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1. Financial Freedom and Privacy in the Post‐​Cash World

Author:
Alex Gladstein
Publication Date:
06-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Cato Journal
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
The future of currency is digital. The majority of transactions made every day are already electronic and controlled by banks or tech companies. These payments are easily surveillable, confiscatable, and censorable. Physical cash still functions as an essential savings mechanism and privacy tool for millions of people worldwide. With cash, individuals can buy goods and services or save without sharing their identity with a third‐​party merchant or custodian. But as banknotes fade from daily use, the future of financial freedom and privacy comes into serious jeopardy.
Topic:
Finance, Privacy, Freedom, Digital Currency, and Cash
Political Geography:
Global Focus

2. Thinking beyond Democracy and Freedom: A Post 9/11 War on Terrorism Scenario

Author:
Rana Eijaz Ahmad and Muhammad Sajid
Publication Date:
07-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Political Studies
Institution:
Department of Political Science, University of the Punjab
Abstract:
This paper is going to explore the world beyond democracy and the shrouded concept of freedom. In the world of 'globalution' where revolution comes through Multinational Corporations and any specific form of government does not work but tolerance. Tolerance for this paper is all about respect for each other’s' ideology, opinion, and status. It makes us wise enough to make our surroundings a harmonized and liveable place. The dichotomous nature of societies demands space for each other. However, we humans are supposed to respect each other's existence without any specifications. We are just human beings instead of Confucianists, Communists, Capitalists, Hindus, Christians, and Muslims. Humans are born free but their specifications have made them intolerant towards each other. Tolerance is a basic ingredient of democracy, which is a means to an end, not an end itself. Freedom can only be observed with impositions and impositions are against the concept of freedom. Thus, this paper will conclude the outcome of the nature of the modern sovereign state system. It is teemed with liberalism (a mixture of liberalism and realism) and liberacantilism (a mixture of liberalism and mercantilism). Misinterpretations of the West have made certain errors during the post 9/11 socalled war against terrorism. These errors cumulatively transform terrorism into 'errorism'. This 'errorism' is bringing home the world that inequality and imbalances are occurring horizontally and vertically making this world disorder. Industrialization is going on in the West and the population is increasing in the rest, breaking the "iron cage of liberalism." It demands a glocal system of governance that could sustain people's co-existence at home and abroad. The triangulation method with primary and secondary sources would be used in the process of this research.
Topic:
Globalization, Democracy, 9/11, War on Terror, and Freedom
Political Geography:
Global Focus

3. Sovereign Power, Government and Global Liberalism’s Crisis

Author:
Mariela Cuadro
Publication Date:
09-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Contexto Internacional
Institution:
Institute of International Relations, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro
Abstract:
For some time now a leading cause of debate among IR scholars has been the so-called Liberal International Order (LIO) and its assumed crisis. This article pierces this debate from a critical perspective asserting that different conceptions and analytics of power allow diverse questions on and diagnoses of liberalism in the global realm. With this objective, it confronts Ikenberry’s conception of LIO with the Foucauldian notion of liberalism. This is done by identifying the conception of power that underlies each notion of liberalism, assuming the former as performative. This way, it first defines two different conceptions of power: sovereign and governmental. Second, it links Ikenberry’s conception of LIO with the sovereign conception of power and points out the political and analytical effects of this relation, mainly, the hierarchical character of LIO and the consequent desire for a West-led world. Third, it develops Foucault’s conception of liberalism linked to governmental power and establishes some of its political and analytical effects: the importance of a heterarchical notion of power focused on the dimension of subject and subjectivity for the analysis of the present, and the political need to reflect on our practices of freedom.
Topic:
Sovereignty, Liberal Order, Liberalism, and Freedom
Political Geography:
Global Focus

4. Fleeing Boko Haram: The Trauma of Captivity and Challenge of Freedom

Author:
Mojúbàolú Olufúnké Okome
Publication Date:
04-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Social Science Research Council
Abstract:
Captivity and freedom are seen as opposites. To be captive is to be imprisoned, detained, confined. To be free is to have liberty, autonomy, free will. It seems logical to associate captivity with trauma, and freedom with an end to trauma. However, enduring elements of trauma challenge the notion of freedom, especially when considering possible psychological effects of long-term captivity. The assumption that the cessation of captivity and experience of freedom constitutes a peaceful, joyful, and self-determining existence may be highly problematic, as may be the social implications of freedom and the impact of responses by others to a person once in captivity but now “free.” This article conceives of the route traversed from captivity to freedom by the victims of Boko Haram (including the young female students abducted from a school in Chibok) as akin to walking a tightrope—a tense, tenuous, perilous, unstable process. It is not impossible to get to freedom, but successfully traversing the tightrope may require unbelievable, extraordinary luck. The surest way to get through is to have the requisite training. Experience also helps. The experience necessary for surmounting the odds need not be experience of abduction and its horrors, but experience with strategies on how to cope with trauma. Such strategies can be provided through culturally appropriate psychosocial support.
Topic:
Culture, Trauma, Captivity, and Freedom
Political Geography:
Global Focus

5. Rethinking Liberal Democracy: Prelude to Totalitarianism

Author:
Isabel David
Publication Date:
04-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Liberty and International Affairs
Institution:
Institute for Research and European Studies (IRES)
Abstract:
In the long course of human evolution and political experimentation, liberal democracy, especially after the events of 1989, has come to be seen as the best political system. In fact, we seemed to have reached the only system compatible with liberty, after the dreadful experiences of Communist and Nazi totalitarianism, and its twin in the economic realm - capitalism. But is liberalism really conducive to freedom? I argue that evil – or totalitarianism – arises from the combination of both the Platonic and Augustinian views: ignorance of values and the pursuit of one’s egotistic desires. Evil has an essentially private nature. In this sense, totalitarianism may arise from a utilitarian culture that sees people – or some forms of knowledge – as worthless and disposable objects.
Topic:
Authoritarianism, Values, Liberalism, and Freedom
Political Geography:
Global Focus

6. Economic Freedom and Net Business Formation

Author:
Noel D. Campbell and Tammy M. Rogers
Publication Date:
01-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Cato Journal
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
Economic freedom indexes, especially the Fraser Institute/Cato Institute Economic Freedom of the World (EFW) index and the Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal Index of Economic Freedom, are becoming increasingly important as researchers seek to explore the link between economic freedom and prosperity. The consistent finding is that nations with more economic freedom—as indicated by security of property rights, free trade, limited government, low marginal tax rates, and so forth—enjoy higher per capita incomes and general living conditions compared with countries that are less free.1 In a less aggregated study, Karabegovic et al. (2003) find that differences in economic freedom across U.S. states and Canadian provinces are significantly and positively related to differences in the level and growth of economic activity across states and provinces. Various researchers have used the Economic Freedom of North America (EFNA) index, published by the Fraser Institute (Karabegovic, McMahon, and Mitchell 2005), to address questions of income differentials between states, income growth, and entrepreneurship.2 Scholars have also used the EFNA index to study migration. Ashby (2007), not surprisingly, finds that people tend to move from less free to more free areas.
Topic:
Migration, Economy, Business, Free Trade, and Freedom
Political Geography:
Global Focus

7. Economic Freedom and Development: New Calculations and Interpretations

Author:
Erich Weede
Publication Date:
10-2006
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Cato Journal
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
For some time there has been a debate about the effect of economic freedom on economic growth and development (Beach and Davis 1999: 10; de Haan and Siermann 1998; de Haan and Sturm 2000; Edwards 1998; Goldsmith 1997; Gwartney, Lawson, and Block 1996: 109; Knack and Keefer 1995; Pitlik 2002; Scully 1992; Torstensson 1994; Weede and Kämpf 2002). Although there is wide agreement about the stylized fact that economically free societies are richer than other societies, there is less agreement about the impact of economic freedom on growth rates. Some writers contend that the level of economic freedom affects growth, whereas others, in particular de Haan and his associates, dispute the robustness of this claim and find only a relationship between improvements in economic freedom and growth. The most recently published research on the effects of economic freedom on growth (Gwartney and Lawson 2004; Gwartney, Holcombe, and Lawson 2006) reaffirms that there are strong and beneficial effects of the level of economic freedom and of its improvement on growth rates. Looking at the published literature as well as at the work in progress by one of my doctoral students (Liu 2007), my impression is that there are two ways to strengthen the effects of the level of economic freedom on growth: first, choose a longer rather than shorter period of growth observation; second, and more important, use an average measure of the level of economic freedom rather than a single time point measure of economic freedom that refers only to the first year of growth observation. If one compares, say, de Haan and Sturm’s (2000) study with Gwartney, Holcombe, and Lawson’s (2006), then one finds that the former study uses a somewhat shorter period of growth observation, but both of them use the level of economic freedom at the beginning of the growth period to be explained.1 Whereas de Haan and Sturm (2000) find no significant and robust effect of the level of economic freedom on growth, Gwartney, Holcombe, and Lawson (2006) arrive at the opposite conclusion: The level of economic freedom does promote growth.2
Topic:
Economy, Economic Growth, Economic Development, and Freedom
Political Geography:
Global Focus