Today's good news: conservative San Diego mayor Jerry Sanders gives a speech explaining why he changed his mind and supported a city council action in support of gay marriage.

Guest lecturer: Dean Kishore Mahbubani on Globalization.

Disclosure: Because this was an in-class lecture, I contacted the dean's office to confirm whether or not this was on the record. They asked that I refrain from publishing several details, and I have complied. These are my notes during his lecture; the dean speaks very well and any poor wording or English is from my note-taking. "I" = dean unless parenthetical comment or otherwise noted.

• I'm going to emphasize one dimension: power. Four examples from UN Security Council, the most powerful international organ in the world; only organ with power to legitimize force. Decisions are binding on UN members. (Dean Mahbubani was twice president of UN security council)
• I assumed law, justice, etc would be key. But principles are second; considerations of raw power are first
• Brazil: reasonably powerful in international relations. In Jan 1999 or 2000 they were President of security Council. Celso Amorim was the ambassador - now foreign minister of Brazil. He found that Iraq issue was not going anywhere; sanctions causing suffering. He came up with the idea of three panels to move things forward, had public support of Security Council. Two weeks later he was transferred to Geneva in an obvious demotion. People think all the bullying started with Bush. But Clinton was the president at that time.
• Second story: Ireland. Richard Ryan would get instructions from Dublin. But he would speak right after French president. After France spoke, he said "Like France," and then proceeded to give his planned speech. The American in the room called the desk, said "Ireland said, 'like France'", the desk called Ireland. Ten minutes after his speech, Ireland called him to ask why he said "like France" and reprimand him for departing from his script.
• Third Story: International Criminal Court. The ICC has universal application even though the US has not signed it. US was afraid US soldiers could be subject to persecution and wanted immunity. US went to the Security Council with a resolution to immunize US soldiers on peacekeeping. Every ambassador in the room agreed this was completely wrong, on the basis of the UN charter. The most eloquent speech against this was by the British representative. All the speeches were against. Then came the voting. The UK voted to support the US resolution. The ambassador then gave an equally powerful speech on why it was right to support the resolution. (See this for more info). Mexican foreign minister refused to take the phone call from Mexico city ordering him to vote for the US and voted against; later he lost his job.
• Fourth Story: Rwanda. I always thought it happened because the UN Security Council was sleeping on the job. But it was not an act of omission, it was an act of commission. The delegates knew it was happening, from cables and such. You can google the report by stephen lewis about this.
• Nonetheless, given how much power the US has, it's amazing how infrequently the US abuses it. America is fundamentally a law-abiding society and leads the world towards law-abiding. Example: even though GATT and WTO don't have power to enforce compliance, I'm told that so far the US has complied with every WTO judgment, even the negative ones. (Joel note: well, on the steel thing, they put it in place knowing it was illegal and kept it place for about two years while the appeals were in progress, long enough to get the political payoff)
• US Navy example about a boat in high seas years ago suspected of carrying North Korean goods but cabled State department and were not allowed to intercept it
• Post-9/11, the rules have changed. People don't realize or know by how much. Nowadays a Navy ship wouldn't hesitate to stop a ship on the high seas.
• I was talking to Gunter Pleuger (who led the fight against the US Iraq initiative in the Security Council in 2003). He said the US "PSI" policy is just pure piracy. Now more and more countries join it, including now Germany. It will thus become a universal norm and redefine piracy. (Note that one of the questions in the PSI FAQ is, "Isn't the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) little better than state piracy?" and the answer, "not at all.")
• Q: do you think rule-based behavior is starting to change realist views? A: Broad trend was basically positive; it took one step backwards immediately after 9/11, and another when the US went to war in Iraq illegally. but the overall trend remains positive. Most countries want to join international law regimes because it benefits their interests. China in particular want to promote the rules. The number of "rogue" states is getting less and less. Example: many territorial disputes around Singapore now go through ICJ.
• Q: in terms of the US, it has that reservoir of power. But the ability to use raw power is circumscribed. Would you agree that the restraints on raw power are great these days? A: the restraints have been growing stronger and stronger. But the US can violate it any time if it wants to. You should all worry about a United States attack on Iran in the next few months, without sanction - I don't think China or Russia will sanction it. If that happens then I think all hell will break lose. It will be a huge disaster.
• Q: US and allies didn't get approval for Iraq, but they didn't for Kosovo either. Or Darfur. But nobody talks about Kosovo intervention being illegal. so it popularity important? A: it's important to draw a distinction between legal and legitimate. The Kosovo intervention was illegal but legitimate. Russia failed to pass a rule banning intervention, and that served to legitimate it. A Canadian diplomat told me the Canadian government analyzed and said intervention was illegal but legitimate. An action that most states support will be legitimate, but something only a few European countries support would not be.
• Q: Do you have examples of non-state actors taking real power? A: When I was on security council, I chose to brief big NGOs/corps, to see if they could be used as an informal lobby to influence the security council. In theory they are supposed to have grown in power, but their impact on the UN security council was virtually zero. UNSec is hard, real power, and no NGO could shift that. Q: what about corporations? A: I saw in the security council zero evidence that corporations are growing in international power. If they can avoid getting involved in political issues, they avoid it. My friend Tom Pickering told me about how the Chinese would come and lobby Boeing to speak up on their behalf, and Boeing said it wouldn't get involved. From time to time they get swept up; they wanted to join Kofi Annan's Global Compact because it would give them legitimacy. John Ruggie involved. But the compact is very controversial.
• Q: your examples are about power in security issues. How are NGOs activities affecting exercise of sovereign power in nation states? A: NGOs have in many ways seized control of power in these (environmental) issues, perhaps this is an exception. Popular sentiment, Al Gore's movie, have moved the center. A sense of global alarm. Friend building a hotel in Maldives that is sinking below the rising water. In that way NGOs are an exception
• Q: I read your book "Beyond the age of innocence" about US power benefiting and harming the world. (missed the rest of the question) A: I learned how divided the world is on American power. FT review was half-page, "don't bother to read it, it's another anti-American book." Two weeks later in Turkey I asked my publisher when is it coming out, she said, "we have a problem, you know the mood in Turkey is so anti-American, your book is so pro-American we cannot publish it." ... I say globalization is good because it's reduced by so much the number of impoverished people in Asia. ... this is the first generation in American history that's not experiencing progress. Poor countries support globalization but rich countries are afraid.
• Q: What do you think will happen about Security Council reform? A: UN has set up "open-ended working group" on security council reform. Some say it should be renamed "never-ending working group". Two theses: one is that it's clear it has to change. Permanent members, by the way, essentially run the council. A Chilean member told me, in reality, there are five members and ten observers. That's absolutely true. But these five represent the great powers of the past, the victors of WWII. But it's not clear who will take their place. But 2045 I'm certain the G5 will have changed. The change will happen but there will be tremendous resistance. Britain and France will never give it up willingly. Japan want to join but China's blocking, Argentina's blocking Brazil, Nigeria's blocking South Africa, Pakistan's blocking India. That's why there's gridlock. But the longer this goes on, the less legitimate the Security Council will have.
• Q: During the Qatar ambassador's talk there was mention of a growing anti-Americanism. How would you explain this? A: the subject is a huge, major issue. Many Americans would like to believe it's a passing shower because of Bush. But I don't buy that theory. Bin Laden was planning and acting in the 1990s. It has to do with the global perception on how American power is used. Cotton subsidies protect thousands of American farmers but hurt millions of Africans. Rwanda genocide was a decision made in Washington. The world is shrinking every day but the impact of American power is staying the same, so it gets bigger every day. As Americans remain ignorant of the negative impact anti-Americanism will get worse.

Class discussion

• Prof was hanging his head: thesis of the class is increasing power of non-state actors and transition towards global governance, but Dean's lecture was about pure power from states. Context of the dean's talk: he worked in the Security Council, which is state-based. If non-state actors have influence (which assumption the class is predicated on), it's not direct in the security council.
• If there is a fusion of governance, it will conflict with sovereignty and territoriality. Fusion is thus not possible for globalization. Definitions, phases, different spheres. Diffusion of popular culture. soft power. That is now a two-way process.
• Convergence, or lack thereof. Anecdotes. Education system different everywhere. But Sciences Po now offers MPA in English in Paris. Italy's education is not globalized. Will they join international standards within 10-12 years? Business schools must have one of two standards. EQUIS.
• Convergence of language. Philippines example: one Senator issued a warning last week about languages going extinct
• When you come together and meet, you realize there are a lot of cultural differences. We cannot rule out the fact that peoples' mindsets are still very different. National traditions, beliefs. Anecdote from business conference, Chinese delegate: "it's okay to sacrifice some human rights for progress." Indians flabbergasted.
• Convergence in some senses, but disparity between haves and have-nots seems to widen. But poverty is reducing tremendously almost everywhere, even if it's grossly inequal. But relative deprivation is important. In the US in the 1950s, debate about whether black and white TV counted as deprivation. Impact of images of wealth from other countries, e.g., TV. People with televisions and mobile phones living on piles of garbage in the slums.
• Lack of diversity in clothing; t-shirt and jeans. WTO rules to require foreign content e.g. on television. Arguably democracy was/is popular because of images from a rich democracy, US. (So if USSR had somehow become visibly wealthy, everybody would want to be communist?)
• Interest of states is diversified but interests of MNCs is focused.
• To what extent does it matter that you can point to an activity and figure out which country it happened in? Is cyber really changing things? (hm. still a sales tax exemption for internet commerce in the US.)
• Perhaps globalization gives states more power because they have far more instrumentalities.
• What about MNCs. Why aren't we mentioning them here? Aren't they the baddies of the whole thing? Example: P&G pushing to create diaper markets where custom is not to use diapers.
• Growth in MNCs (more than 2 borders) ~500 in 1945 to over 8000 now. Blurred because some companies are extensions of states (Airbus, Standard and Chartered). pension fund investors.
• Flow of FDI compared to flow of stock markets. FDI stays between US, Britain, France, Germany, a bit in Japan. Mostly excludes the rest of the world: only about 17% goes to emerging economies, with China talking half. No secondary markets, bond markets, in Asia. Only Singapore and Hong Kong have bond markets.
• Until a few weeks ago, Japan was putting $30 billion/week into US markets; China $50 billion/week.
• student feedback on ole: government should be studied as an activity, not a process. not enough tools, tools are still embedded in old thinking. global governance is not necessary zero-sum. States can use NGOs to influence actions and legitimize state actions. E.g. states using IMF as scapegoat for unpopular policies.

As a grad student on a grad student stipend, I've quickly learned to go to all functions offering free food. That LKYSPP is very good at offering vegetarian options is icing on the cake. This was a fairly small event with six tables of about ten, including four vegetarian settings (but only three vegetarians). Said hi to the Dean, who didn't seem to recognize me as the blogger (see forthcoming story about his lecture in class last week). Here are my notes from the dinner; if anything is incoherent that's my fault, not the speakers:

Dr Choong May Ling

2 threats. terrorists with no previous records. In singapore, JI (Jeremiah Islamiyah). Self-radicalized. Protection is highly vigilant community. Could tear up racial and social harmony.

Second threat is infectious diseases. h5n1. Spanish flu 1918. ministry of home affairs coordinates all security reactions. She used phrase "homeland security". Public-private partnerships part of reaction.

Ltc Dominic Ow from Ministry of Defense. ASEAN only started security coordination last year. Globalized security. Terrorism, disease, natural disaster.

Joseph Liaw. Professor. Asymmetric threats. may be home-grown. Terrorism captures dynamics of these threats. Looking for faint signals of new threats. Need to prioritize.

Alami Musa. Active in Muslim community. Three pronged defense. Hardening targets. Anticipating. Response. Fight vs terrorist war on us requires not just government but people. Building resilience in Muslim community. Not all muslims are terrorists but nearly all terrorists are Muslims. Disappointed by UK muslim leader response: they blamed everybody. Here, religious rehabilitation group formed after 31 JI terrorists were detained in 2002. Identified six steps in radicalization. Created deradicalization program. Shared the errors of JI thought process and abuse of islam with community. Inoculation so they will not be perverted.

Michael Richardson, former journalist. Long list of maritime terrorism successful and not. Clearly used by terrorists. Almost all sunni terrorists are Al Queda, but some terrorists are Shia Hezbollah. Not all states treat Hezbollah as terrorists. Very strong Singapore response. Both law enf. and military. Container inspection.

Q. ISA (Internal Security Act). Detention w/o trial. Used on muslims. Possible that Singapore won battle, lost war? A. Easy question. Served us very well vs communists, social harmony disruptors. Public trial too hard, but their rights still very well protected by a panel. Community outreach before news went public helped prevent negative reaction.

Q. ASEAN is underdeveloped institution? A. Some progress.

Q. about realism and liberalism. A. Are we still on that debate? Some realist theorists acknowledge problems with excluding non-state actors.

Q. Why do people get radicalized? A. They go to religion for answers for crises in their lives (my poor paraphrase here, sorry). "Born-again" Muslims becoming more common in the West

Q. Region prone to money laundering. Any law? A. Long answer amounting to yes. Also, defenses strong against cyber-attack.

Q. Approve of positive Islam message. Can that be mainstreamed to rest of South East Asia? A. Radicals use Muslim community as source of support and recruits. Singaporean Muslim Identity. There are political motivations for extreme religious factions. Mainstream Islam in Malaysia is progressive and moderate. Islam has never been monolithic. So, no.

Q. Ideology virus is dynamic. How to detect new strain? A. Yes it is. Don't know how to detect. A.. Going back to money-laundering and self-radicalization. Martyrdom is spreading. Peroxide bombs in London. Low budget. money laundering laws ineffective.

Q. Terrorism is rooted in Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Iraqi war. Any efforts to resolve that? A. Ending the Israeli-Arab conflict [notice wording change] would be one less reason but wouldn't make problem disappear. 9/11 was blow to jihadists because response took Afghanistan from them. But Iraq war gave second life to jihadist movement.

Q. How to stay vigilant? What cost? A. Can't do fortress singapore. threats and risks. American club very popular to stand and photo, gives us no end of trouble. taxi drivers report odd conversations, are getting training to identify race or nationality of suspect passengers.

Questions I didn't get the chance to ask:

who advocates for civil rights in Singapore in security planning?

Is everyone on the panel happy to continue cheer-leading as human rights and civil liberties are set aside

How many secret prisoners are there in Singapore? Does Singapore participate in extraordinary rendition, as an origination, transit point, or destination for prisoners? Does Singapore plan to use extraordinary rendition if necessary?

How many of the 31 JI prisoners are re-habbed or released? I actually did get to ask Alami Musa this after the dinner; he said three have been rehabilitated and released. The rest are still detained. No, they can't get a trial because how could you do a public trial? You might not be able to get all of the evidence (for example, the Malaysian who sold them the fertilizer for the bombs) and perhaps they might not be convicted. But their civil rights are not a concern as a panel oversees their treatment and he heads a group of 36 (I think) clerics who visit them as part of rehabilitation. The clerics had concerns at first but after meeting the prisoners the clerics agree they are dangerous. (Very much my paraphrase from memory; I could be misquoting some of this)

So there you have it. Singapore has its own Guantanamo somewhere, has indefinite detention of suspects without trial, and nobody (in the dinner group) seems to have a problem with this. It's not a big surprise but it is a disappointment. Permanent detention without trial is a violation of human rights. If you can't get enough evidence to convict somebody, then they are not legally guilty. If you think they are an extreme threat, monitor them once they are released. Surely there's probable cause to keep a list of everybody they meet with or talk to.

Very informative panel, good vegetarian dinner. Very glad I went.

Last required reading for week 5:

Martha Finnemore (2004), "International Organizations as Teachers of Norms: The United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization and Science Policy," in Timothy J. Sinclair (ed.), Global Governance: Critical Perspectives in Political Science. London & New York: Routledge, pp.302-335.

• p 565: "consumers of science (e.g. technology-intensive businesses)" Ouch. Any human being who is curious about the world they live in is potentially a consumer of science. The pictures and descriptions of rovers on Mars and my knowledge the science they are performing is part of my intellectual wealth.
• pp 565-6: Examines the history of sciency policy bureaucracies in the last fifty years. Finds no support for the hypothesis that such bureaucracies are demand-driven. Alternate explanation: UNESCO promoted a new norm to member states. This supports constructivist theories; demonstrates international agencies as principals rather than agents (a distinction that isn't immediately clear to me), and "raises questions about the nature and role of epistemic communities." I think she means that science bureaucrats may have promoted science bureaucracies because they are bureaucrats instead of because they are scientists. Very nice summary; now I can skim the next 31 pages extra-lightly.
• p 571: "The test reported here compiled and analyzed quantitative indicators of domestic conditions that might prompt creation of a science policy bureaucracy in a sample of forty-four countries..."
• I like this article. The writing is clear and the writer has specific information to convey.
• p rest of the article: pretty much follows the summary. Detailed description of how UNESCO got started in the science business and then went around to countries to help them or get them to set up national science councils whose key attributes were access to power and strict "policy only, no research" boundaries.

Class notes

• Bretton Woods System and American Hegemony
• pratical reality of fiat money comes from the Bretton Woods institution
• Yes, they literally handed gold back and forth to conduct international trade. Trade wars via competitive devaluations and tariffs. (Apparently competitive devaluation hasn't stopped yet) (n.b. some argue that oil replaced gold as the backing for American dollars).
• You may not be too surprised to see which US presidential candidate has been giving speeches on this topic.

  Our whole economic system depends on continuing the current monetary arrangement, which means recycling the dollar is crucial. Currently, we borrow over $700 billion every year from our gracious benefactors, who work hard and take our paper for their goods. Then we borrow all the money we need to secure the empire (DOD budget $450 billion) plus more. The military might we enjoy becomes the "backing" of our currency. There are no other countries that can challenge our military superiority, and therefore they have little choice but to accept the dollars we declare are today’s "gold." This is why countries that challenge the system-- like Iraq, Iran and Venezuela-- become targets of our plans for regime change.
  Ironically, dollar superiority depends on our strong military, and our strong military depends on the dollar. As long as foreign recipients take our dollars for real goods and are willing to finance our extravagant consumption and militarism, the status quo will continue regardless of how huge our foreign debt and current account deficit become.
  [...]
  The economic law that honest exchange demands only things of real value as currency cannot be repealed. The chaos that one day will ensue from our 35-year experiment with worldwide fiat money will require a return to money of real value. We will know that day is approaching when oil-producing countries demand gold, or its equivalent, for their oil rather than dollars or Euros. The sooner the better.

• Back to the lecture. US post-war reaction to pre-WWII institutons leads to Bretton Woods regime. This week's reading from Ruggie covers this in some detail, albeit in the context of his theory of "embedded liberalism".
• Here's a firefox plugin to change all dollar prices to barrels of oil equivalent at current prices. Warning: Can't guarantee its safety; I inspected the source code for grossly bad things but I wouldn't know how to spot any dirty tricks; nor did I do anything to confirm that the compiled XPI matches the source code I looked at.
• Basis of Bretton Woods: everybody links currency to dollar, which can be exchanged for gold. IMF to maintain this system; World Bank to rebuild Europe; ITO (GATT, WTO) to reduce tariffs. Tariffs have dropped from 30%+ globally to 4-6%.
• Many countries have abandoned any gold holdings in their central banks. Some haven't. KPMG will audit Fort Knox this year.
• Classmate objection: The IMF has caused more damage than good. Responses: it's invited; it doesn't invade. Local presidents often use the IMF as an excuse to push policy.
• The World Bank is criticized by everybody so they must be doing something right. For counterfactual example, see malaria.
• Class discussion
  • Do you agree that an institution is the norm or rule itself?
  • Ruggie. Schacht is just a footnote. "All Germans are footnotes. I say that as an Englishman."
  • transaction flow patterns after WWII. Intra-firm trade is a bigger portion of trade than world-trade. "narrowing of economic basis". re-reading the pages of Ruggie, I see a few different points mingled and I'm not sure I follow. I think he's saying that, in many cases, countries bulk up their local economies and then trade, and are a bunch of clones of each other, rather than each focussing on their competitive advantage (Ricardo's theory).
  • Finnemore. We all like her more. Statement that UNESCO is successful in part because it offers proven benefits. Maybe, but I don't think Finnemore actually makes that point in the article.
  • After a slow start, good student participation in the class discussion part of today's class

Today's Lunch Seminar: Geoffrey Yu, Intellectual Property: Friend or Foe of Development. 25 years at WIPO. (See 1, 2, 3, 4 for a taste of WIPO.) Liveblogging.

Today's opening joke/story. Woodcutter falls in the water and loses his ax. (Read it here) His version is Madonna, Jennifer Lopez, Shakira).

From the joke, we can see that the crux of the matter is, can a poor person afford intellectual property.

"Most of you would think, piracy, downloading, peer to peer. ... This is a tiny and not terribly important part of IP. Has to do with instant gratification by young people of things which entertain them and of which they obtain pleasure." But it's at the level of poor countries and knowledge that one should be thinking for today's talk.

IP is two branches, copyright and industrial property (patents, trademarks, designs, geographical indications, local knowledge, folklore). He didn't mention trade secrets. More details. These are governed by norms, in international treaties, and governments follow these treaties. (Reality check: vested interests lobby to increase the international treaty powers as an excuse to increase local treaties). Mentions TRIPS.

Originally the concept of protecting IP was directed at the individual men or women that created, composed lyrics, .... Today, one tends to forget about these individuals and one talks about business. When you hear about new drugs, you don't hear about the men and women, you hear about Pfizer, Merck, etc, because they own the rights. One of the debates today is how do we relate IP back to the men and women and not to big business, because big business has created an impression as something which is monopolizing and exploiting (is that a real initiative or is that a PR exercise?).

How to adjust the social contract? Never to lose sight that there is an element of public good. (Telling that you might even worry about lose sight of your entire legitimate purpose; I guess that's the risk when you are completely captured by your industry.)

Reaction to IP by those who oppose monopolies and equate IP with monopoly

What's an example of a social cost? Prices can be set out of the reach of the people who need things. Lots of information is available electronically but locked up through protection measures. But the information locked up is not all original; so some of what was in the public domain is locked up.

Poor countries are calling out for a bigger public domain and to get everything for free without paying at all. But they recognize they cannot get this without balance; the foreign supply of IP will dry up.

You hear a lot of about music piracy in China, but not about patents. If you watch a movie, that's it. You are sated, and watching the movie didn't add to the total wealth and productivity of the country. (Only if your satisfaction doesn't count as a form of wealth. And if human satisfaction isn't a kind of wealth, what's the point of wealth?) He then argues that developing countries will put more effort into enforcing (foreign?) patents to grow the economy than into cracking down on movie piracy. Example: China is inviting foreigners to come and do R&D with the assurance that their rights will be protected. Films and books very good for keeping the young people out of trouble and at home watching their screens.

It has been estimated by some studies that some 3 trillion dollars of the US economy can be traced back to IP and the protection of that IP. So you know why the Americans are so upset. They are the biggest creator and consumer of IP. (Here's an even bigger claim of 5 trillion. Setting aside the validity of the number (which anyway is a Wall Street Journal editorial), note the implication that removing IP protection will reduce this number to zero. Note further this rebuttal, claiming that fair uses are worth more than copyrighted use.

Back to the woodcutter but I missed the point of how the woodcutter relates.

When I came back to Singapore (from WIPO?) it took 12 or 13 years to get support for the idea that IP should be protected. So you can imagine Latin American, etc. They don't see themselves as IP producers. But now they begin to see they are potential producers. Drug research in India and China. Poorer countries realize they have traditions of dance and music etc which in fact the West has been copying free of charge

What on Earth were the reasons for setting protection of 110 years? Can that be justified under any circumstances? Lawyers are the most conservative and are loathe to change things, even though they can realize the intellectual push against this. (Very disingenuous: these extremely long terms are themselves quite new in the last few decades (look up the Sonny Bono act). And surely lawyers played roles in that.)

Q: What is your position on granting patents for traditional knowledge? What should the process be? A: patents must be for novelty. Example of inventing the bendy straw.

Q: I'm not sure about the balance. What is the role of WIPO (given TRIPS, WTO, etc)? How does it fit in? What positions does it take? A: WIPO administers some 25 international treaties. The search for a new balance takes place in WIPO. But governments do go forum-shopping.

Q: something about biomedical protection in Taiwan and then in Singapore, and also about medicine in poor countries, Tamiflu. A: NUS IP training is mostly done in the law school. Hire a good lawyer. On Tamiflu, compulsory licenses. This is allowed but the Americans don't like it.

Question I want to ask: To what extent do you agree with Lawrence Lessig's concerns about the current IP regime? (I would summarize his concerns as, the IP regulatory bodies have been wholly captured by the IP producers, and the balance between the public domain and private profit is shifted very far towards the private interests; this harms our society greatly.)

Q (comment): Patents can be reviewed and taken away. A: you're right. In the US you can go to the courts. In Singapore they have post-grant administrative challenges. (A bill to that effect is coming up in the US Senate.

Q: what are governments doing to help the small producers of IP? A: Give them knowledge and awareness. Example: the Thaksin—can I mention Thaksin here?—government developed a rural program to offer them (rural producers, handicrafts) organization and branding services, organizing fairs. China has hundreds of millions of rural farmers, some cabbages are particularly nice, leafy, delicious. Vice Minister of Trademark told me that he went out to the provices to spread the gospel of trademarks. They invest some money to wrap the product and give it a label.

I got to ask my question. A: personally? Well, I like the idea of having to pay a fee to renew a copyright, like you have to do with patents. But very few people have picked it up. Q: why? A: inertia. I'm in favor of more testing, discussion. Academics can do it. Nothing in the existing treaties would prevent you from the renewal program.

Q: I'm looking from the company point of view. Is there a divergence in how IP will benefit me, more in ? Didn't quite catch his dichotomy. A: The recording industry is famous for its sclerosis, unable to adapt to the changed imposed by technology. Example: the album, where you have to pay for the whole album to get one good song. They are trying to do new things now (like the ringle). Trade secrets. Companies sometimes have a mix of patents and trade secrets. For instance in the music indutry, you have the producers, they sue teenagers and so forth. recording companies slug it out with the technology companies, who want to sell hardware.

His prepared remarks were unimpressive, and included some deep conceptual issues, such as the repeated reference to media (music, books, movies) as something by and for "young"; which is tantamount to saying that culture isn't serious. But his responses to questions were much more enlightened/enlightening. Speaking to him briefly after the talk, he complained about the pressure American companies put on WIPO.

Class notes for Macro week 5

• Washington consensus (see my last week)
• Washington consensus vs East Asian Miracle, triggered by 1993 World Bank study. CW is that Asian miracle is attributable to a mix of free market and government intervention, which contradicts the Washington Consensus (here I use the term in the standard usage of ideologically pure free market, not in the original intent) prescriptions. I wonder which version of the Washington Consensus Friedman means with his Golden Straitjacket. I wonder if he knows.
• Class opinion: it all depends. There is no one pure formula to be followed. "What kind of macroeconomic theory do you expect illiterates with guns who took over the country to follow?" asks our Nigerian classmate. To which a European IM friend says, "'illiterates with guns' - so they have their Republicans too!"
• Time for presentations. Pariyaporn and I went first and did our 5 minutes on gross domestic savings and gross capital formation in Vietnam in 1986-2005. One nice thing about LKYSPP is that we were sitting in the lounge preparing and thought, who can we ask to help explain stuff, and then we realized we could go ask the former Finance Minister of Thailand, who was a visiting professor for the week and whose office was about 50 meters away. We ultimately got half an hour of his time, and he had some very useful things to say about our data, including his personal experience as the then-president of the first Thai bank to open an office in Vietnam. Short form of our presentation: doi moi policy starts opening Vietnam's economy in mid-1980s, collapse of USSR eviscerates Vietnamese investment rate but gov't compensates with growth in domestic savings after USSR collapses, investment rate mostly insulated from Asian crisis but foreign money dries up for years; overall reasonably steady growth in both investment and savings over the whole period.
• Singapore. Highest savings rate in the world, due in part to very large mandatory retirement savings in Central Provident Fund (think Social Security on growth hormones). Huge investment, up to almost half of GDP, through 1985, then declining investment, as Singapore is completely industrialized, but savings keeps growing. Now you know where Temasek and GIC get all the money to play with.
• Ghana. "Mine is a sad story of investment and savings. I indulge you not to weep for my country. ... is highly affected by a series of military adventures." savings and investment very closely matched (no foreign investment) and plummeting through 1983 down to 3%. Economic recovery program in 1983, then investment goes on a serious if jagged trip upwards through the present, but savings doesn't keep up (hence foreign investment made up the gap).
• Pakistan. fairly stable investment, if low for an under-developed country at ~18%. Why? Fiscal year is July through June. savings was much lower until very recently.

Micro

• At equilibrium in a perfect market, firms make normal profits = covering cost of capital = matching but not exceeding opportunity costs = no economic profit.
• Time for the most important lecture in this class. Economic efficiency. What is it and why do markets seek it.
• • All users receive the same marginal benefit
  • All suppliers have the same marginal cost
  • Marginal cost = marginal benefit
• Hmm. Wonder exactly which economic efficiency this one is.
• This is not the same as technical efficiency. Prof's research topic: technical efficiency of government. Not an exciting topic. I guesstimate waste from government technical inefficiency at 3-4% of GDP worldwide.
• There are very few other systems that can even intellectually provide economic efficiency. But e.e. is not necessarily a happy condition; it's just efficient use of resources.
• What's the relationship between buyer/seller surplus and economic wealth created? I ask. Two separate issues, says prof. I'm not sure, because he's talking about wealth accumulation and I don't think that's what I meant by wealth creation. I'll follow up later.
• Earthquake in Indonesia, and a tsunami warning.
• Efficacy of markets. Comparing North and South Korea, East and West Germany, etc. Kerala, which has a communist government and first-world health and education statistics, but is materially poor "even by India's standards".
• Transfer pricing. Outsourcing. Public-private competition. Put them together and you get "best-sourcing", Singapore's policy.
• Again the paradox of wholesale price cuts not being passed on. Related: wholesale vs retail in a monopoly, oil and gasoline prices,
• Coupons as a means of price discrimination
• Taxes distort the perfect market and cause deadweight losses
• You are all (unless you go to the NGO sector) going to be big-shots in government. You have power to cause a lot of damage. In my class (microeconomics) I emphasize this.
• Price ceilings and price floors

Very nice to see this instead of the usual thanking of God for miracles:

Kevin Everett voluntarily moved his arms and legs on Tuesday when partially awakened, prompting a neurosurgeon to say the Buffalo Bills' tight end would walk again -- contrary to the grim prognosis given a day before.
[...]
"It's totally spectacular, totally unexpected," Green told The Associated Press by telephone from Miami.
[...]
"I don't know if I would call it a miracle. I would call it a spectacular example of what people can do," Green said. "To me, it's like putting the first man on the moon or splitting the atom. We've shown that if the right treatment is given to people who have a catastrophic injury that they could walk away from it."
Green said the key was the quick action taken by Cappuccino to run an ice-cold saline solution through Everett's system that put the player in a hypothermic state. Doctors at the Miami Project have demonstrated in their laboratories that such action significantly decreases the damage to the spinal cord due to swelling and movement.
"We've been doing a protocol on humans and having similar experiences for many months now," Green said. "But this is the first time I'm aware of that the doctor was with the patient when he was injured and the hypothermia was started within minutes of the injury. We know the earlier it's started, the better."

Lots of good guest speakers this week. Today: The Bukit Timah Dialogues... on Leadership by Mr Janadas Devan, Senior Writer, The Straits Times (Singapore)

The Sherlock Holmes tent joke.

Googling Devan reveals ... NRYB argument, column about how gays may not be evil for society, Pro-Iraq war column. (Straits Times doesn't publish free on the web so you have to infer what the articles said from these publicly readable forums.)

High-paying white collar jobs moving overshores, which explains the US jobless recovery.

He's still talking about globalization and the 16th century spice trade. Let's use the NUS E-library to read some of his columns. Devan wrote 20 July 2007, "the consequences of a defeat in Iraq are likely to be far worse than in Vietnam. ... The dominoes in the Middle East may not totter if the US were to withdraw precipitously from Iraq. Instead, they may fall ferociously on each other as they become embroiled in an Iraqi civil war, with Iran supporting its Shi'ite Iraqi compatriots and Saudi Arabia and Egypt their Sunni ones." He uses the phrase "bug out" in two different columns. About gays he wrote

What will those who hold that homosexuality is against the laws of God say when it is definitively established that homosexuality has a genetic basis? That God deliberately made a mistake with the DNA of gays - and wishes us to persecute them for his mistake?
And what will they say when they discover homophobia renders Singapore a less attractive place to the talented and creative, both local and foreign? There is a reason why some of the most creative cities in the world - San Francisco, Boston and London - are also among the most accepting of gays.
Clever people cannot abide intolerance.

(Joel's thoughts in response: Defending homosexuality because it may have a biological basis or for economic development reasons are both substandard arguments. Homosexuality should be defended as a human right.)

How New Amsterdam became New York in exchange for two islands in the Spice Islands.

Lou Dobbs and others say the US must protect itself from globalization. Devan quotes Friedman, Binder, Robert Reich opposing simple anti-globalization. Even Brazil and China lost millions of manufacturing jobs, due to productivity increases. More points on changing types of jobs: Reich's "symbolic analyst" jobs. (This corresponds to an article I started reading this morning: The Social Life of Information . Computerization has made many workers lives worse. Walmart "combin[es] an intensive use of information technology, a rapid growth of employee productivity, and a harsh, often punitive work regime that keeps even the most productive workers off balance and their wages at poverty levels.")

Corporate profits have increases in G10 while wages haven't. "Capital has increased at the expense of labor." More about increasing income inequality.

Keynes and Schumpeter. This talk seems like a "greatest hits" tour of globalization. Keynes' is "the dying voice of the bourgeoisie calling out in the wilderness for prophets it does not dare fight for and shifts its ego to the real problems it does not face."

Stability and routine. "Singapore has perfected this. Lee is an incredible routinizer. Routine also enables globalization."

I think he just came to a point but my attention had momentarily wandered. Something about value of novelties vs routines. I'm not sure what this quote means: "There is no tent. Somebody stole the tent. who? We, of course. We lost the tent the moment we industrialized."

Q: about government . A: the government has never told me not to take a line (e.g. a position) because the line's wrong, but they do criticize after publishing. "I've never been prevented ... maybe this is because I write foreign matters mostly."

Q: missed it. A: income inequality in Singapore. Unequal education. In the US I feel rich, because I don't know rich people, but in Singapore I know many rich people and I feel poor. In the US construction is a high-skill job; they come with all these tools. In Singapore, you know how they build walls? They tie up string. In Singapore we have cheap labor. Construction is the least efficient industry. (This seems to be veering into Friedman/Brooks territory of (bad) anecdotes = data). Women in Singapore can't work without maids to take care of things. In the US and Australia women can work without maids. (Okay, taking a step of my own into Brooks territory: some male classmates from other countries who have brought their families seem to be in the same position of needing maids for the family to function properly and the women to work. Maid, in this usage, is closer to the US "nanny".

Q: what's your life like in Austin? A: I'm there because my wife works in the university. I travel 1/3. Q: I was asking, what is your life philosophy as a writer? A: um.... good question. If I could do my life again, I would be an astronomer, because you can't possibly do any harm looking into the sky, or a doctor.

More discussion about wealth inequality and its effects. Possible explanation for subprime crisis: people trying to keep up with the Joneses.

(Joel: I think that I'm going into these lectures with the mindset that I get from reading several hundred pages of dense academic material every week. Impatient and critical.)

A question about the press. "It took a long time for the Singapore government to establish a Singapore media as such. ... media plays a role in many ways ... establishes a certain consensus of what are the main issues. ... Chinese press was dominant in the 1960s, main issues to them were Chinese language, Chinese culture, not necessarily development."

Singapore is a hard country to explain. If I were to tell you there is a great deal of debate, you wouldn't believe me. But there is one place, the civil service.

Adams Chapter 7

• Your business should return more profit than you would otherwise make investing your money in something else. Expressed on p 172 as "PDV > 0 Invest, PDV < 0 Don't Invest." Ignores risk, without which the whole exercise is fairly meaningless.
• p 174. The hurdle rate is incorrectly marked in figure 7.7; the text says "the hurdle rate has been drawn in at 10%" but it's actually drawn at 8%. The text for the different projects doesn't match the diagram. The diagonal line is simultaneously superfluous, confusing, and misleading: superfluous because it doesn't contain any real information, confusing because it intersects the upper right corner of each bar even though there is no reason for the bars to have any width, and misleading because it suggests a smooth, linear function relating a numerical quantity (IRR) on the Y axis to a non-numerical quantity (different projects) on the X axis.
• p 177. The labels on the charts are switched compared to the text. The one on the right should be "During boom period" and the left, "During recession".

Reading Notes for SMIG week 5

John Duffield (2007), "What are International Institutions?", International Studies Quarterly, 9(1), Spring, pp.1-23

• What's wrong with existing definitions? the term is used to refer to different things; scholarly works don't recognize the various forms ... (this paragraph isn't very clear, but seems to recapitulate the first complaint), and everybody talks past each other. Rationalist vs constructivist camps. "Institutionalist"—is anybody who talks about institutions assigned to the institutionalist camp? Is it not possible to write in a scholarly field about a phenomenon X without being assigned to camp "Xist"? This seems like a fancier version of, if you like X so much, why don't you marry it?
• Finally, the definition, and it's not a good one: "international institutions are defined here as relatively stable sets of related constitutive, regulative, and procedural norms and rules that pertain to the international system, the actors in the system (including states as well as nonstate entities), and their activities." That seems to define institutions as mental constructs ("norms", "rules") shared between people. But this is contrary to the normal definition of an institution, which includes people. For example, I would consider a school to be an institution. The mental constructs are a necessary part of it: if all the teachers and students and administators and staff quit each year and were replaced, then it wouldn't be much of an institution. Let's see if Duffield moves beyond this narrow definition.
• Formal Organizations. "Traditionally, scholars and others have frequently used the term 'international institution' to refer to formal international organizations, for example ... the International Monetary Fund ... such a restricted construction of the concept has become ... inappropriate." Are you saying that they aren't institutions or that they aren't the only kind of institutions?
• Practices. "... the assertion that war—'a state of open, armed, often prolonged conflict carried on between nations, states, or parties,' by one authoritative definition ... is a social institution"
• Rules. rationalist conception. "In rationalist analysis, agents are assumed to act rationally to maximize their utilities, subject to external constraints." "It leaves unclear the status of international organizations—some definitions include them (for example, Keohane 1989:3-4) whereas others do not (for example, Simmons and Martin 2002:194)—and international law."
• Norms. constructivist.
• "let us use the word 'norms,' as used by constructivists, to refer to the intersubjective elements and the word 'rules,' as used by rationalists, to refer to the formal elements. Admittedly, this linguistic choice is not unproblematic, and some readers may object to it." Yes, the whole article is like this. "to an important extent, institutions may exist in the minds of people and need not be written down anywhere. As such, they may be characterized as 'shared mental models'" yes. Second appearance of the word deontic, time to look it up. OED: Of or relating to duty, obligation, etc
• Apparently he's going to stick with his definition, but somehow read it such that the IMF, NATO, etc, still count as institutions.
• "How do we know whether such institutions actually exist? More specifically, how can we assess how widely shared a particular norm is or how strongly it is held? No scholarly consensus exists on the measurement of norms. Nevertheless, nonbehavioral evidence for the existence of norms can be culled from a number of sources, including surveys, experiments, interviews, and participant observation ... And in the study of international norms, in which it is often difficult to interact directly with the actors involved, one can and must examine what people say and write, using such methods as content, discourse, and historical analysis"
• "Intentionally omitted from this definition is any conception of institutions as practices or patterns of behavior. As noted above, some scholars have defined institutions in terms of practices, but this approach has found little favor within the field of international relations. Indeed, the need to distinguish institutional norms and rules from behavior is a leading area of agreement among rationalists and constructivists."
• "the functions that different institutional elements perform ... can be divided into three broad categories: the constitutive, the regulative, and the procedural."
• How Duffield's new definition is going to make everything better. Examples.
• There are plenty of interesting tidbits as he talks about various research papers, but he's just so brutally un-happy-making to read.

•     166 institutions
      159 international
       75 norms
       68 rules
       63 may
       55 definition
       45 example
       44 one
       42 they
       40 which
       40 institutional

John Gerard Ruggie (1982), "International Regimes, Transactions, and Change: Embedded Liberalism in the Postwar Economic Order," International Organization, 36(2), pp.379-415.

• p386. Are students of international regimes actually figuring out or finding anything? He thinks yes.
• Political authority is power plus legitimate social purpose. Realism ignores social purpose, and so cannot predict "contect", only "form".
• pp 385-386. According to Polyani, economics used to be wholly embedded in the social order. Separation of economics from social order is new in the last century or so. Some notes on the initial steps of free trade in various countries. All European. Well, this is a 1982 article.
• p 387. Social reaction against market rationality, starting in the late 19th century, dooms orthodox international liberalism. Balancing domestic concerns with globalization.
• p 388. Another mention (first was in previous article) of Schacht. Let's look this guy up. German financial expert and Minister 1935-37. Not a Nazi. Invented a legal fiction to help Germany re-arm without exceeding treaty limits on spending. Wikipedia has lots on his Naziness but not so much on his economic theories.
• p 389-90. Gold standard and international economics in the 20th century. It does seem like a bit of voodoo. Economics is made up of billions of individual transactions, and to come along and tally up the accounts for one nation-state vs another and see that some gold ought to be moved from here to there to balance things out strikes me as wishful thinking.
• p 392. Post-WWII liberalism is different. It's "embedded liberalism", which is "a form of multilateralism that is compatible with the requirements of domestic stability" (p399).
• pp 394-7. Establishment of Bretton Woods institutions. "Extraordinary power and perseverance of the United States" was necessary.
• p 403. "there has been no progress in liberalizing agricultural trade."
• p 404. "In sum, international economic regimes do not determine international economic transactions." For that, we have to look deeper.
• As he keeps detailing post-WWII global fiscal history, I am losing track of the points he's trying to make.

Liveblogging today's lunchtime seminar, Energy Policies and Technologies for a New Millennium: Perspectives on Asian Global Competitiveness. by Dr Robert K. Dixon, Head, Energy Technology Policy Division, International Energy Agency (IEA), Paris, France.

Long-time policy guy in the White House since Reagan, currently at the IEA.

Slides: the oil is in the middle east (and Canada and Venezuela and Russia), not in Asia. 25% of world oil demand is the US. Africa and India are half or less than half electrified.

Chart showing fossil energy as far and away the primary source of energy in the past and future. Shows nuclear power dropping substantially in projected future.

"If you believe the science of global climate change, which I do ..."

Pollution from fossil fuels, ... technology. General-purpose slides relating to energy and fuel, no details or specifics yet.

Nuclear: "As Greenpeace says, it's the only zero-emissions energy technology". That's an odd thing to say: solar, wind, and water are zero-emission, and Greenpeace is still completely opposed to any use of nuclear energy. And his own slide earlier showed nuclear almost disappearing in the next 20 years.

Do-nothing projection has 137% increase in CO2 emissions from 2003 to 2050. Scenarios with more optimism about technology development show increases of only 6 to 27%. Only the best-case scenario has even a 16% decrease in total emissions by 2050. In other words, only a radical and currently unpredicted change in how the world works (plague?) would result in the 50% decrease some leaders promise. Most possible emission reductions are in end-use efficiency and power generation. Lowering demand isn't on the map. If we didn't have the efficiency improvements that have been put in place since 1973, we would have 50% more emissions today, but the world has been "backsliding" in the last 15 years. I wonder if that's mostly China coming on-line? Or the whole world's fault?

slide: China's ambitious goals to reduce energy intensity (that's energy use per GDP). But as China further develops, the further GDP increase will (I assume) more than swamp that out.

Slide: breakdown of different projections. Other renewable (other than hydro) are only 2% in any scenario

Carbon capture. "I know there are some skeptics."

"Renewables will grow a lot but they're growing from a very small base. It remains to be seen if they will have an impact."

Doing a bit of Googling on "iea criticism" gets this. The suggestion is that IEA is pro-oil. Unsurprising, since "[t]he IEA is dedicated to preventing disruptions in the supply of oil, as well as acting as an information source on statistics about the international oil market and other energy sectors." Interesting question: "Has the IEA estimated what level of investment in other sources would be necessary to reduce fossil use to a minority of the total source?"

"We think it's possible to decarbonize the energy production sector. Decarbonizing transport will take longer." Note that that doesn't mean a move from fossil fuels; it just means carbon capture technology added to the current fossil mix.

Questions. I notice the talk has emphasized on the supply side, as I would expect IEA to ... I would like to ask whether reducing the demand ... despite the fact that our lightbulbs are energy efficient, you don't need the lightbulbs; we could raise the blinds! ... (very very long-winded non-question, much omitted) ... France having problems with its nuclear plants in the heat ... I would like to ask whether the third and fourth generation nuclear plants ... how safe are they going to be?

Ann Florini interrupted to call on three or four people to ask their questions in sequence and then have one big answer. Very clever—it keeps the questions much shorter and gets more of an exchange going.

Michael from LDCS. "I may add on to that question just now ... I also didn't get the differentation in your presentation ... in the US, it appears that decline in energy use goes along with decrease in economic growth ... is that happening?" (I may have gotten this question backwards).

Q: Did your comment on decarbonizing energy production mean we wouldn't use fossil fuels?

A: I am assuming energy efficiency on the demand side. Yes, third and fourth generation nuclear plants are better. Dessicants and chillers, some of my most favorite technologies. In some economies energy is linked to growth, in others it's not. ... What I tried to convey is that we'll still use fossil fuels to generate power but we'll capture the carbon.

Qs (I missed a few): I noticed that energy generation was a small contributer to particulate matter. What is the big contributor? Q: You said nuclear is an emissions-free source. But many parts of the cycle in nuclear are carbon-intense (mining, shipping, building the plant ...). So in what way can you possibly mean that nuclear is emissions-free?

A: technology and politics are equally important. I quoted Greenpeace on the zero emission quote; I love to talk about life-cycle issues. It was brought to my attention that the production of solar panels is a very dirty process. ... some platitudes about optimism.

Question I would like to ask: all of the economics of energy reflect a century of investment in fossil fuels, defended by vested interests. When you say that, for example, fuel cell energy costs $400/Kw and needs to cost $50/Kw to be competitive with gasoline, that reflects trillions (adjusted for inflation) of dollars of improvement in the internal combustion engine and very little relative investment in fuel cells. The world's energy policy is a market failure: vested interests control it to the detriment of the global human economy. What would it take to change that?

I bought a new backpack in Seattle, specifically for school, and I love it. It's actually made in Seattle; you can go to the showroom in South Downtown, and see the sewing machines. At the moment it holds:

• In the inner main compartment:
  • my laptop (in its Brain Cell)
  • two library books, by Immanual Wallerstein, whom I was hoping would have some interesting alternative ideas to IR Realism and Neoliberalism for the paper due in a week, and he does, and he's a very smooth writer, but about half of his writing triggers my BS meter, especially the Krondratieff cycle, which in his writing has so many exceptions and special cases that it reminds me of anthropogenic climate change deniers' charts in that it features facts being fixed around the policy
  • A plastic folder with my name placard, blank paper, relevant assignments for the day
• In the outer main compartment:
  • The totally awesome (if a bit too hot for this climate) Seattle Sombrero
  • A flimsy, cheap folding umbrella
  • The power cable for the laptop
• In the little top pocket:
  • A Jimi wallet with my EZ-link card, student card, and one or two bills. The plastic hinge has started to tear so I'm careful not to overfill it.
  • US Army handkerchief from the Fort Lewis PX. And, if I remember, a tissue package since hawker centers don't hand out free napkins
  • Keyring on the short lanyard, with mini Swiss army knife, house key, small nail clippers, and USB drive
  • Sunglasses
• In the left side pocket:
  • Palm Pilot Vx in blue hardshell(still ticking from 2001)
  • cell phone, turned off
  • Uni-ball Signo Gel Grip pens, 0.7 and 0.38mm
  • iPod Shuffle. I was happy with my original shuffle but it died a slow death so now I have a 2nd gen shuffle which I overpaid for at Mustafa Center before I realized that, despite the horribly overstuffed and crowded store, they aren't actually cheap.
  • headphones in case
• In the mesh pocket
  • Nalgene OTG water bottle.

On the one hand, you could say my efforts to get less materialistic have failed completely. On the other hand, you could say that if this backpack and its contents replace my old productivity pod, then I'm downsizing quite nicely.

Long history for Blankert; 22 years with the EU, before that Suriname and Tanzania. One-year "Visiting EU Fellow" at LKYSPP.

The EU has foreign policy? Several hundred EU staff work with China. There is a "delegation from the European Commission", which is an EU embassy. What is the EU's brand in China? Javier Solana, the Euro, and Schengen.

Does the EU's disengagement on Iraq prove that it can never agree or is this the exception that proves that the EU member states generally agree on foreign policy.

Merkel in China. (A fun, but subscription-required article about how Merkel stayed in a normal hotel room, got her own breakfast at the hotel buffet, and picked up and ate bread she had dropped on the floor.)

EU commission policy to propose a new IMF head.

Balance of member states favor independence for Kosovo, but there is still clear disagreement. EU member states act like "cabinet ministers" working to reach agreement on policy. Perry's question: people don't always agree. What is the EU mechanism to resolve these disagreements? A: Maybe not a mechanism, but an attitude to find compromise and stick with compromise. Therefore we are fans of having these endless debates. When agriculture debate had not concluded by midnight deadline, they stopped the clocks. On Taiwan, some member states said "we don't agree, but we don't want to break ranks with the EU position." Some upset with Poland for publicly disagreeing.

There is still an EU arms embargo towards China. Past presidents of Germany etc visited China in the 2000s and intended to lift the embargo but in fact didn't have the power to do so. No unanimous decision could be reached (and "big brother" applied pressure to keep the embargo) so the embargo is still in place. China's 2005 Anti-Succession law threatening Taiwan with war if they declared independence was a nice fig leaf for Europeans to maintain the embargo. (Joel: note that this law means that China would prefer that Taiwan continue to claim to be the legitimate ruler of all of China.).

What else do the EU bureaucrats do regarding China besides embargos? Nuts and bolts engagement: Clean coal, private cars, car emissions, etc. Chinese leadership is aware that pollution is so severe as to be a threat to their leadership. So this means the EU indirectly supports the Chinese leadership. But whatever you think about that, nobody wants instability in China. Huge EU trade deficit with China, but because of good EU macroeconomic policies, still only 0.5% trade deficit overall for EU. Currency revaluation. As with human rights, the EU raises the issue but doesn't let it interfere with the overall relationship.

The Lisbon agenda.

Chinese democracy. We shouldn't think that democracy (one manperson one vote) has always been there. Belgium only gave women voting rights in 1947. Wen Jiabao: "of course, one day China will be a democracy, but it may take a hundred years". So let's hold them to that deadline.

He's taking questions. I just realized I could have been liveblogging this. Better late than never. Email me now and I'll ask him your questions.

China was very upset about continuing arms embargo, but dropped the issue once it was clear it would not change. On human rights, it's the converse,with the EU pressing the issue, but China "very good at pretending to move, but they don't move at all." And each new EU president with 6-month rotating term falls for the show, but "my colleague says, they don't move an inch." After hearing a rosy speech, the colleague responded, "having seen it for 10 years, there has been no change." On trade, there's more movement.

Q: how accommodating is the EU on issues of trade and climate change? A: Trade is a special case because of laws required unanimity. (Seems like an excuse to me.) Q: Any special points towards China? A: I don't think so. Let's remember that the US is still our best friend. Q: In India we have many different Euro standards. How about in China? A: I'm not at all optimistic about Chinese emissions problems. And China is much less centralized than most people believe. "The mountain is high and the emperor is far away." All we can do is dialog—what good is dialog? But we can not tell them what to do.

("Mr Lee said Singapore would learn from other countries ... But all the major players like the United States, Europe, China and India need to be involved ... "If we shut down everything (in Singapore), resulting in zero emissions, the amount that we will save is equal to the increase in emissions in China as a result of economic growth over a period of three weeks. It's not something that we can do by ourselves," said Mr Lee.)

Recommended website

Another mention of China's "self-restraint" in giving ground on textiles. "The West was in principle in favor of free trade; we have some problems in agriculture, admitted, but we shouldn't let textiles [stay protected]."

Q: is there a difference between Taiwan and Chinese mainland? A: "There's a big difference. We adhere to the one-China policy; there's a slight difference between the American policy—well, it depends if it's the State Department or the Pentagon— and our policy. The one is 'we oppose Taiwanese independence', the other is 'we do not support Taiwanese independence.'

Q: there is no EU foreign policy because it's just the member states. If it doesn't affect a member state, it's not EU policy. ... A: The EU is the member states together, which have some institutions working for them, e.g., the European Commission, which is often seen as the EU, but the EU is the 27 member states. It's very hard to get consensus. For example, the position on Kosovo. Greece and other states have expressed themselves very clearly that they are against Kosovo independence. Take Taiwan and China. There we have made pretty strong statements. "After the succession law, we issued a strong statement. Chinese scholars told me, 'that's very strong language', they smiled and added, 'for the European Union!'".

What about China and Russia? Energy? We see China operating in Africa.... China was first extremely reluctant to talk to us about Africa. Another example of how much more sophisticated Chinese diplomacy has become: they now want to explain to us what they are doing in Africa. When there was international criticism about Sudan, they said, what are we doing wrong? Of course it could be sales policy, as all diplomacy is, but ....

Q: If China wants to speak to the US, it knows who to talk to. If China wants to talk to the EU, who does it talk to? Brussels or Berlin? A: long pause. "Uh, Brussels." Longer answer. Next year the French will hold the rotating presidency so maybe the Chinese will pick it up again. But I haven't heard anything from the new French government about the embargo.

I've been here a month and a half and have accumulated some general, if still quite naive, impressions about Singapore.

The infrastructure is excellent. People are generally nice; my Singaporean classmates are all awesome. Customer service (both private sector and public) is lousy; people tend to be superficially helpful but very prone to write you off as Somebody Else's Problem.

Even without huge parking lots as in the US, cars completely dominate the physical space. The difference between the US and Singapore is that, here in Singapore, cars dominate but other modes are still provided for. There are bus-only lanes; plenty of sidewalks, although not always and not always very good; long stretches of unbroken roadway at least have overpasses fairly regularly.

Singapore's government has tried plenty of measures, from enormous taxes to congestion charges to excellent public transportation, to limit car ownership, and has failed utterly. And car drivers are completely car-centric. If you have the right signal and stay in the crosswalk, you can walk across an intersection safely with your eyes closed. In any other circumstance, especially walking across the mouth of side streets while walking along a major road, you take your life into your own hands whenever you step down to the pavement.

The websites for public transit trip planning are awful. In Copenhagen, as well as in Seattle and Los Angeles, two cities not especially noted for their public transit, you can type in a starting address and a destination address and have a pretty good chance at getting detailed multi-modal instructions from point A to point B, including bus connections and rail if present, taking into account total transit time and even estimating how long the walking portions will take you. This is very much not the case in Singapore. This blog gives more detailed, but here are the highlights I've noticed:

• There are two bus companies, SBS (75% owned by ComfortDelGro, for which ownership is not easily available but which shared a director with Temasek) and SMRT (62% owned by Temasek), which also runs the subways. Each bus company's trip planner includes only its own buses.
• Both bus planners make you figure out which bus stop you want to start and end at, using, between the two of them, three different naming/numbering schemes.
• The UI for all of these systems violate common usability standards. Pressing enter at any time on the SBS site produces an error page.
• I haven't found a single map that shows all bus routes, so you can't just look at the map and work it out yourself.
• All in all, transitlink seems the best if you are going bus-only, and streetdirectory for bus and MRT (but excluding SMRT buses), but neither is adequate, both the SBS and SMRT planners are worse, and none compare to Seattle, LA, or Copenhagen's systems.

For months before coming to Singapore, I checked the weather forecast frequently, in yahoo and in the New York Times. It invariably forecast scattered thunderstorms and temperatures in the 80s Fahrenheit. At the moment it is sunny and mostly clear, and has not rained all day. The forecast on Yahoo is "Variably cloudy with scattered thunderstorms." Since I've been here I've experienced several separated weeks of nothing but rain; one week of nothing but sun; seemingly hot days, seemingly cool days, many hazy days, some very clear days, a few rollicking thunderstorms, and two or three massive downpours. Any time I checked Yahoo, it reported "scattered thunderstorms." Here's the current forecast; I'll check in with you Friday to tell you how it went:

Tonight: Variably cloudy with scattered thunderstorms. Low near 75F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 60%.
Tomorrow: Variable clouds with scattered thunderstorms. High 83F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 60%.
Tomorrow night: Scattered showers and thunderstorms. Low near 75F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 60%.
Tuesday: Scattered thunderstorms. High around 85F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%.
Wednesday: A few thunderstorms possible. Highs in the mid 80s and lows in the upper 70s.
Thursday: Scattered thunderstorms possible. Highs in the mid 80s and lows in the upper 70s.

Update: what actually happened

Sunday evening: Clear, then after dusk we were treated to a lovely display of lightning crackling many miles to the north, over the mainland, for perhaps half an hour. No thunder.
Monday: medium rain in the morning, lightening to drizzle. Gray all day. No lightning or thunder.
Tuesday: cloudy. no lightning or thunder. heavy rain after midnight.
Wednesday: partly sunny. No lightning or thunder or rain.
Thursday: rain during the night. sunny. no lightning or thunder.

Cell Phone ripoff

My cell phone claimed $0 balance and I had to go to an M1 store to sort things out. Long story short, the place I bought the phone and card, Yeou Tat Trading Enterprises in Lucky Plaza, sold me a SIM card with face value of S$40 for S$40, but M1 sells the card directly and has an MSRP of S$20. Much of the value of the card then evaporated with daily charges and a one-month expiration for part of the value. The nice lady at M1 helped me change to a mobile plan more suited to my needs (very infrequent calling and SMSing) and told me that Lucky Plaza was notorious for swindles. Yeah, well, M1 isn't exactly working hard to help customers with well-labelled plans, are they? Anyway, I visited the store again and spoke to "Mike", who remembered about as much about what kinds of cards they might have been selling last month as Alberto Gonzales. So my recommendation is to only deal with the mobile phone companies at their stores, where they screw you openly with misleading offers and contradictory and illegible fine print.

HSBC not recommended in Singapore

I don't like advertising. It's basically professional lying in order to steal money. So I put deliberate effort into pre-empting advertising, by choosing not to buy products from companies with especially egregious advertising. I am all the sadder and more embarrassed to admit that, when a fellow student said she was signing up with HSBC instead of one of the local banks (DSB or POSB), my primary motivating for joining her was probably the positive image of HSBC that advertising put in my head.

I can now say with confidence that HSBC is a terrible choice for local Singapore banking. First and foremost, they don't offer the NETS card, which is one of main forms of payment in Singapore. Second, I have yet to find anywhere, point of sale or ATM, that my HSBC "debit" card is accepted other than HSBC ATMs. My credit card from my Seattle credit union is far more useful in Singapore. So, I may eat the S$40 fee for closing an account in less than six months and change to the endearingly named POSB.

The recently retired ambassador to Qatar, Chase Untermayer, was in school for a week, and I was invited to lunch along with the other Americans and a few Gulf-related students. Although he was a political appointee rather than a career diplomat (closely connected to the Bush family, including 41), he was a very nice and diplomatic guy. Lunch was fun not least of which because there was a serious thunderstorm before, during, and after, so we all shared umbrellas in a dash from the school lobby to a nearby restaurant (which had a very colonial feel, lots of dark wood with a glass-enclosed wine bar making up one wall). Lots of talk about the Qatar education system; at the Queen's initiative, Qatar in importing (and subsidizing) for) branches of American universities en masse. He pointed out that the increas in education opportunities for women has an unexpected consequence: the men aren't keeping up and so marriage prospects are increasingly strained for educated women. This led to a discussion between two students from the Gulf, one male and one female.

One thing really stood out for me: he mentioned, twice, that the office of the Vice President was very high on his list of places to go whenever he was recalled to Washington for meetings. One time I think he said, National Security Advisor, then OVP, then Commerce, State Department, etc; and the second time Secretary of Defense, then OVP, then the other places. I thought that striking, especially since his actual boss, I would have assumed, would be the Secretary of State, but that didn't place higher than fourth or fifth in his lists. One more confirmation, I guess, and from a very different channel, of the extraordinary position Cheney holds in this government.

He also mentioned that Al-Jazeera was the number one issue during his term. I skipped his general lecture, but students who attended said that he gave a spirited defense of the US program of promoting democracy, that he faced tough questions from Chinese students, that most listeners were not impressed with the speech, and that American politicians (him specifically) have a tendency to give very long-winded and circular answers to tough questions.

A few questions that I didn't ask at lunch, because they didn't seem appropriate and I couldn't figure out how to word them so they would be and because I don't want to (further?) develop a reputation as a troublemaker:

• You mentioned that you are going to work for a real estate company, and that you decided to retire as ambassador because you would have had to leave the post after the election anyway. Did the company approach you? Were you looking for a job to retire to? Is three years a typical term for a political appointee? Do you not expect Republicans to retain the presidency in 2008? If they did, would you expect to continue in the job?
• You said you were asked to serve in Qatar. Does this mean that you didn't request an ambassadorship? Does it mean that the administration wanted a political operative, rather than a career ambassador, in Qatar? If so, why? (Wikipediaing sinecure leads to this very interesting page that could serve as the basis of a great, if long-winded, naming convention.)
• Many of your google hits are from somebody named "Captain Eric May" and an organization called the "Ghost Brigades", having something to do with 9/11 conspiracy theories. Have you met him? Why is his attention directed towards you? Is he your cyber-stalker?

Osborne, S. and K. Brown (2005) "Managing the process of innovation in public services" in Managing change and innovation in public service organizations, Routledge (pp. 184-213)

Detailed guidelines about how to introduce managed competition to public services (e.g., subcontracting the garbage collection). If you can accept the premise that this is a good idea, or the even stronger form that most government services should be privatized, then you'll find the chapter an unobjectionable and useful list of detailed steps and tips for privatizing your government services, including the advice to not use the word "privatizing". Several forms of managed competition are discussed, including contracting out (privatizing), public vs private bidding, public vs public bidding, and contracting in (outsourcing from one government entity to another). Ignoring the context of ideological warfare in which this advice will be implemented, it is reasonable, thoughtful, and, I would expect, helpful.

Rose, R. (2005) "Can a lesson be applied?" from Learning from comparative public policy: a practical guide, Routledge (pp. 103-116)

Notes on how policies are and are not portable between different countries and cultures. If you're in a hurry, read only boxes 8.3, 8.4, and 8.5.

World Development Report 2002, "Building Institutions: Complement, innovate, connect and compete" (p. 2-27)

How to work on your institutions so that they promote markets so that your people stop being poor.

• pp 4-5. "Four main lessons emerge for institution building. ... Design them to complement what exists—in terms of other supporting institutions, human capabilities, and available technologies. ... Innovate to design institutions that work—and drop those initiatives that do not. ... Connect communities of market players through open information flows and open trade. ... Promote competition among jurisdictions, firms, and individuals."
• p 8. Institutions. Channel information about markets, define and enforce property rights and contracts, increase or decrease competition in markets.
• Figure 1.2. Shows correlation between "financial depth" (ratio of liquid liabilities to GDP) and GDP growth. Having shown a correlation, it then claims causality in the title, "Financial Depth generates growth"
• p 10. "Institutions also affect how countries deal with conflict. A recent study found that growth and poverty outcomes in Asia, Latin America, and Sub-Saharan Africa since the mid-1970s have depended on the quality of institutions for conflict management.9 In divided societies, such as those with ethnic fragmentation or high inequality, low-quality institutions for managing conflict—including low-quality government institutions and inadequate social safety nets—magnify external shocks, triggering distributional conflicts and delaying policy responses. Prolonged uncertainty in the economic environment and delayed policy adjustments curtail subsequent economic growth." Now that sounds interesting. Will have to look up footnote 9.
• p 14. Box 1.8 about computerization of land registration in Andhra Pradesh. I wonder if any Indian classmates know anything about this or similar initiatives and how they've fared in the last six years?
• p 25, Box 1.18, crises and institutional change in Malaysia. "The implication for policymakers is clear: if crises expose real vulnerabilities in markets, policymakers should take advantage of these times to fix the vulnerabilities." That sounds familiar.
• p 26. "Development experience shows that markets can provide the means to attain sustained increases in living standards for people around the world." I don't know why I'm so irritated with and skeptical of the pro-market, privatization stuff on paper when, at the same time, I support the concept of free markets and am well aware that China didn't promote tens (hundreds?) of millions of people from poverty to the middle class through central planning. Maybe all of the privatization stuff we read for this class tweaks me by reminding me of the abuses of privatization in practice, all of the public-cost-for-private-benefit deals sweeping the US right now from sports stadiums to war profiteering.

Neo Chapter 8: Process Innovation: Creating Agile Structures and Systems

• Interesting chapter about some nuts and bolts of Singapore's government: the various reinventions and other initiatives. No mention of any failed initiatives. Also, no hint of the privatization and competition aspects that other readings this week insist are so important to improving government.
• pp 402-403. 5% of annual budget can be rolled over to next year, to avoid "a spending binge at year-end." If you spend less than 95% of your budget, you'll lose budget next year. Your ministry can get a 10% advance during the year, to be repaid with interest. There is a mechanism to accumulate funds over 3 years for larger projects.
• p 404. Net Economic Value has been introduced, the public sector version of Economic Value Added (here spelled without a ™).
• p 414. Examples of horizontal structures within process innovation: "Strategic Issues Group", "Inter-Ministry Committees", "Committee of Permanent Secretaries" (not what you may think; Permanent Secretary is the highest non-political staffer in a Ministry, and works for the Minister), "Sectoral Committees", "Inter-Ministerial Committee", "National Security Coordinating Committee", "National Research and Innovation Committee". I wonder what percentage of the average Singapore bureaucrat's time is taken up with initiatives as opposed to core work. I wonder what a good number would be. Would it change with the maturity of the government?
• p 415. "Speed in rushing to implement simple solutions becomes risky when the real solutions are non-obvious and are likely to have unintended second and third order consequences." Yes! "... Thus horizontal networks, temporary and reconfigurable teams, were required for engaging the right perspectives to find the right solutions and coordinating their efforts in a network fashion." Any details or anecdotes to share? PS21, "Public Service for the 21st Century". Hmm. "PS21 was launched as a grassroots movement grounded on a conviction that public sector staff would be more ready to respond positively to change when they were themselves actively involved in learning and looking for improvements all the time...." You use grassroots very differently than I'm familiar with, Mr Neo.
• More examples: single web access portal; "e-government maturity framework guided the public sector in the development and deployment of e-services and e-governance..."; lots of awards for Singapore in e-governance.
• "e-government action plan II [sic]", S$1.3b over 4 years. "iGov2010 master plan", S$2b over five years. As the price goes up, the names get even worse.
• p 430. Even though I skim lots of pages, I try to read the introduction and conclusion completely. But it's hard when the conclusion starts with a sentence like "Strategic intent provides the direction, drive, and dynamism to management processes such as planning or budgeting to become organizational change capabilities." Faced with text like that, I find my eyes involuntarily saccading to the next paragraph.

Fun excerpts from the IMF 2006 World Economic Outlook (all direct quotes):

• The world economy is in the midst of an extraordinary purple patch, with what looks like a third year of significantly above-trend growth. ... Perhaps the best reflection of the times is that sub-Saharan Africa is headed for its best growth performance in over 30 years.
• Corporations are usually net borrowers. In 2003 and 2004, though, total corporate excess savings (undistributed profit less capital expenditure) in the G-7 countries amounted to $1.3 trillion, which was more than twice the combined current account surpluses of emerging market and developing countries over the same period.
  [This is due to, first,] accommodative monetary and fiscal policy rather than, as commonly believed, productive efficiency. The second and arguably more important component is falling capital spending. ... the real price of capital goods has declined sharply, so less has to be invested .... Another reason is a drop in real capital spending.
• Consumption picked up—driven more by accommodative policy and its effects on house prices and household wealth than by improved job prospects.

From the IMF April 2007 World Economic Outlook:

• The U.S. "addiction" to oil comes largely from gasoline consumption, which as a share of GDP is nearly five times that in other major industrial countries (see figure). Its share in total U.S. oil consumption is a staggering 43 percent, compared with an average of 15 percent in other countries. (The difference is less pronounced when diesel and gasoline are lumped together: 59 percent for the United States versus an aver- age of 38 percent for others.) Low U.S. gasoline prices and weaker fuel efficiency standards likely explain these differences. Fuel efficiency in the United States is 25 percent lower than the EU average and 50 percent lower than that of Japan (An and Sauer, 2004). ... Over the past 20 years, U.S. oil consumption has grown on average by 1.4% a year, compared with a range of -0.5% to 0.6% in the other major advanced economies.
  What explains these differences? ... The remarkable result is that the United States has the lowest (and an insignificant) estimated long-run price elasticity (-0.01) and the second highest income elasticity following Japan. [Joel: in other words, Americans have been buying as much gas as they want, damn the price. This apparent effect is partly explained by reliably cheap and relatively untaxed gas in the US since 1984: if the price of gas didn't change during the measured period, you won't see a change in consumption relative to price. Hence, apparent price inelasticity.]
• Nevertheless, the results are consistent with the stylized facts discussed above and the more significant efforts made in major European countries and Japan relative to the United States to reduce oil consumption, in particular in transportation. These include higher taxes on gasoline, more stringent fuel efficiency standards, a gradual switch to diesel (which has increased efficiency), and heavier investment in public transportation. In power generation, seri- ous steps have been taken to switch to renew- able energy and natural gas.5 These policies also reflect generally stronger efforts to tackle environmental problems: all these countries have ratified the Kyoto Protocol and are acting to achieve a 6—8 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions relative to 1990 levels by 2012.

John Williamson, What Should the World Bank Think about the Washington Consensus

Executive Summary: John Williamson called. He wants his phrase back. Following is all quotes:

• Specifically, there is a real danger that many of the economic reforms favored by international development institutions—notably macroeconomic discipline, trade openness, and market-friendly microeconomic policies—will be discredited in the eyes of many observers, simply because these institutions are inevitably implicated in views that command a consen- sus in Washington and the term 'Washington Consensus' has come to be used to describe an extreme and dogmatic commitment to the belief that markets can handle everything.
• My sixth reform was trade liberalization. Here I see little reason to doubt that I reported accurately on opinions in the international financial institutions ... But this is another area where critics can rightly claim that the policies that nurtured the East Asian miracle were, at least in some countries, at odds with the policies endorsed in the Washington Consensus.
• How is it that a term intended to describe a technocratic policy agenda that survived the demise of Reaganomics came to be used to describe an ideology embracing the most extreme version of Reaganomics?
• I would not subscribe to the view that [market fundamentalism] offer[s] an effective agenda for reducing poverty. We know that poverty reduction demands efforts to build the human capital of the poor, but the populist interpretation fails to address that issue. We know that an active policy to supervise financial institutions is needed if financial liberalization is not to lead to financial collapse, which invariably ends up using tax revenues to write off bank loans that were made to the relatively rich. And some measure of income redistribution would be recommended by any policy that was primarily directed at reducing poverty rather than simply maximizing growth, but market fundamentalists rule out all income redistribution as plunder.
• One can react to the semantic dilemma posed by the different definitions currently in use in three possible ways. Consider these alternatives:
  • Insist on the original usage ...
  • Abandon the term ...
  • Endorse a post-Washington Consensus ...
• The hopeless quest to identify a consensus where there is none should be abandoned in favor of a debate on the policy changes needed to achieve a rounded set of objectives encompassing at least the level, growth, and distribution of income, as well as preservation of a decent environment.

Png Chapter 7

• Economies of scale
• diseconomies of scale
• economies of scope
• diseconomies of scope
• opportunity cost
• transfer price
• economic value added
• sunk costs

Yup. Next! (transfer price and sunk costs are my favorites)

Postscript: according to the textbook, and Wikipedia, Economic Value Added is actually trademarked. How ridiculous is that? A quick googling shows that the term EVA is written with an (r), with no special mark, with a tm, and with both an R in a circle and with no special mark by its inventor. What does the trademark even mean? What power does it give Joel Stern over the use of those three words in sequence?

SMIG reading

Kegley, Charles W Jr. The Neoliberal Challenge to Realist Theories of World Politics.

• Let's look at both realism and neoliberalism because the spectrum between the two of them includes most other theories.
• Most superfluous sentence: "It is axiomatic that for this book's pedagogical goals to be serviced, readers need to be exposed to the assumptions underlying both the realist and liberal-idealist theoretical heritage." Does servicing pedagogical goals lead to a happy ending?
• Conclusion: we need to combine realism and neoliberalism because they both have useful things.
• Joel's conclusion: piffle! To elaborate: I'm skeptical of the premise, which is that most theories in the literature are a spectrum between realism and neoliberalism. Or rather, that may well be true, but it's sad if it is. Just as with neoclassical economics, it seems self-evident to me that many other factors, such as psychology, mob behavior, chaos theory and complexity theory, economic (marxist?), culture, and other factors are huge explainers of IR, at least to the extent we can explain it at all. Both realism and neoliberalism, as presented in our reading, seem far too simplistic, conflate normative and descriptive elements too freely, and otherwise fail to satisfy even as interpretive models.
• Update: reading notes from other students have pointed out some useful things in this paper that I missed with my skimming. In particular, this very critical piece of foundation for any thinking on the subject:

  Four Principle Tasks that need to be fulfilled by a theory in international relations.
  The theory needs to:

  1. Describe
  2. Explain
  3. Predict
  4. Prescribe

Liberal International Theory: Common Threads, Divergent Strands

• "In typologies of international relations theory, liberalism, realism, and marxism are often presented as the three dominant traditions of the twentieth century. ... This chapter analyzes the development of liberal international theory ..."
• Most superfluous sentence: "There are good reasons for embarking on such a project." This sentence led off the second paragraph and I stopped looking for superfluity, having so quickly found such a zenith. If there were no good reasons, would you still have embarked on the project to write this essay?
• "liberalism is committed to the steady ... expansion of human freedom through various political and economic strategies, such as democratization and market capitalism, ascertained through reason and, in many cases, enhanced by technology." This is the traditional definition, going back centuries, into which most Western politicians, including "conservatives" (and Bush, in word if not deed), clearly fall. But how does that relate to liberalism in IR in the 20th century?
• Key points of traditional liberalism:
  • evolution to greater human freedom (security, standard of living, human rights)
  • international cooperation
  • modernization
• "The most striking change in attitude is that confidence in progress has been more qualified in the postwar period."
• Six strands of post-war liberalism
• "Can liberal international theory stand on its own? ... 'most contemporary liberals seem to accept large portions of both marxist and realist explanations'"

Scott Burchill, Liberal Internationalism

• War. This section seems to ignore the huge role of the US in starting many wars, the even more huge preponderance of nasty, multi-decade civil wars, etc.
• points awarded for pointing out that free trade benefits the rich and often not the poor. I don't have much to say about this essay, perhaps because most of it is non-objectionable.