WTO Director General

The upcoming transition of the WTO Director General has been getting a lot of press recently.  Pascal Lamy’s successor could potentially have a tough go of it --  taking over in the wake of a less-than-successful Doha Round.  See here and here.  The folks over at IELPB chime in here.

There are 9 candidates in the running, from Ghana, Costa Rica, New Zealand, Kenya, Jordan, Indonesia, the Republic of Korea, Brazil and Mexico.  Stuff on Mexico’s candidate (here), Indonesia’s candidate (here), Kenya’s candidate (here), and New Zealand’s candidate (here).

 

Why Political Scientists Should Take Political Science Seriously

Warning: This post is intentionally inflammatory, over the top, and abrasive. Also, some claims are over-stated. Nevertheless...

So I was just going on a rant to my wife the other day about how we IR folks frequently waste our time because we don't know what other (non-IR) political scientists are doing. For example, the big trend in studies of trade politics now is to find new and novel ways to figure out what peoples' trade preferences are. So scholars are spending tons of time (and sometimes money) running surveys and experiments to figure out whether attitudes towards trade reflect sociotropic interests or self-interests.

All fine and good, but ultimately it just doesn't matter. Why? Because no election in American history  has ever been a referendum on trade policy.* Hardly any elections are decided on foreign policy more generally. Study after study shows that voters don't care about foreign policy, don't know about it, and don't change their vote because of it unless something has gone horribly, horribly wrong. That is, if IPE knew any damn thing about what political scientists who study American politics know we'd leave trade preference formation to the psychologists (and preference aggregation to the Americanists). And if security scholars actually took domestic politics seriously they likely wouldn't've wasted thousands of pages on audience costs, or the "transparency" of democracies vs. non-democracies as causing them to be more peaceful overall (which they aren't).

Instead, we've got reams of literature showing contradictory results regarding the link between trade preferences and policy, and the existence/non-existence of audience costs and democratic propensity for conflict, and then we try to figure out how to rectify these divergent results. Well the answer is to ignore them completely -- at least in the case of the U.S. -- because the supposed mechanism doesn't exist. We would know this if we paid attention to political scientists working in other sub-fields.

This is prompted by this post from Nexon:

Among other things, Saunders argues that theories of “democratic international relations” — particularly those surrounding audience costs — need to incorporate a central insight from the last fifty years of American politics research: that most voters are “low information”* when it comes to most things political–and especially foreign policy.** Thus, elites who provide “cues” to the voting public in general, partisans, ethnic groups, etc. are often key intermediaries in the relationship between foreign-policy and electoral pressures. ...

Saunders spent a lot of time walking us through arguments about low-information voters, partisan cueing, and various aspects of contemporary theories of political behavior. During the Q&A period, I asked her, basically, “why are you spending all this time telling us things we already know when you could be using that to further elaborate the implications for international-relations theory?” She responded that, in essence, when she presents the paper, “about half the time” she gets “that reaction”; “the other half of the time people are surprised.”

My reaction to this was, more or less, how could anyone working in political science in 2013 not know this stuff? I don’t mean know it well – I certainly don’t know a lot of the relevant literature or the intricacies of key debates — but rather: know the basic contours at all. And after the last few Presidential campaigns? I suspect most readers of this post will have the same reaction.

My reaction is that social scientists don't take social science all that seriously, and they take the work of other social scientists even less seriously. When was the last time an IR scholar cited The Macro Polity to note that foreign policymakers are generally not constrained by domestic mass politics?

I can't believe I'm even typing this, but despite its many (theoretical, empirical, rhetorical, etc.) flaws a book like The Israel Lobby is at least on the correct track. Foreign policy can be influenced by strong domestic interest groups and is influenced by strong domestic interest groups, so when IR folks study domestic politics we should probably focus on which groups are doing the influencing, rather than inferring causal relationships from mythical qualities of regime type.

I'm sure there are times and places in which foreign policy is exceptionally salient for mass publics. I know, for example, that common people pay lots of attention to exchange rates in Japan. I'm sure that the typical Greek pays more attention to central bank activities than the modal American. But to acknowledge this is to reinforce my point: if we in IR are going to theorize about domestic politics, we cannot simply assume that all polities are the same in all times and places. And we especially cannot do that when comparativists (yes, Americanists are comparativists) are telling repeatedly that that is not the case.

*This is not to say that campaigns will never use trade policy to target particular groups like, say, sugar growers in Florida or steel manufacturers in Ohio. They will. Occasionally winning the support of these groups might even be critical for winning elections. Interest group politics is real, and IR folks should be concerned with the phenomenon. But knowing what the median voter thinks on "trade" as a general intellectual concept just isn't very helpful.

21st Century Plastic People of the Universe

From October but I've just seen it. Immediately banned in China, of course. Background here. More here. If you don't "get" the title of this post see here and here.

May the ironic mind always triumph over the literal, and may humor forever overcome the humorless. Live as if you were free.

Human Rights and MNCs

Recently, the risk analysis company, Maplecroft, published its 2013 Human Rights Risk Atlas, revealing a variety of human rights violations around the world. The findings demonstrate not only a rise in some of the most serious human rights violations, but also that more countries are joining the categories of “extreme” or “high risk” based on their human rights records. Maplecroft CEO, Alyson Warhurst, released the following statement regarding the findings, "Multinational corporations are particularly vulnerable to allegations of complicity in human rights abuses, due to their complex supply chains…Business investment is deeply rooted in emerging economies and many of these countries are affected by social tensions. A decline in the human rights risk landscape is not only an unacceptable situation; it is also a forecaster of political risk and business disruption." Implying that worse human rights practices lead to a decline in overall stability particularly conducive to product output. However, do MNCs truly care about human rights practices when determining whether or not to invest abroad? An empirical study on the determinants of FDI would suggest yes (Blanton and Blanton 2007). More importantly, how does foreign direct investment or MNC involvement affect human rights practices in the host countries? Other research by Layna Mosley (2011) focusing on the relationship between workers’ rights and MNCs suggests that certain types of MNCs positively affect labor rights. Multinational production that is subcontracted as opposed to directly owned can result in a race to the bottom in labor rights practices. The results from these studies demonstrate that MNCs and FDI can have a positive influence on human rights practices at both stages of the process—the beginning and end. However, these positive results are conditional on a number of factors. Thus, begs the question—when is it favorable to MNCs or FDI for human rights violations to become an important factor? Does a governments’ human rights record matter for FDI or MNC prior or post investing in a certain country? Is it always in the best interest of the corporation to “care” about the host governments’ human rights practices?

Austerity Politics: Materialism vs. Ideationalism in the Eurozone

In a series of videos, Mark Blyth discusses the intellectual history of austerity -- the basis for his forthcoming Oxford UP book. Annoyingly, the video is organized as a playlist, so the video switches every ten minutes or so rather than playing through. The talk is well worth an hour's watching nevertheless, and I look forward to reading the book when it comes out in April.

I don't want to take too much away from him, but I have a few problems with in Blyth's analysis of current events. When he talks about the eurozone crisis he diagnosis it correctly: in a currency union, if everyone devalues internally then recession will continue; in a currency union, devaluation externally is impossible; the only other option is default. Where Blyth goes wrong is when he says that austerity is a choice, even under these conditions. Here I disagree for reasons I outlined in a previous post (see also the follow-up: "There Will Be Austerity"). Any of default, internal devaluation, and external devaluation is a form of austerity. What form is chosen is a political question. Each of these imposes costs on a different groups of people, so the political battle is of a distributional nature. Blyth insists (sometimes) that this is not the case, that austerity is the result of a cognitive or ideological blunder, and expresses a preference for a policy which is not politically feasible, nor normatively desirable (at least for much of the eurozone): turn the ECB into a "bad bank", and load it up with all of the underperforming assets being carried by eurozone banks.* While this would be great for some eurozone countries, it would be horrible for others. Which is why I think this political question is ultimately of a distributional, rather than ideational, nature.

In a another, somewhat similar way I think Blyth contradicts himself about the causes of the eurozone mess. On the one hand, he maintains that the root cause is profligacy on the part of the eurozone banks: they loaded up on too much sovereign debt from the europeriphery, as evidenced by declining interest rate spreads among the eurozone members. On the other hand, Blyth argues that the sovereigns themselves were not profligate; with the exception of Greece, they were all fiscally sound before the crisis and bailouts. But both cannot be true. If the euro sovereigns did not issue massive quantities of bonds, then there would not be massive quantities of sovereign bonds for banks to buy, in which case the banks would not be in any trouble at all.

This is an important point for him, because he claims that the eurozone crisis (and the US crisis) is the "greatest bait-and-switch in human history". Specifically, he claims that private obligations -- incurred by banks -- became public obligations -- via bailouts -- and now governments are the ones being chastised for fiscal profligacy and the public is having to pay through austerity policies. While not entirely false, this account needs more than he gives it. The story he's telling goes like this: Sovereign debt becomes bank assets, which then become sovereign liabilities again once the sovereigns begin to have trouble servicing they debt, which pushes the banks into insolvency, thus necessitating a bail out. But if this is not the fault of sovereigns then there must be a missing step somewhere. Otherwise I'm not sure where the "bait-and-switch" comes in. I think he can fairly easily square this circle by reference to capital inflows from the eurocore to the europeriphery which fed real estate booms, as well as European appetite for U.S. asset-backed securities. But then he can't explain the convergence in European sovereign borrowing costs so simply.

In the Q&A someone asks Blyth how he defines "austerity". I perked up at this point, because I've written about the slipperiness of definitions of austerity before. His answer, I think, leaves something to be desired. Blyth answers that to him "austerity" is not a combination of any particular policies, but rather a belief in the supposed expansionary properties of fiscal consolidation. Krugman also talks about the problems with "expansionary austerity" a lot, but it seems to me that this contradicts Blyth's own narrative about the ideological history of austerity. As Blyth tells it, austerity has traditionally been viewed (by Schumpeter and others) as the "purge" which must follow the "binge". It is the necessary hangover after the party. Well, such analogies provide no indication that austerity will be expansionary; quite the opposite. It is called "austerity" after all, not "luxury".

At times, Blyth conflates the "expansionary austerity" argument with the "Treasury View" (and earlier versions such as Ricardian equivalence). This is incorrect. The Treasury View -- which largely prompted Keynes' General Theory, as a retort -- is that government spending would "crowd out" spending in the private sector, so the effect of public spending would be neutral (or negligible), not expansionary.

Later, Blyth tries to make the case that shift from Schumpeterian "hangover" austerity to "expansionary" austerity occurred in the Bocconi school of economics in Milan, and was given full voice by Alberto Alesina.** So far as I can tell, this entire school of thought consists of a mere handful of academic papers authored by an even smaller number of economists (see lit review in this paper), the most significant of which (Alesina's) was published in 2010, well after austerity politics had begun in Europe and the U.S. Does Blyth seriously think that the German Finance Ministry, or U.S. Federal Reserve Board of Governors, are primarily influenced by these somewhat-marginal Italian economists rather than more traditional, distributional, political economy concerns? If so, he needs to do more to make case. Perhaps it's in the book, but as I've written before claims of expansionary austerity are mostly attacking a straw man.

These qualms aside, as intellectual history Blyth's talk is excellent and I expect his book will be outstanding as well. I've been waiting for it for what seems like years now, and I'll be happy to get my hands on a copy.

*Note that I think this is possible, and perhaps normatively desirable, but only if the legal standing and conceptual nature of the ECB changes in fundamental ways. As many have noted, this would transform the ECB into a quasi-dictatorial body with nearly no democratic oversight. Perhaps this is itself desirable to some, but there are major downsides to such a policy choice even assuming that the ECB chooses to behave as Blyth seems to think it will. As such, I see no clear sign that it will happen the way Blyth wants it to happen in the near term. Also note that Blyth says that the U.S.'s TARP was an analogous policy. It wasn't. TARP was administered by the Treasury, not the central bank, and was therefore the sort of private-obligation-into-public-obligation program that Blyth decries as a "bait and switch". The TALF program, which was administered by the Fed, supported new issuance of asset-backed securities (with the securities as collateral) as a means of unfreezing credit markets during the winter of 2008-9. The Fed bought some "toxic assets" as part of PPIP, but these later turned into billions in profit. The Fed is not now, nor has it ever been, a "bad bank".

**Alesina did do his undergraduate degree in economics at Bocconi, but he did his PhD at Harvard and has been on Harvard's faculty for almost his entire career. At one point he was the department chair. I.e., Alesina's saltwater credentials are intact. For the record, here are Alesina's current views on the effects of austerity on growth. The short answer? It depends. The longer answer? Austerity via tax increases harms economic growth, while austerity via spending cuts has a neutral effect. Nowhere does he say that austerity of any sort will be expansionary. So it is probably better to put Alesina in the "Treasury View" camp, at least as it relates to spending cuts, rather than the "expansionary austerity" camp. In which case, Blyth may need a better definition.

Aaron Swartz, RIP

I never met him, but for some reason this one stings a bit more than most. Maybe more from me later. Likely not.

Anti-GMO Activist "Apologizes"

A few days ago, Mark Lynas, a British environmentalist who led the charge against the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in agriculture, announced that he has reevaluated his position.  As a major crusader against genetically modified farming, he previously wrote a piece titled “The world trade organisation and GMOs,” where he warned that “the WTO will increasingly remove people's right to choose healthy food and a safe environment for themselves and their children” (here, gated).  Coming from such an outspoken critic, his reconsideration of these earlier views seems like it might carry some weight.  I imagine that is why his announcement -- and apology(!) -- made such a splash (see here, and here).

To readers of this blog, the GMO debate might recall the “US-EU Beef Hormones” dispute (one of the longer running trade conflicts).  There, EU countries prohibited the import of certain meat products from the US, because the products contained genetically modified hormones.  The US challenged the ban, asserting that it violated the EU’s WTO commitments. The EU argued, in response, that it should be permitted to invoke an exception to its WTO obligations:  GMOs are harmful, and thus a ban of their importation is justified.  The case was tried before a WTO panel and then went to the Appellate Body.  In short, the WTO determined that there was a lack of scientific evidence supporting the EU’s position on GMOs, and the EU ban was deemed illegal.  Choosing not to implement the WTO ruling, the EU faced authorized retaliation from the US.  This retaliation took the form of tariffs on certain EU products, to the tune of an annual trade value of $116.8 million.  (See here for a summary of the case.)

Anyway, back to Lynas.  I wonder what his decision/announcement really means for policy on  GMOs.  In his remarks, Lynas characterized the GMO debate as “over.”  On the one hand, maybe his announcement suggests a sea change in scientific/public opinion on GMOs? (...I know nothing about the science of GMOs, or any relevant survey work done on this).  On the other hand, though, a few areas of the US have recently considered legislation relating to mandatory GMO labeling.  A GMO-related bill was introduced yesterday in New Mexico, and last week in Washington (here).  In California, a couple months ago, voters considered a ballot initiative that would have required the labeling of food with genetically modified ingredients.  The CA measure was rejected, though the vote was pretty close (here).   Maybe efforts such as these have been ongoing and just flew under my radar.  In any case, it’ll be interesting to see how these bills play out, and whether Lynas's high-profile announcement has any impact on their fate.

(h/t Kyle Goehner)

 

 

 

James Buchanan, RIP

I met him only once, briefly, and it was this past summer. He was clearly diminished, but still remarkably sharp for a man in his 90s.

Buchanan's influence will be felt by those who study constitutional economics, law and economics, and theories of logrolling. My sense is that outside of those areas his (direct) influence has slipped in recent decades, although that impression may be incorrect. In any case, he helped resurrect political economy as a field of study distinct from welfare economics. I do a very different sort of political economy from him, and yet I am in his debt. Early neoliberal institutionalists in IPE built some of their work off of his foundation, see e.g. this 1982 article by Keohane which laid the groundwork for After Hegemony, and which cites Buchanan alongside Coase.

Here is his Wikipedia page. Here is his Google Scholar page. Here is his 1986 Nobel Memorial Prize lecture, which concludes with the question which motivated Buchanan's entire career:

How can we live together in peace, prosperity, and harmony, while retaining our liberties as autonomous individuals who can, and must, create our own values?

Peer Review

Peter Henne posted a series of questions about peer review. Dan Nexon noted that while the post had generated lots of traffic, no one had offered answers to Peter's questions. Here are mine.

1. Is there an objective standard for “so what?” No, there is not. Yet, this doesn't make it fully subjective. Any good paper will explain why what it reports matters, and few papers under-sell their findings. A reviewer's job is to evaluate the degree to which those assertions are warranted. A good rule of thumb here might be, if you are struggling to decide whether a paper you are reviewing is important, it isn't.

2. When is a methodological flaw a disqualifier? Always. Whether such flaws warrant a reject or an R&R depends upon the severity of the flaw and the potential significance of the results once the flaw is corrected. 

3. Should I take into account the prestige of the journal? Yes. But this consideration matters only in regard to the "so what" question. Thus, disallow flawed research everywhere. Competent work (even cutting edge methods) that makes smaller contributions belongs in less prestigious outlets. Thus, many reviews I write begin with, "this is an excellent piece of research, but it is not important enough to be published in (APSR/IO/AJPS)."

4. Is it fair to impose my sub-field's standards on interdisciplinary journals? Yes, interdisciplinary does not mean absence of discipline. If you do not impose the standards that you know (those in your discipline), what standards will you apply?

5. Should theory-free inductive studies be published in scholarly journals? Isn't this a variant of the so what question?

6. Can I tell them to cite me? Sometimes. See below.

7. How extensive should the literature review be? As extensive as it needs to be, and not a bit more so. The purpose of the lit review is to answer the "so what" question. Presumably, the research a paper reports offers a novel contribution to some research program. To do so the lit review must accurately characterize the current state of knowledge. If important contributions are omitted, the author must be encouraged to incorporate them. If your work is an important and omitted contribution, then yes, you can tell them to cite you. If your work isn't an important contribution, then find some other way to get people to read your work.

More broadly, Peter asks, "what constitutes a publishable paper, what necessitates revise and resubmit, and when is a rejection fair?" There are no rules, but here are my general guidelines. Well-written papers that report well-designed and well-executed research that speaks to some problem of public or scholarly concern deserve to be published (but not necessarily in the APSR). Rejection is fair when a paper is profoundly flawed or is trying to punch above its weight. Everything else warrants a revise and resubmit on the first iteration. Be unforgiving on the second iteration.

No Social Science Among Social Scientists

Matt Yglesias, one of the most econ literate journalists going, is at the annual flagship conference for economists and notes something odd:

I'm in San Diego for the American Economics Association's annual meeting, and so naturally I wanted to grab a cup of coffee in the hotel lobby before the 8AM sessions started. Imagine my surprise to find that as of 7:45 AM the lines were punishingly long and there was no way I'd be able to get to the session on high-skill immigration if I waited around.  

Sad. And a result of a shocking lack of economics. Clearly the price charged should have been much, much higher. You only have the logistical capacity to serve so many people between 7:30 and 8:00 AM, so you ought to serve the people with the most willingness to pay. Let folks who don't care about being on time to an 8AM session just wait around and buy their coffee later after prices fall. Let those who place a strong premium on both coffee and punctuality pay through the nose. It seems so simple and yet even at a conference of economics nobody wants to apply economic ideas.

I find the same thing is true in political science. For example, when Jeff Flake launched a campaign to cut federal funding of political science research what did political scientists do? Did we utilize our theories of politics to form an effective lobbying organization? Did we use our professional organization to overcome the collective action problem and secure our rents? No. APSA released an outraged statement on its website and encouraged members to... write their Congressperson. How imaginative, how theory-driven, how efficacious. The Monkey Cage reviewed a bunch of studies which had received NSF funding. That's about the sum total of the response from political scientists, excepting snarky posts on Facebook and Twitter.

Similarly, it is a cliche that political science faculty departments are often governed, shall we say, sub-optimally. While I'm not yet a faculty member, and thus don't yet have much experience in this area, I hear stories all the time (not just from my department) about how weird and screwed up things frequently get in faculty meetings. Why not use our theories to improve this in Pareto-improving ways? We supposedly know how to do that. While we're at it, why don't political scientists control governance at the university level? Don't we know how insurgencies succeed?

And why do most of us vote, contribute to campaigns, and even volunteer to work for particular candidates? Leaving aside whether voting is "rational" for instrumental reasons, most of our theories suggest that actual policy differences between candidates will be minimal and that most of politics occurs in a bureaucratic setting anyway. Why not direct our efforts towards influencing that process instead? For that matter, why are the successful politicians a bunch of lawyers rather than political scientists?

I could go on but you get the point: all too often social scientists tend to not take their theories seriously enough to actually make use of them in the real world. That says something. Not sure what, but something.