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39641. Comparability of Effort in International Climate Policy Architecture

Author:
Joseph E. Aldy and William A. Pizer
Publication Date:
01-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
The comparability of domestic actions to mitigate global climate change has important implications for the stability, equity, and efficiency of international climate agreements. We examine a variety of metrics that could be used to evaluate countries' climate change mitigation effort and illustrate their potential application for large developed and developing countries. We also explain how transparent measures of the comparability of effort can contribute to the design of international and domestic climate change policy along several dimensions. For example, such measures can facilitate participation and compliance in an agreement if they can illustrate that all parties are doing their "fair share." Second, these measures can inform the bilateral linking of domestic cap-and-trade programs in a manner akin to how nations negotiate the lowering of trade barriers more generally in trade policy. Third, assessments of the comparability of effort can affect whether to implement and, if necessary, the stringency of unilateral border measures (e.g., a border tax). Finally, such assessments demonstrate the need for a well-functioning policy surveillance regime.
Political Geography:
Europe

39642. Can Negotiating a Uniform Carbon Price Help to Internalize the Global Warming Externality?

Author:
Martin L. Weitzman
Publication Date:
01-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
It is difficult to resolve the global warming free-rider externality problem by negotiating quantity targets. By contrast, negotiating a single binding minimum carbon price (the proceeds from which are domestically retained) counters self interest by incentivizing agents to internalize the externality. The model of this paper indicates an exact sense in which each agent's extra cost from a higher emissions price is counterbalanced by that agent's extra benefit from inducing all other agents to simultaneously lower their emissions. Some implications are discussed.
Topic:
Climate Change, Economics, Energy Policy, Industrial Policy, and International Cooperation
Political Geography:
Europe

39643. Balancing Without Containment: An American Strategy for Managing China

Author:
Ashley J. Tellis
Publication Date:
01-2014
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
China is poised to become a major strategic rival to the United States. Whether or not Beijing intends to challenge Washington's primacy, its economic boom and growing national ambitions make competition inevitable. And as China rises, American power will diminish in relative terms, threatening the foundations of the U.S.-backed global order that has engendered unprecedented prosperity worldwide. To avoid this costly outcome, Washington needs a novel strategy to balance China without containing it.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, Development, and Emerging Markets
Political Geography:
United States, China, America, Washington, Beijing, and Asia

39644. In the Crossfire: Islamists' Travails in Tunisia

Author:
Anouar Boukhars
Publication Date:
01-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
Tunisia is struggling with insecurity, social tensions, and ideological divisions three years after President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali was ousted during a popular uprising. But the country is making progress on the path to democracy. Islamist and secular politicians have struck a potentially landmark agreement that could get Tunisia's democratic transition back on track. To solidify gains and ensure that a successful Tunisian experiment reverberates across the Arab world, socioeconomic struggles that fuel protests and radicalism must be confronted.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Security, Democratization, and Treaties and Agreements
Political Geography:
Arabia, North Africa, and Tunisia

39645. Tehran Calling: Understanding a New Iranian Leadership

Author:
Cornelius Adebahr
Publication Date:
01-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
After years of tension, sanctions, and deadlocked negotiations, Hassan Rouhani, Iran's relatively moderate new president, has provided an opening for improved relations between the Islamic Republic and the West. While Rouhani has not ushered in a new Iran, Tehran has adopted a more conciliatory tone on its nuclear program since he took office. This shift is more than just talk, but the West will have to carefully calibrate its response to determine whether Rouhani's changed rhetoric signals the beginning of a new direction for Iran.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Islam, and Nuclear Weapons
Political Geography:
United States, Iran, and Middle East

39646. The Ethical Imperative of Curbing Corporate Tax Avoidance

Author:
David Scheffer
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
If the future of human rights is dependent on the capacity of the state to fulfill them, then one must focus on how the private sector interfaces with public values—an interface that directly affects how billions of people survive both economically and with dignity. During the last few years reports about multinational corporations shielding phenomenal profits from meaningful taxation have troubled governments and individual taxpayers alike. But there has been little effort to associate such tax avoidance schemes with corporate abdication of responsibility f or advancing critical societal goals. Instead, much of the ensuing debate has centered on how to tax corporate profits fairly and more efficiently. While the ideas being marketed in this area are enlightening, there has been less discussion about why corporate taxation is a worthy public goal or what corporations should do voluntarily. The linkage between corporate tax avoidance and “corporate social responsibility” (CSR) has not yet been clearly drawn, but the moment has arrived to bridge the gap. That task may necessitate changing, fundamentally, the ethical framework within which corporate officers, boards of directors, shareholders, tax advisers, and stakeholders in general operate.
Topic:
Human Rights

39647. Ad Fontes: The Question of Rebellion and Moral Tradition on the Use of Force

Author:
James Turner Johnson
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
"Stab, smite, slay!" These are not the words of Bashar al- Assad telling his forces how they should deal with the Syrian rebel movement, or indeed those of any other contemporary political leader, but rather the words of Martin Luther exhorting the German nobility to a harsh response to the peasants' rebellion of 1524–1525. His writings show that he sympathized with many of the peasants' grievances so long as these did not issue in rebellion, but when they turned to force of arms, he responded sternly. This was not a peculiarity of Luther. Consider the following from an English courtier, Thomas Churchyard, writing admiringly of the treatment of Irish rebels in 1579 by Sir Humphrey Gilbert, commander of the English army sent to put down the rebellion: "He further tooke this order infringeable, that when soever he made any ostyng [military campaign], or inrode, into the enemies Countrey, he killed manne, woman, and child, and spoiled, wasted, and burned, by the grounde all that he might, leavyng nothing of the enemies in saffetie, whiche he could possiblie waste, or consume."
Political Geography:
Germany and Syria

39648. Christian Just War Reasoning and Two Cases of Rebellion: Ireland 1916-1921 and Syria 2011-Present

Author:
Nigel Biggar
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
The contemporary West is biased in favor of rebellion. This is attributable in the first place to the dominance of liberal political philosophy, according to which it is the power of the state that always poses the greatest threat to human well-being. But it is also because of consequent anti-imperialism, according to which any nationalist rebellion against imperial power is assumed to be its own justification. Autonomy, whether of the individual or of the nation, is reckoned to be the value that trumps all others. I surmise that it is because in liberal consciousness the word “rebel” connotes a morally heroic stance—because it means the opposite of “tyrant”—that Western media in recent years have preferred to refer to Iraqi opponents of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and Taliban opponents of the ISAF in Afghanistan not as “rebels,” but as “insurgents.”
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, Iraq, Taliban, Syria, and Ireland

39649. Why We Need a Just Rebellion Theory

Author:
Valerie Morkevicius
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
The Arab Spring has generated a variety of responses from the West. While broad political support was voiced for uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen, the responses to protests in Bahrain and Morocco were muted. The swift decision to intervene in Libya stands in marked contrast to the ongoing hand-wringing on Syria. While political realists might see these contradictions as evidence that geopolitical concerns determine foreign policy, from an ethical point of view these responses also reveal a fundamental tension in Western thinking about rebellion. On one hand, rebellion is viewed with a distrustful eye—as a disruptive, chaotic force that threatens to destroy the day-to-day order on which civilization is built. On the other, rebellion is perceived more optimistically—as a regenerative, creative force that can leave a better civilization in its wake. These two radically disparate ways of thinking about rebellion have deep philosophical and theological roots. The pessimistic view has historically dominated just war thought, as James Turner Johnson's contribution to this roundtable illustrates; whereas the perspective of Enlightenment liberalism offers a more optimistic judgment, as found, for example, in the works of Locke and Rousseau.
Political Geography:
Libya, Yemen, Arabia, Syria, Egypt, Morocco, Bahrain, and Tunisia

39650. Sovereign Wealth Funds and Global Justice

Author:
Chris Armstrong
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
Dozens of countries have established sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) in the last decade or so, in the majority of cases employing those funds to manage the large revenues gained from selling resources such as oil and gas on a tide of rapidly rising commodity prices. Rather than using those revenues for day-to-day government expenditure, sovereign wealth funds ring-fence them for longer-term investments or to smooth expenditure over time in the light of impending pension crises. In building diverse portfolios on international stock and real estate markets, states also reduce their vulnerability to fluctuating exchange rates, volatile commodity prices, or the likely exhaustion of natural resource supplies in the decades to come.

39651. On Rights to Land, Expulsions, and Corrective Justice

Author:
Margaret Moore
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
This article examines the nature of the wrongs that are inflicted on individuals and groups who have been expelled from the land that they previously occupied, and asks what they might consequently be owed as a matter of corrective justice. Such cases—in which individuals and groups are expelled, their property is expropriated, and their land is subsequently settled by other people—are not unusual. They include the expulsion of Germans from the Sudeten area of Czechoslovakia between 1945and 1947; the expulsion of (mainly) Greek Cypriots from the north of Cyprus following the Turkish invasion there in 1974; and the expulsion of Muslim Bosniaks from what is now called the Republic of Srpska, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, between 1991 and 1995. Historically, there are numerous other cases of “ethnic cleansing” and border redrawing. The injustice with which this article is concerned is also foundational to the current dominant societies in the Americas and Australasia.
Political Geography:
America, Bosnia, Herzegovina, and AustralAsia

39652. The Touch of Midas: Money, Markets, and Morality

Author:
Edward Skidelsky
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
Money has always inspired obsession, both in those who amass it and in those who think about it. “Man will never be able to know what money is any more than he will be able to know what God is,” wrote the French financier Marcel Labordère to his friend John Maynard Keynes. The analogy is apt. Money, like God, injects infinity into human desires. To love it is to embark on a journey without end. Three new books testify to money's enduring power to fascinate and horrify. The most scholarly of them, The Invention of Market Freedom by political theorist Eric MacGilvray, traces the emergence of the distinctively modern or “market” conception of freedom out of its “republican” predecessor. The general story is somewhat familiar, but MacGilvray complicates it by showing that market freedom did not vanquish its republican competitor in open combat but subverted it from within, like a parasite devouring its host.
Topic:
Economics and Markets
Political Geography:
New York

39653. Special Responsibilities: Global Problems and American Power

Author:
Stephen M. Walt
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
Special Responsibilities: Global Problems and American Power, Mlada Bukovansky, Ian Clark, Robyn Eckersley, Richard Price, Christian Reus-Smit, and Nicholas Wheeler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 290 pp., $29.99 paper. Former secretary of state Madeleine Albright famously described the United States as the “indispensable nation,” entitled to lead because it “sees further than others do.” She was one of the many government officials who believed their country had “special responsibilities,” and was therefore different in some way from other states. Such claims are sometimes made to rally domestic support for some costly international action; at other times they are used to exempt a great power from norms or constraints that weaker states are expected to follow.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
United States, America, and Europe

39654. A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change

Author:
Paul Wapner
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
Climate change is the most intractable environmental issue, and Stephen Gardiner has written extensively about it, especially from an ethical perspective. He recognizes that climate change is not merely a technical, economic, or political challenge but fundamentally a moral one. It comes about because people—especially the rich and powerful—are unwilling or unable to care about those on the receiving end of climate hardship. This insensitivity generates complacency, or at least confusion, about how to build institutions and shape widespread behavior in the service of climate protection. A Perfect Moral Storm is Gardiner's most extensive and detailed statement to date on this theme.
Topic:
International Relations, Climate Change, and Environment

39655. Recovering International Relations: The Promise of Sustainable Critique

Author:
Richard Shapcott
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
One of the virtues of International Relations (IR) as a discipline is that it periodically engages in bouts of reflection upon its methods and directions. Daniel Levine's book is a contribution to this self-reflective practice. Like P. T. Jackson's recent work, The Conduct of Enquiry, Levine's Recovering International Relations seeks to acknowledge the diversity and strengths of various approaches to the study of IR and to simultaneously build something constructive out of this pluralism— in other words, to be both critical of the status quo and yet not reject it altogether. Levine's goal is to “recover” IR's original vocation, or calling, and to reinvigorate it via the idea of “sustainable critique”—a project inspired by the work of Theodor Adorno and the Frankfurt School.
Topic:
International Relations

39656. On Complicity and Compromise

Author:
Hugo Slim
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
Chiara Lepora, an Italian doctor with Médecins Sans Frontières, and Robert Goodin, an American philosopher based at the Australian National University in Canberra, have joined forces to produce an elegant and exceptional book. With humanitarian ethics as its starting point, On Complicity and Compromise elaborates a sophisticated and practical approach to complicity that will be profoundly useful to a much wider audience than humanitarians alone. The rigor and simplicity of this book will be of real value to anyone grappling with difficult ethical choices in politics, business, diplomacy, policing, or social services.
Topic:
Politics
Political Geography:
America, Australia, and Italy

39657. Editorial - 90 volumes of International Affairs

Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Chatham House
Abstract:
When International Affairs first appeared in 1922, recording contributions to the equally new British (later Royal) Institute of International Affairs, the journal set itself the modest goal of becoming 'a source of information and a guide to judgment in international affairs'. It was originally intended only for members of the BIIA, but quickly expanded its readership and impact by beginning to sell copies to non-members as well. In 1931 it took the name International Affairs.
Topic:
International Affairs
Political Geography:
Britain

39658. Learning from the past: the relevance of international history

Author:
David Stevenson
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Chatham House
Abstract:
In what follows I will begin in Houghton Street and from there will broaden outwards in successive circles, from London in the 1920s to Europe in 1914, to the Caribbean Sea in 1962, and to where we find ourselves today. The reasons for so doing will, I trust, become clear. But my focus will be on the origin and applications of the discipline of international history, through an investigation of the Stevenson Chair around which the LSE International History Department grew up; the LSE becoming in turn one of the nuclei from which the subject would spread further, both elsewhere in Britain and overseas. I will underline the practical purposes of the discipline's creators, while highlighting a tension between two intellectual traditions that were present from the outset. I will emphasize the need to synthesize those traditions if the study of international history is to yield the maximum insight and value.
Political Geography:
Europe

39659. 'Time of Troubles': Arnold J Toynbee's twentieth century

Author:
Ian Hall
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Chatham House
Abstract:
Arnold J. Toynbee (1889–1975) was synonymous with the Royal Institute of International Affairs for the first half of its history. He held the post of Director of Studies from 1925 to 1954, and thereafter retained an office in Chatham House until his death. Throughout that half-century he combined the roles of scholar and public intellectual, using International Affairs—along with many other outlets—to communicate the fruits and findings of his research to policy-makers and the wider community. During his 50 years at Chatham House Toynbee contributed 19 essays to the journal—which must surely be the most of any individual author—and produced his two monumental multi-volume works, the Survey of international affairs, which he penned, edited or commissioned from 1925 until 1958, and A study of history, which appeared in twelve volumes between 1934 and 1961. He also published a further 50 books and hundreds of scholarly articles during his lifetime, as well as many interviews and lesser pieces. If one includes reviews of books by others, Toynbee's complete works amount to almost 3,000 items.
Topic:
History
Political Geography:
Britain and Middle East

39660. Cosmos, chaos: finance, power and conflict

Author:
Harold James
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Chatham House
Abstract:
A spectre is haunting the world: 1914. The approaching centenary of the outbreak of the First World War is a reminder of how the instability produced by changes in the relative balance of power in an integrated or globalized world may produce cataclysmic events. Jean-Claude Juncker, the veteran Prime Minister of Luxem-bourg and chair of the Eurogroup of finance ministers, started 2013 by warning journalists that they should take note of the parallels with 1913, the last year of European peace. He was referring explicitly to new national animosities fanned by the European economic crisis, with a growing polarization between North and South. Historically, the aftermath and the consequences of such cataclysms have been extreme. George Kennan strikingly termed the 1914–18 conflict 'the great seminal catastrophe of this century'. Without it, fascism, communism, the Great Depression and the Second World War are all almost impossible to imagine.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Communism, Economics, Politics, and War
Political Geography:
Europe