Very cool stop-motion animation in a Toronto bookstore: The Joy of Books
Creative use of language by Alabama linebacker Courtney Upshaw, after his team's defeat of LSU yesterday: “I’ve got to say, we outphysicaled them today”
Newest religion officially recognized by the Swedish government: the Church of Kopimi. Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V are their sacred symbols.
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Friday, January 6, 2012
Education as a principal-agent problem
The Atlantic has an interesting article by Anu Partanen on its website: "What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's schools success." The basic argument is that Finland implemented education reform about a generation ago in order to achieve equity, and that excellence is, in some sense, a fortuitous by-product.
Of course, equity (in this case, equal access to the same quality educational resources for all children, regardless of wealth, ethnicity, location, etc.) is a hard sell in the United States. As a result, Partanen suggests, the dozens of fact-finding missions that come to visit Finland each year almost willfully ignore the key lesson of Finland's model.
Partanen repeatedly cites a top Finnish education official, Pasi Sahlberg, who has written the book Finnish lessons: What can the world learn from educational change in Finland? I have not read the book, so I may be kicking in an open door here, but it appears to me that Partanen's representation of Finland's model risks overlooking its most important attribute.
Consider education as a principal-agent problem. The state would like high educational achievement for all its citizens, and can be seen as the principal. The agents who, in the end, make this goal possible are the teachers. (In between are intermediate principals/agents such as state education boards and the like, but I'm ignoring those for the sake of simplicity.)
Assume that being a good teacher has two components: learnable (a skill set) and exogenous (for example, liking children) and that only a subset of the population of possible teachers has the requisite exogenous characteristics. How do you maximize the chances that your agents are all good teachers?
There are two obvious strategies to adopt: require serious training, and offer a salary (plus non-salary perks such as 'prestige') sufficiently high to attract enough people with the exogenous characteristics needed. This is what Finland appears to have done. It is also what some of the better private schools do in the United States, with pretty good success.
Of course, both training and higher salaries cost money. How might you try to achieve the same goal more cheaply? Well, you could try to specify precisely what students need to learn, and how, and then hire agents to do exactly, and only, that. And make sure they do so by administering ever more frequent standardized tests.
These agents won't need as many skills, and they won't necessarily need the exogenous characteristics, because you have specified exactly what they'll be doing anyway. So you can pay them much less. And you'll get a large number of unmotivated, relatively unskilled teachers. You'll still get a bunch of superb teachers as well, of course, but you risk demotivating them too, since they will not be able to deploy their own capabilities to their fullest extent. This situation would seem to exist in rather too many public school systems in the United States.
However, while Finland's focus on equity may be ignored by American educational reformers, the importance of higher salaries (and prestige) and better training are not. Education reformers have been calling for both for years. In contrast to Partanen, I would bet that you could retain the system of public and private schools the United States has at the moment and still achieve much better results, as long as you were willing to commit to paying for higher teacher salaries and more extensive training.
The problem, of course, is that while the state is the principal in my little model, it is also an agent: it is the agent of the American public. So we would need to convince the American public to spend more (perhaps considerably more) on teachers. And that is perhaps an even harder sell than equity.
Of course, equity (in this case, equal access to the same quality educational resources for all children, regardless of wealth, ethnicity, location, etc.) is a hard sell in the United States. As a result, Partanen suggests, the dozens of fact-finding missions that come to visit Finland each year almost willfully ignore the key lesson of Finland's model.
Partanen repeatedly cites a top Finnish education official, Pasi Sahlberg, who has written the book Finnish lessons: What can the world learn from educational change in Finland? I have not read the book, so I may be kicking in an open door here, but it appears to me that Partanen's representation of Finland's model risks overlooking its most important attribute.
Consider education as a principal-agent problem. The state would like high educational achievement for all its citizens, and can be seen as the principal. The agents who, in the end, make this goal possible are the teachers. (In between are intermediate principals/agents such as state education boards and the like, but I'm ignoring those for the sake of simplicity.)
Assume that being a good teacher has two components: learnable (a skill set) and exogenous (for example, liking children) and that only a subset of the population of possible teachers has the requisite exogenous characteristics. How do you maximize the chances that your agents are all good teachers?
There are two obvious strategies to adopt: require serious training, and offer a salary (plus non-salary perks such as 'prestige') sufficiently high to attract enough people with the exogenous characteristics needed. This is what Finland appears to have done. It is also what some of the better private schools do in the United States, with pretty good success.
Of course, both training and higher salaries cost money. How might you try to achieve the same goal more cheaply? Well, you could try to specify precisely what students need to learn, and how, and then hire agents to do exactly, and only, that. And make sure they do so by administering ever more frequent standardized tests.
These agents won't need as many skills, and they won't necessarily need the exogenous characteristics, because you have specified exactly what they'll be doing anyway. So you can pay them much less. And you'll get a large number of unmotivated, relatively unskilled teachers. You'll still get a bunch of superb teachers as well, of course, but you risk demotivating them too, since they will not be able to deploy their own capabilities to their fullest extent. This situation would seem to exist in rather too many public school systems in the United States.
However, while Finland's focus on equity may be ignored by American educational reformers, the importance of higher salaries (and prestige) and better training are not. Education reformers have been calling for both for years. In contrast to Partanen, I would bet that you could retain the system of public and private schools the United States has at the moment and still achieve much better results, as long as you were willing to commit to paying for higher teacher salaries and more extensive training.
The problem, of course, is that while the state is the principal in my little model, it is also an agent: it is the agent of the American public. So we would need to convince the American public to spend more (perhaps considerably more) on teachers. And that is perhaps an even harder sell than equity.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
"He's voted for foreign aid repeatedly"
Another reason not to support Ron Paul. His son, Rand, going on the attack against Santorum, said on Tuesday, on CBS's The Early Show: "On economic issues, like foreign aid — he’s voted for foreign aid repeatedly."
Now I don't actually have any idea about Santorum's general stance on foreign aid. (I suspect that, like most of the Republican candidates this election round, he's largely opposed to it.) Regardless, I find it offensive that Paul is trying to imply that any support of any foreign aid at any time is obviously wrong.
Interestingly, Paul's statement also illustrates an argument about the framing of aid I make in my book. Paul clearly sees aid as an economic issue. I don't think he is being strategic here (though he might be): he really thinks of aid in those terms. More importantly, I would argue he thinks of it in those terms not because he is a libertarian (many libertarians in Europe think of aid in humanitarian terms, and support it), but because he is an American. Foreign aid has been framed in economic or security terms in the United States for decades, much more so than is the case in other donor countries. As a result, if Americans think aid serves no economic purpose, they're much more likely to reject it than are their counterparts in, say, Denmark.
Now I don't actually have any idea about Santorum's general stance on foreign aid. (I suspect that, like most of the Republican candidates this election round, he's largely opposed to it.) Regardless, I find it offensive that Paul is trying to imply that any support of any foreign aid at any time is obviously wrong.
Interestingly, Paul's statement also illustrates an argument about the framing of aid I make in my book. Paul clearly sees aid as an economic issue. I don't think he is being strategic here (though he might be): he really thinks of aid in those terms. More importantly, I would argue he thinks of it in those terms not because he is a libertarian (many libertarians in Europe think of aid in humanitarian terms, and support it), but because he is an American. Foreign aid has been framed in economic or security terms in the United States for decades, much more so than is the case in other donor countries. As a result, if Americans think aid serves no economic purpose, they're much more likely to reject it than are their counterparts in, say, Denmark.
International intervention: Why Libya and not Syria?
Philip Gourevitch has an interesting post at the New Yorker on the situation in Syria: The Arab Winter. It is striking to me how much stamina the protesters in Syria have displayed, given how little headway they have been able to make on their own against Assad's security forces, and how little international assistance, or even attention, they have received.
Gourevitch concludes that although the Arab League has taken some action on Syria, and has monitors on the ground now, these are likely to remain toothless. He does not deem it likely that more will happen: "Qadaffi was uniquely reviled, and uniquely disposable, and disposing of him was the easy part of the revolution (as it was with Mubarak in Egypt). With Assad it’s trickier—and the Syrian people remain hostages of that trickiness."
It is also worth thinking about geopolitics here (Gourevitch does so a little, but it is not the focus of his argument): chaos in Libya is much less worrisome to all kinds of key actors in world politics than is chaos in Syria, as a simple look at the map makes clear. What would instability in Syria mean for Israel, for Turkey, for Iraq, and for their various allies?
Still, there cannot be many other countries at the moment where the government is killing its own civilians at the same rate as Assad's troops are doing (an average of about 20 citizens per day since March, Gourevitch calculates). For those who argued for intervention in Libya on purely humanitarian grounds, that ought to mean something.
(Interesting idea for an undergraduate research project: compile data on rates of death-by-government-forces in authoritarian countries and see what kinds of patterns, if any, one can find. There are datasets on total deaths, so rates should be not that hard to deduce. But I can't think, off-hand, of anyone who has looked into them. Be the first!)
Gourevitch concludes that although the Arab League has taken some action on Syria, and has monitors on the ground now, these are likely to remain toothless. He does not deem it likely that more will happen: "Qadaffi was uniquely reviled, and uniquely disposable, and disposing of him was the easy part of the revolution (as it was with Mubarak in Egypt). With Assad it’s trickier—and the Syrian people remain hostages of that trickiness."
It is also worth thinking about geopolitics here (Gourevitch does so a little, but it is not the focus of his argument): chaos in Libya is much less worrisome to all kinds of key actors in world politics than is chaos in Syria, as a simple look at the map makes clear. What would instability in Syria mean for Israel, for Turkey, for Iraq, and for their various allies?
Still, there cannot be many other countries at the moment where the government is killing its own civilians at the same rate as Assad's troops are doing (an average of about 20 citizens per day since March, Gourevitch calculates). For those who argued for intervention in Libya on purely humanitarian grounds, that ought to mean something.
(Interesting idea for an undergraduate research project: compile data on rates of death-by-government-forces in authoritarian countries and see what kinds of patterns, if any, one can find. There are datasets on total deaths, so rates should be not that hard to deduce. But I can't think, off-hand, of anyone who has looked into them. Be the first!)
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Understanding war
Interesting op-ed in yesterday's New York Times by John Tirman, of MIT: "The forgotten wages of war". Tirman points out that Americans rarely debate, or even think about, civilian destruction caused by their war efforts. This is problematic because, as Tirman argues, "The consequences of how we fight wars reveals [sic] a great deal about how and why others fight us."
Tirman has an important point, but I think he overlooks a deeper issue, one that bears on why the United States has shown rather less reluctance to go to war than have European countries in recent decades. In the American imagination, a war is something you go out and fight elsewhere; for many continental Europeans, a war is something that comes and destroys your country, and nobody is immune. Different experiences during World War II and the Cold War account for most of this difference, so it may be waning. Perhaps that is too bad: as Tirman points out, a greater understanding of what war means to those who have it visited upon them is salutary.
(By the way, Tirman has apparently written a recent book about the issue: The Deaths of Others: The Fate of Civilians in America’s War, which looks at American wars going back to World War II. The table of contents looks pretty interesting.)
Tirman has an important point, but I think he overlooks a deeper issue, one that bears on why the United States has shown rather less reluctance to go to war than have European countries in recent decades. In the American imagination, a war is something you go out and fight elsewhere; for many continental Europeans, a war is something that comes and destroys your country, and nobody is immune. Different experiences during World War II and the Cold War account for most of this difference, so it may be waning. Perhaps that is too bad: as Tirman points out, a greater understanding of what war means to those who have it visited upon them is salutary.
(By the way, Tirman has apparently written a recent book about the issue: The Deaths of Others: The Fate of Civilians in America’s War, which looks at American wars going back to World War II. The table of contents looks pretty interesting.)
Monday, January 2, 2012
Democracy, hunger, aid
The famine in Somalia this fall received a fair amount of press, which likely helped increase aid flows to the country. Aid efforts appear to have helped forestall a worst-case outcome, which is great. Of course, the fact that a famine erupted at all is due in large part to the absence of a functioning government (and continual fighting between groups aspiring to be the government) in the country.
Amartya Sen famously pointed out in his classic Poverty and Famines that famines are exceedingly unlikely under a functioning, democratic government. Hunger, however, does happen; moreover, being less extreme than famine, hunger is generally under-reported. The New York Times performs a valuable service today, highlighting hunger in the Democratic Republic of Congo (in an article by Adam Nossiter).
Congo is, at least nominally, a democracy. Indeed, elections were held in November, albeit with lots of problems and irregularities. The article gives a striking illustration both of Sen's thesis and of one mechanism that might undermine it.
On the one hand, Nossiter notes that the government is interested in enriching itself, not its citizens, investing nothing in the agricultural sector. In fact, one expert suggests that all agricultural projects undertaken in the country are funded by foreign aid donors rather than the national government. This is the kind of behaviour one might expect from autocratic governments that need not rely on public support. Moreover, it is the kind of behaviour that one could imagine leading to a famine at some point in the future.
On the other hand, Nossiter suggests, the daily struggle for sustenance may make it possible for such blatant disregard for the lives of citizens to co-exist with regular (albeit rather flawed) elections. So is a famine possible in democracies with rulers who have farmed out the "caring for the survival of our citizens" to foreign aid organizations? And if so, what can/should aid organizations do about this?
Amartya Sen famously pointed out in his classic Poverty and Famines that famines are exceedingly unlikely under a functioning, democratic government. Hunger, however, does happen; moreover, being less extreme than famine, hunger is generally under-reported. The New York Times performs a valuable service today, highlighting hunger in the Democratic Republic of Congo (in an article by Adam Nossiter).
Congo is, at least nominally, a democracy. Indeed, elections were held in November, albeit with lots of problems and irregularities. The article gives a striking illustration both of Sen's thesis and of one mechanism that might undermine it.
On the one hand, Nossiter notes that the government is interested in enriching itself, not its citizens, investing nothing in the agricultural sector. In fact, one expert suggests that all agricultural projects undertaken in the country are funded by foreign aid donors rather than the national government. This is the kind of behaviour one might expect from autocratic governments that need not rely on public support. Moreover, it is the kind of behaviour that one could imagine leading to a famine at some point in the future.
On the other hand, Nossiter suggests, the daily struggle for sustenance may make it possible for such blatant disregard for the lives of citizens to co-exist with regular (albeit rather flawed) elections. So is a famine possible in democracies with rulers who have farmed out the "caring for the survival of our citizens" to foreign aid organizations? And if so, what can/should aid organizations do about this?
Thursday, December 29, 2011
How not to choose a presidental candidate: Ron Paul edition
(I'm doing some research on the late Dutch libertarian politician Pim Fortuyn; in doing so, I got sidetracked into reading much more about Ron Paul than I would recommend to anyone; I figured I might as well say something about what I read.)
As numerous news outlets have reported in recent weeks, late 1980s/early 1990s newsletters published in Ron Paul's name, with articles written in the first person, featured all kinds of racist, homophobic, and generally bigoted writing. James Kirchick wrote a good analysis of these newsletters in the The New Republic; some pdfs can be found here and here, and transcriptions here.
Paul has long claimed he did not write these newsletters, and that he was unaware of their content. (Julian Sanchez & David Weigel offer a good discussion of who might have written them in Reason.) Paul's protestations seem pretty implausible, given that a) the newsletters brought in a fair amount of income for him during those years, and b) he was even then clearly someone with political ambitions.
Paul also argues that all this is old news, and that this means, in turn, that he should not have to face questions about the newsletters anymore — indeed, he recently walked out of a CNN interview where he was asked about them. At the same time, he has long conceded that he has "moral responsibility" for content that went out under his name (Matt Welch, at Reason, has an overview of Paul's responses to questions about their content). If "moral responsibility" is to mean anything at all, shouldn't it mean precisely that you do have to continue to answer questions about it?
In any case, lots of people like Paul as a candidate because he seems principled and plain-spoken. This appears be at the heart of his support among many college students, as well as of the anguished (semi-)endorsements by Andrew Sullivan (since retracted) and Conor Friedersdorf.
They are attracted to Paul, it appears, despite all that is wrong with him. As Kirchick notes in the New York Times today, he may or may not be bigoted (depending on how one interprets the newsletters), but he is definitely an inveterate conspiracy theorist. Moreover, his economic theories are completely nutty. Still, as John Cassidy pointed out in the New Yorker yesterday, Paul has many supporters who are attracted to him not for his views or his past statements, but because of "his reputation as an outsider, a plain speaker, and a scourge of the political establishment." As one 18-year old student is quoted as saying "He's real. That's what makes the difference for me."
However, shouldn't these newsletters — and Paul's response to questions about them — make it quite clear that he is in fact neither "real" (he is obviously trying to spin those newsletters and their content) nor "principled" (unless the principle is a cynical willingness to spout even the most despicable opinions in an attempt to gain adherents for a nutty economic agenda)?
What we are left with, then is that Paul is better than his competitors at seeming real and principled. Apparently that is the 2012 election's version of 2004's whether one might like to have a beer with someone. Neither, I would argue, is how one should decide whom to vote for to run the country.
As numerous news outlets have reported in recent weeks, late 1980s/early 1990s newsletters published in Ron Paul's name, with articles written in the first person, featured all kinds of racist, homophobic, and generally bigoted writing. James Kirchick wrote a good analysis of these newsletters in the The New Republic; some pdfs can be found here and here, and transcriptions here.
Paul has long claimed he did not write these newsletters, and that he was unaware of their content. (Julian Sanchez & David Weigel offer a good discussion of who might have written them in Reason.) Paul's protestations seem pretty implausible, given that a) the newsletters brought in a fair amount of income for him during those years, and b) he was even then clearly someone with political ambitions.
Paul also argues that all this is old news, and that this means, in turn, that he should not have to face questions about the newsletters anymore — indeed, he recently walked out of a CNN interview where he was asked about them. At the same time, he has long conceded that he has "moral responsibility" for content that went out under his name (Matt Welch, at Reason, has an overview of Paul's responses to questions about their content). If "moral responsibility" is to mean anything at all, shouldn't it mean precisely that you do have to continue to answer questions about it?
In any case, lots of people like Paul as a candidate because he seems principled and plain-spoken. This appears be at the heart of his support among many college students, as well as of the anguished (semi-)endorsements by Andrew Sullivan (since retracted) and Conor Friedersdorf.
They are attracted to Paul, it appears, despite all that is wrong with him. As Kirchick notes in the New York Times today, he may or may not be bigoted (depending on how one interprets the newsletters), but he is definitely an inveterate conspiracy theorist. Moreover, his economic theories are completely nutty. Still, as John Cassidy pointed out in the New Yorker yesterday, Paul has many supporters who are attracted to him not for his views or his past statements, but because of "his reputation as an outsider, a plain speaker, and a scourge of the political establishment." As one 18-year old student is quoted as saying "He's real. That's what makes the difference for me."
However, shouldn't these newsletters — and Paul's response to questions about them — make it quite clear that he is in fact neither "real" (he is obviously trying to spin those newsletters and their content) nor "principled" (unless the principle is a cynical willingness to spout even the most despicable opinions in an attempt to gain adherents for a nutty economic agenda)?
What we are left with, then is that Paul is better than his competitors at seeming real and principled. Apparently that is the 2012 election's version of 2004's whether one might like to have a beer with someone. Neither, I would argue, is how one should decide whom to vote for to run the country.
Thursday, October 6, 2011
The IMF as battering ram?
Observers of the IMF's actions in international financial crises are fond of quoting former U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor as having said that the IMF serves as a "battering ram" for U.S. interests. Google "IMF battering ram US interests" (without the quotes) and you get almost 75,000 results.
Interestingly, it is very difficult to find the original source for this quotation. Most authors either don't bother offering a citation, or simply cite another secondary source. For instance, one of the sources cited most often (indeed, it is the number one hit on the above Google search) is a 1998 article by Devesh Kapur in Foreign Affairs magazine: "The IMF: A Cure or a Curse?" Kapur mentions "former U.S. trade representative Mickey Kantor's colorful rendering of the institution as a 'battering ram' for U.S. interests." He does not offer a source for this rendering, however.
A number of authors do offer a citation to the January 14, 1998 issue of the International Herald Tribune. This is the case, for example, with the third hit in the Google search: Paul Midford's article on Japan in the book Globalization and National Security (edited by Jonathan Kirshner). However, a Factiva search of the IHT for the term "battering ram" in January 1998 finds no article dated January 14. This suggests that people are simply copying citations from other secondary accounts without double-checking themselves.
The same Factiva (or Lexis/Nexis) search does find an IHT article dated January 26 (also published in the New York Times on the same date) by Philip Bowring, titled "Toward a different Asia and a less dominant dollar." This article features the line "The IMF, in the words of former U.S. trade representative Mickey Kantor, is a 'battering ram' to open up Asian markets to U.S. enterprise" but gives no indication when Kantor might have said this, or in what context.
Some additional digging turns up the original source of the quotation: an article in the Times of London, 5 Dec. 1997, in the commentary/opinion section, titled "America's new Asian model." Kantor, who at that point no longer was U.S. trade representative (nor Commerce Secretary, a post he also held in 1996-1997), spoke in personal capacity at a dinner of the Confederation of British Industry. The relevant quotation from the article is: "the former US Commerce Secretary said that the troubles of the tiger economies offered a golden opportunity for the West to reassert its commercial interests. When countries seek help from the International Monetary Fund, Europe and America should use the IMF as a battering ram to gain advantage."
Note that the article does not imply that those are Kantor's exact words, though it seems plausible that Kantor did indeed use the term "battering ram." As an indication of how few of those who cite Kantor's statement have actually dug down to the original source, a Google search on "the troubles of the tiger economies offered a golden opportunity" (with quotes) produces only about 8 hits. Note, too, that Kantor does not say that the IMF is a battering ram, contra Kapur and Bowring, but rather that he, speaking in his personal capacity, thinks it should be used as a battering ram. (The article does claim that Kantor "echoes views emanating from the IMF to the Federal Reserve" but offers no evidence for this.)
In sum, Kantor's statement was colorful, which explains its popularity, but since he was not speaking in any official capacity, nor claiming to describe an actual (as opposed to a desired) strategy, it is much less meaningful than most people (mis-)quoting it believe or imply.
Interestingly, it is very difficult to find the original source for this quotation. Most authors either don't bother offering a citation, or simply cite another secondary source. For instance, one of the sources cited most often (indeed, it is the number one hit on the above Google search) is a 1998 article by Devesh Kapur in Foreign Affairs magazine: "The IMF: A Cure or a Curse?" Kapur mentions "former U.S. trade representative Mickey Kantor's colorful rendering of the institution as a 'battering ram' for U.S. interests." He does not offer a source for this rendering, however.
A number of authors do offer a citation to the January 14, 1998 issue of the International Herald Tribune. This is the case, for example, with the third hit in the Google search: Paul Midford's article on Japan in the book Globalization and National Security (edited by Jonathan Kirshner). However, a Factiva search of the IHT for the term "battering ram" in January 1998 finds no article dated January 14. This suggests that people are simply copying citations from other secondary accounts without double-checking themselves.
The same Factiva (or Lexis/Nexis) search does find an IHT article dated January 26 (also published in the New York Times on the same date) by Philip Bowring, titled "Toward a different Asia and a less dominant dollar." This article features the line "The IMF, in the words of former U.S. trade representative Mickey Kantor, is a 'battering ram' to open up Asian markets to U.S. enterprise" but gives no indication when Kantor might have said this, or in what context.
Some additional digging turns up the original source of the quotation: an article in the Times of London, 5 Dec. 1997, in the commentary/opinion section, titled "America's new Asian model." Kantor, who at that point no longer was U.S. trade representative (nor Commerce Secretary, a post he also held in 1996-1997), spoke in personal capacity at a dinner of the Confederation of British Industry. The relevant quotation from the article is: "the former US Commerce Secretary said that the troubles of the tiger economies offered a golden opportunity for the West to reassert its commercial interests. When countries seek help from the International Monetary Fund, Europe and America should use the IMF as a battering ram to gain advantage."
Note that the article does not imply that those are Kantor's exact words, though it seems plausible that Kantor did indeed use the term "battering ram." As an indication of how few of those who cite Kantor's statement have actually dug down to the original source, a Google search on "the troubles of the tiger economies offered a golden opportunity" (with quotes) produces only about 8 hits. Note, too, that Kantor does not say that the IMF is a battering ram, contra Kapur and Bowring, but rather that he, speaking in his personal capacity, thinks it should be used as a battering ram. (The article does claim that Kantor "echoes views emanating from the IMF to the Federal Reserve" but offers no evidence for this.)
In sum, Kantor's statement was colorful, which explains its popularity, but since he was not speaking in any official capacity, nor claiming to describe an actual (as opposed to a desired) strategy, it is much less meaningful than most people (mis-)quoting it believe or imply.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Men are from Venus, women are from Mars, or ...?
There's been much to do about the fact that, on the issue of the U.S. military action in Libya, key women on Obama's staff were more pro-intervention than their male colleagues. Maureen Dowd gives a representative overview in a recent NYT column.
Dowd already makes clear just how simplistic this gender stereotyping is, but now Charli Carpenter has an excellent and thoughtful discussion of the issue over at Foreign Affairs, titled Flight of the Valkyries: What gender does and doesn't tell us about operation Odyssey Dawn. One crucial point Carpenter makes: the international context within which political actors come of age likely has far more to do with support or opposition to the intervention in Libya than gender.
A similar message emerges from an illuminating new book by my former colleague Mia Bloom, titled Bombshell: The many faces of women terrorists. The book strikingly illustrates the similarity across genders of most motivations for terrorism (rape is a key gender-specific exception). In fact, gender disparities in terrorist activities appear driven largely by sexism and chauvinism among those who recruit terrorists ('demand'), rather than by gender-based differences in willingness to engage in such activities ('supply').
There is something amusing about the fact that, in this respect at least, the leadership of Al Qaeda appears to have quite a bit in common with the Washington, DC press corps.
Dowd already makes clear just how simplistic this gender stereotyping is, but now Charli Carpenter has an excellent and thoughtful discussion of the issue over at Foreign Affairs, titled Flight of the Valkyries: What gender does and doesn't tell us about operation Odyssey Dawn. One crucial point Carpenter makes: the international context within which political actors come of age likely has far more to do with support or opposition to the intervention in Libya than gender.
A similar message emerges from an illuminating new book by my former colleague Mia Bloom, titled Bombshell: The many faces of women terrorists. The book strikingly illustrates the similarity across genders of most motivations for terrorism (rape is a key gender-specific exception). In fact, gender disparities in terrorist activities appear driven largely by sexism and chauvinism among those who recruit terrorists ('demand'), rather than by gender-based differences in willingness to engage in such activities ('supply').
There is something amusing about the fact that, in this respect at least, the leadership of Al Qaeda appears to have quite a bit in common with the Washington, DC press corps.
Monday, March 28, 2011
How to contribute to disaster relief
Yesterday I posted some critical comments regarding disaster relief aid. These should under no circumstances be taken to imply that I think disaster relief aid is not valuable, or that it is not important to contribute to such aid. The key point is that it is worth thinking very carefully about making sure each contribution actually makes a difference.
Saundra Schimmelpfennig has a very good list of "Dos and don'ts of disaster donations" on her blog; these were written for the 2004 tsunami and updated for last year's Haiti earthquake, but they are no less valuable today, applied to Japan's earthquake/tsunami. I highly recommend reading through these before making any donation.
One important point that comes through in Saundra's list is that disaster aid is most likely to arrive when it is comparatively less needed. Organizations that are already active on the ground are best positioned to provide aid in the immediate aftermath. By the time donations from around the world arrive in the bank accounts of these organizations, they have already incurred most of their startup costs.
At the other end of the timescale, much of the crucial rebuilding work happens after the world media has moved on (when did you last hear or read something about the ongoing rebuilding effort in Haiti?), and thus also after new donations stop flowing in.
This has two implications: it means that it is less important to give as soon as possible than people sometimes believe, and it means that some of the most important donations take place before a disaster takes place. For this reason, I highly recommend not earmarking donations for a specific crisis. If you do wish to earmark a donation for a specific crisis, donate to an organization focused on the rebuilding process, rather than on emergency disaster relief operations.
On the other hand, if you want to support emergency disaster relief, consider contributing to an organization for which disaster relief is part of the ongoing mission, regardless of where disasters may occur. One excellent example in this category is Doctors without Borders/Médécins sans Frontières (MSF). MSF is acutely aware of potential pitfalls associated with disaster relief aid, and deliberately is not accepting donations specifically earmarked for Japan. Read their statement here.
In the case of Japan, I also want to reiterate the importance of asking what the added value of a contribution to disaster relief there is likely to be, given that:
1. Japan is a rich country which, moreover, can print its own money. This means that shortage of funds is unlikely to be the determining factor in limiting relief operations.
2. Japan is also an open, well-functioning democracy, with a government that cares about the well-being of its citizens. This means that situations in which the government deliberately neglects particular affected groups or areas (and in which relief organizations could play a key role) are unlikely to arise.
In contrast, there are numerous conflict- and disaster areas around the world where neither of these two conditions holds. MSF is active in most of them. So is the Red Cross. Consider giving to these organizations so they can make a difference where they are needed most.
Saundra Schimmelpfennig has a very good list of "Dos and don'ts of disaster donations" on her blog; these were written for the 2004 tsunami and updated for last year's Haiti earthquake, but they are no less valuable today, applied to Japan's earthquake/tsunami. I highly recommend reading through these before making any donation.
One important point that comes through in Saundra's list is that disaster aid is most likely to arrive when it is comparatively less needed. Organizations that are already active on the ground are best positioned to provide aid in the immediate aftermath. By the time donations from around the world arrive in the bank accounts of these organizations, they have already incurred most of their startup costs.
At the other end of the timescale, much of the crucial rebuilding work happens after the world media has moved on (when did you last hear or read something about the ongoing rebuilding effort in Haiti?), and thus also after new donations stop flowing in.
This has two implications: it means that it is less important to give as soon as possible than people sometimes believe, and it means that some of the most important donations take place before a disaster takes place. For this reason, I highly recommend not earmarking donations for a specific crisis. If you do wish to earmark a donation for a specific crisis, donate to an organization focused on the rebuilding process, rather than on emergency disaster relief operations.
On the other hand, if you want to support emergency disaster relief, consider contributing to an organization for which disaster relief is part of the ongoing mission, regardless of where disasters may occur. One excellent example in this category is Doctors without Borders/Médécins sans Frontières (MSF). MSF is acutely aware of potential pitfalls associated with disaster relief aid, and deliberately is not accepting donations specifically earmarked for Japan. Read their statement here.
In the case of Japan, I also want to reiterate the importance of asking what the added value of a contribution to disaster relief there is likely to be, given that:
1. Japan is a rich country which, moreover, can print its own money. This means that shortage of funds is unlikely to be the determining factor in limiting relief operations.
2. Japan is also an open, well-functioning democracy, with a government that cares about the well-being of its citizens. This means that situations in which the government deliberately neglects particular affected groups or areas (and in which relief organizations could play a key role) are unlikely to arise.
In contrast, there are numerous conflict- and disaster areas around the world where neither of these two conditions holds. MSF is active in most of them. So is the Red Cross. Consider giving to these organizations so they can make a difference where they are needed most.
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