincingly argued book and inherently gloomy. Perhaps its weakness is the lack of coherence between the topics covered, obvious since it is a collection of adapted essays rather than something written from scratch. 

This week I’m reading Jack Kerouac’s ‘On the Road’

A rather late New Years Resolution I suppose, but I have decided to read a book a week for the next 12 months. To keep me motivated I will give a short opinion piece or review of the book here and also to hold myself to account. The book I’ve started with is Noam Chomsky’s book called Hopes and Prospects. A lot of people have done this challenge before, one of the reasons I am doing this is that firstly I have not read anywhere near the amount of books I would have hoped to at this age and secondly it seems that reading books for pleasure is becoming an increasingly lost art with so many distractions demanding our attention in the digital age. At the same time, having an iPad makes things slightly easier as it keeps all my books in one place, making it very portable.
Every Tuesday of the week, I will write on here about the book I’ve just read.
]]> http://admagnusson.wordpress.com/2011/03/15/52-book-in-52-weeks/feed/ 0 admagnusson http://admagnusson.wordpress.com/2011/03/03/western-hypocrisy-in-the-middle-east/ http://admagnusson.wordpress.com/2011/03/03/western-hypocrisy-in-the-middle-east/#comments Thu, 03 Mar 2011 15:52:58 +0000 admagnusson http://admagnusson.wordpress.com/2011/03/03/western-hypocrisy-in-the-middle-east/ Continue reading →]]> All over the North Africa and the Middle East there has a mass movement of popular uprising in authoritarian regimes. The west has been cozying up to these governments for decades in the belief that stable dictatorial governance is a price worth paying for regional harmony and keeping radical Islam at bay. The obvious elephant in the room is oil, without this most precious of commodities, the US and EU would be much more damning in their criticism of these countries human rights and democratisation records. Instead the past few years have seen leaders like Hillary Clinton, Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy softening up to the likes of Muammar Gaddafi in the faint belief that he could be rehabilitated into the international community. The mass demonstrations and uprising that are currently underway in Libya have laid bare the brutal tactics that Gaddafi has used in his attempts to crush them and exposed the world to the true tyrant he is.

This puts countries that have been willing to do business with Gaddafi in an embarrassing position. Britain used the justification of abuse of human rights and democratisation and key reason for the invasion of Iraq in 2003, yet only a couple of years later were more than willing to do business with a man who for many years was bankrolling international terrorism (including the Lockerbie bombing) in the interests of the benefits to British business. It is naive to think that statecraft in international politics involves judging every other country against the standard of your own. Sometimes it is indeed necessary to shake hands with the devil, and engage with regimes that you do not agree with.  However when you start preaching one thing and practice another, it looks hypocritical.

Two days ago I did the previously unthinkable and implusively purchased an iPad from the Apple store in Geneva. Having previously thought it was the most ridiculous, pointless, money grabbing Apple product in recent memory; I have gone from being an outright sceptic to believing its the best Apple device I have ever purchased. So……How did this happen?

Since the announcement of the device back in January I remember being totally underwhelmed by Steve Jobs familiar and tedious ‘magical and revolutionary’ sales pitch in front of the mac cult. It was enough to make me feel ashamed to own a Macbook and iPhone, watching the audience endlessly cheer each and every sentence Mr Jobs uttered. Like many others, I thought ‘why would anyone want an oversized, overpriced iPod touch?’ considering many people these days own a smart phone and laptop, I didn’t see the need or gap in the market for a tablet device such as the iPad.

However……….A couple of weeks ago curiosity got the better of me, with the iPad recently released in Switzerland and with the non stop press coverage, I thought I’d see what all the fuss was about. On first sight, it reminded me of a digital photo frame, however after playing around with the instantly familiar interface, all the things I previously did on my laptop and iPhone were instantly more fun and enjoyable. From that moment on, I knew it was only a matter of days before I found some lame mental excuse justifying this expensive luxury purchase. Although the device doesn’t really add anything new from a technological perspective, it revolutionises (yes I said it) the way you interract with the internet and computing in general. It’s hard to explain how, without actually trying one for yourself, however the large screen size really makes a significant difference over the iPhone and iPod touch. I can see this being used far more often than my laptop from now on for 90% of the time, the lack of a physical keyboard being the only obvious downside.

I think within the next few years, tablets such as the iPad will begin to takeover laptops in popularity due to their size, practicality and elegent simplicity. Owning one of these feels like you are holding the future.

Posted via email from Ari Magnusson

I have been at EFTA in Geneva for just over 6 weeks now. As I am paid in Swiss Francs I require a bank account here, which I promptly set up with UBS. One thing I found suprising is just how expensive and impractical banks are here. Most of the perks of consumer banking that we take for granted in the UK are considered luxuries that cost a considerable sum here. For example my Maestro card cost 27 pounds a year and cannot be used for online payments, to use internet banking I have to pay 2 pounds a month on top of this. To apply for a credit card (and hence buy stuff online) you must have 7,500 pounds in your current account as a minimum and also if I use a non UBS cash machine I get charged 1 pound per transaction.

Geneva is also a rather inconvenient city in some regards. Everything shuts here at the lastest by 7pm and on Sundays the place is virtually a ghost town, the place just feels very inflexible, stuck in its ways and lacks dyanamism. However on the plus side, I only walk 15 minutes to work and I can get to Chamonix within an hour so it kind of balances out.

Posted via email from Ari Magnusson

The global village is a worn out cliché — conventional wisdom suggests the world is shrinking at an ever-faster rate and with it, creating an emerging homogenous global culture. Certain voices go as far as too say that this globalisation is merely thinly veiled American cultural imperialism. This is a widespread, but ultimately simplistic notion. For scholars such as Joseph Nye it is simply misguided: although globalisation is US-centric, reflecting existing global power structures, he argues that it should be viewed as a modernising force, which creates distinct cultures through a reciprocal process of exchange between individuals, groups or even nation states.

Yet in cities across the world we see the same uniform retailers, banks, fast food outlets and fashions lending fuel to the homogeneity argument. Does this really mean we are witnessing the erosion and extinction of national identities across the world? Not according to David Held of the London School of Economics, who instead suggests that globalisation makes us all aware of cultural differences between different groups and our own individual identities.

Perhaps this means that the human race is destined for persistent and perhaps worsening conflicts between distinct cultural blocks harbouring divergent values, political views and religious beliefs? This view, prophesised by Samuel Huntington’s well known argument on the ‘Clash of Civilizations’, paints a downbeat and static view of global cultural relations and too easily allows to forget the significant strides made in fostering global cooperation since the Second World War–the establishment of the United Nations, the emergence of European integration and the entrenchment of human rights and international law over the past six decades are indicators that we are perhaps able to overcome differences to promote peace and a common good. According to David Held these developments constitute the emergence of a form of ‘cosmopolitanism’

Economics and political economy sound like the same thing, in fact they are often confused. Political economy concerns itself with the effect that political decisions have on economic processes and vice versa. This makes it a far more interesting and ultimately relevant topic for understanding how the world works in our ever globalising world. Let me start out by explaining in finer detail what separates this two approaches by starting with neoclassical economic theory.

Economics is the study of choice under scarcity.  What I mean by this is that in a world of finite resources, rational choices have to be made according to an opportunity cost. In other words, choosing one option, another opportunity of potentially greater value must be sacrificed, as every decision requires a trade-off between costs and benefits. According to Gary Becker there are three assumptions can be made that underpin economic methodology, these can also be applied across all the social sciences. The first is that economics assumes rational ends/means calculations in people’s behaviour and that this guides their preferences. Therefore there is little difference between people’s basic choices as economics can be used to explain the universality of human behaviour. Because of this markets develop naturally to coordinate with shifting degrees of efficiency. 

One of the other core tenets of economic theory is the concept of the market as a self-regulating and self-correcting entity, which is governed by objective laws and universal principles. Under optimal conditions of complete information and fair competition, it is argued that the free-market will result in optimal allocation of resources.  Although this approach appears to work very well in theory, it does not capture the realities of how the global economic relations have functioned as it is based on a set of very narrow assumptions like rational behaviour in individuals.  Throughout history the world economy has always been a mix of openness and closure and it is apparent that the narrow methodological economic approach is not adequate in explaining the realities of how the global economy operates.

What separates IPE from economics is that it is a substantive discipline rather than a specific methodology used to explain a phenomenon as it focuses on the politics of an international economic exchange. David Lake has argued that it is primarily concerned with two key questions: firstly why do states open themselves to trans-border flows of goods, services, goods and people? Secondly being how does integration into the international economy affect the interests of states, industries, and individuals. 

The example of the European Union and its increasing integration is arguably one of the most striking examples of political and economic integration in recent history and is part of a wider trend towards economic regionalisation. There are numerous theories that are suggested in IPE, which seek to explain the reasons and context of this transformation. The primary aims of post-war European integration were political but the means have been economic which makes it an interesting IPE case study. Following the 1950s the desire to rid Europe of the Franco-German rivalry had been the driving force of this integration because of the belief that another catastrophic war could reoccur. By the 1980s there was a growing consensus that the major states of Europe could only achieve their national economic goals through greater regional and international cooperation to allow them to genuinely compete with Japan and the US as an economic superpower. The 1993 signing of the Maastricht Treaty created the European Union and reshaped its long-term goals towards the development of a centralised federal Europe. This began with the single market initiative and soon after the plans moved towards a single monetary union, which was established in 2002. Two years later, many of the former communist eastern European states were admitted into the union, making it the largest single market in the world. The next section of this essay outlines how the main IPE approaches seek to explain European integration.

The realist approach to European integration emphasises the role of power, national political interests and inter-state rivalries in the integration process. Realists highlight the importance of one or two regional hegemons in this process. Hegemony theorists argue that powerful states have complex utility functions that include not just wealth but power and stability and because of their large internal markets and strategic trade advantages, they attempt to lock-in by persuading other states to adopt free trade. In the case of the European Union, Germany and France would be the obvious example.

Joseph Grieco has argued that states are concerned with maximising their relative gains compared to other states rather than their absolute gains.  One example they would point to is that French support for the single monetary union was driven by their interest in weakening German monetary power within the EU and transferring some of their monetary control measures to European institutions.  Accordingly, this pursuit of relative gains makes cooperation very difficult in the eyes of realists, especially in areas such as security. Realists would thus point to the failure of the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy to achieve any substantial impact in cooperation between member states in the area of security. Grieco has also suggested that the resurgence of European integration in the 1980s and 1990s is an attempt by European states to balance the economic threat posed by the USA and Japan by ‘band-wagoning’ as the signing of the Maastricht treaty coincided with the end of the Cold War.

Realists argue that powerful states always have a strong interest in promoting an open world economy, as this has been the case throughout history. Gilpin has argued that economic regionalism has increased because nation states want the absolute benefits from the global economy while simultaneously increasing their relative gains.

The neoliberal-institutionalist approach emphasises the role that institutions have in solving economic and political problems and argues that their role is to reduce transaction costs. Liberals have always asserted that the aim of ‘Political Economy’ is to create a competitive market society that allows resources to be allocated efficiently while maximising individual utility.  In this sense, their approach is the most closely matched to neoclassical economic theory.  Therefore neoliberal-institutionalists assert that supranational institutions such as the EU facilitate this role for the member states thus resulting in pareto-efficient outcomes. A key distinction that divides the liberal and realist schools of thought is that liberals believe states are fundamentally driven by absolute gains and are unconcerned about their gains relative to other states.

For liberals such as Moravcsik, even though joining the EU requires concessions, potential member states are willing to give in to these demands because the benefit of membership is so valuable to them that it outweighs the cost.  The benefits in this case being increased FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) and increased trade with other member states by joining the largest common market in the world. He also argues that European integration can be reflected in three factors that concerned the converging interests of European states. These are patterns of commercial advantage, the relative bargaining power of important governments, and the motivation to increase the legitimacy of interstate commitments.  Therefore agreements such as the Single European Act or the Maastricht Treaty, were not driven by transnational coalitions of business elites or supranational entrepreneurs, but by a gradual process of converging preferences among the most powerful member states which came to agreements amongst each other while providing incentives to smaller member states.

The constructivist premise of IPE rests on a deeper and broader ontology, which bases its world-view on aspects, which are not covered by utilitarian understandings (realism and liberalism). However it lacks the positivist rigour of which realism and neoliberal-institutionalism base their understandings of IPE. Constructivists prioritise the importance of norms and identities in the study of IPE and do not depend on special methodology that neo-utilitarian approaches require. A constructivist understanding of European integration would emphasise the transformative impact on the European state system through norm diffusion and socialisation. Constructivism assumes the existence of a certain identity of preference change. It has been argued that the EU is responsible for an institutional fusion, where the density of interaction between national and European institutions means that the once clear distinction between the two no longer holds. Therefore they put great emphasis on the identity-shaping capacity of institutions thus leading to the assumption that constitutional and institutional set-up of member states will converge into one model. 

Finally the Marxist approach to European integration has often been associated with dependency theory and is structure based rather than actor based (realism and neoliberal institutionalism) in its examination of the global economy. Raoul Prebish argued that the structure of the world system created a north/south divide which trapped developing countries into an unequal trading relationship as they were mostly exporting labour-intensive raw materials while importing capital-intensive goods from the ‘developed north’. Dependency can thus be viewed as a pattern of conduct concentrated on transnational links between local and foreign technology, and capital which constrains development options caused by the integration of less developed states into the international system.  When viewing the EU as an external actor, dependency can be used to frame the unequal trading advantage the EU holds over many parts of the developing world with its policies such as the CAP (Common Agricultural Policy) which makes it difficult for poorer countries to gain access to trade goods in the European market at a competitive price. Essentially then, European integration would be viewed as a process that aims to sustain this unequal advantage.

So there you go, IPE summed up in under 2,000 words.

Posted via web from Ari Magnusson

For the next few months or so there won’t be too many updates on my blog here as I’m currently working at a think tank called Counterpoint. They are the cultural relations think tank of the British Council and I am working on one of their blogs called ‘Social planet’. It covers similar topics as my blog, however focusses more on issues of culture and globalisation and primarily how it affects the way we live in the modern world.

I have been doing interviews with leading figures such as David Held and Mary Kaldor, which has been fascinating. Especially since these are the people that wrote many of the books I have been using throughout the past 5 years.

The EU is a unique actor within international trade because of its institutional composition being a union made up of member states rather than a single state. It has been argued that this unique set-up is a source of power for the EU, as it comprises the largest single market in the world. Trade policy-making power is entrusted from the 27 member states to the supranational level through the Commission, which speaks with a single voice and acts on behalf of the whole union during trade negotiations. Above all the EU is an economic power and trade provides the foundation for its actorness. The Common Commercial Policy governs EU trade policy and is the best known example of supranational competence.

The single negotiating position that the EU speaks with is a result of internal bargaining between member states so therefore reflects several factors including: ideology, constituency interests and lobbying by industry. However the Commission is unique within international trade negotiations in that it enjoys relative supranational autonomy, and that it can shape the agenda in an opposite direction to that preferred by certain member states.

According to the Principal Agent Theory, the principal (EU member states) will designate regulatory power to the agent to carry out a set of tasks on its behalf. However due to limited resources, the principal is unable to monitor and approve every decision so therefore authorises a degree of autonomy for the agent to engage in activities with its own judgement (agency slack). However they must continue to monitor them to ensure that they act in accordance with their own preferences. In the case of the EU, this is a function performed by the Article 133 committee. The PA theory is therefore useful in conceptualising and understanding the unique relationship between the Commission and member states.

It has been argued that the unique composition of the EU’s trade policy stems from its own experiences as a market integration and single market project. More specifically these were common rules of regulation. In this respect the EU like all other market institutions is socially embedded with a range of norms and values stemming from its cultural environment, which it projects externally, in this case within the context of international trade. Realists however, would assert that the trade policy interests of the EU are fundamentally driven by the most powerful member states (Germany, France and the United Kingdom), which dictate the agenda for the whole union according to their own preferences.

The nature of EU trading relations can be divided into three categories. At the bilateral level the EU exercises its power and market access to negotiate deals of reduction of tariffs, quotas and technical barriers to trade. At the regional level it conducts trade through bloc-to-bloc deals with unions such as Mercosur or ASEAN. Finally at the multilateral level it conducts its trading relations through the WTO.

The EU is able to exercise its normative power through bi and pluri-lateral agreements (such as Euro-Med) to encourage human rights and democratisation. Former Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy outlined three normative objectives that the EU had pushed for in the past in regards to its regional trade agreements. Firstly he states that trade is an effective tool for the EU to forge closer relationships with neighbouring countries and regions such as the Euro – Med agreement. Secondly he argues that trade has been an essential instrument to instigate political reform such as the free trade agreements signed with countries in Eastern Europe after the collapse of communism which paved the way for eventual membership. Finally he sees EU trade policy as a catalyst for international development. This approach indicates that the EU uses trade as a tool to project its norms and values.

These values have been channelled into the notion of ‘Managed Globalisation’ as a doctrine for EU trade policy. This conceptualisation was forged through a compromise of deeply held ideological beliefs regarding the moral duties of the EU and a rational understanding of that fact that the long-term viability of the EU depended on a strong internal economy while being a global leader in global economic affairs. Promoting multilateral trading is at the heart of ‘Managed Globalisation’ therefore increasing the number of participant countries within the WTO system remains part of this policy to extend the common rules of trading to as many states as possible.

The EU has tried to pursue its external regulatory goals within the WTO framework. With increasing economic interdependence in the global system, this has created incentives to protect domestic interests internationally by attaching regulatory provisions within trade agreements to include: investment, health, intellectual property rights, the environment, competition policy and social policy such as labour standards. In 1998 Sir Leon Brittan launched the ‘Millennium Round’, which aside from traditional trade issues also included the above-mentioned regulatory provisions. This deep trade agenda was pushed through the framework of the GATT and WTO but could have easily been initiated through other international organisations, which specialised in greater detail over the issues of trade-related issues. However there are sound arguments for why the WTO has been used to pursue this regulatory agenda. Firstly, implementing international regulatory agreements normally incurs a sizeable transaction cost because it requires enforcement. Secondly regulatory agreements cause unbalanced implementation costs as some states may have to significantly alter existing domestic regulation. Therefore by linking regulatory provisions to trade liberalisation commitments they become more legitimate and are not as difficult to enforce, as they would be in isolation. However some of these regulatory provisions have been particularly controversial, notably TRIPS (Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights) as this meant many developing countries have been priced out of being able to afford essential medication such as anti-retroviral drugs to treat HIV/AIDS. This has led to accusations of double standards and hypocrisy.

Young has argued that the contradictions within EU trade policy are due to a separation between its internal policy making and external obligations. So although the effect of the single market on world trade has generally been liberalising, there are noticeable exceptions to this. An example this would be the EU ban on imports of hormone-treated beef. The ban imposed by the Commission was a result of considerable internal dispute between member states with some happy to allow imports (UK, Ireland, Denmark) while other were concerned about their safety for consumption (Italy, Luxembourg, France and Germany). The directive to ban imports of the beef was therefore passed through Qualified Majority Voting.

It has also been argued that EU trade policy is sometimes shaped by mercantilist tendencies associated with relative wealth gains in opposition to potential rivals such as China or Russia. Advocates of this view maintain that states are concerned primarily with relative rather than absolute gains and use their power to attempt to implement policies that produce favourable outcomes to their national interest. Such a view sees the EU trade policy backed by realist international relations and IPE (International Political Economy) theory. This argument is supported by the notion that the EU uses its trade policy to position its economy so it can be better placed to compete with the US and emerging powers.

The EU has also displayed this export-orientated and private business input within its multilateral trade policy at the WTO, with its 1996 ‘Market Access Strategy’. This has seen the EU utilise the WTO legal mechanisms to advance European public and private interests. The CAP also remains a major impediment for many developing countries, which primarily depend on trading in agricultural goods. It is often the most cited protectionist measure in the EU. Many perceive this to tarnish the EU’s reputation as a protector of global free trade. Elgström has therefore argued that the EU is regarded with suspicion amongst officials in many developing countries and subsequently is perceived to be motivated primarily by self-interest.

The EU – Mexico Global Agreement, which was signed in 2000, is interesting as it displays both the normative and realist/mercantilist characteristics of EU trade policy. On the face of it, the deal had substantial economic benefits for both parties. So why did the EU risk the insistence on conditionality as a principle of the trade agreement? Szymanski and Smith argue that by including political conditionality in its economic agreements with third countries, and by being dedicated to supporting those countries in reaching these conditions, it creates a mutually reinforcing trading system that encourages coherence amongst its various external policy objectives.

Andreas Dur however, has argued that the EU – Mexico Global Agreement was actually driven by realist/mercantilist goals. This was primarily a deal to protect existing European exporters to Mexico from the potential damage of NAFTA. European subsidiary firms had significant manufacturing interests in Mexico, which led them to become politically active in lobbying their governments to push for a free trade deal. Dur suggests that exporters are more likely to mobilise in response to a threat resulting from an existing free-trade agreement rather than in response to an opportunity. This approach suggests that EU trade policy is also shaped by its societal-interests within member states, which are lobbied by industry and business sectors. This leads member states to pursue action through the EU.