democracy

Brazil’s Military Coup, 55 years later

Bruno Gonçalves Rosi History, Politics , , , , , , , , ,

Fifty-five years ago, in 1964, Brazilian president João Goulart was overthrown and substituted by Castelo Branco, a military president. Until 1985 the country was governed by military presidents. To this day people are still debating the coup (some even denying that there was a coup), much because the victims and perpetrators are still commanding the debate. In light of that, I’d like to offer some thoughts about 1964 here.

In 1789, only thirteen years after the American Revolution, a small group of Brazilian discontents planned an independent attempt in the region of Minas Gerais. The movement failed miserably, leaving one infamous victim, Tiradentes, who would much later be considered the patron of Brazilian independence. In the following years Brazil saw many other revolts and independence attempts, but in 1808 a significant change of events took over the country: instead of fighting in Europe a war against Napoleon he believed he could not win, Dom João VI, the Portuguese prince-regent, decided to move his capital from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro. However, some years later Dom João had to choose between staying in Brazil or losing his crown. He decided to go back to Portugal. His son, Dom Pedro I, remained in Brazil as a new prince-regent. Legend has it that, when embarking back to Europe, João turned to Pedro and said, “make the independence of this country before someone else does.”

And he did: on September 7, 1822, Dom Pedro I proclaimed Brazil’s independence and became the country’s first emperor. His son, Dom Pedro II, would succeed him in 1840 and rule until 1889 when the monarchy was overthrown, and the republic established. Now, just imagine if the king or prince of England or Spain proclaimed himself emperor of America. Well, that’s what happened in Brazil. It seems to me that people forget how absurd this scenario really was.

Fast-forward: Dom Pedro I followed his father’s steps in 1831. He had to choose between staying in Brazil or jeopardizing his family’s position in Europe. He went back to Portugal but left his son to become emperor in Brazil. Because Dom Pedro II was still only four years old, that wouldn’t happen until almost a decade later. And so, the 1830s were a very turmoiled time in Brazilian history. The country was ruled by several regents and was about to be torn apart. This favored speeding up Dom Pedro II’s coronation. Although he was only 14 years old, his rise to power helped to heal several wounds and bring a union to Brazil. The country’s subsequent history, at least until the proclamation of the republic in 1889, was lived under the shadow of the 1830s. To a high degree the Brazilian elites were afraid that without a strong central power, represented by the emperor, the country would fall apart, much like Hispanic America. On top of that, Brazilian economy was majorly dependent on African slaves, and the same elites were afraid that the Haitian Revolution of 1803 would be emulated in their country in the absence of a strong centralized government.

These are in my view the basics of Brazilian history in the 19th century. To prevent regional fragmentation (as in Hispanic America) or a slave revolution (as in Haiti) a very strong and centralized government was established. Liberal on the surface, but very far from that in reality. I don’t question that in the absence of this choice Brazilian history might have been quite different. However, I think that it is important to notice that Brazilian political history didn’t have a very democratic beginning.

As I already mentioned, the monarchy in Brazil ended in 1889. Dom Pedro II suffered a textbook coup d’état: some economic elites colluded with the military (mostly the army) and took over the power. The first forty years of Brazilian republic were notoriously oligarchic, ruled mostly by the coffee elites of the states of São Paulo and Minas Gerais. These elites, however, tasted their own medicine when, in 1930, Getúlio Vargas took over power by force. He would be the country’s dictator until 1945.

Vargas deserves special attention, both because of his long time in power and his enduring influence. On many occasions, he has been classified as a fascist, or something close to that. Populist is also a label that has been associated with him. I prefer to label him as “getulist”. To be sure, Vargas had some resemblance to fascists in Europe and populists in Latin America, but I understand that this is mainly so because all these governments share in their anti-liberalism, centralization of power and tendency to extreme violence.

Vargas peacefully stepped down from power in 1945, only to come back (democratically elected!) in 1951. He committed suicide in 1954. The whole period of 1945-1964 was lived under his shadow. Many tried to be his successor. Juscelino Kubitsheck, president from 1956 to 1961, began his political career as Vargas’ protégé and remained faithful to the mentor until Getúlio’s death. Leonel Brizola, governor of Rio Grande do Sul (1959-1963) – Vargas’ home state – also tried to continue Getúlio’s legacy. Even more so did Brizola’s brother in law, João Goulart, president from 1961 until the 1964 coup.

Even more than Juscelino Kubitsheck, João Goulart began his political career as a protégé of Getúlio Vargas, but never achieved the political brilliance of his mentor. Jango, as he was called, was not a communist by any means. Very much like Vargas, his ideology was a confused mix of positivism, laborism, populism and any other -isms. Very pragmatic. However, above all, Jango was a fool. He was unable to understand that the World had changed. What was successful for Vargas in the 1930s could not be reproduced in the 1960s. Because of that, amid the Cold War scenario he was mistaken for a communist by some. Others, more pointedly, realized that he was too oblivion to the communist threat Brazil was facing.

Communists had been trying to come to power in Brazil (rarely democratically) since the 1920s. The Cold War only intensified this threat. After the Cuban Revolution of 1959 many feared that Brazil would be the next domino to fall.

And this is in short, the scenario in which the military came to power in Brazil in 1964. As late Brazilian economist Roberto Campos very lucidly pointed, democracy was sadly not an option for Brazil in 1964. The country had to choose between a right-wing or a left-wing dictatorship. I believe they chose correctly. The communists took power in Cuba in 1959. They are still there. The military seized control in Brazil in 1964. They pacifically laid over power 21 years after and never tried to come back. I am not saying that a right-wing dictatorship is a good solution against leftism. Anyone who reads this here is reading his prejudices solely. What I am saying is that Brazil sadly has little democratic tradition and had even less 55 years ago. Therefore, we should not be surprised that the military took over power in 1964. Surprisingly would be if things happened in any other way. I don’t celebrate the military government of 1964-1985. Just the opposite: as with so many things in Brazilian history (or in life!) it is not something to celebrate. Just to accept and live with it.

Nightcap

Brandon Christensen Links , , ,
  1. The intellectual distrust of democracy Jacob Levy, Niskanen
  2. Leave John Locke in the dustbin of history John Quiggin, Jacobin
  3. In defense of neoliberalism William Easterly, Boston Review
  4. The predated mind (our animal origins) Nick Nielsen, Grand Strategy Annex

Brazil’s sole openly gay congressman leaves the country after death threats?

Bruno Gonçalves Rosi Current Events, Politics , , , , , , , , ,

According to The Guardian and other online sources in English, Jean Wyllys, “Brazil’s first and only openly gay congressman” left the country after death threats. But is that so? Running a great risk (or certainty) of being called homophobic, fascist, racist, taxidermist, guitarist, etc., I’m gonna give some information that The Guardian and other sources neglect.

First of all, Mr. Wyllys is not “Brazil’s first and only openly gay congressman.” He was preceded by at least one other “openly gay congressman,” Clodovil Hernandes (1937-2009). Mr. Hernandes was elected for Congress in 2006 and before that was for several decades a respected (although sometimes controversial) fashion designer and television presenter. Mr. Hernandes was always open about his sexuality and while in Congress had good relations with Jair Bolsonaro, frequently accused of homophobia by Brazilian and international media – including The Guardian.

But coming back to Mr. Wyllys, he rose to fame after winning the Brazilian version of the of the Big Brother reality franchised television show in 2005. Following that, he ran for Congress in 2010 representing the Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL. Socialism and freedom – a contradiction in the very party’s name) but received only an average of 13,000 votes. His election was only possible, considering the number of votes he had, through the votes of another highly voted candidate of the same party. In 2014 he ran for reelection and this time, justice be done, received a great number of votes: almost 145,000 – more than enough to be elected by his own rights, although still way behind Jair Bolsonaro himself, who received 464,572 votes in the same election. However, in the last elections, Mr. Wyllys went back to electoral mediocrity, with meager 24,295 votes. Once again, as in 2010, he was benefited by his electoral law and party votes and got elected, despite being behind candidates who received way more.

After Bolsonaro was elected president in last October, many leftists in Brazil declared they were part of “The Resistance.” One of the mottos of this informal group was “nobody lets go of nobody’s hand.” There were many rumors on the internet saying that Mr. Wyllys would leave Brazil with Bolsonaro’s election. Answering these rumors he said, “the slogan of my campaign was resistance. For all those who spread fake news saying that I would leave Brazil, I am here and here I will stay.” However, Mr. Wyllys’ resistance didn’t last for a month. Just a few days before the swearing-in he released a note from overseas stating that he will not assume his position as a congressman in February and that he will also not return to Brazil due to alleged death threats. Mr. Wyllys didn’t present any proofs of the death threats he affirms is receiving.

Mr. Wyllys despicable 24,295 votes – and the downfall from his previous almost 145,000 – show that he is actually a minor figure in Brazilian politics. However, considering the cover given him by The Guardian and other media, one might think he is something else. One might think that his alleged death threats are a major threat to Brazilian democracy. But let’s consider some things that The Guardian and other media ignore:

Last September, during the presidential campaign, Jair Bolsonaro suffered a knife attack in Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais. Bolsonaro’s stabber, Adélio Bispo de Oliveira, was affiliated to PSOL – Mr. Wyllys’ political party – between 2007 and 2014. According to official records of Brazil’s House of Representatives, on the same day of the attack, Mr. Oliveira was in the House, in Brasília. Brasília and Juiz de Fora are almost 700 miles apart. Did somebody register his presence to create an alibi? Immediately after the attack, Mr. Oliveira was assisted by extremely expensive lawyers. The identity of who pays these lawyers is secret. If all these things don’t raise eyebrows, I don’t know what to do.

In 2016, during the voting for the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, Mr. Wyllys spit on Jair Bolsonaro. Mr. Wyllys spit was followed by a wave of leftists spitting on opponents as a sign of political resistance.

The case is still under investigation, but there is a lot of evidence that Fernando Holiday, a black and gay city councilor for São Paulo, suffered a murder attempt last December. Evidence also suggests that this was a political crime, for Holiday defends a controversial social security reform. But I don’t see The Guardian celebrating that São Paulo, Brazil’s greatest city, has a young, black, and gay councilor or that worried that his life might be under threat. Maybe because Holiday defends free-market and conservative policies?

Joice Hasselmann, elected for Congress in 2018 elections, also claims she received death threats. The difference between Ms. Hasselmann and Mr. Wyllys is that she presented proofs: in late November a pig’s head with a death note was left on her residence’s door. The case is under investigation. A woman, elected for Congress of one of the world’s largest democracies is apparently receiving death threats, but the coverage by international media is minimum. Maybe because Ms. Hasselmann is conservative?

In sum, Brazil’s democracy is fragile indeed. A presidential candidate was stabbed. A counselor in the country’s largest city was the victim of a murder attempt. A congresswoman by the country’s most populous state receives death threats on her home. If Mr. Wyllys is indeed receiving death threats, he shouldn’t leave the country. He should honor his voters, despite how few they are, and most of all, he should cooperate with the police.

Venezuela: a nightmare coming to an end?

Bruno Gonçalves Rosi Current Events, Politics , , , , ,

Yesterday, January 23, Juan Guaidó, the head of Venezuela’s National Assembly, declared himself acting president of the country. Mr. Guaidó claims that the election that brought Nicolas Maduro to a second six-year term was not fair and that therefore Mr. Maduro is a “usurper” and the presidency is vacant. Donald Trump immediately recognized Guaidó as president and so did Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and the entire Lima Group (Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Guyana and Saint Lucia).

Venezuela does not have a very democratic history, but things began to deteriorate in 1999 when Hugo Chávez came to power as president. He ruled the country until his death in 2013 and was succeeded by his vice-president Nicolas Maduro. Initially, Chávez didn’t look so bad, but he became increasingly more dictatorial through his government.

Hugo Chávez was the first president linked to Foro de São Paulo to come to power. He was succeeded by Lula da Silva in Brazil, Evo Morales in Bolivia, and many others. Foro de São Paulo (or São Paulo Forum) is a conference of leftist political parties and other organizations from Latin America and the Caribbean launched by the Brazilian Workers’ Party (PT) in 1990 in the city of São Paulo. The aim of the Foro was to build mutual support between these organizations, especially considering the collapse of the Soviet Union.

It can be said that Foro de São was exceedingly successful for a while. At one point in the 2000s, a great part of Latin America was ruled by politicians connected to it. However, the problem with socialism, as Margaret Thatcher once said, is that “eventually you run out of other people’s money.” PT’s rule in Brazil began to fall in 2013 when a great number of Brazilians started protesting against Dilma Rousseff’s government. Dilma was impeached in 2016, and her predecessor and mentor Lula da Silva was jailed in 2018 by Operation Carwash. Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s new president, is a fierce anti-communist. His election also marks a turn of events not only in Brazil but in the whole in Latin America. Maduro can no longer count on the support he received from Brazil, the continent’s greatest economy.

With money running out and corruption escalating, the decline of socialism in Latin America is just a matter of time, just as it was in Europe. Wind of Change.

The Yellow Vests: Update

Jacques Delacroix Current Events , , , , ,

In the ninth weekend of demonstrations, the politics of envy seem to dominate. (Soak the rich again!) The Government must give us more money. Lower some taxes but impose or re-impose others especially the former tax on wealth.

Far behind: Introduce a degree of popular initiative in the political process: allow groups of citizens to initiate legislation, to implement it, and to abrogate it.

I can’t tell if those who want more money are the same as those who demand popular initiative in legislation. It’s a problem with grass root movements. They make attribution difficult.

Pres. Macron’s response is all over the place. It sounds like the work of an old man although the pres. is only 41. I think I know why this is: Nearly all the past thirty presidents and prime ministers are graduates from the one same school. Maybe they just crib the class notes of their predecessors.

Notably, Mr Macron’s response – contained in an open letter – to the nation includes more “save the Planet” proposals as if he had forgotten that an environmentalist tax set the barrels of powder on fire to begin with. Little chance he will be heard by the Yellow Vests although his open letter may serve to rally the main part of the population around him as the lesser of several evils.

Notably, the president, on his own, mentioned the possibility of limiting immigration although that’s not high in any of the Yellow Vests demands. Curious.

The president’s proposed themes are supposed to be debated widely and on a national scale. They are expected to give rise to suggestions on how to govern France. The suggestions will be collected at the municipal level (a good idea; the French like their mayors) in complaint books called “cahiers de doléances.” The latter sounds to me like a very bad idea. The last time those words were used on a large scale, was around 1788-89. The ruling circles lost their heads soon afterwards. (I mean literally.)

Keep things in perspective: If you add all the demonstrators nationally in every town any Saturday, you arrive at a very small number although it’s made up of persistent people . They are persistent because they represent a large minority facing serious, possibly unsolvable problems. Many ordinary French people have grown weary of the disruptions the Yellow Vests have caused. There is also huge revulsion against the acts of violence that accompany Yellow Vests demonstrations (not necessarily their own acts).

Cool heads counsel the president to dissolve the National Assembly and to call for new elections. Supposedly, this would bring up elected representatives more in tune with the people’s mood. My own guess is that new elections would result in the isolation of the Yellow Vests and bring an end to their movements. Just guessing.

Did I forget anything?

Eroding norms and political transformation: A new chance for liberty?

Alexander Albrecht Current Events, Law, Liberty , , , , , , , , ,

The Hammelsprung

Usually, the debates in Germany’s highest political body – The Bundestag – right before Christmas are not that exciting for the public. Parliamentarians are exhausted from long nights and intense discussions from the past weeks. But on Friday the 14th December, the last scheduled plenary session this year, something remarkable happened in the Bundestag, symbolically standing for the erosion of political norms, which democracies experience for a few years. The topics this day were not too fascinating – they discussed how to make the country more appealing to top-level researchers and if fixed book prices should be abolished. Not trifling, but nothing too crucial either.

But around noon the right-wing party AfD decided to initiate a Hammelsprung. The Hammelsprung is a control mechanism to ensure two crucial things.

First, it can be used to achieve absolute clearness of a voting result. Since the counting of votes mostly takes place via counting hands, a Hammelsprung can help to bring about a final decision in close polls. The process is relatively old-fashioned and quite funny in my opinion: The parliamentarians have to get out of the plenary hall first and then reenter through doors labeled “Yes,” “No,” and “Abstention” while an official counts these votes loudly.

Second, it is a tool to assure that crucial decisions of the parliament are made by a majority of the parliamentarians. If a parliamentary group has doubts that more than half of the parliament’s members are present to an assembly, it can propose a Hammelsprung to determine the exact amount of parliamentarians present. If there are less than half of the parliamentarians present, the parliament does not have a quorum and thus the parliamentary session gets canceled.

How the parliament works

At this point, it is important to mention that the German parliament is a working parliament rather than a debating one (such as the British house of commons). Hence, most of the parliamentary work takes place in exclusive committees. These committees consist of members from each party and are all dedicated to certain political topics such as defense policy, health policy and so on and so forth. Parties look for alliances to back up their policy proposals within these committees. Thus, the majority ratios regarding political proposals are played out not in the big parliamentary debates, but in rather small expert working groups. So one can expect that what gets resolved within a committee, gets resolved in the parliament as well.

These committees meet simultaneously to the parliamentary debates. On top, a parliamentarian has to inform himself, manage his team, be present in his election district and many more things. So it is impossible for him to be present in every parliamentary session. So over the years the norm established, that not every member of parliament need to be physically present during the parliamentary session, but only the experts in the certain relevant subject. During their election campaign, the AfD aggressively attacked this particular norm by labeling parliamentarians of established parties as “lazy” and “self-indulgent”, referring to the many empty seats during parliamentary debates.

A battle against norms and the establishment

The AfD used the Hammelsprung on Friday the 14th December in the second meaning mentioned above: To enforce a cancellation of the parliamentary session regarding the acquisition of top-level researchers. This was not a topic related move to ensure the necessary quota, it was rather yet another milestone in the ongoing battle against existing norms. We can say this for certain because AfD didn’t even re-enter the hall: they purposely stayed outside in order to enforce a cancellation of the session. Alexander Gauland, the party whip of the AfD, explained that they wanted to show that the AfD wants to give the government a “hard time” and added: “He that will not hear must feel.” This can be seen as an act of revenge against the parliament because the AfD’s candidate for the vice presidency of the Bundestag failed to get elected a second time in a row. Contrary to their expectations, enough parliamentarians somehow made their way quickly enough into the parliament to reach the quota necessary to proceed with the debate.

How norms foster social cohesion

But the danger remains: There are several tools populist parties (right or left wing) can use to impede effective governing within a perfectly legal framework. This development is not at all a specifically German one. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt provide an in-depth description of the erosion of norms in the American political system in their book How Democracies Die. According to their theory, functioning democracies do not only rely on a thought-out constitution and functioning political organs but also on shared norms. The most important norms for Ziblatt & Levitsky are mutual tolerance and forbearance.

Mutual tolerance describes the recognition of the political enemy as an opposed actor instead as an existential threat to the country. Contrary, forbearance means to restrain the urge of using every legal means to achieve a political end.

It is certainly not too difficult to quantify the erosion of these two norms in America, specifically when one pays closer attention to the skyrocketing amount of “filibustering” in the Congress or, as seen recently, to the increasing times of governmental shutdowns caused by a lack of agreement between Republicans and Democrats over the federal budget. We can see the effects of this abandonment of norms on a daily basis: The more hostile political environment, the lack of respect for other political opinions, the increasing difficulties for finding a compromise between parties. The political opposition is on the verge of drifting away from constructive criticism towards impeding the government in every possible way.

A liberal response?

In my opinion, there are two ways to react to this threat.

First, we could change the rules of the game and narrow the legal framework for processes which can be used to impede effective governing such as filibustering and the Hammelsprung. I do not think that this is the right way to counteract populist parties (or tendencies more generally). These processes exist for a good reason. But they hinge on the observance of forbearance. There was no extensive problem of filibustering in the Roosevelt, Truman, or Wilson administrations, although their policies were also quite controversial. The problem is not the rules themselves, but the lack of shared norms for a solid foundation to put them to good use. Furthermore, changing the rules would only foster the thought that a perfect constitution is somehow reachable. And here I see the danger, that we might jeopardize the status of the law as a neutral guardrail for society and it instead becomes an arbitrary mean to achieve political ends, as Frederic Bastiat describes in his work The Law.

The second option is to adjust our own behavior to the changing circumstances brought by the new populist players one the pitch. Therefore the established political actors need to carefully reevaluate the importance of certain norms and if necessary transform them. Of course, this is not as easy as said: It presupposes a willingness to cooperate among established actors (which is nothing to take for granted in today’s times) as well as a vigilant public, which backs up those norms. Additionally, norms do not emerge from scratch. They are rather the result of a slow change in the mutual understanding of social human interaction.

What the future will bring

The AfD already has announced that they want to continue to use every legal (and in some cases illegal) way to make it harder to govern the country, which is their way to battle the establishment. Whereas the established parties tried various strategies to cope with this right-wing populist party ranging from ignoring to direct confrontation. Still, nobody knows exactly how to deal with these new political circumstances. But what is for certain is the political landscape is further going to change; and thus also politicians and parties will need new strategies, structures, and norms.

Although this development is mostly seen as the road to a gloomy and authoritarian future, I believe (or at least I hope) that democratic parties will find new ways to counter right and left wing populist proposals. Instead of trying to engineer our legal framework to preclude populist from polls, politicians should focus on giving scope for spontaneous order and new alliances. This process is incredibly exciting to me. As Steve Davies describes it, we are currently witnessing a “great realignment” of party structures in Europe. And where old structures break up, there is room for new ones. European liberal party leaders (carried by the Axis of Linder – Rutte – Macron) are still looking for their place in this new power vacuum. Nobody can predict where this development will lead us. That is why we must proceed to fight for our liberty: inside and outside of political party structures.

The real threat to democracy in Brazil

Bruno Gonçalves Rosi Current Events, Law , , , , , ,

Earlier this week, Ricardo Lewandowski, a judge in Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court, was in a commercial flight. The passenger sitting next to him turned to the judge and said: “I am ashamed of Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court”. Lewandowski’s reaction was to threaten the passenger with jail. He turned to him and said, “tell me, do you want to go to jail?”  The passenger was indeed stopped by the police at the destination, but released right after. The video of the exchange is easily found on Youtube.

Lewandowski came to the Supreme Court appointed by former president Lula da Silva, today serving time in jail for corruption and still indicted for several crimes. He has been criticized several times for favoring Lula and his party.

I wonder if the press, that complains so much about Jair Bolsonaro being a threat to democracy in Brazil, will have the same treatment for Lewandowski. When you cannot criticize in public a public server or a public institution without being stopped by the police, democracy is no longer in place.

Since the 19th-century Brazilian judges and magistrates believe they are above the law. It is just a sad fact in Brazilian history. The challenge for Brazil is to show people like Lewandowski that they are just humans, open to criticism, like everybody else.

Legal Immigration Into the United States (Part 19): How to Go About It

Jacques Delacroix Culture, Current Events , , , , , , , ,

Admitting immigrants legally for the benefit of American society need not be bureaucratically demanding. The existing H-1B visa program could fairly easily be turned into a merit system. It would require only minor tweaking. The main tweak would be to forbid or, at least, to restrict severely employers’ reliance on labor contractors through which most of the abuses occur, I believe. (See, for example, the infamous Disney case, described below.) Let each employer applying for such visas be squarely on record as vouching for the individual beneficiaries’ quality.

Following the example of Canada, some degree of priority could be assigned to obvious contributions to successful adaptation to American society, beginning with knowledge of English. (This might actually require a new law making English the official language of the US.) I listed above other examples of immigrants features that might be scored positively. Note again that avoiding the drawbacks of a completely relative-based system does not necessarily imply the rejection of the simple idea that having relatives in the country often facilitates adjustment. Within the framework of a H-1B-type point system, some degree of preference could be assigned to the fact that the beneficiary has relatives in the US close to where he will first settle. This would not be family re-unification under a different guise because family relations would be subordinate to work capabilities and other features facilitating adaptation.

The next necessary tweak has to do with the fact that the H-1B program has a bad reputation among the unemployed and  the uncertainly employed. So, in 2016, the Walt Disney company was sued, famously for having American workers train their F-1B visa replacements before they were laid off. The suit was dismissed by reason of what I think was a big loophole in the protective measures in favor of American workers in connection with the H-1B program. No one denied that Disney had done what it was accused to have done. Many believe furiously that the program actively discriminates against American workers and keeps their wages low. To make it more acceptable, the existing H-1B safeguards against noxious practices undermining the employment of the American-born and of legal resident immigrants would have to be widely publicized and remedies against abuses would have to be made judicially more accessible than they are now.

The American public would also have to be ready for the predictable consequences of merit policies in terms of culture and in terms of politics. The merit-based program I envisage would result quickly in a large increase in Indian immigration. Although Indians have been very good immigrants by most counts, there might be objections because nearly all of them seem to suck some form of leftism or other with their mother’s milk. In addition, and although India is often celebrated as the “world largest democracy,” there is some question about educated Indians’ attachment to the constituent forms of historically Western democracy, specifically. (I am a small-time expert on this because I read items in and through the Indian press and because I have Indian relatives. They are a tiny biased sample, of course but also an informational gateway of sorts. See also India-born commentator Jayant Bhandari in the October 5 2017 issue of Acting Man: “Canada: Risks of a Parliamentary Democracy.”)

This problem and others like it could be mitigated by placing a numerical ceiling on the total number of immigrants from any one country. I predict informally that this particular problem would turn out to be limited because, once the gates of legal immigration opened for real, there would be a sharp increase in applications from European countries with democratic systems similar to ours. This too would have consequences: As I have pointed out, by and large Europeans are not shy about using any form of welfare, broadly defined, including unemployment benefits. I note shyly that placing a ceiling on the contribution of any one nation-state to US immigration would seem “fair” to liberal opinion, making the whole project more acceptable than would otherwise be the case.

Incidentally, a reasonable merit-based system, aimed as it would at foreigners of some competence, might produce additional revenue to help defray both the cost of better enforcement of immigration laws, and the cost of caring for people admitted on altruistic grounds.

[Editor’s note: in case you missed it, here is Part 18]

Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy

Mark Koyama History, Links , , , , , , ,

Understanding how political parties function is an area where recent research in political science has contributed major insights. Political parties are a fairly recent phenomenon. Prior to the 19th century, there were factions and loose groupings – the Optimates and Populares in Republican Rome, Tories and Whigs in late 17th century England, and Girondins and Jacobins in the French Revolution – but not organized parties. They were looser groupings that centered around dominant individuals – a Marius or Sulla, a Lord Shaftsbury, or a Brissot or Robespierre; but not parties with structured platforms and a deep well of local support.

I recently reviewed Daniel Ziblatt‘s recent book Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy for the Journal of Economic History (gated and ungated). Ziblatt provides new insights into the key role played by conservative parties in the formation and stabilization of democracy in Western Europe. Ziblatt’s thesis is that where conservative parties were able to become entrenched and organized political forces, the prospects for liberal democracy were fairly good. But where conservative parties remained weak, democracy was likely to remain poorly institutionalized. Under these circumstances, elites simply had too much to lose from acquiescing in universal suffrage.

Ziblatt contrasts the fate of England where a popular conservative party did take on solid roots in the late 19th century with that of Germany. As I write in my review:

“The central insight Ziblatt emphasizes throughout is game theoretic: the absence of a party to organize around meant that economic elites lacked the ability to strategically defend their interests and hence became willing to ally with any forces that might help them protect their property. While in Britain, the well-institutionalized Parliamentary Conservative party moderated and sidelined the more reactionary and xenophobic elements in British life, the absence of such a strong party meant that in Germany, the right tended towards antisemitism and other forms of extremism . . . “

“. .  . Stable and lasting democratization required “buy-in” from old regime elites and this buy-in can only occur if there are institutional mechanisms in place that are capable of assuaging their fears and moderating the influence of extremists. In late 19th and early 20th century Europe, strong professional conservative parties served this purpose. In the absence of such a party the transition to democracy will likely be temporary and unstable.”

Do read the full review.

Liberalism, Democracy, and Polarization

Edwin van de Haar Current Events, Liberty, Politics , , , , , , , , ,

Is polarization a threat to democracy and what is the liberal position on this?

As I pointed out in Degrees of Freedom, most liberals have a preference for democracy. Modern-day democracy – with universal suffrage, a representative parliament, and elected officials – has been developed over the course of the twentieth century. The idea has its roots in antiquity, the Italian city states of the Renaissance, and several forms for shared political decision-making in Scandinavia, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and England. Democracy is not a liberal “invention,” but the term ‘liberal democracy’ has taken firm root. This is true because modern democracy is based on liberal ideas, such as the principle of “one man, one vote,” protection of the classical rights of man, peaceful change of political leadership, and other rules that characterize the constitutional state.

Remarkably, the majority of liberals embraced the idea of democracy only late in the nineteenth century. They also saw dangers of majority decision making to individual liberty, as Alexis de Tocqueville famously pointed out in Democracy in America. Still, to liberals democracy is better than alternatives, such as autocracy or absolute monarchy. This is not unlike Sir Winston Churchill’s quip “it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government, except all the others that have been tried.” Yet there is a bit more to it for liberals. It is has proven to be a method that provides a decent, if imperfect, guarantee for the protection of individual freedom and the peaceful change of government.

Of course there is ample room for discussion inside and beyond academia about numerous different issues, such as the proper rules of democracy, different forms of democracy, the role of constitutions in democracy, whether referenda are a threat or a useful addition to representative democratic government, the roles of parties, party systems, and political leaders, et cetera. These are not the topic here.

In the context of the election of President Trump, but also before that, both inside and outside the US, there is a wide debate on the alleged polarization in society. By this is meant the hardening of standpoints of (often) two large opposing groups in society, who do not want to cooperate to solve the issues of the day, but instead do everything they can to oppose the other side. Consensus seeking is a swear word for those polarized groups, and a sign of weakness.

There appears less consensus on a number of issues now than in the past. Yet this is a questionable assumption. In the US it has been going on for a long time now, certainly in the ethical and immaterial area, think about abortion, the role of the church in society, or freedom of speech of radical groups. Yet most (Western) societies have been polarized in the past along other lines, like the socialist-liberal divide, the liberalization of societies in the 1960s and 1970s, or more recent debates about Islam and integration. Current commentators claim something radically different is going on today. But I doubt it, it seems just a lack of historical awareness on their side. I can’t wait for some decent academic research into this, including historical comparisons.

As a side note: a different but far more problematic example of polarization is gerrymandering (changing the borders of legislative districts to favour a certain party). This has been going on for decades and can be seen as using legal procedures to rob people not of their actual voting rights, but of their meaningful voting rights. Curiously, this does not figure prominently in the current debates…

The (classical) liberal position on polarization is simple. Fighting for, or opposing a certain viewpoint, is just a matter of individual right to free speech. This also includes using law and legislation, existing procedures, et cetera. The most important thing is that in the act of polarizing there cannot be a threat to another person’s individual liberty, including the classical rights to life, free speech, and free association, among others. Of course, not all is black and white, but on the whole, if these rules are respected I fail to see how polarization is threat to democracy, or why polarization cannot be aligned with liberalism.

Nightcap

Brandon Christensen Links , , ,
  1. Soccer, communists, fascists, and Yugoslavia Richard Mills (interview), Jacobin
  2. Over- and under-reactions in politics Chris Dillow, Stumbling & Mumbling
  3. How a controversial non-violent movement has transformed the Israeli-Palestinian debate Nathan Thrall, Guardian
  4. Sovereignty, confusion, and the international order Nick Danforth, War on the Rocks

Courts as Modern Civic Churches?

Shree Agnihotri Current Events, Law, Religion , , , , , , ,

India is in the middle of an anachronistic power tussle. Watching The Tudors right when the Indian Supreme Court is hearing submissions in the Sabrimala case placed before me an interesting hypothesis – the King v Church tug of war is replicating itself, albeit democratically, in the controversy surrounding the Essential Practices Test.

First introduced in the Shirur Mutt case (1954 AIR 282), the doctrine provides for a test that would make state interference justified under a Constitution that gives to her citizens (Article 25), the freedom to practice and profess their religion, and to religious denominations (Article 26), the right to manage affairs and administer properties, both being subject to restrictions on public order, morality, and health. Essentially, the test gives the Court the power to determine what constitutes “essential to the practice of the religion” and holds that everything non-essential is subject to legislative action by the State.

A number of scholars (Gautam Bhatia, Shreya Atrey) have commented on the un/desirability of the consequences of such a test. The clearest of them all comes from Jacobsohn who characterizes the test as an attempt to internally reform the religion by allowing the judges to “re-characterize the religion in a more progressive light”.

What has given these objections much weight is the support Justice Chandrachud has lent to the skepticism of judicial discretion bestowed by the doctrine. He questions the ecclesiastical function of the court and proposes to use constitutional morality as the one stop test for determining the constitutionality of a religious practice, instead of going the long way of finding the non-essential elements that may be subjected to progressive restraints. This adherence to the constitutional word is consistent with the treatment of the constitution as the new-age charter of a civic religion, a notion oft repeated and celebrated in India.

King Henry VIII’s ostensible zeal for reform came out of his hatred for papal supremacy. Divine rights of the Kings placed the King directly under God, and God alone. He would then become the supreme mortal in terms of matters relating to governance and spirituality. The Indian courts do not wish to claim any such supremacy over spiritual matters (yet). What they seek to do is social reform – a venerable objective behind the framing of the Indian constitution. In that, they seek to be not just interpreters and guardians of the constitution, but active participants of change in realizing the aims of the constitution.

But one must question this insistence that in religion, like with the legislation, there is an umbra and a penumbra and that the latter is so hierarchy placed that it may be interfered upon, whereas the umbra is so essential that it may not be touched. What is religion but not faith? And what is faith but not a collection of beliefs organically coalesced to create charters that may look different for each generation? Is it not possible that a religion undergo change so as to value a tenet A over B within a span of decades? Is it also not possible that A and B exist simultaneously without harming the essentiality of each other, howsoever inconsistent they might seem to an educated rational mind? Since when has religion been the epitome of moral consistency?

Much can be said on the justifiability of this aspiration. Much more can be said of the legitimacy of the court’s position on such matters. Democratically speaking, ridding a society of its ills is more likely to give positive results if it comes from a joined political action rather than from a bench of judges who, in all their wisdom, are not privy to a large section of the society. Of course, the Indian supreme court has “grounded itself” (a phrased used by Dr. Rajeev Dhavan) and has acquired the kind of legitimacy that demands respectful obedience from its supporters. And this has been primarily because of the non-traditional use of judicial description for activism against a falling parliament often mired in political games to care much about the legal and policy lacunae deserving attention.

Sabrimala is an especially thorny issue, not just because the judges must conclusively decide the path the judiciary wishes to take with respect to social reform but also because they can either be the ecclesiastical court and inform the citizens of the immorality (grounded in the constitution, no doubt but then looking at the vastness of the Indian constitution, it can probably accommodate all moral philosophers barring Peter Singer) of their actions or they can let arguably unethical practices live, giving individual liberty the space that separation of church and state demands.

Turkey at the start of one-man rule

Barry Stocker Current Events, Economics, Liberty, Politics , , , , , , , ,

1. Yesterday (Monday) Recep Tayyıp Erdoğan took office under the system of executive presidency, which gives him arbitrary personalised powers, based on the claim that a system of such extreme powers for one person is the most democratic system if that person is elected. The changes came about as the result of a referendum last year, which gave a narrow victory for the constitutional changes. It seems to me, and many others, that rigging allowed victory in the election. For the first time in Turkey, all ballot papers unstamped by an electoral officer were counted, allowing unlimited fraud. There are other issues about intimidation and irregularities, but this is not the moment to go into further detail, but I will just point out that radical changes to the constitution were ‘legitimised’ by pseudo-democratic fraud.

2. The constitutional changes enable the President to: legislate by decree, appoint most Constitutional court judges, appoint the army chiefs, appoint police chiefs, appoint all higher level members of the bureaucracy, appoint government ministers and vice-presidents without reference to the National Assembly. There is no Prime Minister. The President, Vice-Presidents, and Ministers are not obliged to answer questions in the National Assembly. In principle the National Assembly can reverse decrees as laws, but to allow the President to legislate in such an unaccountable way in the first place undermines all understanding of what a national assembly is for and what the limits on the head of government or head of state (now the same person) should be in a state which is constitutional and democratic.

3. Ministerial appointments have most notably included the elevation of Erdoğan’s son-in-law, Berat Albayrak, to the Ministry of Treasury and Finance. Albayrak is a major businessman whose rise in business and then politics have taken place since Erdoğan became the most powerful man in Turkey in 2002.

4. Other appointments have given business people ministerial posts for areas of the economy in which they have a dominant market position. Erdoğan’s own family doctor who owns a medical business is health minister. The education minister owns a private college.

5. The appointments of business people and a son-in-law show carelessness about propriety in the separation of the administration of public affairs from private and family interests, to put it in the mildest way possible. It also suggests that Erdoğan thinks he is too big for the party which brought him to power, AKP. It has been clear for some time that the most powerful people in the AKP are this son-in-law and one of the sons. That is, the AKP exists as a vehicle of one family, and its businesses associates. In this case, it is hardly a properly functioning democratic party.

6. The appointments were preceded by a presidential decree on the appointment of the governor and vice-governors of the central bank, which reduces its autonomy and makes it more vulnerable to Presidential pressure. Erdoğan has clearly been struggling to live with central bank decisions to raise interest rates in response to inflation and the falling value of the Turkish Lira. Anyway, the currency lost 20% of its value and inflation is at nearly 16% though the central bank’s target is 5%.

7. Market confidence in Turkey, even of a very minimal kind, was resting on one man, Mehmet Şimşek, who has western training in economics and is the last remnant of the days when the AKP appeared to many to be a centre-right reformist party, and did manage to behave in part like such a party. Şimşek appears to have been increasingly unhappy with his situation, putting a rational face on polices he knows are going in the wrong direction, occasionally winning battles to raise interest rates. One of Erdoğan’s main obsessions is that interest creates inflation. He has found it necessary to curtail that belief on occasions. Şimşek apparently wanted to resign from government recently, but no one ‘betrays’ Erdoğan in that way. Şimşek was bullied into staying and has now been sacked. His replacement is Erdoğan’s son-in- law. The markets have been spooked and the lira fell very sharply yesterday evening.

8. The Erdoğanists do have a solution to lack of international market confidence in Turkey. It is to create a Turkish ratings authority which will rate Turkish government credit as the government wishes! This absurd proposal, which will only reduce the credibility of the lira and government debt, shows the depths to which economic policy run on political paranoia has sunk in Turkey. Political paranoia because low credit ratings are due to foreign conspiracies!

9. Going back to last month’s election, about 2% of ballots cast have been declared invalid by the Supreme Electoral Council. HDP (Kurdish rights and leftist party) has pointed out that most ‘invalid’ ballots are from polling stations where it did not have observers. The HDP is defined as ‘terrorist’ by the followers of Erdoğan and its presidential candidate is in prison on ‘terrorism’ charges. This is all based not on credible evidence of co-operation with the PKK, which does have common roots with HDP, but on absurdly broad definitions of terrorism which take in people who do not oppose the PKK enough or which offer any criticism of state policy towards the PKK.

10. Based on point 9, it looks very much like 2% of votes cast were spoiled to take votes from the HDP. It hardly seems likely that would be the limit of fraud. As mentioned in point 1, all ballots were counted which did not have the basic security guarantee of a stamp from an electoral official on the ballot itself or the envelope containing the ballot. It is inherently difficult to arrive at accurate figures in this matter, but it looks very much like at least 4% of the ballot was fixed (that would merely double the most obvious form of rigging, which I do not think is an extravagant assumption, after all most rigging will take place in very hidden ways). If I am correct then the pro-Erdoğan electoral list for the National Assembly did not get a majority of votes and Erdoğan did not get a majority of votes in the presidential election.

11. The government-state machine extends claims that the HDP is terrorist to the main opposition party, CHP, on the grounds that the CHP has offered some criticisms of the detention of the HDP presidential candidate, and that some CHP supporters voted HDP to help it overcome fraud and reach the 10% of votes necessary to enter the National Assembly. CHP provincial leaders have been banned from attending the funerals of soldiers killed by the PKK, soldiers who in some cases will be CHP supporters, showing the kind of spite, vengefulness, and abuse of state power driving the AKP.

12. The Istanbul municipal government has announced that public transport will be ‘only’ half price during next month’s Kurban Bayram (Sacrifice Festival; religious festival and public holiday) instead of free as has been normal for a long time. This shows the strains that public finances are under in Turkey. The AKP are specialists in providing ‘free’ benefits to electors, along with favours for individuals and families, building up a base in local government in this way before they came to power nationally. The Istanbul news is a small thing in itself, but is suggestive of a decline in the capacity of the AKP to use public money to buy votes.

13. Given increasing personal indebtedness, rising inflation, the falling value of the currency, the decline of foreign investment and the credibility of government debt instruments, we could see some very difficult economic times in Turkey. It is clear that this process was important in holding the recent election 18 months early. The loyalty of the AKP and Erdoğanist base is intense, but was formed at a time of economic growth and expanding public services. We see going to see what happens to loyalty in less happy circumstances.

Nightcap

Brandon Christensen Links , , ,
  1. Neo- and other liberalisms David Glasner, Uneasy Money
  2. How neoliberalism seeks to limit the power of democracies Patrick Iber, New Republic
  3. The Unacknowledged Success of Neoliberalism Scott Sumner, Econlib
  4. From oligarchy to republic: Lessons from the American South James H. Read, Law & Liberty

Israelis Kill Unarmed Palestinians in Gaza

Jacques Delacroix Current Events , , , , ,

The Israeli Defense Force is killing unarmed demonstrators in Gaza. The Defense Force is on one side of the fence, the demonstrators on the other. What happened is that the ruling political party in Gaza, Hamas, sent the demonstrators to try and breach the fence separating Gaza from Israel. The declared purpose was to have Gaza Palestinians exercise their “right of return.” Hamas means the “right” of Palestinians to return where their forebears used to live, or maybe not, or nearby, etc, right inside present-day Israel. Of course, if Israel allowed this, Israelis might just as well start packing. It would be the end of the Jewish state that already has about 1.85 million Muslim and Christian Arab citizens. Both Palestinians and Israeli Arabs reproduce faster than Israeli Jews, by the way. (It’s the Jews’ fault, of course; they should get busy.) Hamas generously would allow Jews of Middle Eastern origin to remain as second-class, tribute-paying dhimmis. All the others, the majority, would have to leave quickly. Ethnic cleansing is the best scenario if Hamas wins, according to Hamas. The worst? Hamas does not say.

The mid-May 2018 demonstration was presented as a way to commemorate what Palestinians call “the disaster “– meaning the creation of Israel and the wholesale defeat the Arabs suffered in the war they had started against the new state. Initially, it had nothing to do with the inauguration of the new American Embassy in Jerusalem. It was mostly the Amerileft media that created a link with such devices as showing the inauguration in Jerusalem on a split screen with the rioting in Gaza. Many Americans, some of whom can’t place the US on a world map, would have believed that Palestinians were dying while the Americans and Israelis were gaily drinking champagne right next door.

The Israelis had warned early on that they would shoot demonstrators who tried to breach the fence separating Israel from Gaza. They did, killing about 70 Palestinians. That’s harsh but no one can call it unfair: They said it clearly: If you touch our fence, we will kill you. Don’t touch the fence, I would say. Little detour: the magazine Commentary pointed out that the Gaza authorities claim that 1600 Gazans were wounded by real bullets. What’s wrong here is the ratio of wounded to killed, 1600/70. It should be something like 1600/500 . It does not add up or else, the Israelis snipers are real bad at their job. Go figure!

Hamas thinks it’s winning because of the large number of unarmed demonstrators, its youths, wounded and killed. It’s been acting like this forever. Just a week ago, Gazans (who may have been Hamas agents or not) deliberately destroyed the valve to the main pipeline supplying Gaza with diesel fuel. The more misery ordinary residents of Gaza suffer, the happier the Hamas government is because Israeli atrocities give it standing among the ill-informed and mindless everywhere. I am tempted to feel sorry for Gazans myself because of the terrible government they live under. I can’t quite do this; below is why.

Hamas was elected in proper well observed elections. Although the Hamas government is well overdue for a new election, I would argue that the initial election makes Hamas one of the most legitimate governments in the Middle East. Hamas is explicitly an Islamist party. It does not think well of freedom of religion. It wants to impose sharia but does not feel strong enough yet. Hamas is in favor of polygamy. Young Gaza Palestinians are dying because of actions encouraged by their government, the Hamas government. Their parents properly elected that government. There has been no rebellion against it. The mass of the population seems loyal.

Hamas is insuring an aggravation of a situation in Gaza that is pretty much intolerable already. Israel left Gaza unilaterally 15 years ago but it maintains a partial blockade of the territory. It provides fuel and electricity and most of the water available, on its terms. It allows certain merchandise in but not others. Cement is limited, for example, I read in a source I can’t quote now but that I found credible at the time that Israeli Customs allow in milk and sugar but not instant coffee – which makes life more enjoyable. There is almost no work in Gaza, except working for the Hamas government. Nevertheless, no one there is starving because the territory is largely on welfare. Gaza has one of the highest educational achievement scores in the world although there is malnutrition there.

Gaza is a welfare non-state. It has no industry and very little else by way of earning its living. (That’s in part because of Israeli control over its borders, of course.) It’s an economic ward of the UN and secondarily of the European Union and of the USA. American Jews are thus among those supporting through their taxes riots where the main demand is “Death to the Jews!” The Leftmedia does not seem to be willing to mention, or it actually does not know, that the Israeli blockade of Gaza would be ineffective, almost useless, if Egypt did not join in. Yes, Egypt is also impeding the movement of goods, funds, and especially of people between itself and Gaza. And the PLO, which rules the West Bank, the other part of Palestine, has its own punitive measures against Gaza. Hamas is everyone’s favorite!

If you too feel revolted by the Israeli killings of Gaza demonstrators, and if you don’t think that righteous indignation is its own reward, I invite you to take two minutes to answer the following simple and sensible question:

Suppose you have a chance to advise the Israeli Prime Minister; suppose further that you have reason to believe that he will pay attention to you; what’s your advice to him regarding the present situation in Gaza (mid-May 2018)?

You can be sure that I have answered the question myself.

PS I am not Jewish, never have been, never will be. I am not a fundamentalist Christian either.