Power and Politics in Today’s World

Course site, by Ian Shapiro. Slides.

Lecture 2: From Soviet Communism to Russian Gangster Capitalism

Gorbichev’s tenure

Gorbichev was president for ’85 to ’91.

Gorbichev’s reforms

• Perestroika: Restructuring of the Soviet Economy.
• Glasnost: Free speech. More media companies, allowed to criticise the soviet union.

Coup of ’91

• Coup by senior Communist Party members.
• Gorbichev ousted.
• Yeltsin stood asgainst the coup.
• Military sided with Yeltsin.
• This was when the communist party fell, and power transitioned to the Russian Parliment.

Final days of Soviet Union

Berlin wall came down, several members suceeded, a failed coup attempt, and gain of power by the Russion Parliment.

Reasons for the fall of the SU

1. Unsustainable system: Command economy didn’t work.
2. Containment: West focussed on making sure the SU didn’t expand, so just had to wait for it to fall.
3. Investment in Afghanistan: SU didn’t want Islamic Fundamentalism to rise in its Asiatic constituents.

Why was collapse peaceful?

Exit, Voice, and Loyalty

Exit, voice (advocate for change), and loyalty (change it yourself): The three things you can do when a state/organisation starts to fail. Which one you select depends on the cost.

Reasons

• Beliefs of the elites: They didn’t believe in the public ideology of the communist party. Thus, no loyalty.
• Reduced costs of exit: E.g. Yeltsin becoming president of Russia.
• Reduced economic costs of exit: E.g. KGB had offshore accounts, theft of state assets, shorting the ruble.

Signs of a weak state

• Inability to tax: E.g. Russia didn’t have the capacity to check profits, so they taxed exports.
• Haphazard use of power: To discourage disobeying the state where they don’t have the capacity to enforce.

Reliance on oil

• Makes up ~40% of the government’s income.
• Leads to corruption: The only way to get rich is to have access to oil, those who control access can extract large bribes.
• No incentive to diversify: incumbents like it this way, Russia is too weak to extract taxes, geopolitical power as other states depend on Russia’s oil.

Lecture 3: Advent of a Unipolar World: NATO and EU Expansion

Three lenses on politics

Interests, institutions, and ideals.

Operation Desert Storm

US helping Kuwait against Iraq’s invasion. Went pretty well: was proportional & last resort.

UN

United Nations. Formed in 1945 with 51 members, now at 198. Largely peaceful.

NATO

North Atlantic Treaty Organisaton. Formed in 1949 with 12 members, now at 31. Most famous article is Article 5: If any NATO country is attacked, they act as if they have all been attacked.

Relationship between UN and NATO wrt. Article 5

Resolution of an Article 5 depends on the UN being able to assure stability.

Lecture 4: Fusing Capitalist Economics with Communist Politics: China and Vietnam

Tiannamen Square narrative

• Mao died in 1978.
• Criticism of government slowly allowed, student groups are active.
• Students lead protest in Tiannamen Square asking for reforms (mainly democracy).
• General belief that the gov wouldn’t attack its citizens.

Potential reasons for China & Vietnam’s success

• Late-mover advantage.
• Predominantly rural population: Don’t have to dismantle inefficient urban economies.
• Confucian: Value order.
• Education.
• Gradual change from communism to capitalism.
• Integration of gov and business (e.g. business leaders must members of the communist party).
• Lots of exports.
• Accountability for inefficiency/corruption.

How sustainable is China & Vietnam’s success?

• Growth is more complex for larger economies.
• Leadership is becoming more corrupt.
• Demands for higher wages.

Logics of modernization theory

• Richer people want freedoms / opportunities, so demand change.
• Poorer people ask for better pay.
• To maintain an army, you need to concede benefits to poorer people.

Washington Consensus

Wiki. Economic policy prescriptions for the “standard” of economic reform in developing countries. Tightly coupled with free market.

Lecture 5: The Resurgent Right in the West

Post-war welfare

Post-war, a lot of welfare was set up across Europe + US. Even in conservative govs, welfare state increased. Eventually attacked by Regan and other RW politicians in the late 70s/early 80s.

Median voter theorem & refutation

Median voter theorem: The median income is always less than the mean income. So politicians have an incentive to redistribute downwards.

But this view is too simplistic:

1. There are more dimensions to trade off against than just income. For example, you might capture the median voter if you offer less income redistribution but a stricter stance on immigration.
2. The population isn’t necessarily divided into two: You can capture the “median voter” (if that has a meaning anymore) if you target both the lower & upper classes, but not the middle class.

Lecture 7: Shifting Goalposts: The Anti-Tax Movement

Proposition 13

Vote for cutting property taxes in California in ’78. Won by a landslide.

Narrative: Referendum politics wrt. Brexit

Directly before and after Brexit the UK voted leave, they elected a remain government. This is because a referendum poses only a single question, limiting the scope of their decisions, leading to less consideration for downstream costs.

Estate tax

US voted to repeal the estate tax in ’01. This only helped the very rich, and the narrative provided is that this happened as result of:

• Unlikely coalition: Despite the Republicans having a minority, lots of people pressured into it, plus allegedly good for recently-rich African Americans, plus allegedly good for homosexual marriages.
• Single-issue politics.
• Was repealed in 10 years, so that it didn’t need a supermajority to pass.

Lecture 9: Money in Politics

Warren court

• Supreme Court that made a large number of progressive changes, e.g. Miranda warnings, interracial marriage.
• Earl Warren, chief justice of the court, was regrettably appointed by a conservative president.
• Outlier amongst common court votes.

Judicial review

We can create laws by passing legislation; or have some kind of judicial review where we take individual cases to some court (e.g. SC in US), and the law gets changed that way.

Effectiveness

Allegedly not effective (compared to not having judicial review at all).

First amendment & political spending

• First amendment says that we can’t limit lobbying for the gov to change laws
• One law limited donations & spending on political campaigns.
• Then, it was partially overturned: This violated first amendment, so they stopped capping how much people can spend on campaigns. But, they still capped how much people could donate - to avoid corruption.

Why is there so much money in US politics?

• Parties are weaker, and can’t choose the candidates, so all campaigning is retail (aka via the public).
• Election cycles are much longer, so more money can be soaked up.
• Money is seen as support for a candidate.

Issue with crowd funding

A potential solution to corp money, which funds extreme positions, is to use crowd funding. But people who give crowd funding typically hold extreme opinions.