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4291. School Choice and Development: Evidence from the Edgewood Experiment

Author:
John Merrifield and Nathan L. Gray
Publication Date:
01-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Cato Journal
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
On April 22, 1998, the Children's Educational Opportunity Foundation announced the availability of CEO Horizon Scholarships to residents of the Edgewood Independent School District (EISD) in San Antonio, Texas. The CEO Foundation did not limit eligibility to students with proof of superior academic talent, so the scholarships were really privately funded tuition vouchers. As such, we shall refer to them as the Edgewood Voucher Program. The EVP was a working model of Milton Friedman's (1955, 1962) original idea for a universal voucher program, except that it was set to last only 10 years. This article analyzes the EVP's immediate economic development effects, including the impact on the property tax base, housing growth and values, and business formation. We begin with an overview of the EVP, review the existing literature, describe the benchmark for our impact estimates, and then discuss the estimates and their significance for universal tuition vouchers.
Topic:
Development

4292. Incredible Commitments: Why the EMU Is Destroying Both Europe and Itself

Author:
George Selgin
Publication Date:
01-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Cato Journal
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
When the merits of a European Monetary Union were first being debated, many skeptics fell into one of two camps. The first camp consisted of “Keynesians” (for example, Eichengreen and Bayoumi 1997, Salvatore 1997) who, referring to the theory of optimal currency areas, doubted that Europe constituted such an area, and believed that the proposed monetary union would eventually fall victim to country-specific (“idiosyncratic”) shocks. Unemployment and other burdens stemming from such shocks would, these critics argued, eventually force the monetary authority to either abandon its commitment to price-level stability in order to offer relief to adversely affected members, or cause the members to abandon the union so as to be able to realign their exchange rates.
Political Geography:
Europe

4293. IMF Subsidies, Cancellations, and Resumptions: New Empirical Evidence

Author:
Adrian Urbaczka and Roland Vaubel
Publication Date:
01-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Cato Journal
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
For a long time, the International Monetary Fund has been criticized for subsidizing its credits. According to Walter Bagehot (1873), a lender of last resort ought to “lend freely but at a penalty.” Otherwise moral hazard results (see Dreher and Vaubel 2004). Bakker and Schrijvers (2000) and the Saxton Report (2002) have presented estimates of the subsidy element in IMF lending. In this article, we present an improved and updated calculation. We also present evidence on another criticism of IMF policy: that it fails to enforce compliance with policy conditions. The IMF claims that it cancels its programs if debtor governments do not honor their policy commitments. We show that cancellations due to noncompliance tend to be followed by new programs very soon.

4294. Kill or Capture: The War on Terror and the Soul of the Obama Presidency

Author:
Benjamin H. Friedman
Publication Date:
01-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Cato Journal
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
The Republican Party at least has the decency not to get its civil libertarian supporters' hopes up. Bemused tolerance and the odd Ron Paul appearance are about all the encouragement they get. Democratic civil libertarians, by contrast, suffer from relevance. Like other interests large enough to matter in primary elections but loyal enough to betray later, they are seduced and then scorned, especially by presidents. Their disappointment is harsher because it is less expected.
Topic:
War

4295. Knowledge and Cooperation: A Liberal Interpretation

Author:
Richard L. Gordon
Publication Date:
01-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Cato Journal
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
Daniel B. Klein's fascinating exposition of the case for limited government argues that understanding of the complexity of knowledge and its use to coordinate human actions indicates the impossibility of successful interventions by governments. His basic point is that knowledge is not simply something that always can be purchased on the open market and readily employed. People may create the knowledge that they utilize, and it always must be interpreted properly. Intervention kills such initiatives.

4296. The Case for Polarized Politics: Why America Needs Social Conservatism

Author:
David Lampo
Publication Date:
01-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Cato Journal
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
It might seem odd that, in a time when political pundits routinely condemn the rampant if not unprecedented polarization in American politics, one writer would try to make the case that polarized politics is a good thing, but that is indeed what former Reagan advisor Jeffrey Bell attempts in The Case for Polarized Politics: Why America Needs Social Conservatism . His arguments to justify an outspoken social conservatism as necessary to both the success of the Republican Party and the long-term success of what he calls "American exceptionalism," however, fall short on several levels.
Political Geography:
America

4297. Politics, law, and the sacred: a conceptual analysis

Author:
Friedrich V. Kratochwil
Publication Date:
01-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:
Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:
The 'return' of religion has not only engendered new conflicts in world politics, but also fundamentally challenged the Western political project, which allegedly rests on a strict separation of the public and private sphere. Religion is supposed to play a role only within the confines of the latter, as it is considered a 'privately held belief'. Of course, this project is neither shared by all Westerners, nor is it necessarily persuasive to other cultures. Thus within the emerging global sphere it is by no means clear whether such a strict separation can muster assent.(Barbato and Kratochwil 2009: 1–24) For this reason some thinkers, such as Habermas (2003) or Connolly (1999), among many, have attempted to formulate a new approach in which ways of overcoming the dis- placement of religions to the 'private/personal' realm are explored, in order to harness the semantic potential of religion for the establishment of a discourse on global order, while avoiding at the same time the establishment of a particular orthodoxy or of a millenarian political projects based on the notion of absolute 'truth'.
Topic:
Human Rights and Law

4298. Governmentality's (missing) international dimension and the promiscuity of German neoliberalism

Author:
Hans-Martin Jaeger
Publication Date:
01-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:
Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:
An important insight from the recent publication of Foucault's governmentality lectures for International Relations (IR) is that international manifestations of governmentalities such as police and liberalism, rather than constituting mere domestic analogies, have inherently international dimensions. Police and liberalism are both constituted by and constitutive of the international contexts in which they emerge: historically, the European balance of power and a 'globalisation' of markets, respectively. However, Foucault's account of German and American neoliberalism in the twentieth century omits references to the international context. This article first reconstructs the 'domestic-international nexus' in Foucault's account of police and liberalism, and then recovers aspects of the missing international dimension of his analysis of German neoliberalism with recourse to Wilhelm Röpke's writing on IR. The upshot of this recovery effort is threefold. First, the international remains pivotal to (mid-) twentieth-century neoliberal governmentality. Second, (German) neoliberalism's association with multiple 'international' governmentalities, including liberal and non-liberal ones, exposes neoliberalism as a 'promiscuous' mode of governance. Third, German neoliberalism's promiscuity is underwritten by (though not reducible to) a conservative ethos of moderation. More broadly, this article contributes to efforts to theorise the relationship between domestic and international politics, and to understand neoliberalism as a 'variegated' phenomenon.
Political Geography:
America and Germany

4299. Locating the normative within economic science: towards the analysis of hidden discourses of democracy in international politics

Author:
Milja Kurki
Publication Date:
01-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:
Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:
Economic science has been overwhelmingly perceived as a 'positive' science, both among economists and many scholars in other social sciences. As a result, there has been an estrangement between the 'scientific' study of economics and the study of 'fuzzier' matters of normative nature. Crucially, it is often assumed that economists — whether academics or practitioners — have little to say about democracy, a concept that is famously normative and contested in nature. This article argues that this perception is mistaken and misleading. When several key figures in economic science are examined in detail, we can see that their economic theories are, in fact, deeply intertwined with certain normative visions of democracy, even if implicitly. Recognising the role of hidden normative theories of democracy within economic science perspectives is important theoretically, in re-reading the nature and scope of economic science discourses. It is also, however, important in understanding some key world political trends. It is argued here that we are in a better position to understand the curious 'dabbling' of global financial organisations in matters of 'political nature' when we remain attuned to the role of hidden democratic assumptions. Also, the complex role of these organisations in 'democracy promotion', and the nature of democracy promotion itself, can thus be better appreciated.
Topic:
Politics

4300. Caribbean development alternatives and the CARIFORUM–European Union economic partnership agreement

Author:
Anthony Payne, Matthew Louis Bishop, and Tony Heron
Publication Date:
01-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:
Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:
The Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) signed in October 2008 between the Caribbean and the European Union has been the subject of much controversy. There has been a marked split within the Caribbean between the officials and politicians who negotiated — and thus championed — the EPA and the wider academic and civil society community that subjected it to heavy criticism. The paper examines these debates in detail and situates them within the broader intellectual and practical panorama of Caribbean development alternatives. Specifically, it discusses how the terrain upon which development has been both theorised and practised in the region has narrowed significantly since the 1980s, with the EPA being the latest manifestation of this evolving trend. The paper consequently goes beyond an analysis of the short-term politics of the EPA to elucidate the deeper, structural explanations for the divisions over the EPA between the policy and academic communities and the wider implications of the Agreement for contemporary Caribbean development.
Topic:
Development
Political Geography:
Europe and Caribbean