American Jews The Political Behavior of American Jews A Public Choice Approach to Israel-influenced Voting Jake Goodman Brown University Author Eli Binder Audrey McDermott Ethan Shire Editors Spring 2018 The paper analyzes the voting incentives created by the relationship between American Jews and American-Israeli foreign relations. At the founding of the Jewish State in 1948, the United States recognized the establishment of a Zionist state through a press release from President Truman on March 14, 1948 (U.S. Recognition of the State of Israel). The two main political parties in the United States— the Democrats and Republicans—have both since maintained consistent political, economic, and military support for Israel. This support has come to be viewed by American Jewish voters, most of whom desire support for Israel, as a public good provided by the United States Government. This public good has direct ramifications on voter incentives. However, despite bipartisan support for foreign aid to Israel, American Jews have remained consistently liberal. While social scientists have offered various theories of why American Jews became and remain Democratic, a cogent explanation can be offered through the lens of public choice economics. Indeed, Jewish liberalism demonstrates a political anomaly that can be explained through the framework of voter incentives. Before explaining the impact of pro-Israel policy on Jewish voting, it is necessary to identify some additional factors that evidence how Jewish voting behavior remains a political anomaly. American Jews, despite job and social discrimination, have become the highest per capita income of any religious group in the United States (Wright, Ethnic Group Pressures in Foreign Policy, 1982, 1655-1660). While affluence in America generally tends to correlate with Republican affiliation, this trend does not hold true for American Jews (Cohen, American Jewish Liberalism, 405-430). Steven Cohen and Charles Liebman, in their research, also noted that more religious Jews tend to be less liberal, inclining religious Jews toward conservatism. They identify only a few issues on which Jews assert themselves as decidedly liberal: political identity as liberal, church-state separation, social codes, and domestic spending. Cohen and Liebman’s research illustrated that aside from pro-Israel policies, Jews have additional incentives to shift to the Republican party, yet they have remained consistently Democratic. On the other hand, Jews have higher education levels, which correlate with liberalism, compared to the general populace provides a common explanation of Jewish liberalism. Thus, while Jews demonstrate anomalous behavior, they also demonstrate typical associations that explain Jewish liberalism. While many incentives influence Jewish political behavior, a single-issue factor that unites Jews remains the support of Israel from the United States government. Professor Lawrence Fuchs defined American Jews as an “ethno-religious group,” which forms attitudes on social and political policy that align group interests with national interests (Fuchs, The Political Behavior of American Jews, 1980). American Jews, as “partisans of Israel,” were thus instrumental in having the United States recognize the state of Israel (Fuchs, 1980). As Professor Steven Bayme noted, the pro-Israel consensus in the American Jewish community has been maintained remarkably well over the past sixty plus years, with the two primary oppositional sources, classical Reform and Satmar Hasidism, remaining largely uninfluential (Bayme, American Jewry and the State of Israel, 2008). To court the Jewish vote, Democrats and Republicans have functioned as “entrepreneurs selling policies for votes” — the policy, in this case, being bilateral economic assistance for Israel (Downs, An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy, 1957). If we assume that American Jewish citizens behave as expected utility maximizers, Jewish voters gain extra expected utility from electing the more pro-Israel candidate, aligning with the Jewish voters’ preference for a pro-Israel public good. The gain to the Jewish voter would be defined as the preferred more pro-Israel candidate (Ferejohn & Fiorina, The Paradox of not Voting, 1974). Indeed, due to American Jewish attachment to Israel, there is a rational reason to vote; by voting for a more pro-Israel candidate in the political market, the Jewish voter ensures a higher quality public good that suits the Jewish voter’s preference for a more robust pro-Israel political platform. An initial investigation must depict the nature of the collective good thus described. As the natural monopoly on tax spending and military power, the government provides public goods to citizens. The United States government, having such a monopoly, becomes the sole provider of military and economic support to Israel for American citizens. Israel first received U.S. government assistance in the form of a $100 million loan from the Export-Import Bank in 1949 and aid remained modest for the next two decades (Sharp, Federation of American Scientists, 2016). After several consecutive Arab-Israeli wars, US aid to Israel increased dramatically, with Israel becoming the largest recipient of US aid in 1974. Middle East Specialist Jeremy Sharp reported that Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of US aid since World War II, receiving $124 billion of bilateral assistance in non-inflation adjusted terms (2016). An additional State Department directive this year has pledged $38 billion over the next ten years to Israel. The majority of this assistance has come in the form of Military aid, which has led to a qualitative military edge for the Israeli military, developing anti-rocket technologies such as the Iron Dome, Arrow I and II, and David’s Sling. The United States has also provided economic aid to Israel in the form of emergency aid packages during times of recession. Aid from the United States has thus allowed Israel to transition from a fledgling nation-state to a modern industrialized nation. (Sharp, Federation of American Scientists, 2016). While the United States government is not the sole supplier of aid to Israel, it functions as a monopoly within the US political market as a government supplier of aid. Jewish voters thus form preferences and expected utility functions based upon the differing levels of aid provided by the US government, a monopolistic supplier. To further analyze the impact of US foreign policy toward Israel on Jewish voting patterns, it is necessary to examine the historical political alignment of Jews, from Jeffersonian Republicans to Democrats to Republicans, prior to the establishment of Israel as a Jewish state. While Jewish political equality did not emerge directly out of the American revolution, Jews achieved political equality in the five states they were most numerous in, and the growing movement in revolutionary America for the separation of church and state worked to the Jewish community’s advantage (Fuchs, 1980, p. 24). The first instance of Jewish political alignment began with a Jewish attachment to the Jeffersonian Republicans; in the 1830s, Jackson and the new Democratic party gained the Jewish devotion Jefferson and Madison had maintained (Fuchs, 1980, p. 29). By 1840, a large majority of American Jewry, around 15,000 at the time, joined Martin Van Buren’s coalition, buoyed by Van Buren’s protection of Jews in Egypt (Fuchs, 1980, p. 30). With the immigration of as many as 100,000 German Jews to the United States between 1848 and the beginning of the Civil War, Jewish political alignment shifted, splitting support between Democrats and the Whigs (Fuchs, 1980, p. 33). By 1860, Jews in the North, particularly German-Jews, welcomed the new Republican Party, as many Rabbis and Jews opposed slavery (Fuchs, 1980, p. 35). In the four decades after the Civil War, Jews were widely divided with a slight major party preference for the Republican Party (Fuchs, 1980, p. 50). With the exception of Woodrow Wilson’s Jewish majority in 1916, Jews continued to lean Republican in presidential elections from 1900 to 1928 even with an influx of nearly two million Jewish immigrants fleeing anti-Semitism and poverty in Europe (Fuchs, 1980, p. 51). However, the 1920s showed a growing trend of Jewish support for the Democratic party, more rapid in certain cities but generally solidified by the Jewish commitment to Franklin Roosevelt in 1932 (Fuchs, 1980, p. 71). For example, in Boston’s Ward 14, a heavily Jewish area, 78 percent of enrolled voters were Republican in 1928, while only 14 percent of voters were Republican in 1952 (Fuchs, 1980, p. 72). The proportion of Jews who voted for the Democratic Party peaked at 90 percent for FDR in the 1940s (Rebhun, 2016, p. 141). To maintain Jewish support, the Democratic Party committed itself to fighting fascist anti-Semitism in Europe and to ensuring the military and economic security of the State of Israel (Schnall, 1987, p. 77). In all Presidential elections since 1932, 60 to 90 percent of American Jews voted for the Democratic candidate. (Rebhun, 2016, p. 141). While Jewish-American Democratic support has been in decline since the late 1960s, the Jewish vote has remained solidly within the Democratic camp (Rebhun, 2016, p. 143). Additionally, the Jewish vote declined in Republican support between 1980 and 2000 but has since risen from 2000 to 2016 (Kent, 2016). As evidenced by the above historical charting of Jewish political alignment, the Jewish community has shifted in partisan alignment multiple times in American history. Why then have Jews maintained their allegiance to the Democratic Party since 1932? While many factors are involved in addressing this question, a key factor absent in other eras of American history is the establishment of Israel in 1948 and the consequent United States’ support of Israel. The median voter theorem becomes especially relevant in addressing the Jewish-Democratic alliance. Anthony Downs observed that voters can cut the cost of information by comparing ideologies rather than policies — the lack of information thus engendering a demand for ideologies in the electorate (1957, p. 142). Downs reasons that stable government in a two-party democracy requires a distribution of voters approximating a normal curve in which both parties resemble each other closely (1957, p. 143). In terms of US-Israeli foreign policy, Democrats and Republicans resemble each other closely in that they have both maintained military and economic aid for Israel. According to the Median Voter Theorem, with both parties exhibiting similar ideologies of a pro-Israel consensus, one would expect the distribution to resemble a normal curve, but this has not been the case. Surprisingly, Democratic and Republican Israeli policy has had more in common than not; yet, a normal curve does not represent the Jewish vote. In the election of 1948, both party candidates were committed to Zionism, with both parties adopting pro-Israel positions in their national platforms (Fuchs, 1980, p. 81). Truman’s election allowed the Democratic party to yield pro-Israel results, beginning with Truman’s recognition of Israel, the $100 million loan from the Export-Import Bank in 1949, and the Tripartite Declaration of 1950 (Sharp, 2016, p. 36). Lawrence Fuchs identified 1952 as a key moment in the political market for the Jewish vote, in which despite being as “well paid, fed, and educated as the most successful Republican denomination groups” Jews continued to vote for Democrats (1980, p. 99). Eisenhower’s term, however, allowed for product differentiation in the political market; Jews could now compare the quality of the collective good provided by the United States government, economic and political aid to Israel, under two different political parties. Indeed, while several factors, as Lawrence Fuchs noted, contributed to Jewish loyalty to the Democratic party, the Eisenhower Administration's policy toward Israel hurt Republican chances with Jewish voters; Zionist rallies were held in October of 1954 protesting the Eisenhower Administration’s policy towards Israel (Fuchs, 1980, p. 117). Fuchs indicated that Zionist leaders criticized the Eisenhower Administration's decision to ship arms to “feudal Arab leaders” while holding back on Israeli military aid (Fuchs, 1980, p. 117). The Suez Canal, in which the United States strengthened its bond with Egypt and forced military Israeli withdrawal, provided another demonstration of Eisenhower’s lukewarm position toward Israel (“Suez Crisis, 1956,” n.d.). Weak Republican support for Israel did not shift Jewish political alignment to its benefit; American Jews thus exhibited a lopsided preference for Democratic US-Israeli policy during the 1960 election of John F. Kennedy, with around 80 percent voting for Kennedy and 18 percent voting for Nixon — a major shift from the 1956 election in which 60 percent voted for Stevenson while 40 percent voted for Eisenhower (Weisberg, 2012, p. 217). Post-1948, several Republican administrations have seen fluctuations in their capturing of the Jewish vote. Professor Theodore Wright, writing in 1982, noted that in recent years Republicans had sought to “outbid the Democrats” in their promises to the Zionist state. Indeed, the election of Ronald Reagan demonstrated a partisan shift in the political market in reaction to the Israel policies of the Democratic Carter Administration. Professor Weisberg cited data showing that many Jews felt Carter was too hard on Israel and consequently 39 percent voted for Reagan and 45 percent voted for Carter (Weisberg, 2012, p. 228). This represented a major shift in the partisan distribution of Jewish voters, nearly approaching Downs’s normal distribution curve. However, despite Reagan’s policies being more pro-Israel than Carter’s, the Democratic party regained the Jewish vote in the 1984 presidential election, with 67 percent voting for Walter Mondale and 31 percent voting for Ronald Reagan (Weisberg, 2012, p. 228). Professor Weisberg notes that while Republicans saw a boost in their attainment of the Jewish vote in the 1970s and 1980s, it was followed by subsequent loss of the Jewish vote in the 1990s and 2000s (Weisberg, 2012, 232). However, another interesting data point occurred in 2012. The highly-publicized testiness of Obama’s relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and “dissatisfaction with Obama’s Middle East policy” during his first term boosted the Jewish Republican vote by 9 percentage points, from 21 percent for McCain to 30 percent for Romney (Rebhun, 2016, p. 144). The Republican resurgence was squashed in the 2016 election, falling to 24 percent for Trump despite visible strain in the Obama-era US-Israeli diplomatic relations. These various historical examples indicate that shifts in the partisan alignment of the Jewish vote occur in accordance with a greater expected utility of Republican Israeli policy after a strain in Democratic-Israel relations. Nonetheless, while Jewish voters demonstrate small shifts in political alignment, they often return to a high percentage of votes for the Democratic presidential candidate. This is a noteworthy behavior; if Republicans have proven to Jewish voters that they can successfully compete with Democrats with their pro-Israel policies, why have more Jews not shifted to the Republican party? Arye Hillman accounted for such a phenomenon by considering the expressive-voting hypothesis, which posits that certain people vote “to obtain the expressive utility from confirming identity” to themselves or a group rather than to decisively sway an election (2011, p. 250). Because American Jews have historically aligned with the Democratic Party, Hillman assumed that Jews, with exceptions, rationally vote for Democrats, though it is against their self-interest, in order to gain the expressive utility associated with expressing group identity (2011, p. 256). Hillman offered a variety of historical examples from Podhoretz’s book Why Are Jews Liberals?. In the 1960’s election, he noted that Kennedy’s father was openly anti-semitic, yet Kennedy secured 82% of the Jewish vote (Hillman, 2011, p. 254). In 1972, he cited that the Democrat McGovern received two-thirds of the Jewish vote despite McGovern favoring racially-based quotas in education that would have been disadvantageous to Jews and be inimical to the state of Israel (Hillman, 2011, p. 254). Additionally, in 2008, 78 percent of Jews voted for Obama despite Obama having “anti-Israel associations” and a record that showed less concern for Israel than his Republican opponent (Hillman, 2011, p. 255). There are obviously limits to how much Jewish identity impacts voting decision and how much Jewish identity is tied to Israel. However, despite its assumptions about Jewish identity, Hillman’s evidence provides a theoretically relevant public choice explanation of why Jews may rationally vote for Democrats despite competitive pro-Israel policies from the Republican Party. Rather than functioning as a singular issue which ultimately sways the Jewish voter, the Jewish preference for a robust pro-Israel policy represents a unique and influential indicator within the multifaceted preferences of the Jewish voter. By examining historical presidential voting data, specific instances when Jewish voters could have voted according to a pro-Israel preference based upon the partisan performance of the previous administration can be identified. While this analysis has been largely driven by market outcomes – Jews evaluating their voting decisions based off of the Israeli policy of the current administration – it highlights the impact of information on voting patterns. If a Jewish voter is provided with more information, via four years of governance by a certain party, about the perceived ideology of either political party, they will adjust their preferences according to this new information. While Downs notes there are costs to acquiring such information, the marginal return, or the increase in utility from making an improved decision concerning partisan Israeli-relations ideology, would presumably exceed the marginal cost of acquiring such information for Jewish voters who decide to vote. However, while it is important to analyze the behavior of Jews as an ethnic group, there exist differences within the Jewish community which should also be examined. Laurence Kotler-Berkowitz and Lawrence Sternberg researched the influence of the centralized institutions of the American Jewish community on political cohesion and division amongst Jews (2000, p. 23). The researchers amalgamated data proving that the political activists within major Jewish institutions in the United States, such as the Jewish Community Relations Council and the organized Federation system, display differences in measures of ideology, partisanship, political and social attitudes, and policy preferences than most synagogue members and donors and are decisively more liberal (2000, p. 40). Their research demonstrated that the participants in the most centralized set of Jewish institutions display political preferences “within a fairly narrow range, denoting political cohesion” (2000, p. 44). Kotler-Berkowitz and Sternberg’s research also showed that while Jews tend to lean liberal, the degree of cohesion within the American Jewish community should not be assumed to be absolute. For example, political division among American Jews, despite the overall liberalism of Jewish institutions, allows for the opportunity of Republican competition in the markets, specifically in the more traditional Jewish communities. Republicans have particularly thrived among Orthodox Jews, who are the most Republican in their voting (Weisberg, 2012, p. 225). Eytan Gilboa traced the historical arc of Jewish support for Israel and the complicated relationship between Jews and specific Israeli policy preferences. Beginning in 1948, he notes that 90 percent of American Jews supported the establishment of Israel and the decision of President Truman to recognize the State of Israel (Gilboa, 1986, p. 113). According to public surveys from 1957 to 1983, Jews remained highly favorable toward Israel, with all but one of the pro-Israel results ranking above 90 percent (Gilboa, 1986, p. 113). Gilboa’s research also notes that all surveys of American Jews in his research show overwhelming support for US aid to Israel — around 91 to 96 percent from 1971 to 1985 (Gilboa, 1986, p. 117). However, Gilboa also investigated public opinion surveys that show a less unified American Jewish community from 1967 to 1982 concerning positions and policies in the Arab-Israeli conflict (Gilboa, 1986, p. 121). Surveys between 1980 and 1984 further evidence a split Jewish opinion on the question of a Palestinian state (Gilboa, 1986, p. 123). The conclusion of Gilboa’s paper highlights the remarkable stability of Jewish support for economic and military aid for Israel despite diverging foreign policy positions of American Jewry. Gilboa’s data and conclusions highlight an interesting complication of the Jewish political market; American Jews, while supporting aid, may not uniformly support the same policy results. The complex interactions between Zionism, ethno-religious political behavior, and political support for Israel highlights the lack of information politicians acquire about the Jewish community and also provides evidence of why US aid for Israel has been sustained for so long. An additional complication is that the Jewish voting is not the only group incentivizing pro-Israel policy. In fact, since 1989, Israel’s favorability among general Americans has vacillated between 45 percent and 79 percent (Saad, 2016). Republicans have additional political incentives to support Israel that may influence the Jewish vote. Evangelical Christians, who number about 75 million in the United States, have become “increasingly mobilized” in support of Israel (Waxman, 2010, p. 15). Since the Second Intifada, which began in 2000, the Christian Right has become increasingly influential in the Republican political market. According to Professor Murray Friedman, the Christian Right, while showing strong support for Israel, disincentivized Jews from joining the Republican party out of fear that the Christian Right has become “too influential” in the GOP (2003, p. 436). The influence of the Christian Right on Republican foreign policy highlights that while Republicans compete with Democrats for the Jewish vote with pro-Israel policy, they also compete for the vote of the Christian Right through pro-Israel policy. Additionally, the bedrock of evangelical support for Israel has shifted incentives for Jews to vote as single-issue voters; support for Israel remains ensured for by the prominent support for pro-Israel candidates on the Right vying for the support of evangelists, allowing Jewish voters flexibility to vote for Democrats who may not be as pro-Israel as the Republican candidate. In recognizing that pro-Israel policy has not yielded strong Jewish electoral results, Republicans have continued to maintain pro-Israel policy because the Christian Right has incentivized them to do so. Thus, while the political market for the Jewish vote remains influenced by a multitude of factors, the widespread preference among Jewish voters for a pro-Israel collective good shifts incentives in the political market. How Jews collectively vote remains complex, and the historical Jewish alignment with the Democratic Party despite competitive pro-Israel policy from the Republican Party highlights this complexity. It seems likely that two trends will continue based on the political incentive structures described in this paper: Jews will continue to predominantly align with the Democratic Party and both Democrats and Republicans will continue to offer competitive pro-Israel ideologies. The public choice approach to Jewish political behavior thus offers insight into why these trends continue by examining the incentives that shape how Jews vote and how politicians respond in turn. References Aldrich, J. H. Rational choice and turnout. American Journal of political science, 1993: 246-278. Bayme, S. AMERICAN JEWRY AND THE STATE OF ISRAEL: HOW INTENSE THE BONDS OF PEOPLEHOOD? Jewish Political Studies Review, 20(1/2), 2008: 7-21. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/25834774 Baker, P. For Obama and Netanyahu, a Final Clash After Years of Conflict. 2016. Retrieved April 02, 2017, from https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/23/world/middleeast/israel-benjamin-netanyahu-barack-obama.html Cohen, S., & Liebman, C. American Jewish Liberalism: Unraveling the Strands. The Public Opinion Quarterly, 61(3), 1997: 405-430. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2749579 Downs, A. An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy. Journal of Political Economy, 65(2), 1957: 135-150. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1827369 Ferejohn, J. A., & Fiorina, M. P. The paradox of not voting: A decision theoretic analysis. American political science review, 68(02), 1974: 525-536. Fuchs, L. H. The Political Behavior of American Jews. Westport, CT: 1970. Greenwood Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4371453 FRIEDMAN, M. The Changing Jewish Political Profile. American Jewish History, 91(3/4), 2003. 423-438. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23887289 Gilboa, E. Attitudes of American Jews Toward Israel: Trends Over Time. The American Jewish Year Book, 86, 1986: 110-125. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23604779 Hillman, A. Expressive voting and identity: Evidence from a case study of a group of U.S. voters. Public Choice,148(1/2), 2011: 249-257. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/41483691 Kent, D. Presidential vote by religious affiliation and race. 2016. Retrieved March 28, 2017, from http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/how-the-faithful-voted-a- preliminary-2016-analysis/ft_16-11-09_relig_exitpoll_religrace/ Kotler-Berkowitz, L., & Sternberg, L. THE POLITICS OF AMERICAN JEWS: COHESION, DIVISION, AND REPRESENTATION AT THE INSTITUTIONAL LEVEL. Jewish Political Studies Review, 12(1/2), 2000: 21-54. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/25834469 REBHUN, U. POLITICAL ORIENTATION. In Jews and the American Religious Landscape (pp. 134-164). 2016. New York: Columbia University Press. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/rebh17826.9 Saad, L. Americans' Views Toward Israel Remain Firmly Positive. 2016. Retrieved April 06, 2017, from http://www.gallup.com/poll/189626/americans-views-toward-israel-remain-firmly-positive.aspx Schnall, D. REPUBLICANS, DEMOCRATS AND AMERICAN JEWS. Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought, 22(4), 1987: 75-87. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23259491 Sharp, J. M. Federation of American Scientists [Scholarly project]. 2016. Retrieved March 20, 2017, from https://fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL33222.pdF Suez Crisis, 1956. (n.d.). Retrieved March 30, 2017, from https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/lw/97179.htm U.S. Recognition of the State of Israel. (n.d.). Retrieved March 20, 2017, from https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/us-israel Waxman, D. The Israel Lobbies: A Survey of the Pro-Israel Community in the United States. Israel Studies Forum,25(1), 2010: 5-28. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/41805051 Weisberg, H. Reconsidering Jewish Presidential Voting Statistics. Contemporary Jewry,32(3), 2012: 215-236. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/43549743 Wright, T. Ethnic Group Pressures in Foreign Policy: Indian Muslims and American Jews. Economic and Political Weekly, 17(41), 1983: 1655-1660. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/4371453

The Brown University Journal of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (JPPE) is a peer reviewed academic journal for undergraduate and graduate students that is sponsored by the Political Theory Project and the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics Society Program at Brown University. The Brown University Journal of Philosophy, Politics & Economics *FEATURES * FROM GREG FISCHER Mayor of Louisville, KY Jorge O. Elorza Mayor of Providence, RI Economics Cannabis By Kaid Ray-Tipton Latent Effects of Cannabis Legalization: Racial Disproportionality and Disparity in Washington State Drug Convictions, 2000-2015 Click to flip through the journal Philosophy A More Perfect Union Economics Energy By Benjamin Seymour Inclusive Norms and the Future of Liberal Unity By Jingpeng Shao Embracing Renewable Energy for Sustainable Job Growth in West Virginia economics Politics A.S.E.A.N Philosophy Transcendental Self By Hisyam Takiudin The Long Game: ASEAN, China's Charm Offensive and the South China Sea Dispute By Jennifer Kim Reconceptualizing the Idea of the Self Within Western Philosophy: The Existence-Reason Binary and the Nonrational Transcendental Self Politics Racial Capitalism Politics American Jews By Olerato Mogomotsi Racial Capitalism in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Challenging the Fallacy of Black Entitlement under Service Delivery Protests. By Jake Goodman The Political Behavior of American Jews A Public Choice Approach to Israel-influenced Voting

In Favor of Entrenchment Justifying Geoengineering Research in Democratic Systems Samantha M. Koreman Dartmouth College Author Filippo Zinni Lori Kohen Antonio Almazan Editors Fall 2019 Download full text PDF (10 pages) Abstract This paper critically evaluates the ability of structurally democratic governments to address long-term, existential problems such as climate change using the example of geoengineering. The solution to these problems is to curtail strict democracies and, instead, entrench the right of future generations in valid constitutions. Theoretical Framework Climate change is a problem that harms current generations and that will continue to harm future generations. Current generations are harmed as a result of changing temperatures, rising ocean levels, and unpredictable weather patterns. Future generations will experience much more severe effects. Most ethical theories acknowledge that individuals have some obligation to future generations. Unfortunately, this acknowledgement does not always translate into the field of political theory. Because of moral facts about representation and non-moral facts about the motivation that individuals have for stepping foot in the political arena, current democratic political institutions are ill-equipped to implement policies on behalf of current generations. This is a serious problem when it comes to solving for the harms caused by climate change. One potential solution to climate change is geoengineering—the new realm of “deliberate large-scale intervention in the Earth’s natural systems to counteract climate change.” However, democracy has difficulty justifying this solution. In order to rightfully implement long-term climate change solutions like geoengineering research, it is necessary for democratic political institutions to entrench the rights of future generations in their constitutions. This paper will first establish a two-pronged problem for democracy. Then, it will apply that problem to geoengineering. After addressing potential solutions to the geoengineering dilemma, this paper advocates for entrenching the rights of future generations into a democratic constitution as a solution for the two problems discussed in the first two sections of the paper. Finally, this paper addresses multiple counterarguments to entrenchment and concludes that entrenchment is, in fact, a viable solution to justifying geoengineering research in the policy arena. I. A Problem for Democracy If we assume that we have some obligations to future generations, then it is necessary to solve a two-pronged problem for dealing with claims of intergenerational justice in modern democratic societies. Although some people claim that democracy has many benefits related to the idea that citizens get to have input in important political decisions through electing representatives and voting on specific policies, a major downside of the democratic procedure is that on a purely structural level, it is ill-equipped to solve long-term problems. The first prong of this democratic dilemma is that procedural accounts of representative democracy require that representatives be responsive to their constituents. This occurs through voting and tests of public approval. Neither of these methods allow representatives the leeway to directly make decisions on behalf of future generations as future generations are not the constituents of political representatives—as they do not yet exist. It is impossible for future generations to elect representatives or even have any measurable approval or disapproval for current policies. For policies with long time horizons, it will only be after the policies are implemented that future generations will weigh in on whether they approve of said implemented policy. This concern over time horizons establishes the second prong of the problem of integrating concerns about intergenerational justice in democratic procedures—because representatives want to be elected and maintain high approval ratings, they will often choose to focus on short-term projects. These short-term projects are policies that current people prioritize in their day-to-day lives. While this prong is an issue in general for democracy’s ability to pass policies that address long-term problems, it is especially problematic in the case of policy concerning climate change. While many people are in favor of addressing climate change, they rarely vote for a politician based on a policy to address climate change. Even if a small portion of the population did vote in this manner, it would still be difficult for policymakers to collectively act to pass policies that mitigate climate change as they need to cater to all constituents. For example, as in the case of America’s coal industry, politicians will often advocate for investing in economic advances that lead to increased resource use. One might have an easy answer to this and say that politicians can simply invest in decoupling in order to satisfy both current and future peoples. However, this two-pronged problem is not so easily addressed in cases where these sorts of justifications for certain environmental policies in a representative democracy reach counterintuitive conclusions that run in opposition to the interest of current people. II. The Dilemma of Geoengineering If we are to accept the context above claim that democracy is unable to establish a stable obligation to future generations, then a dilemma regarding geoengineering becomes apparent—geoengineering research to “arm the future” is unjustified and undesirable while actually implementing geoengineering is justified. Current geoengineering research focuses on the possibility of manipulating the Earth in such a way as to mitigate—or, hopefully, to solve for—the effects of climate change. While there are many proposals in the scientific community regarding specific forms of geoengineering such as injecting sulfate aerosols into the Earth’s atmosphere to increase the Earth’s albedo and decrease the Earth’s temperature, all forms of current geoengineering research are affected by the dilemma of democratic procedure. There exists an important higher-order claim in discussions of policy justification that the rationale for certain advocacies and the way that those rationales interact within an overarching political framework is important for determining the extent to which policies are justified. Proponents of geoengineering research often make the argument that even if our current population is not in favor of actually implementing geoengineering, it is important to “arm the future” with the information needed to implement geoengineering if future generations are put into a position where they must implement geoengineering for their own survival. Contrastingly, a rationale for implementing geoengineering does not categorically ignore the overarching context of democracy. An argument of this sort could proceed in the following fashion: current people are being harmed as a result of climate change. Constituents also have an interest in mitigating climate change. There has already been substantial research into geoengineering policies that prove it is both feasible and cost-effective. Therefore, there is a justification for politicians to support the implementation of geoengineering to benefit current people. This is not mere conjecture—in recent memory, members of the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States have lobbied for funds for real-world geoengineering testing and testified to congress proclaiming the wonders of geoengineering. Members of the Trump administration and high-level Republicans have publicly advocated for geoengineering as a method of solving for climate change and some pundits claim that their reason for doing this lies in protecting the interest of constituents in the oil industry. Current people have an interest in implementation and would benefit from a successful deployment of, for example, stratospheric spraying—the introduction of “small, reflective particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect some sunlight before it reaches the surface of the Earth” would act as a way to almost immediately decrease the temperature of the planet and mitigate the current effects of climate change. The question then becomes why politicians have not made more of an attempt to secure funds to create a real-world test for geoengineering. The answer is deceptively simple—people may not like climate change, but they also do not like the idea of messing with the environment or they believe that there exists a slippery slope in geoengineering, potentially leading to continued adjustments of the environment. While public opinion might be in favor of the idea of researching geoengineering, they are wary of implementation. III. One Potential Response to the Geoengineering Dilemma One might claim that interest in geoengineering research within the current population is reason enough for politicians to advocate for it. This is not a categorical solution—it is only contingent on the beliefs of current people and those beliefs could change. If geoengineering research proved to be useful and effective, it might be the case that current people would lose interest in its novelty. Support for policies can fade, and in the case of climate change it would be a mistake to let solutions be determined solely by what could be transient interest. If one accepts that a successful implementation of geoengineering will take time, resources, and extensive research then it can be argued that choosing to stop researching geoengineering is a harm to the future generation that requires that research for its survival. IV. Addressing the Democratic and the Geoengineering Dilemmas Up until this point, this paper has put forth two problems—democracy’s two-pronged dilemma and the geoengineering paradox. The two-pronged dilemma states, first, that democracy does not have a structure to address the interest of future citizens and, second, that it is ill-equipped to work on long-term projects to address long-term issues. The geoengineering paradox has been presented as an application of democracy’s two-pronged dilemma and states that democracy justifies implementing geoengineering but not researching it. If one accepts these problems and believes that we have some obligation to future generations, then a solution is needed. A solution to democracy’s two-pronged dilemma and the geoengineering paradox is for democratic states to entrench the rights of future generations in their constitutions and laws using legal language that requires policymakers to maintain a certain element of respect for future generations. This would entail positively affirming that human rights extend to the future. Ideally, this entrenchment would be flexible and focus on ideals of intergenerational equality—it would prioritize the interest of future generations to maximize their ability for free choice and maintain a standard of living that is at least at the median of the standard of living of current generations. The content and interpretation of the entrenchment of the rights of future generations is somewhat variable, but the benefits to entrenchment are multifold. First, entrenchment would allow policymakers to permissibly make decisions in the interest of future generations and avoid the first prong of the democratic problem. It would provide a structural justification for pursuing policies beyond that which can be justified by an obligation to be responsive to their constituency. Although future generations still cannot express approval or disapproval for current policies, a policymaker has reason to virtually represent their interests to the best of their ability. The second benefit is also clear—entrenchment solves the second prong of the democratic problem. Entrenchment provides a constitutional obligation to give care towards future generations and take on long-term projects. Even in cases where short-term projects might support a bid for reelection, policymakers must consider whether these short-term projects conflict with the rights of future generations. A practical example can be seen in a political debate on whether to invest in jobs in coal or green energy. Although coal jobs might have some small, short-term benefits to a single politician’s constituency, it would be impermissible to make a conscious choice to support an industry that has the ability to exacerbate environmental harms. Instead, the politician might advocate for investing in renewable energy and training programs to transition coal miners to work at a new renewable energy plant. In cases where there are geographic concerns about the feasibility of renewable energy, the burden of the politician would be to determine whether any industry practices could be changed in order to improve the sustainability of the local coal plant. Entrenchment implies consideration of the future rather than a categorical prioritization of interests. Third, and most relevant to the geoengineering dilemma, entrenchment allows for there to be an overarching political context that legitimizes the rationale for research in the name of “arming the future.” It allows politicians to support geoengineering research even in the context where the benefits of the policy will not be realized for decades-long after their time in office is done. It represents fulfilling a contractual obligation. If a politician were to propose a policy that would violate the constraints of entrenchment, then she would be liable to something like impeachment. Impeachment acts as a way to punish politicians who break laws. As entrenching the rights of future generations would be akin to proposing a law constraining conduct, the violation of entrenchment would be a violation of the law. This would give individuals and structures within the government the ability to impose sanctions on those policymakers who would seek to disrespect future generations. V. Responding to Potential Objection to Entrenchment Even if one accepts that entrenching basic rights for future generations addresses democracy’s two-pronged dilemma and the geoengineering dilemma, there are still a few powerful objections to entrenchment. A. Entrenchment is Undemocratic One could make the argument that any entrenchment of any value into a constitution is undemocratic as it could constrain the ability of policymakers to be responsive to their constituents. Values that are entrenched in a constitution—a document made by one group of people that often continues on to future generations—do not always represent the views of current people. To entrench the rights of future generations in a constitution would be to impose values on future generations; something inherently undemocratic. This is a relatively weak argument for two main reasons. First, entrenchment in this case is something that allows for procedural fairness and respects democratic tenets of equality. If one was a proponent of democracy, then she would advocate for both of these features as prerequisites for a democratic process to take place. Second, and most powerfully in the context of this paper, entrenchment explains the reason that the paradox of geoengineering exists. People often recognize respect for future generations as a value that they either have or ought to have. Although they themselves may disagree with implementing geoengineering, that does not mean that they categorically want to take that choice away from others. Although democracies do not necessarily need to possess liberal values, they often do because of concerns about fairness and equality. In order to ensure that future generations maintain an ability to choose, it is necessary to implement certain political protections against current generations unknowingly limiting the options of future generations. B. An Epistemic Worry One more powerful objection to entrenchment is the notion that current people do not even know what is in the interest of future people. After all, one of the benefits of democracy is that people can voice their own interests and concerns to policymakers. Future people cannot do this as they do not yet exist. Norms and values change over time, and opinions about policy can often be shaped by these changes. Apart from a concern about what interests future people will have, there may also be a second, purely epistemic worry that consists of something akin to the following: we cannot know what the future holds with any certainty, and we cannot make policy to address problems that we do not know about. Therefore, any policy to help the future will rely on incomplete information. First, this epistemic question applies to current people too. If individuals do not vote, policymakers are still tasked with considering them in their decisions. We do not say that they have done something wrong if policymakers make an imperfect decision—we only say they made a mistake when the decision they make directly violates the rights of those people who are not their constituents. For example, a decision to invest in infrastructure in one town that 40% of the town refrained from voting on. That by itself is not a problem. If the infrastructure investment requires bulldozing the home of someone who did not vote for this plan, then that person could say that her personal rights were disrespected and the policymaker did something wrong. Second, certain interests have remained the same. Basic goods that are key to survival are a prerequisite for having higher order interests, interests that relate to ethical determinations of what a good life would entail. In terms of higher order interests, “although moral variety undoubtedly exists, it is less extensive than is often supposed…[as] commonalities define the distinctively human forms of life.” Certain interests are human interests, and entrenchment focuses on the consideration of these interests. Even if one disagrees with the idea that there can be one common conception of the “good life” as espoused by the Skidelskys’, approaches of determining a good life based on what a rational individual would want or what capabilities we wish individuals to have also require attention to ensuring basic goods. Basic goods are “in general necessary for the framing and the execution of a rational plan of life” and capabilities require asking “what is so-and-so able to do and be?” Food, clean water, and shelter are all requirements for safe living, and all of those requirements are threatened by climate change. Third, in terms of the specific policy of “arming the future” with geoengineering research, current people are not telling the future what to do. Instead, current people would be maximizing the choices that the future can make by providing them with information. Entrenchment as a justifying account of why it would be permissible to “arm the future” does not entail an epistemic overreach as no decision is being made; the future does not need to use the information that they would be given. They have the freedom to refuse to implement geoengineering if they do not believe it is what is best for them. Finally—to address the purely epistemic worry that nobody can predict the future on a policy level—it is important to recognize that it is likely the case that climate change will pose an existential risk to some future generation. Although it is always difficult to calculate epistemic uncertainty, it is plausible to say that we are relatively certain that if climate change is currently affecting people, it will likely affect future people as well. It is also worth noting that in our current democratic system, policymakers do recognize climate change as an existential risk to future generations and often act in the international arena to combat it like with the Kyoto Protocol or the Paris Accords. C. Prioritizing the Present Another strong objection to entrenchment is the worry that policymakers would be prohibited from prioritizing the present. If there are side constraints against harming the future, policymakers may feel like they either cannot make any decision or can only make decisions that benefit the future for fear of being impeached for shirking their duties to the future. First, this misunderstands the goal of entrenchment. Entrenchment states that there is a prohibition against harming future generations with current policies. It prohibits policymakers from ignoring future generations in their calculations. It allows policymakers to permissibly take action that benefits future generations without someone claiming that they are shirking their obligations to the present. It does not state that policymakers should only prioritize future generations; it simply places a side constraint on what sorts of policies can be permissibly implemented. We still may not harm the present with our policies. Second, stating that a certain group has rights that should be protected does not imply that the current generation does not have rights. Entrenching the rights of future people does not take away the rights of current people. Certain policies might prioritize future people over current people, but in the case of justifying climate change policy that is not the case,especially when it comes to geoengineering research to “arm the future.” Third, to address the worry about undue prioritization in regard to taxation, there is a mistake in assuming that geoengineering research does not benefit current people. Scientific research has numerous fringe benefits. It benefits scientists and educational institutions in terms of providing funding and jobs as well as attracting new talent. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that an individual’s taxes go towards something that will benefit her in specific terms. If someone agrees to exist within the bounds of government and pay taxes, she agrees to pay for a set of government services rather than a specific service. There is no real mechanism to withhold a person’s taxes from being used towards services that do not directly benefit her as money is fungible. Finally, a worry about considering the interests of future people is akin to worrying about the interests of current people. A democratic system gives everyone input into the decision-making process, but equality of input does not entail that everyone’s input will be included in the final decision. Consideration of future interest does not imply that those interests will always override current interests; it is the job of policymakers to make reasoned decisions rather than a problem with entrenchment. To this final response, there is a separate worry, namely the way that democracy often considers interests is via some majority rules system. It is because of this that there can exist a tyranny of the majority where the interests of the minority are systematically discounted. If consideration of future people is meant to mean that policymakers are to consider each of the votes of the infinite future people, then it may mean that in a democratic system would always side with the infinite future people because they numerically outweigh current people. This interpretation of entrenchment is a mistake. First, consideration of basic interests does not require counting individual votes as the interests remain the same and simply act as a constraint. Second, side constraints on what policymakers can permissibly vote for exist in our current system in order to curtail the harms of the tyranny of the majority. While individual policies can fall into the trap of the tyranny of the majority, policymakers do not have the right to infringe on the basic rights of the minority. VI. Conclusion If one wishes to justify funding geoengineering research to “arm the future,” then it is necessary to solve democracy’s two-pronged problem and address its relationship with the dilemma of geoengineering. While policymakers have the ability to make any law, it is important that the laws they create are justified by a broader framework. By entrenching the rights of future generations to basic necessities that would be harmed by climate change, policymakers would have a codified reason to invest in policies that can “arm the future” with information about how to quickly counteract climate change. Works Cited Gardiner, Stephen M. “Is ‘Arming the Future’ with Geoengineering Really the Lesser Evil?” Climate Ethics. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, 2010. Keith, David. A Case for Climate Engineering. MIT Press: Cambridge, MA, 2013. Keith, David W. “Toward a Responsible Solar Geoengineering Research Program.” Issues in Science and Technology. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine: The University of Texas at Dallas, Arizona State University, 2017. Lukacs, Martin. “Trump presidency ‘opens door’ to planet-hacking geoengineer experiments.” The Guardian, 27 March, 2017. www.theguardian.com/environment/true-north/2017/mar/27/trump-presidency-opens-door-to-planet-hacking-geoengineer-experiments Oxford Geoengineering Programme. “What is geoengineering?” University of Oxford Martin School. 2018. www.geoengineering.ox.ac.uk/www.geoengineering.ox.ac.uk/what-is-geoengineering/what-is-geoengineering/indexd41d.html Skidelsky, Edward and Skidelsky, Robert. How Much is Enough?: Money and the Good Life. New York, NY, 2012.

Vermont Act 46 Implications for School Choice Quinn Bornstein Brown University Author Danai Benopoulou Mike Danello Phillip Squires Editors Fall 2018 This paper analyzes Vermont Act 46, an education policy passed by the state legislature in 2015 that seeks to reduce rising public education costs by consolidating the state’s many small, rural school districts into larger unified districts Introduction Vermont is the second-smallest state in the United States, with a 2014 population of around 626,500. Compared to the country as a whole, Vermont has a smaller percentage of residents under the age of 18: 19.4% compared to the 23.1% nationwide average (US Census Bureau, 2014). Even though this number might appear to be trivial, the difference illustrates a dire issue that the state is facing. The number of children in the state’s K-12 public school system has declined from 103,000 students in 1997 to 78,300 in 2015 without a significant reduction in school sites or personnel. This, in turn, has led to a sharp increase in education spending. Since 2009, Vermont’s per-pupil expenditure has been among the highest nationwide.[1] The budgetary expansion is exacerbated by the changing demographics of students who are enrolled in the school system, including a 47% increase in the number of students who qualify for free and reduced lunches through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.[2] A heavy burden of this spending increase is placed on residents’ income taxes. Vermont’s school-aged population decline and the accompanying spending hikes are not expected to improve in the coming years. Therefore, state lawmakers have been searching for a way to provide the best opportunities to students while simultaneously decreasing the educational budget. A possible policy solution is Vermont Act 46, which was signed into law in June 2015 by former Governor Peter Shumlin. The act provides three school district consolidation styles and offers tax incentives to towns that merge to create districts that contain at least 900 students.[3] If successful, the act aims to increase educational opportunities through the curricular and extracurricular programs offered by larger districts, and decrease budgetary inefficiencies caused by Vermont’s underutilized school facilities and personnel. But what will guarantee Act 46’s success in implementation? As written, the law is poised for success in its high-visibility and symbolic appeal to community unity as well as its use of monetary inducements as a policy tool to increase district cooperation. In addition, its mixed top-down and bottom-up structure appeals politically to a wide range of constituencies including conservatives, liberals, the governor, and school board members. However, Act 46’s success is threatened by the controversy surrounding whether districts that merge will have to give up their school choice rights. Leading education policy analyst Rick Hess argues that one of the biggest impediments to policy implementation is political controversy around the topic.[4] School choice is a longstanding attribute of the Vermont public education system. Because of the state’s mainly rural population, 82 out of 97 school districts do not have the capacity to operate their own high school.[5] Thus, inhabitants of those districts are free to choose a high school, rather than be assigned one. The ability to attend a school outside of the district is highly valued among Vermont communities as it allows for local control, parental freedom, and increased educational opportunity. Due to the community’s investment in school choice, the implementation of Act 46 will only be successful if it is revised and clarified by the Vermont legislature in order to preserve school choice. Vermont Act 46 Explained Vermont Act 46 operates on two axes: budgetary efficiency and increasing student opportunity. Legislators and the governor believe that both policy issues can be addressed through school district consolidation. Currently, the state contains 13 different types of school district structures. This diversity has resulted in a lack of cohesion and flexibility to share curricular resources, administrative models, and extra-curricular opportunities.[6] Because of Vermont’s low population density—an average of 68 residents per square mile—the smallest Vermont elementary school contains 15 students, and the smallest high school a mere 55.[7] These schools are not anomalies: out of the state’s 300 public schools, 205 enroll fewer than 300 students.[8] On the one hand, small classroom sizes and low student to teacher ratios offer many benefits, such as individualized attention. However, small schools often do not have the ability to offer a diverse range of educational opportunities and have higher per-pupil costs than larger schools. Research on economies of scale by Bruce Baker of Rutgers University and Wendy Geller of the Vermont State Agency of Education finds that nationwide, “district-level per pupil costs tend to level off as district enrollments approach 2000 pupils.” This means that moderately sized districts, those enrolling 2,000-4,000 students, can have an efficient per-pupil expenditure without sacrificing individualized teaching practices that result in optimal student performance. However, only four out of the 97 Vermont districts contain over 2,000 students.[9] To feasibly balance the optimal district population (according to national literature) with Vermont’s rural demographics, legislators compromised and decided on 900 students as the optimal district size under Act 46. On the side of economic efficiency, Act 46 seeks to rein in educational spending by setting allowable spending increases per district; citizens are taxed doubly for every dollar amount exceeding this limit. This sanction is balanced by the positive tax incentives to induce districts to consolidate. Act 46 outlines three paths to consolidation with varying deadlines, with the inducements being higher the sooner a district consolidates. Districts who follow the first path and merge by the 2017 deadline receive a 10-cent tax break per $100 of residential property within the district. This amount decreases by two cents annually over the next five years, greatly incentivizing districts to merge before 2022.[10] Inducements are a powerful policy tool for implementing rapid change, for districts will want to maximize their tax break potential. This method operates under the assumption that monetary measures are the best way to prompt change.[11] Since the main goal of Act 46 is to counter the heavy spending pressures that districts face, the use of inducements is well founded. Districts will be fiscally motivated to consolidate as they face the opportunity to save money in the short term while implementing a policy that will also help them save money in the long run. However, this policy tool presents a controversy because the allowable spending increases, tax benefits, and sanctions are top-down inducements. Stowe Representative Heidi Scheuermann, who staunchly opposes Act 46, argues that the law erodes the traditional power of local policymakers and school board members, impeding their ability to monitor their districts’ educational budgets. She states that the consolidation of budgetary power in the hands of legislators in the state’s capital moves the schooling system further away from providing for the diverse needs of individual students in Vermont’s varied districts.[12] It is natural for Scheuermann, as a Republican member of the state legislature, to be wary of increased state power over traditionally local matters. However, Act 46 is “designed to encourage and support local decisions and actions.”[13] The legislation balances the top-down economic inducements by providing district autonomy over which of the three phases of consolidation to enact. It also allows the districts autonomy on how to undergo the actual restructuring process. Furthermore, consolidation is neither mandated nor does the Act require districts to have over 900 students. The language merely states that the “state’s educational goals are best served” by this number.[14] The top-down voluntary size standards and fiscal inducements coupled with the bottom-up local control on how to meet these standards is reminiscent of President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). This 2001 policy operated on a “horse-trade” structure of a federal call for state authority on setting certain standards and designing teaching and testing practices to meet them.[15] Act 46 follows this federalism-preserving structure, but differs from NCLB in its focus on restructuring as the key to educational reform, instead of altering student and teacher standards. The restructuring movement, which emphasizes individual school-level administrative practices such as site-based-management (SBM), is popular with local school administrators and school board members, for it returns power to the local level. Often, school board members are proponents of the status quo in education policy; that is, they want to maintain the current policy monopoly that the majority of school districts nationwide have their budgets and administrative processes decided by a democratically elected school board.[16] School redistricting clearly differs from Vermont’s status quo, and the decreased number of districts will result in fewer school board positions and therefore a lower number of Vermonters who will have control over the educational system. However, because of the bottom-up autonomy that districts retain under Act 46, the Vermont School Board Association director, Nicole Mace, supports the law.[17] On the other hand, the Act’s top-down aspects appeal to powerful individuals in Montpelier, the state’s capital, who benefit from the increased state control. These individuals, such as Jeff Francis, who is the head of the Vermont Superintendents’ Association (VSA), are crucial to the law’s implementation. They have access to the media and can thus raise public awareness of the law. They also have leadership roles with state bureaucratic agencies such as the Department of Education and authority over local superintendents.[18] The VSA is also a proponent of Act 46 because superintendents statewide are expected to receive increased public approval for taking initiative in implementing a reform that touts both fiscal responsibility and educational opportunity. However, Act 46 could contribute to what Hess calls “policy churn” due to its support from the VSA. Since superintendents often have short tenures, averaging around three years, the results of the reforms they put in place but are often reaped once they out of office.[19] Even before the first phase of district consolidation goes into effect in 2017, the next governor or legislative body could decide that merging would not solve the state’s education budget concerns. Therefore, to ensure its full implementation over time, it is important that Act 46 is supported by the public, not just the policymakers and bureaucrats. The latter individuals could be more concerned with furthering their own personal political agendas rather than ensuring student welfare. The law is successful at garnering bipartisan support among Vermont voters and taxpayers. Although conservatives like Rep. Scheuermann are concerned with the increase in state power that comes with implementation, others would support the law’s primary aim of fiscal responsibility. On the other side of the aisle, liberals would tout the possibilities for increased student opportunity that comes with redistricting, especially for those on free and reduced lunch who may otherwise not have access to extracurricular enrichment opportunities. In 2015, a student had to turn down the opportunity to attend the University of Vermont under its full-ride Green & Gold merit scholarship because her high school did not offer the curriculum required for her to apply to the university.[20] Under Act 46, larger districts would be able to offer more specialized instruction, such as Advanced Placement, vocational education, and arts courses. This means that all Vermont students would have a more level playing field; achievement will not be limited to those who happen to live in districts with large high schools. Act 46 also succeeds in gaining widespread public support because of what Hess calls high visibility. Community awareness of the law is important because it impacts not just families with school-aged children, but every Vermonter due to the effect that the law has on their property taxes. The act’s high profile on the state agenda is evident in the community forums that supervisory unions have held across the state in the past year to explain the law’s contents. St. Johnsbury Academy, a high school in Caledonia County that serves students from more than 14 local districts, explained to taxpayers, through its community forum, that the school’s allowable tuition increase would be 1.95% (which is the average of all the sending towns’).[21] These opportunities for resident input and learning are important to foster support for a complicated economic bill that could have appeared to be the product of disassociated Montpelier politicians. Hess explains that another aspect of increasing visibility is symbolism: this new law gives the impression of grand change.[22] Even if residents do not fully understand the intricacies of the three phases of consolidation or the economic inducements, they can support the act’s ideals of opportunity, equality, local authority, fiscal responsibility, and unity despite geographic isolation. The Issue of School Choice Despite the law’s many benefits, one deeply-rooted Vermont ideal does not have a place in Act 46: school choice. In other areas, Act 46 is poised for success in implementation: it addresses an important fiscal issue, utilizes inducements as a policy tool, provides opportunities for student achievement, garners wide-ranging bipartisan support, and is highly visible. Yet Hess argues that successfully implemented policies should not only have high visibility, but also low controversy.[23] Granted, there is some disagreement as to Act 46’s success in the aforementioned areas. The conservative interest group Campaign for Vermont argues that the tax write-offs for residents in districts that merge will actually lead to higher educational spending, not lower.[24] Conservatives like Rep. Scheuermann are also concerned with the possible erosion of local control. However, the larger danger of losing local control does not come from Montpelier’s top-down mandates and inducements. The major source of controversy is the legislation’s unclear language about whether former choice towns that merge with non-choice towns will still provide tuition to allow families to send their children to schools outside the new district. Act 46, as currently written, states it will not change the way a district pays students’ tuition.[25] Many legislators and schools, such as St. Johnsbury Academy, interpreted this to mean that choice is only given up if the school board of a sending town chooses to mandate that all their resident students attend the new district schools.[26] However, the State Board of Education ruled that school choice towns cannot maintain their choice if they merge with a district with schools that offer those grades.[27] Therefore, there is a vast gulf between how the law was written and envisioned, and how it would be implemented. Act 46’s chances of success are greatly reduced if school choice is not maintained and the Vermont state legislature does not revise and clarify the law’s language to overturn the State Board of Education’s ruling. The preservation of this 140-year-old Vermont educational practice is essential because of its bipartisan support, symbolism, and educational opportunity. Vermont’s school choice system is designed so that school boards in towns that do not offer all K-12 grade levels must pay tuition for students to attend a public or approved secular, independent school outside of the town or district for those absent grades. It could be the case that a town has such a designated “sending school,” but a child is better served by attending a different school, for geographic or curricular reasons. In this situation, the parents can petition the school board to have the child’s tuition follow them to the other school.[28] This flexibility for students to move across districts is important because many schools are too small to offer a wide range of Advanced Placement or language courses.[29] Furthermore, Vermont is practically exempt from the provision of the federal No Child Left Behind act, that allows students to attend another school in the same district if their designated school does not meet the standards of adequate yearly progress toward excellence for two years. There are very few school districts in Vermont containing more than one school offering the same grade levels.[30] Without school choice, parents would have to change their place of residence to save their child from attending a failing school, putting families in a difficult situation. Choice also promotes community control; school boards are in charge of allotting tuition to the various sending schools and deciding if a town has a designated high school. Finally, choice connotes freedom and individualism; this symbolism appeals to both conservatives who value local government and family values, and liberals who want to provide equal opportunities. During the 2016 gubernatorial race, in the first debate between Republican Phil Scott and Democrat Sue Minter, both candidates expressed support for school choice, despite their differing views on Act 46 and the necessary steps needed to enhance the state’s public education system. Minter stood by the existing school choice system, but would counter its expansion. Scott, on the other hand, promised to expand school choice and lamented the fact that Act 46 curtailed a key Vermont value.[31] In the first year of implementation, residents of 55 school districts voted on merging into larger districts. The results varied, with several districts on the western side of the state in Chittenden County touting successful merger votes. John Castle, superintendent of the North Country Supervisory Union, explained that this success, which came from the most densely populated section of Vermont, is due to its “different ethos and cultural disparities” compared to other, rural areas of the state. He cites a fear among residents of rural districts like Orleans Central and Franklin Northeast, a particularly isolated district along the Canadian border, that a merger will bring with it a sense of loss of community identity and history.[32] Three districts have defeated the proposal entirely. However, the majority of districts remain at an irresolute intermediary stage, while merger study and exploratory committees try to decide how best to balance the needs of taxpayers and students with the district’s budget.[33] The unification study committee report for the Franklin Northeast Supervisory Union, a district that ultimately failed to pass the Act, outlines the changes to school choice that the merger would entail. Students from the three districts who are currently enrolled in grades 9-12 for the 2016-17 school year would be “grandfathered”: their tuition dollars would follow them and allow them the choice to attend their current school, even if it is out of district. However, successful passage of Act 46 would bring an end to choice at the close of the 2019-20 school year.[34] Including those in Franklin Northeast, four out of fifteen towns that have rejected merger proposals offer school choice.[35] Members of the State GOP, led by House Minority Leader Don Turner, have called for a reconsideration of the bill to permit “communities the ability to keep their school choice and still merge with non-school choice towns.” While this would be the best solution for constituent support and educational opportunity, not all actors find this feasible. Nicole Mace of the Vermont School Boards Association and Jess Francis of the Vermont Superintendents Association argue that the state will face an added cost by providing tuition for choice while also operating all K-12 grade levels within the same district.[36] They believe this will exacerbate the problems of the high education budget that Act 46 seeks to repair. Apart from the argument to not amend Act 46 as currently written, skeptics could also look to test scores to argue in favor of rescinding the law entirely. Vermont’s scores on the 2015 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test continue to rank among those of the top 10 states in the country. The only state higher in 4th grade reading is Massachusetts (with no state topping Vermont in 8th grade reading) and the achievement gap between students on Free and Reduced Lunch and those who are not is much lower in Vermont than the national average.[37] One of the main goals of Act 46 is to enhance student achievement. However, students are already successful. So, why change the system? However, school district consolidation under Act 46 is concerned with a different kind of success - not the kind that can be measured through standardized test scores. The law allows for districts to provide extra-curricular and advanced curricular opportunities—the arts, sports, foreign language, Advanced Placement courses—to isolated, rural students who may not otherwise have access to academic enrichment. While Act 46 is an economic policy and its main goal is to rein in the education budget, lawmakers and constituents must not forget that the primary aim of any policy affecting schoolchildren and their families is to provide students with the best educational experiences and opportunities for success. School choice is an essential component of widening rural children’s academic and social experiences. Milton Friedman writes that school choice promotes a “healthy intermingling” of students from varied racial and socioeconomic backgrounds.[38] At St. Johnsbury Academy, students from the more than 14 sending districts in Vermont and New Hampshire[39] attend classes with hundreds of domestic and international boarding students. If Act 46 were to discontinue school choice, local students from one town could be arbitrarily designated to attend an inferior or less diverse secondary school, merely because of the way the redistricting lines were drawn. While the Vermonters arguing for school choice are mainly fueled by tradition and desire for educational opportunity, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos supports school choice as a way to limit federal involvement in education.[40] The Trump administration’s position on school choice differs from that of the Obama and Bush administrations. The former sees it as a way to flee struggling public schools while the latter focus on increasing accountability and raising test scores for public schools. This past concentration on improving public schools is logical—even though 37% of students in 2012 had school choice available to them, the vast majority of parents (77%) reported that the public school assigned to their neighborhood or school district was their first choice of school.[41] Despite the fact that the majority of Americans favor their local public school, Vermont’s low population density, history of school choice and disparity in classes and programs offered, places the state in a very different position. This highlights the importance of maintaining school choice in Vermont, even if the majority of Americans don’t utilize the option. As the VBSA and VSA debate the fiscal difficulties of the mutual coexistence of choice and district merging, they must remember that the success of Act 46 depends on its low controversy among its constituencies. If parents cannot preserve choice for their children, Act 46 will be nearly impossible to implement statewide. Endnotes [1] Baker, Bruce D. and Wendy I. Geller. 2015. “When is Small Too Small? Efficiency, Equity & the Organization of Vermont Public Schools.” Vermont Agency of Education & Rutgers University. Retrieved from http://education.vermont.gov/documents/EDU-bbaker-vtconsolidation-march2_20152.pdf . [2] St. Johnsbury Academy. 2015. SJA and Act 46. Retrieved from http://www.stjacademy.org/page.cfm?p=238&newsid=2773&ncat=11,10,9,4,7,12 [3] Vermont Agency of Education. 2015a. Act 46 of 2015 Fact Sheet. Retrieved from http://education.vermont.gov/documents/edu-act46-fact-sheet.pdf . [4] Hess, Frederick M. 1999. “A Political Explanation of Policy Selection: The Case of Urban School Reform.” Policy Studies Journal, 27 (3), 459-473. [5] Vermont Department of Education. 2013. Town and Unified Union School Districts Tuitioning One or more Grades. Retrieved from http://education.vermont.gov/documents/EDU-Town_and_Unified_School_Districts_Tuitioning_One_or_More_Grades.pdf [6] St. Johnsbury Academy. 2015. SJA and Act 46. Retrieved from http://www.stjacademy.org/page.cfm?p=238&newsid=2773&ncat=11,10,9,4,7,12 [7] United States Census Bureau. 2014. Vermont Quickfacts. Retrieved from http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/50000.html . [8] St. Johnsbury Academy. 2015. SJA and Act 46. Retrieved from http://www.stjacademy.org/page.cfm?p=238&newsid=2773&ncat=11,10,9,4,7,12 [9] Baker, Bruce D. and Wendy I. Geller. 2015. “When is Small Too Small? Efficiency, Equity & the Organization of Vermont Public Schools.” Vermont Agency of Education & Rutgers University. Retrieved from http://education.vermont.gov/documents/EDU-bbaker-vtconsolidation-march2_20152.pdf . [10] Danitz Pache, Tiffany. 2015a. “Campaign for Vermont Calls for Repeal of Act 46.” Vermont Digger. Retrieved from http://vtdigger.org/2015/09/07/campaign-for-vermont-calls-for-repeal-of-act-46/ . [11] McDonnell, Lorraine M., and Richard F. Elmore 1987. Getting the Job Done: Alternative Policy Instruments. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Vol. 9, No. 2 (Summer, 1987), pp. 133-152. [12] Kinzel, Bob and Rick Cengeri. 2015. Getting Act 46 Together. Vermont Edition [Radio Broadcast]. Montpelier, VT: Vermont Public Radio. [13] Vermont Agency of Education. 2015a. Act 46 of 2015 Fact Sheet. Retrieved from http://education.vermont.gov/documents/edu-act46-fact-sheet.pdf . [14] Vermont Agency of Education. 2015b. Clarification on Act 46 Size Requirements. Retrieved from http://education.vermont.gov/documents/edu-act46-size-requirement-clarification.pdf . [15] Fuhrman, Susan H. 2003. Ridings Waves, Trading Horses: The Twenty-Year Effort to Reform Education. In Gordon, David T. & Graham, Patricia A., A Nation Reformed: American Education 20 Years After A Nation at Risk. (pp. 7-22). Cambridge, Ma: Harvard Education Press. [16] Papay, John. 2015. The Role of Research in Educational Politics and Policymaking [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from https://canvas.brown.edu/courses/1018282/files/folder/Class%2520Slides?preview=53833383 . [17] Danitz Pache, Tiffany 2015b. “State GOP Leaders Call for Clarification of Act 46 Impact on Private Schools.” Vermont Digger. Retrieved from http://vtdigger.org/2015/10/26/state-gop-leaders-call-for-clarification-of-act-46-impact-on-private-schools/ . [18] Danitz Pache, Tiffany. 2015a. “Campaign for Vermont Calls for Repeal of Act 46.” Vermont Digger. Retrieved from http://vtdigger.org/2015/09/07/campaign-for-vermont-calls-for-repeal-of-act-46/ . [19] Hess, Frederick M. 1999. “A Political Explanation of Policy Selection: The Case of Urban School Reform.” Policy Studies Journal, 27 (3), 459-473. [20] Kinzel, Bob and Rick Cengeri. 2015. Getting Act 46 Together. Vermont Edition [Radio Broadcast]. Montpelier, VT: Vermont Public Radio. [21] St. Johnsbury Academy. 2015. SJA and Act 46. Retrieved from http://www.stjacademy.org/page.cfm?p=238&newsid=2773&ncat=11,10,9,4,7,12 [22] Hess, Frederick M. 1999. “A Political Explanation of Policy Selection: The Case of Urban School Reform.” Policy Studies Journal, 27 (3), 459-473. [23] Ibid. [24] Danitz Pache, Tiffany 2015b. “State GOP Leaders Call for Clarification of Act 46 Impact on Private Schools.” Vermont Digger. Retrieved from http://vtdigger.org/2015/10/26/state-gop-leaders-call-for-clarification-of-act-46-impact-on-private-schools/ . [25] Vermont Agency of Education. 2015a. Act 46 of 2015 Fact Sheet. Retrieved from http://education.vermont.gov/documents/edu-act46-fact-sheet.pdf . [26] St. Johnsbury Academy. 2015. SJA and Act 46. Retrieved from http://www.stjacademy.org/page.cfm?p=238&newsid=2773&ncat=11,10,9,4,7,12 [27] Danitz Pache, Tiffany 2015b. “State GOP Leaders Call for Clarification of Act 46 Impact on Private Schools.” Vermont Digger. Retrieved from http://vtdigger.org/2015/10/26/state-gop-leaders-call-for-clarification-of-act-46-impact-on-private-schools/ . [28] School Choice Vermont. 2015. Tuitioning and School Choice, and Access to Independent Schools in VT. The Legal Basics. Retrieved from http://www.schoolchoicevermont.com/choice-in-vt.html . [29] Kinzel, Bob and Rick Cengeri. 2015. Getting Act 46 Together. Vermont Edition [Radio Broadcast]. Montpelier, VT: Vermont Public Radio. [30] School Choice Vermont. 2015. Tuitioning and School Choice, and Access to Independent Schools in VT. The Legal Basics. Retrieved from http://www.schoolchoicevermont.com/choice-in-vt.html . [31] Danitz Pache, Tiffany. 2016a. “In First Debate, Minter, Scott Clash on Act 46 and School Choice.” Vermont Digger. Retrieved from http://vtdigger.org/2016/08/23/in-first-debate-minter-scott-clash-on-act-46-and-school-choice/ . [32] Danitz Pache, Tiffany. 2016b. “Act 46 by the Numbers: Merger Votes are In.” Vermont Digger. Retrieved from http://vtdigger.org/2016/08/14/act-46-by-the-numbers-merger-votes-are-in/ . [33] Vermont School Boards Association. 2016. Act 46 Map. Retrieved from http://www.vtvsba.org/act-46-map . [34] Franklin Northeast Supervisory Union Study Committee. 2016. Study Committee Report Franklin Northeast. Vermont Agency of Education. Retrieved from http://education.vermont.gov/sites/aoe/files/documents/edu-study-committee-report-franklin-northeast.pdf . [35] Danitz Pache, Tiffany. 2016b. “Act 46 by the Numbers: Merger Votes are In.” Vermont Digger. Retrieved from http://vtdigger.org/2016/08/14/act-46-by-the-numbers-merger-votes-are-in/ . [36] Danitz Pache, Tiffany 2015b. “State GOP Leaders Call for Clarification of Act 46 Impact on Private Schools.” Vermont Digger. Retrieved from http://vtdigger.org/2015/10/26/state-gop-leaders-call-for-clarification-of-act-46-impact-on-private-schools/ . [37] Vermont Agency of Education. 2015c. Reading and Math Scores Remain Among Best in the Nation. Retrieved from http://education.vermont.gov/documents/edu-press-release-naep-scores-2015.pdf . [38] Friedman, Milton. 1962. Capitalism and Freedom. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. [39] St. Johnsbury Academy. 2015. SJA and Act 46. Retrieved from http://www.stjacademy.org/page.cfm?p=238&newsid=2773&ncat=11,10,9,4,7,12 [40] Strauss, Valerie. 2017. “What ‘school choice’ means in the era of Trump and DeVos. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/05/22/what-school-choice-means-in-the-era-of-trump-and-devos/?utm_term=.b998a14bff38 [41] U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. (2018). Digest of Education Statistics, 2016 (NCES 2017-094), Table 206.40 . Works Cited Baker, Bruce D. and Wendy I. Geller. 2015. “When is Small Too Small? Efficiency, Equity & the Organization of Vermont Public Schools.” Vermont Agency of Education & Rutgers University. Retrieved from http://education.vermont.gov/documents/EDU-bbaker-vtconsolidation-march2_20152.pdf . Danitz Pache, Tiffany. 2015a. “Campaign for Vermont Calls for Repeal of Act 46.” Vermont Digger. Retrieved from http://vtdigger.org/2015/09/07/campaign-for-vermont-calls-for-repeal-of-act-46/ . Danitz Pache, Tiffany 2015b. “State GOP Leaders Call for Clarification of Act 46 Impact on Private Schools.” Vermont Digger. Retrieved from http://vtdigger.org/2015/10/26/state-gop-leaders-call-for-clarification-of-act-46-impact-on-private-schools/ . Danitz Pache, Tiffany. 2016a. “In First Debate, Minter, Scott Clash on Act 46 and School Choice.” Vermont Digger. Retrieved from http://vtdigger.org/2016/08/23/in-first-debate-minter-scott-clash-on-act-46-and-school-choice/ . Danitz Pache, Tiffany. 2016b. “Act 46 by the Numbers: Merger Votes are In.” Vermont Digger. Retrieved from http://vtdigger.org/2016/08/14/act-46-by-the-numbers-merger-votes-are-in/ . Franklin Northeast Supervisory Union Study Committee. 2016. Study Committee Report Franklin Northeast. Vermont Agency of Education. Retrieved from http://education.vermont.gov/sites/aoe/files/documents/edu-study-committee-report-franklin-northeast.pdf . Friedman, Milton. 1962. Capitalism and Freedom. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Hess, Frederick M. 1999. “A Political Explanation of Policy Selection: The Case of Urban School Reform.” Policy Studies Journal, 27 (3), 459-473. Fuhrman, Susan H. 2003. Ridings Waves, Trading Horses: The Twenty-Year Effort to Reform Education. In Gordon, David T. & Graham, Patricia A., A Nation Reformed: American Education 20 Years After A Nation at Risk. (pp. 7-22). Cambridge, Ma: Harvard Education Press. Kinzel, Bob and Rick Cengeri. 2015. Getting Act 46 Together. Vermont Edition [Radio Broadcast]. Montpelier, VT: Vermont Public Radio. McDonnell, Lorraine M., and Richard F. Elmore 1987. Getting the Job Done: Alternative Policy Instruments. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Vol. 9, No. 2 (Summer, 1987), pp. 133-152. Papay, John. 2015. The Role of Research in Educational Politics and Policymaking [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from https://canvas.brown.edu/courses/1018282/files/folder/Class%2520Slides?preview=53833383 . School Choice Vermont. 2015. Tuitioning and School Choice, and Access to Independent Schools in VT. The Legal Basics. Retrieved from http://www.schoolchoicevermont.com/choice-in-vt.html . Strauss, Valerie. 2017. “What ‘school choice’ means in the era of Trump and DeVos. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/05/22/what-school-choice-means-in-the-era-of-trump-and-devos/?utm_term=.b998a14bff38 . St. Johnsbury Academy. 2015. SJA and Act 46. Retrieved from http://www.stjacademy.org/page.cfm?p=238&newsid=2773&ncat=11,10,9,4,7,12 Vermont Act No. 46: An act relating to making amendments to education funding, education spending, and education governance. Vt. Gen. Assemb. B. 46 (2015). Vermont Agency of Education. 2015a. Act 46 of 2015 Fact Sheet. Retrieved from http://education.vermont.gov/documents/edu-act46-fact-sheet.pdf . Vermont Agency of Education. 2015b. Clarification on Act 46 Size Requirements. Retrieved from http://education.vermont.gov/documents/edu-act46-size-requirement-clarification.pdf . Vermont Agency of Education. 2015c. Reading and Math Scores Remain Among Best in the Nation. Retrieved from http://education.vermont.gov/documents/edu-press-release-naep-scores-2015.pdf . Vermont Department of Education. 2013. Town and Unified Union School Districts Tuitioning One or more Grades. Retrieved from http://education.vermont.gov/documents/EDU-Town_and_Unified_School_Districts_Tuitioning_One_or_More_Grades.pdf . Vermont School Boards Association. 2016. Act 46 Map. Retrieved from http://www.vtvsba.org/act-46-map . United States Census Bureau. 2014. Vermont Quickfacts. Retrieved from http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/50000.html . U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. (2018). Digest of Education Statistics, 2016 (NCES 2017-094), Table 206.40 .

The Duty to Use Drones The Duty to Use Drones In Cases of National Self-Defense Lina Dayem University of Chicago Author Ginevra Bulgari Vance Kelley Galen Hall Naima Okami Editors Spring 2019 Download full text PDF (14 pages) Introduction Since the tactic was first implemented, targeted killing by drones has been associated with political secrecy, dubious legality, and unsavory practices, and has thus garnered a negative reputation. In this essay, I endeavor to vindicate the use of drones, if only under the constrained circumstances of national self-defense. I argue the following: If a state can permissibly carry out targeted killings for the purpose of national self-defense, then it ought to do so with drones because of the minimized risks to soldiers and civilians. To argue this position, I first demonstrate that we should think of targeted killing as fitting into the self-defense paradigm, rather than military or law enforcement paradigms. I explain that states may permissibly engage in targeted killing when it is justified in terms of national self-defense. Next I explain how drones minimize risk to both soldiers and civilians. By combining the logic of self-defense with the principle of risk minimization, I arrive at the conclusion that in circumstances where targeted killing is necessary for national self-defense, states have a duty to use drones. Finally, I respond to potential objections about the use of drones, all of which can be addressed by improved drone policy. Military and Law Enforcement Paradigms Provide Inadequate Justification for Targeted Killing Targeted killing is a practice in which many governments engage. To justify targeted killings, theorists and politicians generally invoke one of two paradigms that permit the use of deadly force: the military paradigm and the law enforcement paradigm. These paradigms act to orient government policy—they direct how we may morally and legally behave towards our enemy. Targeted killing remains controversial because it cannot be clearly endorsed by either paradigm. The Military Paradigm The military paradigm activates the laws and conventions of war. Enemy combatants are the only parties liable to death. According to the jus in bello[1] convention, combatants can permissibly be killed during wartime without punishment (with some exceptions). Hostile treatment towards a combatant is permissible simply by virtue of combatant status, rather than any actions taken by the individual in question. In other words, a combatant’s liability to death derives precisely from assumption of the role of a soldier. In this paradigm, identifying an enemy terrorist as a combatant engaged in acts of war could enable the state to justify permissibly killing him without a trial. So, the fact that targeted killings of terrorists occur without trial suggests potential use of the logic of the military paradigm. Furthermore, in the case of the United States’ conflict with Al-Qaeda, we notice that the military paradigm seems to underlies the operative language of both parties, although it does not fully account for the conflict’s operative logic. Declaring a “War on Terror” and Jihad (Holy War)[2], respectively, implies at least nominally that each side considers the other’s fighters to be enemy combatants. The problem, of course, is that under international law a private citizen (such as Osama bin Laden) cannot declare war as that is a right granted only to sovereign states.[3] Conversely, under international law, a state cannot declare war against a non-state actor.[4] We may doubt the applicability of the military paradigm to targeted killings for several other reasons. First, terrorists willingly forgo the conventions that govern combatant status. The convention states that combatants wear the insignia of their country and carry their weapons openly.[5] Terrorists, however, do not wear uniforms, and hide amongst civilians. Of course, the main tactic of terrorists—targeting civilians—violates the jus in bello convention of noncombatant immunity. It is not only the status of the terrorists that is unclear; the status of those who carry out targeted killing is equally blurry, as civilian leaders often order targeted killings. In the United States, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), a civilian organization, has the authority to command drone strikes.[6] CIA control over drone strikes blurs the line between combatant and civilian, since civilians do actively engage in hostile conduct. This further complicates traditional boundaries of warfare with respect to justice and permissibility. Finally, naming someone in advance to be placed on a hit list runs counter to the very idea of status-based liability. In war, individual soldiers on the battlefield are not identified by the enemy and specifically targeted. Rather, a soldier is attacked by another soldier as part of a relationship of hostility qua soldier.[7] In other words, a soldier is liable to be killed due to his status as a soldier, rather than because of his actions. The practice of naming a target in advance singles him out qua individual. Therefore, the naming practice is fundamentally at odds with the status-based logic of legitimate military hostility. The Law Enforcement Paradigm Political theorists and governments have also justified targeted killing under a law enforcement paradigm. These parties maintain that terrorists should be considered criminals, rather than combatants. However, the goal of law enforcement is to arrest—not kill—the criminal. By the law enforcement paradigm, it is wrong to deprive a suspected criminal of due process by killing him before a trial. Indeed, the instances where law enforcement officers can permissibly kill are restricted to cases wherein a criminal resists arrest by putting the life of officers or others at risk. In this situation, liability to death is action-based rather than status-based. In other words, the criminal has effectively forfeited their right to life by initiating an attack. Liability to death may also come after the trial as retributive justice. So in certain cases, certain crimes may be punishable by death. While the death penalty is controversial, in cases where it is legal, it also represents an instance of action-based liability as punishment for a past action. However, by its very nature, targeted killing skips the fundamental steps of arrest and trial. Placing a name on a hit-list presumes guilt, and the individual listed becomes liable to instantaneous death by drone strike without being afforded due process. Under the law enforcement paradigm, this would be considered an extrajudicial execution, tantamount to murder.[8] Invoking the Principle of Self-Defense to Justify Targeted Killings The Self-Defense Paradigm In this discussion, I will draw from the work of several authors, such as McMahan, Gross, and Finkelstein, who analyze targeted killing as an act of self-defense. The self-defense paradigm better addresses the conceptual lacunae in the military and law enforcement paradigms as they concern targeted killing, and thus maps more clearly onto the practice of targeted killing. The basic premise of the self-defense paradigm is that when there is a threat to national security, a state has a right to protect itself. Self-defense can be considered a special offshoot of the law enforcement paradigm because, as described above, it is sometimes permissible for law enforcement officers to engage in certain self-defensive practices involving lethal force.[9] This paradigm deals with the threats that terrorists pose to national security and so is preemptive in nature. In this way, the killing of a terrorist should not be conceived of as punishment or retributive justice, since the paradigm does not deal with past actions. Instead, under the self-defense paradigm, someone who has never committed an attack could be just as liable as someone who has already committed several, provided that they pose the same current threat. Indeed, under this framework, a terrorist’s past crimes only serve as an epistemic gauge for predicting the likelihood that the individual will strike again.[10] The self-defense paradigm bypasses the military paradigm’s murky combatant-noncombatant distinctions because its liability criterion centers on action rather than status. If someone poses a threat to a state, the actions a state may take against the individual are not constrained by their status. Rather, the individual’s status is irrelevant both to their liability to death as well as our ability to retaliate. The self-defense paradigm also circumvents the law-enforcement paradigm’s crucial steps of arrest and trial because it operates on the logic of preemptive justice rather than retributive justice. Like the law enforcement paradigm, the self-defense paradigm uses the logic of action-based liability to death, but in a less evident manner. A terrorist’s liability to death derives from the notion that in planning an attack, a terrorist wrongs innocent people by increasing their likelihood of harm.[11] Thus, the harm caused by the terrorist’s death would need to be proportional to the harm prevented by protecting innocents from the attack. In other words, if their death would not disrupt realization of that harm, the targeted killing is not justified. Finally, it must also be considered whether or not the targeted killing could result in dangerous unintended consequences.When these criteria are met under the self-defense paradigm, the result would be that targeted killing is permissible as an act of self-defense. In the next sections, I argue that in the cases where targeted killing is permissible, states have a duty to use drones to carry them out because drones reduce risk to both civilians and soldiers. The Duty to Minimize Risk in Cases of Self-Defense: Individual Cases To demonstrate the duty to minimize risk to civilians and soldiers in cases of national self-defense, I will employ an analogy involving individual self-defense. Imagine that an individual is attacked in a way that threatens their life. It is uncontroversial that they have the right to defend themselves against the attack. By initiating the attack, the attacker has forfeited their right not to be harmed. Because the victim’s life is threatened, responding proportionally to the attack means that they may permissibly kill the attacker, if that is the only way to thwart the attack. However, imagine that the attack occurs in a crowded location. While the victim still has the right to defend themselves, they would wrong bystanders by inflicting harm on them, or risking their harm. The bystanders, detached from the conflict, have done nothing to make themselves liable to harm. Consequently, they must minimize the harm to which bystanders are exposed. Therefore, the means by which one may defend themselves in this crowded location are constrained. For instance, while the victim may shoot the attacker in the open, the victim many not shoot indiscriminately into the crowd in order to scare the attacker away. Similarly, if the attacker hides within the crowd, it would be wrong to simply aim at the group of people if there existed high likelihood that a bystander would be harmed. Furthermore, imagine the victim had the choice between two weapons that each afford equal capabilities to thwart or end the attack. One of the weapons is more precise than the other. For example, consider a handgun in comparison to a large vehicle (to be used as a deadly weapon). By aiming a gun at the attacker, they have a lower chance of accidentally hitting a bystander than if they were to drive the vehicle into the crowd. Because the victim has the choice between the two weapons, it would be wrong to choose the car, because it poses higher risk to bystanders. These two examples demonstrate that even in the presence of bystanders the victim retains the right to self-defense, yet has a duty to minimize the risk they pose to the innocent. For the bystanders simply have the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and have done nothing to make themselves liable to harm. The duty to minimize risk even when acting in self-defense is not only a consideration which must be undertaken with respect to bystanders, but at the state level also stretches to the defensive capabilities afforded by the state to its soldiers. Consider an analogy offered by Bradley Strawser. He imagines a commander who orders their troops to take off their bullet-proof vests and run at the enemy, and concludes that the commander wrongs the troops by ordering them into a dangerous situation without the normally available protection.[12] In doing so, the commander unjustly increases their risk to harm. While there may exist important moral differences between denying defensive capability to soldiers and aiming a weapon at a crowd of bystanders, Strawser’s analogy highlights the fundamental idea that it would be wrong to increase the possibility of harm to a soldier, or civilian, through deprival of defensive capability. Applying a Duty to Minimize Risk to Cases of Self-Defense: State-Level The duty to minimize harm to bystanders in the individual case can be extended to situations of state-level self-defense as a duty to minimize the risk of harm to civilians and soldiers. If under reliable intelligence a state discovers an imminent threat to its national security, the state has a right to defend itself against that threat. But at the same time, the means available to the state for the purpose of self-defense must be bound by a duty to minimize risk to civilians and to soldiers. If a state can justifiably respond to an imminent threat of a terrorist attack, it does not have a carte blanche to employ any weapon in its arsenal. For instance, a state could launch a nuclear bomb on the city where the attacker is hiding. While this would certainly be an effective method to kill the attacker, it is a grossly disproportionate and as such obviously unjust. Instead, the state might instead choose a “boots on the ground” mission to find the individual, or any number of other more precise strategies. Any kind of armed engagement involves risk to both civilians and to the soldiers involved. As in the case of individual self-defense, it is the state’s duty to employ a strategy that offers the least risk to all parties involved. I will now explain how drone technology seems to be the obvious choice for risk reduction in such a scenario. Risk Reduction Through Use of Drones Undertaking targeted killing with drones reduces the risk of harm to a state’s own soldiers, as well as foreign civilians, in several ways. For pilots, the remote operation of unmanned weapons dramatically reduces chance of harm: drone pilots can operate from a base thousands of miles away from the conflict zone. They personally face no threat of harm, retaliation, or retribution. In contrast, engaging in a “boots on the ground” mission puts the soldiers involved at an increased risk because they are directly exposed to the hazards of a hostile territory, which leaves them open to the possibility of attack. The remote aspect of drone strikes may also reduce harm to civilians in the conflict zone. Journalist Michael Lewis perceptively reasons that because drone pilots feel secure, they are surprisingly less likely to initiate a strike out of fear or anxiety for their personal safety.[13] What Lewis articulates is that the mistakes frequently made by soldiers in the “fog of war” can be minimized by drones.[14] Moreover, drones themselves can act as intelligence-gathering machines. A target may be surveyed for months before an attack is carried out. This has several benefits. First, it confirms that the target is actually involved in terrorist activities, reducing the chance of targeting an innocent person. If the suspect is the right person, then the extensive intelligence allows the pilot to identify a pattern in the subject’s daily life so that the subject may be targeted at times when they are more likely to be alone. Furthermore, when operated with due care, drones are precise, capable of striking only a single person. As journalist Mark Bowden notes, “[A drone’s] extraordinary precision makes it an advance in humanitarian warfare. In theory, when used with principled restraint, it is the perfect counterterrorism weapon. It targets indiscriminate killers with exquisite discrimination.”[15] To ensure that its deployment is as precise as possible, operators have adopted measures to minimize civilian risk. For example, a recent review of drone procedures by the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan recommended that strikes occur while the target is in a vehicle, rather than in a compound. This is because it is easier to keep track of those entering and exiting vehicles than those entering and exiting compounds, reducing the likelihood that a target’s family member or close associate will also be hit. In addition, the strike could take place on an isolated road, further reducing the risk to bystanders.[16] Even under unideal operation conditions, drone strikes are generally less deadly to civilians than other available means, such as ground strikes or piloted airstrikes.[17] Finally, the practice of targeted killings itself can reduce a conflict’s escalation and thus its casualties. Targeted killing, when justified as preemptive action as described above, functions to avoid prolonged engagement or full-scale war. Comparing the civilian casualties of war to drone strikes demonstrates clearly that conventional warfare is the deadlier of the two.[18] Thus, for the aforementioned reasons, when states can permissibly carry out targeted killing for the purpose of national self-defense, they have a duty to do so with drones because they minimize risk of harm for civilians and soldiers alike.This duty to employ drones should be understood as prima facie, a strategy that should be adopted unless specific circumstances require the use of other measures. In other words, the duty stands as long as using drone technology will minimize risk to bystanders and soldiers involved in the operation. If in a given operation, certain material limitations, geographical specificities, or procedural carelessness will cause an elevated risk of harm, the duty no longer stands. Objections Many critics object to drones on the grounds that civilians sometimes are killed in drone strikes—because of this unjust risk to civilians, they argue that the use of drones cannot be justified. I will first respond by emphasizing that my argument deals with minimizing risk, not eliminating risk altogether. To eliminate risk completely would be to advocate for pacifism. We need to compare the risk that drones pose to civilians to the risk that other weapons and armed operations pose to civilians. Recent figures indicate that in comparison to conventional measures, drone strikes have ranged from slightly to far less lethal in producing collateral damage.[19] The above objection can take on a more nuanced character, deserving a different response. Perhaps critics feel an intuitive discord between the very precise capability of the drone and the fact that it nevertheless produces civilian collateral, damage which seems to imply carelessness in drone operations. To respond to these critics, I argue that their concern has more to do with mishandling and reckless use of the technology than with a problem with the technology itself. This kind of criticism is not unique to drones; any weapon can be used well or poorly. However, I contend that because drones are known for their precision, concern over rates of collateral damage may be even more relevant than in the case of use of other weapons. As such, elevated numbers of civilian casualties may be an indication of faulty intelligence or careless policy. I reiterate that the duty to use drones is only prima facie: if drones cause or exacerbate harm—either as a result of material factors or policy faults—then the duty to use them is dissolved. Indeed, I would agree with critics that these cases call for rigorous reassessment of policy and procedure. However, I would highlight that by focusing on drone technology in discussing this problem we misplace responsibility by blaming the weapon for the faults of its operators. In his 2006 essay “Terrorism and Just War,” Michael Walzer advocates for targeted killing as a counterterrorism measure. He acknowledges that counterterrorism occurs in the grey area between war and law enforcement, and usually away from active war zones. In his view, to keep the effects of counterterrorism from resembling the effects of terrorism, it is the duty of counterterrorist fighters to take extensive measures to prevent civilian casualties. For it is the care and protection of civilians that distinguishes legitimate counterterrorist activities from the illegitimate engagement of terrorists, as terrorists do not operate with similar notions of “collateral damage.” Walzer believes this care for civilians should be upheld even more so in the case of targeted killings because they are activities outside of wartime. He concludes that “what justice demands is that the army take positive measures, accept risks to its own soldiers, in order to avoid harm to civilians.”[20] While I believe that the motivation for Walzer’s argument is noble, it rests on a false premise. For, when read carefully, we observe that Walzer takes risk as a sort of sliding scale oscillating between the two extremes of risk to soldiers or risk to civilians. Rather, it is possible to work to minimize risk for civilians without this occurring at the expense of soldiers, minimizing risks for both parties. Walzer does not seem to entertain this possibility. However, when used with due care, the drone is the most precise weapon that we have in our arsenal. Its use would minimize risk to civilians while simultaneously eliminating risks to soldiers as well. If this is truly the case, then there does not seem to be a reason that, by his criteria, Walzer would object to their use. It does not seem that acknowledging the duty to avoid harming civilians would necessarily preclude the duty to avoid harm to soldiers. Again, however, my argument for the use of drones is only a prima facie. If it is indeed the case that more civilians would be harmed by the use of drones, either due to material limitations or reckless policy, then they should not be used. Many critics argue that if drones make targeted killing easier and less risky to soldiers, states will undertake more targeted killings than they would otherwise. They worry that the easy, efficient, and asymmetric nature of drone engagement may cause operators to ignore or forget that killing is only permissible when absolutely necessary to prevent greater harm. In turn, criteria for appearing on a hit-list for such targeted killings could become weaker and weaker. Walzer expresses this concern in his essay “Targeted Killing and Drone Warfare.” He writes, “why should we think it different from the sniper’s rifle? The difference is that killing-by-drone is so much easier than other forms of targeted killing. The easiness should make us uneasy. This is a dangerously tempting technology. It makes our enemies more vulnerable than ever before, and we can get at them without any risk to our own soldiers” (italics added).[21] Therefore, he and likeminded observers assume that when there is lower risk to military personnel, the “necessity” threshold for pursuing a targeted killing would be lowered. My immediate response to such an objection is to specify that I do not argue for a blanket duty to use drones. My argument only pertains their use in justified instances of self-defense. Just because drones are tempting to overuse or abuse, it does not follow that they will definitely be misused. In a similar vein to my previous responses, I emphasize that the key is a consistent and honest drone policy, with transparency and accountability. If states consistently hold themselves to a high bar of certainty required to permissibly engage in a targeted killing, then temptation does not have to materialize into a dubious precedent. Similarly, some critics contend that the remote warfare aspect of drones will create a “video game mentality” in its operators, emboldening them to undertake even more risks. This notion, however, is simply untrue. According to a 2011 Department of Defense study, drone operators experience depression, anxiety, and PTSD at rates similar to combat pilots.[22] In the Atlantic article “The Killing Machines,” Mark Bowden, after conducting interviews with drone pilots, describes why these pilots experience such emotional distress. Combat pilots are not responsible for long-term intelligence collection, and are trained to leave the scene as soon as their missions are complete. On the other hand, a drone operator is responsible for collecting intelligence. This operator may observe the same person for months, becoming intimately familiar with the target’s daily life after seeing him with his friends and family. What’s more, the drone’s camera feed continues after a missile is launched. Drone pilots witness “the carnage close-up, in real time—the blood and severed body parts, the arrival of emergency responders, the anguish of friends and family…War by remote control turns out to be intimate and disturbing.”[23] One might also worry that justifying targeted killing with the logic of preemptive self-defense fails to address the combatant-noncombatant ambiguity previously discussed in reference to the military paradigm. For, if someone is killed before he commits a wrongful action, doesn’t that indicate that his killing could have only been status-based? I respond to this objection by reiterating that self-defense operates on the logic of action-based liability. While not immediately obvious, planning a deadly attack is a type of wrongful action severe enough to warrant liability to death, as it increases the likelihood of harm to a innocent people.[24] In this way, the assailant’s status is irrelevant; it is the nature of the threatening action that allows permissible retaliation. However, because of the preemptive nature of the response, there will always remain some uncertainty—indeed, the assailant could have had a change of heart and not followed through with the planned attack. Given this uncertainty, it is necessary to set the epistemic bar rather high when assessing the true likelihood that a suspected assailant will follow through with the threat. Indeed, extended surveillance should be used to ensure—to a degree of near certainty—that the targeted individual’s outward behaviors definitively imply intention to carry out an imminent attack. This would be possible with use of a drone, since it carries intelligence gathering capabilities. Ultimately, we should make quite certain that the assailant is truly preparing an attack for which killing them would be proportional to prevent the harm to innocents. In sum, my responses to these five objections follow a specific trend, emphasizing the need for stringent procedural constraints in use of drones, a high epistemic bar for identifying targets who pose a threat before proceeding to killing, and conducting the strikes with tremendous care for the welfare of civilians. I believe that if the policy for targeted killings was transparent, rigorously regulated, and strictly followed, the objections discussed above would be void. Conclusion In this essay, I have demonstrated that whenever targeted killing is permissible as an act of national self-defense, states have a duty to use drones to carry out the attack. In support of this argument, I have explained that the logic of self-defense is better applicable to targeted killings than either the logic of military conduct or of law enforcement. As the self-defense paradigm requires use of means which reduce risk to all parties involved, drones stand out as the obvious choice—precise, remote weapons which reduce the risk of harm to both soldiers and civilians. Finally, I responded to several objections to drone technology, ultimately concluding that strict and thoughtful procedures with regards to the technology’s use could allay critics’ overarching unease. Endnotes [1] Term of art meaning “just conduct during war.” [2] This is not to conflate the version of jihad that means “holy war” with its broader meaning: that is, a spiritual struggle within oneself against sin. [3] Jeff McMahan, “Targeted Killing: Murder, Combat or Law Enforcement?” in Targeted Killings: Law and Morality in an Asymmetrical World, eds. Claire Finkelstein, Jens David Ohlin, and Andrew Altman, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 142. [4] McMahan, “Targeted Killing,”142. [5] This is a long-standing military convention, explicitly defined in by the United States’ “Military Commissions Act of 2006,” to respond to the lack of its explicit codification under the Geneva Convention. [6] Under the Obama administration, this power was transferred to the Pentagon, thereby placing drone strikes under military jurisdiction. However, this policy was reversed in March 2017 by the Trump administration, placing drone strikes in the jurisdiction of civilians again. See Mark Bowden, “Killing Machines,” The Atlantic, and “Trump Gives CIA Authority to Conduct Drone Strikes,” Reuters. [7] Thomas Nagel, “War and Massacre,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 15, no. 6 (July 1972): 123-44. [8] Michael L. Gross, “Assassination and Targeted Killing: Law Enforcement, Execution or Self-Defence?” Journal of Applied Philosophy 23, no. 3 (August 2006): 325. [9] McMahan, “Targeted Killing,”135; Claire Finkelstein, “Targeted Killing as Preemptive Action,” in Targeted Killings: Law and Morality in an Asymmetrical World, eds. Claire Finkelstein, Jens David Ohlin, and Andrew Altman, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 179. [10] McMahan, “Targeted Killing,” 139. [11] McMahan, “Targeted Killing,” 139 [12] Bradley Jay Strawser, “Moral Predators: The Duty to Employ Uninhabited Aerial Vehicles,” Journal of Military Ethics 9, no. 4 (December 2010): 346-7. [13] Michael W. Lewis, “Drones: Actually the Most Humane Form of Warfare Ever,” The Atlantic, August 21, 2013, accessed November 20, 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/08/drones-actuallythe-most-humane-form-of-warfare-ever/278746/. [14] Lewis, “Drones: Actually the Most Humane Form of Warfare Ever.” [15] Mark Bowden, “The Killing Machines,” The Atlantic, September 15, 2013, accessed November 20, 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/09/the-killing-machines-how-to-think-aboutdrones/309434/. [16] Lewis, “Drones: Actually the Most Humane Form of Warfare Ever.” [17] Bowden, “Killing Machines.” [18] Daniel L. Byman, “Why Drones Work: The Case for Washington’s Weapon of Choice,” Brookings (blog), November 30, 2001, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/why-drones-work-the-case-for-washingtons-weapon-ofchoice. [19] Bowden, “Killing Machines,” The Atlantic. [20] Michael Walzer, “Terrorism and Just War,” Philosophia 34, no. 1 (2006): 9. [21] Michael Walzer, “Targeted Killing and Drone Warfare,” Dissent Magazine, January 11, 2013, accessed November 20, 2018, https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/targeted-killing-and-drone-warfare. [22] James Dao, “Drone Pilots Are Found to Get Stress Disorders Much as Those in Combat Do,” The New York Times, February 22, 2013, accessed November 20, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/23/us/drone-pilotsfound-to-get-stress-disorders-much-as-those-in-combat-do.html. [23] Bowden, “Killing Machines.” [24] McMahan, “Targeted Killing,” 139. References Bowden, Mark. "The Killing Machines." The Atlantic, September 15, 2013. Accessed November 20, 2018. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/09/the-killing-machines-how-to-think-about-drones/309434/ . Byman, Daniel L. “Why Drones Work: The Case for Washington’s Weapon of Choice.” Brookings (blog), November 30, 2001. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/why-drones-work-the-case-for-washingtons-weapon-of-choice/ . "Charter of the United Nations: Chapter VII." United Nations. Accessed November 20, 2018. http://www.un.org/en/sections/un-charter/chapter-vii/ . Dao, James. "Drone Pilots Are Found to Get Stress Disorders Much as Those in Combat Do." The New York Times, February 22, 2013. Accessed November 20, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/23/us/drone-pilots-found-to-get-stress-disorders-much-as-those-in-combat-do.html . Finkelstein, Claire. "Targeted Killing as Preemptive Action." In Targeted Killings: Law and Morality in an Asymmetrical World, edited by Claire Finkelstein, Jens David Ohlin, and Andrew Altman, 156-82. Oxford University Press, 2012. Gross, Michael L. “Assassination and Targeted Killing: Law Enforcement, Execution or Self-Defence?," Journal of Applied Philosophy 23, no. 3 (August 2006): 323-35. Lewis, Michael W. "Drones: Actually the Most Humane Form of Warfare Ever." The Atlantic, August 21, 2013. Accessed November 20, 2018. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/08/drones-actually-the-most-humane-form-of-warfare-ever/278746/ . McMahon, Jeff. “Targeted Killing: Murder, Combat or Law Enforcement?” In Targeted Killings: Law and Morality in an Asymmetrical World, edited by Claire Finkelstein, Jens David Ohlin, and Andrew Altman, 135-55. Oxford University Press, 2012. Nagel, Thomas. "War and Massacre." Philosophy and Public Affairs 15, no. 6 (July 1972): 123-44. Strawser, Bradley Jay. "Moral Predators: The Duty to Employ Uninhabited Aerial Vehicles." Journal of Military Ethics 9, no. 4 (December 2010): 342-68. Singh, Kanishka. "Trump Gives CIA Authority to Conduct Drone Strikes." Reuters, March 13, 2017. Accessed November 20, 2018. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-cia-drones-idUSKBN16K2SE . U.S. Congress, House. Military Commissions Act of 2006. HR - 6166, 109th Congr., 2nd sess. Introduced in Senate September 22, 2006. https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/150084.pdf . Walzer, Michael. "Targeted Killing and Drone Warfare." Dissent Magazine, January 11, 2013. Accessed November 20, 2018. https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/targeted-killing-and-drone-warfare . Walzer, Michael. "Terrorism and Just War." Philosophia 34, no. 1 (January 2006): 3-12.

No Place Like Home Home Bias Theory to Foreign Portfolio Investment in Emerging Markets Qiyuan Zheng Wesleyan University April 2021 Introduction: Modern technology has allowed investors, especially in developed markets, to gain access to a wealth of information about events that affect equity prices almost instantaneously, ultimately making it more difficult for investors in developed economies to ‘beat the market’. Such markets, where prices fully reflect all available information, are considered to be efficient; according to the efficient market hypothesis, opportunities for arbitrage in efficient markets are scarce, if not impossible. In this context, the typical investor could only generate higher returns by taking on greater risks. If this was the case, inefficient markets would be fundamentally more profitable for the informed investor as arbitrage opportunities are abundant and riskless profit can be made once the investor correctly identifies mispriced assets. This line of reasoning suggests that inefficiency in emerging markets might attract foreign portfolio investment (FPI) inflows, since investors in the developed world would seek to exploit the arbitrage opportunities in those inefficient markets. Market inefficiency in emerging economies is often at least partially due to poor property rights and weak institutional arrangements, such as unstable and corrupt political systems, not fully as a result of economic fundamentals, such as lack of financial development and domestic investor behavior. If inefficiency in an emerging market were to be largely a result of poor property rights and weak institutions, the ability of foreign investors to properly exploit arbitrage opportunities would be low and the institutional risk borne by investing in the market would be high, as unstable political environments foster volatile asset prices. Under such conditions, one might very well expect inefficient markets to drive away FPI. However, if the institutional quality of an investing environment is held constant and market inefficiencies are a result of economic fundamentals, then one should expect such a market to attract FPI. This paper finds evidence that, after accounting for a given level of institutional risk, potential simultaneity, and time of information absorption, there is no significant relationship between market inefficiency and FPI. To explain the inconsistency between theory and empirical evidence, I suggest an extension to the equity home bias theory. Since capital is abundant in wealthy nations where markets are efficient, investors that account for a majority of FPI inflows into emerging economies would be more familiar with and thus more optimistic about efficient markets since they more closely resemble their domestic investing environment. If a large enough number of foreign investors show a clear preference for efficient markets, the magnitude of their actions may very well offset that of unbiased investors looking to exploit arbitrage opportunities in inefficient markets. The paper proposes that, while market inefficiency should theoretically attract FPI, holding institutional risk constant, empirical evidence fails to show this relationship because foreign investors from the developed world exhibit a preference for more efficient markets that they are familiar with. A Survey of Theory and Existing Literature In documenting market efficiency among developing countries, Morck et al. found that the relationship between GDP per capita and price synchronicity can largely be explained by weak institutional arrangements and poor property rights. Their research not only provides a theoretical framework for this paper but also suggests an important measure of market inefficiency. Institutional shortcomings, especially poor property rights, discourages informed trading in the market as volatile political environments make it difficult for investors to price assets and retain their earnings (Morck 15, 16). The lack of informed investors would increase the magnitude of noise trading’s effect on the market. Since noise traders are uninformed and exhibit poor market timing (the buy high-sell low effect), their actions would not only lead to excess volatility in the market, but also push prices of different stocks to move synchronously away from their fundamental values (De Long 705, 715). Morck et al.’s paper presents empirical evidence supporting the above theory, as the observed relationship between GDP per capita and price synchronicity is rendered insignificant once property rights have been accounted for (Morck 22). This conclusion directly implies that, if protection of property rights is the only factor affecting the level of information reflected in prices, one can use price synchronicity as an appropriate proxy for market efficiency (i.e. better property rights lead to more informed traders, less price synchronicity, and a more efficient market). However, there are certainly other factors affecting the level of information reflected in stock prices. I argue that, in the absence of property rights violations, price synchronicity would remain an appropriate proxy as less synchronous prices would indicate that the market captures higher levels of firm-specific information and has a higher concentration of informed traders. Additionally, the lower prevalence and less developed nature of financial institutions in emerging markets would decrease the number of informed traders and thus increase price synchronicity while lowering market efficiency. In the subsequent analysis, I will refer to the following factors as economic fundamentals affecting market efficiency: domestic investor behavior, prevalence of financial institutions, quality of financial institutions, and technological development. This claim is particularly important, as the paper seeks to differentiate between market inefficiency caused by economic fundamentals and that caused by poor political institutions. Markets are efficient if “security prices at any time ‘fully reflect’ all available information” (Fama 383). Since efficient markets already reflect “all obviously publicly available information”, it would be very difficult for investors to obtain higher returns without undertaking greater risk (Fama 414). Rational investors who seek to increase returns while lowering risk would then be drawn to less efficient markets where arbitrage opportunities are more easily available. Thus, upon first glance, it seems that inefficient emerging markets would be more attractive to foreign investors, especially those from developed countries with efficient markets. Since most foreign portfolio investment comes from wealthier nations where capital is abundant, one could expect that less efficient markets, those with higher price synchronicity, would generate higher levels of FPI. However, this conjecture fails to consider the factors that lead to market inefficiency in developing countries and the preferences of foreign investors. The following paragraphs present two potential explanations for why emerging markets that are less efficient might fail to attract FPI. The first explanation comes directly from the work of Morck et al. on price synchronicity in emerging markets. While poor property rights decrease market efficiency, they also increase both the opportunity cost—the time spent gathering information to identify asset mispricing—and risk of arbitrage trading. Political events are also typically much harder to predict in these countries and, given the poor property rights, “risk arbitrageurs who do make correct predictions may not be allowed to keep their earnings, […] especially if the risk arbitrageurs are political outsiders” (Morck 15). Thus, if the observed market inefficiency is largely the result of poor property rights and weak institutional arrangements, the expected relationship between price synchronicity and FPI becomes more complicated. While inefficient markets still present certain arbitrage opportunities for investors, the risk of investing in an environment with poor property rights may very well drive foreign investors away. Another potential explanation comes from an extension of the equity home bias theory. The traditional equity home bias theory states that investors are more inclined to hold domestic stocks despite the potential benefits of international diversification. This phenomenon was first analyzed in 1991, when French and Poterba found that domestic investors expect returns around 300 basis points higher than foreign investors when looking at the identical market (French 4). The optimism in domestic markets would then lead investors to prefer a domestic stock over an international one, even if the economic values of the two stocks do not differ from each other. The equity home bias theory implies that investors prefer assets they feel more familiar with and such preferences can often offset the actual economic differences between any two assets. This paper argues that investors from developed countries with efficient markets would naturally prefer stocks in more efficient markets of the developing world as they more closely resemble their domestic investing environment. Since most FPI comes from wealthier nations in the developed world, even if one observes an inefficient market in a country with strong property rights and therefore higher chances of arbitrage without bearing institutional risk, such a market might not attract FPI as most foreign investors would prefer to hold assets in efficient markets with which they are more familiar. Existing literature shows that a simple analysis of FPI and price synchronicity is not enough to uncover the fundamental relationship between market efficiency and FPI inflows. To properly understand whether investors are truly drawn to inefficient markets due to opportunities of arbitrage, one must first take into account the institutional risk inherent in emerging markets. Only after accounting for the protection of property rights can one expect there to be a positive correlation between price synchronicity, essentially a measure of market efficiency, and FPI inflows. Empirical results that do not align with such expectations would be consistent with the story of equity home bias theory, where foreign investors prefer efficient markets as a result of familiarity and resemblance to their domestic markets. Constructing the Data Set The paper analyzes nine emerging markets: Brazil, Chile, China, Greece, India, Malaysia, Mexico, Thailand, and Turkey. The choice of these countries is based on their per capita GDP, the size of their domestic equity market, and data availability. The time period observed ranges roughly between 2000 and 2016. I shall note here that the somewhat arbitrary decision to characterize these countries as emerging markets through per capita GDP and choosing countries with sufficient stock listings may introduce sampling bias. A future extension of this paper may be to include a larger number of developing countries and test the robustness of this study by shifting the per capita GDP cutoff used to define emerging markets. Due to limited resources, this paper uses an approximation for its main variable of interest, price synchronicity. To obtain a price synchronicity index for each country and year, I collected weekly stock returns (between 2000 and 2016) for the companies listed on a popular index of the given country. Table 1 details the exact indexes used to construct the price synchronicity data. Given a country, the price synchronicity of year T is then constructed as follows: SyncT=w∈Tmax⁡(Upw, Downw)Upw+Downw1NT The above equation states that for every week w in year T, I calculated the number of stocks that rose in share price (if closing price was higher than opening price), the number of stocks that dropped in share price (if closing price was lower than opening price), and divided the maximum of the two numbers by the total number of stocks that experienced a change in share price. An arithmetic mean is then computed for the given NT weeks in year T. Note that this calculation is based on Morck et al.’s methods of finding price synchronicity, with the denominator constructed to include only stocks with changed share prices to avoid non-trading bias (Morck 5). Given the method of calculation, a price synchronicity of 0.5 would indicate that prices do not move together at all while high price synchronicity (such as 0.9) would indicate an inefficient market. Data for other variables were obtained through the World Bank, Transparency International, and World Integrated Trade Solutions (WITS). The following section will discuss the methodologies and rationale for including each regressor. Analytical Methodology Given the panel structure of the data, the paper will use a fixed effects model on the country level with robust standard errors to analyze the relationship between market efficiency and foreign portfolio investment. The fixed effects model would allow for the paper to account for unobserved but time-constant differences between countries, therefore yielding a less biased estimate. The fixed effects model was chosen over a random effects model on empirical grounds. The Sargan-difference test of overidentifying restrictions yielded a Sargan-Hansen statistic of 566.9 when applied to a random effects regression with robust standard errors, which indicates a significant level of overidentification in the model. Initially, I estimated a simple fixed effects model with price synchronicity as the only explanatory variable: FPIit=α+βSyncit+i+eit (1) However, the coefficient for the model is difficult to interpret and meaningless to this paper’s purpose. While the paper is primarily interested in exploring the effect of market inefficiency (caused by non-institutional factors) on FPI inflows to emerging markets, the coefficient presented in Equation 1 is theoretically biased downwards as the result of institutional risks present in emerging markets with high price synchronicity. More specifically, one can see that is subject to omitted variable bias because the level of corruption drives up price synchronicity (positive correlation) and discourages foreign investors (negative correlation with FPI). Additionally, could be affected by other confounding variables as a result of selection bias. To properly identify how FPI is affected by market inefficiency caused by economic fundamentals, one must account for the level of political risk the investor must bear to participate in the market and other confounding variables with the following fixed effects model: FPIit=α+1Syncit+2Corruptionit+3Xit+i+eit (2) Note that Corruptionit reflects the Corruption Perception Index of country i in year t, obtained from Transparency International. The author calculated Corruptionit=(100- Corruption Perception Index) so that 0 represents no corruption and 100 is the value for the most corrupt extreme. Ideally, the paper would’ve liked to use the “good government” index from Morck et al.’s work that included factors specific to property rights protection but financial constraints limited the data collection process (Morck 15). Xit is a vector of time-varying country-level characteristics that consists of the following variables: GDP per capita, inflation volatility, market capitalization of domestic companies (in current US dollars), and capital openness. Inflation volatility is calculated by taking the 5-year moving coefficient of variance of each country’s consumer price index (obtained from the World Bank). Capital openness is measured by the standardized version of the Chinn-Ito Index (Chinn). GDP per capita and inflation volatility could both be omitted variables as they both are significant indicators of an economy’s stability and development, in turn affecting confidence levels in foreign investors. Market capitalization indicates both the breadth and depth of the domestic financial markets, as a higher levels of market capitalization would provide more opportunities for foreign investors and increase FPI inflows. Although intuition suggests that capital openness would be a significant factor in affecting foreign investment, empirical evidence from existing literature suggests that capital controls on FDI and FPI have no significant impact on FPI inflows (Li 228, 230). The variable was still included in Equation 2 largely because theory implies that capital controls would increase the opportunity cost for foreign investors to invest in the domestic market and therefore decrease FPI. To test for robustness of the results, I removed the variable from the model and found no significant changes to the parameters of interest. Pre-existing theory and literature suggested that each of the variables included in the vector Xit would be correlated with FPI inflows. Thus, the model should include these variables as controls in the regression to minimize standard errors and account for any sampling bias. To account for potential information absorption time, I re-estimated Equation 1 and 2 with lagged price synchronicity, inflation volatility, and GDP per capita. If these factors were to exhibit greater cross-year variations than within-year shifts, then the incorporation of the lagged independent variables would allow for the possibility of foreign investors “reacting” to changes in their values in the next time period. I chose to not pursue a fully lagged model because market capitalization and capital controls are present constraints on the foreign investor’s choice set. Further, the corruption index remained period t as well since it measures the level of corruption perceived by the public at time t, which is a direct factor in determining the level of FPI in the same time period. Additionally, a fixed effects lagged-distributed model was also estimated as follows: FPIit=α+1Syncit+2Syncit-1+3Corruptit+5Xit+6Yit-1+νi+eit (3) Note that Syncit-1 and Yit-1 are lagged price synchronicity and lagged vector of control variables, hence they are values of country i in year t-1. The paper conducted further robustness tests by removing 2008 from the estimated models. Figure 1 shows that FPI inflows in observed countries dropped dramatically as a result of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). Figure 2 shows the average price synchronicity among the observed countries across time and indicates that average price synchronicity varies between 75% and 70% for most of the years with no significant change during the GFC. One can see that the patterns exhibited by the data during the GFC is an aberration caused by an external shock, which could affect both the precision and accuracy of previous estimations. The paper accounts for this by re-estimating all the previous models with a smaller sample size that does not include 2008. Although doing so limits the power of the test, the removal of the outlier (2008) should offer a more accurate estimate of the effect market efficiency has on FPI. Empirical Results Before estimating the models specified in the Methodology section, one must return to examine an earlier claim: “price synchronicity would remain an appropriate proxy under [scenarios in which other factors (besides poor property rights) affect the level of information reflected in stock prices] as well, since less synchronous prices would indicate that the market captures higher levels of firm-specific information”. Table 2 Column 1 shows an estimated fixed effects model that captures the relationship between price synchronicity and institutional risk (represented by the Corruption Perception Index). As expected, the coefficient for the Corruption Index is positive, since higher levels of corruption means more institutional risk and thus higher price synchronicity. The estimated coefficient is statistically significant. Most notably, the R-squared for the estimation is only around 8%, indicating that there are certainly other factors, such as market inefficiency due to economic fundamentals and the quality of financial institutions, that affect price synchronicity. Additionally, Table 2 Column 2 shows a negative correlation between corruption and FPI inflows, as expected. Although the relationship is not statistically significant, theory suggests that it would bias the estimates of Equation 2 downwards. Tables 3, 4, and 5 show the estimated regressions specified in the Methodology section. Table 3 displays the estimates obtained by using the “present” model without any lagged variables while Table 4 shows the results after lagging the appropriate independent variables. Table 5 shows the estimates obtained from the lag distributed model (Equation 3). In Table 3, the first two columns represent Equation 1 and 2 without the lagged independent variables. The first column shows a negative and marginally significant (at the 10% threshold, p=0.054) coefficient for price synchronicity, with the point estimate show approximately $0.605 billion decrease with every 1 percentage point increase of price synchronicity. This is not surprising, as price synchronicity caused by institutional risk would most likely drive foreign investors away. The second column on Table 3 also show a negative and marginally significant coefficient for price synchronicity. Although this coefficient is greater in magnitude ($0.967 billion decrease for every 1 percentage point increase in price synchronicity), it has a larger confidence interval than that of the first model and is less statistically significant (p=0.066). Columns 3 and 4, estimates after removing 2008, exhibits a similar pattern as the coefficient for price synchronicity is negative and statistically significant (at the 5% threshold) when it’s the only regressor in the model but no longer significant once the model accounts for institutional risks and other sources of selection bias (Column 4, Table 3). Table 4 incorporates lagged price synchronicity, inflation volatility, and GDP per capita. Columns 1 and 2 show the results of Equation 1 and 2 when with the lagged independent variables replacing their non-lagged counterparts. Columns 3 and 4 show those same models estimated after removing 2008 from the sample. The results across all columns are consistent in that the coefficient for lagged price synchronicity are all positive but statistically insignificant even after accounting for the downward bias caused by institutional risks. Interpreting the results of Table 3, the paper finds that market inefficiency (proxied by price synchronicity) drives foreign investors away mostly as a result of the poor property rights that created the inefficient market in the first place. This effect is exhibited by the negative and (marginally) significant coefficient for price synchronicity in Column 1 and 3. Once the model accounts for institutional risk and potential selection bias, market inefficiency remains negatively correlated with FPI inflows but at a less significant level in Column 2 and completely insignificant when 2008 is removed from the sample, as shown in Column 4. If the level of institutional risk does not change and the market becomes more inefficient (price synchronicity rises), theory suggests that more investors would be drawn to the market as they seek to exploit arbitrage opportunities. This theory implies that a model which accounts for institutional risk should generate a positive and significant coefficient for price synchronicity. However, empirical evidence does not support this conjecture and instead illustrates that market inefficiency stemming from causes unrelated to institutional risks either does not significantly affect or decreases the level of FPI inflows, depending on whether year 2008 was included in the sample. Results obtained by the lagged models fit the theory slightly better, as the coefficient for lagged price synchronicity is positive, as shown in Table 4. Both Column 2 and 4 of Table 4 exhibit point estimates that indicate a $0.42 billion rise in FPI inflows per percentage point increase in lagged price synchronicity (decrease in market efficiency). However, this estimate is not statistically significant, which could be a result of the small sample size and thus less power / minimal detectable effect. Further, Column 2 and 4 of Table 4 showed a higher point estimate than Column 1 and 3 of the same table, respectively, fitting the theory that not including corruption as a covariate would downwardly bias our estimate. Considering the empirical results on both tables (with and without the lagged component), one can see that, once institutional risks are accounted for, changes in market efficiency does not significantly affect FPI inflows. A potential explanation for this phenomenon is an extension of the equity home bias theory, in which foreign investors from the developed world feel more familiar and are thus more optimistic about efficient markets. Hence, market inefficiency (under the same level of institutional risk) can both attract investors through opportunities of arbitrage and drive away investors through its unfamiliar nature. If those effects offset each other, one would observe no significant relationship between market inefficiency and FPI inflows after accounting for institutional risk. That said, it is more probable that Table 4 is the better model, as it lagged certain independent variables that investors would be “reacting” to in period t based on their information in period t-1. To further test this, a lag distributed model was estimated in Table 5 to show that price synchronicity in period t-1 is indeed positively correlated with FPI inflows in period t, even after account for price synchronicity in period t. However, as before, the estimate is not statistically significant, most likely due to a combination of small sample size and the potentially offsetting effect from the equity home bias theory. Robustness Tests Another potential explanation for the insignificant coefficient for price synchronicity is a reverse causality chain between FPI inflows and market efficiency. The paper argues that increased FPI inflows can lead to higher market efficiency in emerging economies. As established, a majority of FPI in emerging markets come from developed countries where capital is abundant. These developed countries also have better financial institutions, which help “foreign” investors make more informed decisions than their domestic counterparts in the developing country. If one assumes that most foreign investors in emerging markets are more informed than their domestic counterparts, then an increase in FPI inflow would mean more informed investors in the market and therefore an increase in market efficiency. Incorporating this conjecture, one can obtain three distinct factors that affect market efficiency in emerging economies: level of institutional risk, amount of foreign investment (FPI inflows), and other economic fundamentals. Since the paper is only interested in the relationship between market inefficiency caused by economic fundamentals and FPI inflows, it must account for the first two factors. Equation 2 properly accounts for the level of institutional risk but fails to address the joint relationship between market efficiency and FPI inflows. I used a three-stage least squares method to estimate the following simultaneous equations system: FPI=γ+1Sync+2X+3GDP+e2 (4) Sync=α+1FPI+2Corruption+3(HH Index)+4GDP+e1 (5) The variable HH Index, the Hirschman Herfindahl Index for exported products (obtained from WITS), was added to account for the level of economic specialization, since more specialized economies tend to experience greater price synchronicity (Morck 9). Additionally, the fixed-effects approach was replaced with a least-squares dummy variable approach by adding a dummy variable for every panel value except one. The results of this model are shown in Table 6, with the coefficients for the panel dummy variables suppressed from the output. The first two columns show the estimates for both endogenous variables (Equation 4 and 5) when using the entire sample size and the second set of columns shows the results after removing 2008 from the sample. Even after addressing the simultaneity problem in the non-lagged model, the paper fails to find a significant relationship between market efficiency and FPI. Although the coefficients for price synchronicity are positive, as shown by Column 1 and 3 in Table 6, they are statistically insignificant. Additionally, these estimates fail to provide empirical evidence in favor of the claim that FPI leads to more efficient markets in developing countries; both Column 2 and 4 show insignificant positive coefficients for FPI when it’s used as an independent variable in estimating price synchronicity. As stated previously, theory and empirical evidence (from Table 4) suggest that a model with lagged price synchronicity and corruption index would better capture the causal relationship between market efficiency and FPI. If the lagged model is a better fit and the conjecture of reverse causality remains valid, then changes in FPI inflows in time period t-1 would affect market efficiency of time period t-1, which in turn would influence the FPI inflows of time period t. To put it simply, FPI and market efficiency are two endogenous variables that are both sequentially and jointly determined. A precise and accurate estimate of the effect market inefficiency (when caused by economic fundamentals) has on FPI inflows would then require a model that allows for both sequential and simultaneous relationship between market efficiency and FPI. I estimated such relationship with the following equation: FPIit=α+1Syncit-1+2Corruptit+3Xit+4Yit-1+5FPIit-1+νi+eit (6) where FPIit-1 is the lagged FPI variable. This equation would allow us to “parse out” the reverse causality effects on market efficiency caused by changes in FPI inflows. Thus, 1 would be the unbiased estimate if such reverse causality indeed exists. Results in Table 7 show a point estimate of between $0.14 to $0.28 billions of FPI increase per percentage point increase in the lagged price synchronicity (depending on whether or not 2008 is included in the sample). However, this estimate is also not statistically significant, most likely due to the same reasons addressed earlier in the previous section. Conclusion and Avenues for Future Research: Due to the lack of available data and time constraints, there are a number of robustness tests and models I wished to estimate but was unable to do so. As mentioned earlier, the paper used an approximation for price synchronicity. Although the approximated values fall somewhat around those provided by Morck et al.’s research (provided on Table 2 of Morck’s article, for year 1995), using the actual price synchronicity of all stocks, as opposed to that of index stocks, in each given country and year would reduce sampling bias in the estimated models. I also wished to estimate the same fixed effects models but replace the Corruption Perception Index with the “good government” index constructed by Morck et al. that more closely represents the institutional risks foreign investors face in emerging markets. Ultimately, using a fixed effects model and a three-stage least squares estimation of a simultaneous equations system, this paper finds evidence consistent with an extension of the equity home bias theory. Economic theory suggests that, under the same level of institutional risks, inefficient markets should attract foreign investors and therefore increase the level of FPI inflows into an emerging market. Empirical evidence shows that there is no statistically significant relationship between market efficiency and FPI inflows once the protection of property rights has been accounted for. At “best”, empirical evidence suggests a $0.42 billion rise in FPI per percentage point increase in lagged price synchronicity, but the point estimate is statistically insignificant. This paper proposes that one can reconcile the inconsistency between theory and empirical evidence by looking at an extension of the home bias theory, where some foreign investors prefer efficient markets because they more closely represent their domestic investing environment. References Chinn, Menzie D. and Hiro Ito (2006). "What Matters for Financial Development? Capital Controls, Institutions, and Interactions," Journal of Development Economics, vol. 81, no. 1, pp. 163-192. De Long, J. Bradford, et al. “Noise Trader Risk in Financial Markets.” Journal of Political Economy, vol. 98, no. 4, 1990, pp. 703–738. Fama, Eugene F. “Efficient Capital Markets: A Review of Theory and Empirical Work.” The Journal of Finance, vol. 25, no. 2, 1970, pp. 383–417. French, Kenneth R., and James M. Poterba. “Investor Diversification and International Equity Markets.” The American Economic Review, vol. 81, no. 2, 1991, pp. 222–226. Li, Jie, and Rajan, Ramkishen S., “Do capital controls make gross equity flows to emerging markets less volatile?” Journal of International Money and Finance, vol. 59, pp 220-244 Morck, Randall K. and Yu, Wayne and Yeung, Bernard Yin, "The Information Content of Stock Markets: Why Do Emerging Markets Have Synchronous Stock Price Movements?" Journal of Financial Economics (JFE), vol. 58, no. 1-2, 2000 Wooldridge, Jeffrey M., 1960-. Introductory Econometrics : a Modern Approach. Mason, Ohio :South-Western Cengage Learning, 2012. Print.

Peaceful Animals A Look into Black Pacifism and the Pedagogy of Civil Rights in American Public Education Jade Fabello The University of Texas at Austin Author Anchita Dasgupta Alexander Ogilvy Alexis Biegen Audrey McDermott Editors Fall 2019 Download full text PDF (9 pages) The following are the key points of the American civil rights movement according to current United States public education curricula. First, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King nobly campaigned for peace and nonviolence. Then Rosa Parks, feeling tired, refused to give up her seat on a bus. Another figure, Malcolm X, was similar to King but he was violent. And then tragically, a random actor shot Dr. King in the cheek. That is where the story usually ends. American racial tensions subsided until the election of Barack Obama. This oversimplification reflects the entirety of the knowledge imparted to many who have experienced the United States public education system. American history education is, in a word, lacking. United States history curricula downplay the impact felt by marginalized groups in this country, producing alarming results. This paper asserts that the pedagogy of Black history in American middle and high school public education centers around convenient and pointed narratives. Especially with regard to forms of protests during the civil rights movement, these narratives have been intentionally structured in a manner that, by way of purposeful omission and harmful misinterpretation, promote the passivity and pacifism of Black Americans. Obtaining accurate and comprehensive information about the Black American condition is an endeavor that one must explicitly elect to partake in. Simple reflection by anyone who has been exposed to American public education reveals that the most prominent figures discussed are white. The history of minority groups seldom sees the light within core curricula. This contemporary self-taught requirement for knowledge acquisition directly parallels to American Slavery. As explored in Self-Taught: African American Education in Slavery and Freedom by Heather Andrea Williams, African Americans’ quest for education has historically been an uphill battle. Unsurprisingly, society rarely provided enslaved individuals a means to an education. The barriers to literacy and other such skills have historically been high. In 1830, North Carolina passed a statute making the education of slaves—either by freedmen or other slaves—a harshly punishable crime. The internal logic of the law operated with an understanding of the relationship between denial of education and self-preservation of the system. As Frederick Douglass states in The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave: “The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers." By affording knowledge and context to the oppressed, the oppressor risks lessening their status as such. Douglass’ education directly facilitated his liberation and eventual coalescence into the abolition movement. While the laws may have changed, the mechanisms that work to suppress Black political action remain as a product of Black history education. To understand this, one must first endeavor to comprehend the pedagogical evolution of the gravest ill inflicted upon Black bodies in America: equating Black people with animals. Intense and categorical dehumanization is a central part of the institution of slavery. In the US Constitution, Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3: the Three-Fifths Compromise, the language of dehumanization of Black people is codified into the most important document of the American polity. Societal justifications and the cognitive dissonance required for the institution of slavery are well discussed in modern academic literature. Broadly speaking, however, the afterlives and scope of the brutality of slavery continue to be poorly understood. In his work The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley, Malcolm X balked at the historical knowledge that the average Black American possessed, saying “it’s unbelievable how many black men and women have let the white man fool them into holding an almost romantic idea of what slave days were like." Prior to the Civil Rights Movement, slavery was often suggested to be a mutually beneficial situation. In return for food and shelter, slaves provided free labor to their masters. This specific framing is fortunately less common than in previous eras. Nevertheless, it would be incorrect to assume that this erroneous pedagogy is a relic of the past. In 2015, the New York Times revealed that a textbook by major publishing company McGraw-Hill Education printed the phrase “the Atlantic Slave Trade… brought millions of workers from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations." This example of nomenclature choice presents an active rewriting of history. The word “workers” implies a compensation that was non-existent in American slavery. Captured Africans and American Blacks were used as currency; they did not receive it. These specific and at times subtle framings contribute to the understating of American slavery. Every individual choice of diction carries moral and political content. It is in the exact verbiage of American historical documents that laid the groundwork for the evolving and sustained systems of Black oppression. If in contemporary times the basic foundations of Black people being in America are understood as a consensual employment, then the opportunity for discussion of the continued maltreatment of Black people has no foothold. After some controversy, McGraw-Hill Education acknowledged the error. However, the “misprinted” issues will likely circulate for years to come (McAfee). This instance, which some would consider an outlier, does not deviate significantly from the actual standards. Improvement from past pedagogies is undeniable, however, the present approach to education does not adequately capture the brutalities and atrocities of enslavement. The current educational system cannot afford proper context for the current state of being for the Black individual, without recognizing the inhuman cruelty that has been historically inflicted upon the Black community in America. Simultaneously, members of unafflicted groups have less of a basis from which they can understand contentions asserting the continued existence of institutional racism. Racism is deeply woven into many facets of society, making it difficult to pinpoint parties solely responsible for the historical miseducation of American youth. However, when it comes to a substantial portion of the information diffused throughout the nation, few governing bodies have more of a direct impact than the Texas Board of Education. Former social studies textbook editor Dan Quinn states: “What happens in Texas doesn’t stay in Texas when it comes to textbooks." The Texas market for textbooks is unequivocally large. Therefore, the guidelines set in place by this body have profound implications on the textbooks received by much of the nation. This reality is extremely troublesome when we look at both statements made by board officials and some of the recent sets of the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS), which outlines the curriculum required for Texas public schools. After the board adopted the then-new standards in 2010, board member Pat Hardy was quoted saying “there would be those who would say the reason for the Civil War was over slavery. No. It was over states’ rights." While this statement is from 2010, its impact and that of other comments like it are still apparent and intensely relevant. A 2018 survey of one thousand high school seniors by the Southern Poverty Law Center found that only eight percent of students can correctly identify slavery as the central cause of the civil war. Attempts to relegate slavery to an insignificant role takes away agency from Black individuals who sought their liberation through their tireless strife against slavery. Correcting pedagogy is a particularly challenging endeavor. The agents of that change—educators and guideline setters—are often the products of miseducation themselves. The Southern Poverty Law Center notes that “teachers struggle to do justice to the nation’s legacy of racial injustice. They are poorly served by state standards and frameworks, popular textbooks and even their own academic preparation." The Texas State Board of Education did recently agree to acknowledge the centrality of slavery in the Civil War. While credit is due, this is merely a starting line and does not rectify the other deficiencies in standards or the in-classroom experience of teaching with racial ineptitude. The official TEKS has only included Jim Crow Laws and the Ku Klux Klan as teaching requirements as of the November 2018 revisions. This former exclusion again has contributed to the dismissal of suffering crucial to contextualization. However, the document has long since mentioned the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King (TEA 7). King’s remarkable contributions towards assisting the Black condition are undeniable and merit inclusion into educational standards. However, the way the American education system broaches King further promotes the pacification of the Black race. The current collective consciousness greatly downplays the radicalism of King and fellow Civil Rights leader Rosa Parks. Peter Dreier, a professor of politics and director of the Urban & Environmental Policy department at Occidental College, discusses how “in the popular legend, Parks is portrayed as a tired old seamstress…who, on the spur of the moment...decided to resist the city’s segregation law by refusing to move to the back of the bus on December 1, 1955." However, Dreier continues to explain that the reality of the situation was that the move came as a result of a massive coordinated effort on the part of veteran activists. This account is corroborated by (among other sources) Taylor Branch’s Parting the Waters , Stewart Burns’ Daybreak of Freedom: The Montgomery Bus Boycott , and Rosa Parks’ autobiography, My Story . The removal from America’s shared memory of the careful and calculated effort to dismantle Jim Crow sells short the scale of the effort required to uproot institutional boundaries. He continues, “Contemporary struggles for justice...may seem modest by comparison to the movements of the 1960s that began in Montgomery in 1955." The false yet ubiquitous narrative of the she was tired, so she sat cause and effect ignores the radical line of thinking that openly and actively defies American racism. The simplification of Parks’ actions in education resources does not accurately depict the radical schools of thought that she exemplified. The pacified version of King, provided to the average American student, debases his radical ideas and uses them to combat current political and social movements. King has often been haphazardly invoked in attempts to pacify or condemn post-police brutality rioters or NFL protesters. We live in a time where it is antiquated to believe that online comments hold no relevance in the grander discourse. The term internet “trolls” is currently included in official reports created by top United States Federal Agencies. Posts on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter or other such sites are legitimate reflections of the society in which they originated. As such, the vitriol and ignorance found in online commentary are troubling indications of mass miseducation. Politicians and individuals use specifically-curated King quotes to fit whatever narrative is convenient. This pacified version of King is then in turn used to pacify Black people. These protest-dissenting claims bear no mind to the wider breadth of the King library of thought—which includes the September 27th, 1966 CBS interview, in which King stated: “I think that we’ve got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard." Dr. King’s vocabulary was not limited to the four word phrase “I have a dream.” While he may not have endorsed violence in the context of social movements, it is apparent that King’s thoughts on riots would not align with those who often champion his name. In modern America, King is near universally understood to be a figure worthy of praise. It is so often forgotten that King was fiercely unpopular with the majority of society for much of his life. In 1966, the Gallup measure of King polled his admiration levels at 32% positive and 63% negative. Yet modern mythos takes this for granted. The education system inserts into popular consciousness a particular mold of how an oppressed Black person seeking change should act. That mold is a very corrupted memory of Dr. King. To call King strictly nonviolent is itself misleading. While King’s rhetoric may have been very deliberate, one can not divorce racism from violence. King and his followers employed a disciplined sacrifice of the Black body. The violence was there. It simply was not directed towards white bodies or white property. We are presented with King because he comparatively easy to digest. His general message of nonviolence is malleable. Little to no emphasis is regarded to the failures, shortcomings, and bitter reality of the civil rights movement as a means for achieving social change. Despite King’s desire to expose the grave violence of racism, the presented, pared down version of him does not force us as a collective to deeply explore the gravity of the injustices placed against Black people. A firehose directed at protestors, while shocking and horrific, still rests easier on people’s minds than the state-sponsored murder of Black Panther Captains. Further, the High School TEKS does briefly mention the Black Panther Party for the sake of contrasting their beliefs with those of MLK. The author of this paper, themself a product of Texas high school public education, can attest that in practice this comparison amounts to a further dismissal of the validity of their actions—while touting King’s “peaceful” approach. Neither the middle school nor high school TEKS makes reference to King’s influential counterpart, Malcolm X. Again anecdotally, mentions of Malcolm X consists of characterizing him as violent and little else. In the civil rights section of the San Jacinto Museum’s Curriculum Guide for Teaching Texas History , which aligns with TEKS, Non-Violent Protest is the first critical vocabulary point. Shortly thereafter, the curriculum suggests that “students should have a basic knowledge of the rights of United States’ citizens to petition the government for a solution to grievances." Again, while there is validity in discussion around this form of protest, the same section draws the parallel to the “Declaration of Independence as a list of complaints by the colonists against King George in England." It is ironic that a proudly boasted and bloody revolution was subsequent to that list of complaints, while Black Power groups, which almost exclusively subscribed to revolutionary mentalities, receive no mention in the Guide. In America, “violence” is an acceptable means to achieve an end as long as those who carry it out are not of a dark complexion. The themes of what has been selectively chosen to receive praise or condemnation in our teachings of history, while not surprising, have dire implications. In America, passivity and pacifism are standards that are disproportionately held to Black and Brown bodies. Malcolm X articulated this point to an LA crowd in 1962: The white man is tricking you. He’s trapping you. He doesn’t call it violence when he lands troops in South Vietnam. He doesn’t call it violence when he lands troops in Berlin. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, he didn’t say get nonviolent. He said, “Praise the Lord but pass the ammunition.” The double standard outlined by X places boundaries on current political efforts lest they risk misaligning with the beliefs of the deified King. The complexities of Malcolm X’s ever-evolving racial beliefs cannot be justly covered within the scope of this paper. But the classification of his actions and beliefs as merely violent is wildly inaccurate and harmful. X’s more direct and introspective approach presents a perspective that we can not afford to remove from education standards. Major influential names of the Black Power movement similarly receive no mention. For example, the status quo completely ignores the perspectives of Fred Hampton, the young Panther captain who was assassinated by the FBI, and Robert F. Williams, author of the book Negroes with Guns . This erasure limits both Americans’ understanding of the context in which these ideologies evolved and their understanding of the options available to combat systemic oppression. The omission of these figures is indicative of a larger narrative that operates under the impression that Blacks are innately dangerous creatures, and therefore should not be encouraged to take a bold and active role in liberation, lest they risk harming white Americans. America frowns upon the idea that Blacks should either want or need to defend themselves. The absence of these individuals (X included) from not only TEKS but the AP US History Guideline and Common Core standards is indicative of the devaluation of an entire school of thought. There are subjective flaws in the ideologies of both King and X. However, by only providing a simplified and one-sided narrative of the pursuit for Black Liberation, the historical curriculum discourages radical approaches of combating deeply rooted problems. Education’s intrinsic relationship with a successful society is best defined by iconic author James Baldwin in 1963: Man is a social animal. He cannot exist without a society...Now the crucial paradox which confronts us here is that the whole process of education occurs within a social framework and is designed to perpetuate the aims of society. Thus, for example, the boys and girls who were born during the era of the Third Reich, when educated to the purposes of the Third Reich, became barbarians. The paradox of education is precisely this—that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated. The purpose of education, finally, is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself…But no society is really anxious to have that kind of person around. What societies really, ideally, want is a citizenry which will simply obey the rules of society. If a society succeeds in this, that society is about to perish. By leaving out parts of the story, the United States stifles the consistent efforts of radicals and revolutionaries to reveal evidence of how the country has undermined the civil rights of Black Americans in the past and present. Our education system helps to perpetuate a narrative of both Black inhumanity and Black pacifism. In order to give Black youth the tools to contextualize and confront the contemporary manifestations of racism that our education system neglects to address, US public education must deliberately address the duality of the civil rights movement: a struggle for Black Liberation that has been both peaceful and violent. Works Cited "Act Passed by the General Assembly of the State of North Carolina at the Session of 1830—1831" (Raleigh: 1831). “AP® United States History Including the Curriculum Framework.” College Board Web. 5 Dec. 2016. Baldwin, James. "The Negro Child - His self Image." 16 October 1963, Lecture. Brown, Emma, “Texas officials: Schools should teach that slavery was ‘side issue’ to Civil War.” The Washington Post. Web. 5 December 2016. Colins, Gail @nybooks. "How Texas Inflicts Bad Textbooks on Us." The New York Review of Books. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Dec. 2016. Douglass, Frederick, Gregory Stephens, and Peter J. Gomes. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print. Dreier, Peter. "Rosa Parks: Angry, Not Tired." Dissent 53.1 (2006): 88-92. Web. Fernandez, Manny, and Christine Hauser. "Texas Mother Teaches Textbook Company a Lesson on Accuracy." The New York Times. The New York Times, 2015. Web. 13 Sept. 2016. Gallup, Inc. “Martin Luther King Jr.: Revered More After Death Than Before.” Gallup.com, 16 Jan. 2006,news.gallup.com/poll/20920/martin-luther-king-jr-revered-More-after- death-than-before.aspx. McAfee, Meloncyee. "McGraw-Hill to Rewrite Textbook after Mom's Complaint." CNN. Cable News Network, n.d. Web. 05 Dec. 2016. National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, Council of Chief State School McGaughy, Lauren. “Texas History Curriculum: Hillary Clinton and Alamo 'Heroes' Are in. Oprah's Out.” Dallas News, 16 Nov. 2018, www.dallasnews.com/news/education/ 2018/11/13/texas-education-board-debate-eliminating-helen-keller-hillary-clinton-others-history-curriculum. Officers Title: Common Core State Standard. National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, Council of Chief State School Officers, Washington D.C. Copyright Date: 2010 Pittman,Yvonne, Appleby, Elizabeth, and Stuthers, Lisa. “Curriculum Guide for Teaching Texas History.” San Jacinto Museum of History One Monument Circle. Jan 8. 2013 Rothman, Lily, "What Martin Luther King Jr Really Thought About Riots." Time. Time, n.d. Web. 05 Dec. 2016. Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). “Teaching Hard History American Slavery.” Web. 17 Nov. 2018. Texas Education Agency (TEA). "Texas Education Agency - Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills. Chapter 113. Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for Social Studies " Texas Education Agency -Welcome to the Texas Education Agency. N.p., n.d. Web. 4 Dec. 2016. United States. NSA, CIA, FBI. ICA. Background to “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections”: The Analytic Process and Cyber Incident Attribution. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Web. 20 Feb. 2017. Williams, Heather Andrea. Self-taught: African American Education in Slavery and Freedom. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina, 2005. Print. X, Malcolm “The White Man is Tricking You!” Nation of Islam. Los Angeles 22 May, 1962 X, Malcolm, and Alex Haley. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. New York: Ballantine, 1992. Print.

Georgian-South Ossetian Conflict Is secession a viable solution? Tathyana Mello Amaral Brown University Author Miles Campbell Ryan Saadeh Ethan Shire Editors Fall 2018 This paper assesses the viability of secession as a possible solution for the Georgian-South Ossetian conflict. The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 resulted in the creation of weak and unstable states that sought to establish their identity and place in the world. It triggered a wave of pervasive ethno-nationalism in Eastern Europe, led to a number of lasting military conflicts, and brought about the question of self-determination of minor ethnic groups like the Armenians, Chechens, and Kosovians. The Yugoslav Wars marked an important turning point in the history of the post-Soviet region because it resulted in the secession of Kosovo from Serbia in 2008 and created legal precedent for separatist groups. While the right to secede offers an answer to the resolution of ethnic conflicts, some scholars and theorists find it troubling. [1] The dispute between Georgia and ethnic Ossetians of the Transcaucasian region, now known as South Ossetia, highlights how the right to secede is still a point of controversy in international law. Historical Background: Nature of the Conflict Though the enmity between ethnic Georgians and ethnic Ossetians dates back to the 13th century when Ossetians were driven South from the Northern Caucasus Mountains to Georgian territory, it greatly intensified during the Soviet period.[2] During this period, South Ossetia was an autonomous administrative unit within the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR). As historian George B. Hewitt discusses, language policy was an important point of contention between the ethnic groups since Georgia pursued discriminatory policies against its ethnic minorities.[3] The Soviet Union’s early language policy granted a lot of freedom to ethnic groups as part of a “nativization” effort that sought to liberate and win over oppressed peoples. By the late 1930s, however, fears of emerging nationalism within the federation led to a change in policy to one of “Russification”. Georgia, however, was exempted from such policies until 1953 since its leader Joseph Stalin was a Georgian native. In 1936 Georgian was declared a state language and Georgianization became the policy of the day. In 1938 the state imposed the Georgian alphabet on the Ossetian language and prohibited minority language schooling, causing great tensions between the government and the ethnic minorities.[4] When the Russification policies reached the Georgian SSR, the Georgian Nationalist Movement proposed the 1988 Draft Language Law which aimed to oblige ethnic minorities to master the Georgian language.[5] These Georgian language policies, along with other discriminatory practices, thus created deep resentment among South Ossetians towards Georgians. It is important to note that the small state of Georgia is home to other separatist ethnic minorities, including Abkhazians in the West and Adjarians in the South. Although the Abkhazian-Georgian conflict has paralleled the Georgian-South Ossetian conflict since 1991 when violent conflict first erupted during the Georgian independence movement, this paper will exclusively focus on the South Ossetian conflict. The violent experience of the 1990s was a culmination of hundreds of years of conflict. Political scientist Stefan Wolff writes that “South Ossetians wanted to preserve and remain within the Soviet Union. The Ossetians believed that their survival as ethno-cultural communities distinct from the Georgian majority would be in acute danger in an independent Georgian state.”[6] The relationship between Russia and South Ossetia was reinforced by the fact that ethnic Ossetians had their own autonomous republic within Russia, namely North Ossetia-Alana. With the support of Russia, the South Ossetian separatists managed to put up a strong resistance against the Georgians.[7] In June 1992, shortly after the election of former Soviet Foreign Minister Edvard Shevardnadze as Georgian president, a ceasefire was signed in Sochi under Russian supervision.[8] The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) sent a mission composed of troops from Georgia, Russia, South Ossetia, and North Ossetia to facilitate negotiations toward a political agreement.[9] The OSCE mission successfully maintained peace until 2003 when President Mikhail Saakashvili rose to power through the popular Rose Revolution, and made the restoration of Georgian territorial integrity a major goal of the new government.[10] The administration’s policy led to a violent flare up in 2004 when the government cracked down on a symbol of interethnic cooperation: the Ergneti Market.[11] Though the black market was a major point of contraband trade, the introduction of a harsh taxation system in the market, as a part of Saakashvili’s anti-contraband operation, significantly harmed Georgian relations with Ossetians. The market was one of the only sites of direct interaction between the two ethnic groups. Relations were made even worse by the fact that one of the targeted groups in this operation was comprised of local officials and businessmen who profited from Russian and Ossetian trade connections.[12] Violence erupted during and after the shutting down of the market. Even more detrimental to interethnic relations, in 2006 it became public that the smuggling operation still existed, but that it was now run but the ruling Georgian elite.[13] The closing of the Ergneti Market was labeled a “missed window of opportunity” for conflict resolution by academic Doris Vogl. She argued that “during the rigorously implemented state-building process of the early Saakashvili government, the informal Georgian-Ossetian relations immediately lost momentum.”[14] The events of 2004 polarized and radicalized both Georgians and Ossetians and intensified the clashes between the ethnic groups in the prelude of the war of 2008. Though Georgia offered South Ossetia federal status in 2004, the leadership rejected this possible resolution.[15] Georgian policies in the early 2000s allowed Russia to offer more substantial and public support to the separatist Ossetians. Russia distributed passports to ethnic Ossetians and intensified political, economic and military ties with the separatist region. Arguably even more important, Russia observed growing relations between Georgia and Western powers like the United States. Georgia received 1.3 billion dollars of American financial aid and oversaw the construction of BP operated Baku–Supsa oil pipeline which runs through Azerbaijan and Georgia.[16] As Georgia began to pursue NATO membership, Russia was threatened by the possibility of having the Western coalition present in its own backyard. Svante E. Cornell and S. Frederick Starr comment that before the 2008 war, “Georgia was moving rapidly toward Euro-Atlantic integration, and was doing so at a time when an increasingly assertive Russian foreign policy was being shaped by sphere of influence-thinking.”[17] With fears of further NATO expansion and growing US presence in the Caucasus, Russian policy was driven by global security concerns, dynamics of European and global geopolitical power. Also significant is the fact that dominant Western powers such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and France supported and legitimized the secession of Kosovo from Serbia in February 2008. This allowed President Putin to cite the “Kosovo precedent” when signing a presidential decree on April 16th that established political, economic and social relations with both South Ossetia and Abkhazia.[18] Rising tensions between the two sovereign nations resulted in a five day war in 2008. Controversy surrounds who actually initiated the war on August 7th 2008,[19] as reports by the European Union and the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program Joint Center agree that while Georgia made the first move, Russia significantly increased the number of troops and armaments in Abkhazia, and later in South Ossetia in the prelude to the war.[20] After five days of violent conflict, Georgia and Russia agreed to sign an armistice and engaged in peace talks sponsored by the European Union, the United Nations and OSCE. Russian military troops remained in South Ossetia in order to prevent Georgia from recovering the territory.[21] On August 25th, Russia recognized the sovereignty of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Western powers and institutions such as NATO, the European Union, and the United Nations strongly condemned this move as they believed it undermined the sovereignty of the Georgian state. In response, Georgia ceased all diplomatic relations with Russia. This made the peace process slow and ineffective as the co-sponsored EU-UN-OSCE talks in Geneva were the only mechanism for multilateral talks.[22] Since 2008, Russia has increased governmental, economic and social ties with the secessionist regions. The administrative border between South Ossetia and Georgia has also been pushed southwards and since the summer of 2015, South Ossetian-held territory includes a section of the Baku-Supsa pipeline. As Andrews Higgins puts it, the secessionist region is part of Russia’s “Frozen Zone”, which includes areas under Russian control that officially belong to neighboring states, such as Georgia’s Abkhazia, Moldova’s Transnistria, and Ukraine’s Crimea. Higgins also adds that these regions are “useful for things like preventing a NATO foothold or destabilizing the host country at opportune moments.”[23] Issues with the Secession of South Ossetia In his essay “The Cracked Foundations of the Right to Secede”, law professor and political scientist Donald Horowitz outlines a set of assumptions that are made about secessionist states which justify the right to secede. This right assumes that secession will produce a “homogenous successor” that will “respect minority rights,” and where “republican democracy is viable.”[24] It also assumes that secession will “result in a diminution of conflict.”[25] The case of South Ossetia can be analyzed as a natural secessionist experiment of history because the region has been a de-facto independent state for many years. The question then arises: have these assumptions materialized in the case of South Ossetia? In short, they have not. As Horowitz points out, secession “merely proliferates the arenas in which the problem of intergroup political accommodation must be faced.”[26] In the case of Georgia, ample evidence shows that ethnic conflict continues to haunt both Georgia and the de-facto independent state of South Ossetia. There were many reports concerning violations of human rights from both sides during the 2008 war. For example, a Human Rights Watch report showed that there was intentional destruction of Georgian villages by Russian-South Ossetian troops.[27] The majority of ethnic Georgians who resided in South Ossetia fled during the August 2008 conflict, but an estimated 20,000 still live in the disputed territory.[28] The Ministry for Internally Displaced Persons from the Occupied Territories, Accommodation and Refugees of Georgia reported that there were 34,274 internally displaced persons (IDPs) from South Ossetia as of October 2014.[29] A UN survey shows that 56.9% of IDPs from South Ossetia are unable, but would like to return to their place of origin in cities like Tskhinvali, Znauri, Java, and Shida Kartli. This demonstrates how interethnic accommodations have failed to unfold with the creation of a separate state. Additionally, with no access to the territory except in preparations for the Geneva Discussions, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and Georgian authorities have been unable to implement conventions regarding rights of refugees, stateless persons, and IDPs.[30] Russian troops regularly detain Georgian civilians for illegal crossings of the “administrative boundary line” (around 320 villagers were detained in 2015 alone).[31] In fact, the Freedom House Organization states that ethnic Georgians are barred from returning to the region unless they “renounce their Georgian citizenship and accept Russian passports.”[32] Therefore, the freedom of movement of Georgian citizens is constantly threatened in South Ossetia. In July 2017, the South Ossetian authorities also shared plans “to abolish the Georgian language schooling in the region’s ethnic Georgian populated areas beginning from the 2017/2018 academic year.”[33] The language policy proposed by the South Ossetian government recalls the discriminatory policies Ossetians were subjected to at the hand of Georgians during the Soviet period. Regarding the meaningful political participation of ethnic minorities, the Freedom House states that ethnic Georgians have refused or been barred from participating in the electoral process.[34] Freedoms of expression and of organization are also threatened.[35] As Horowitz argues, the treatment of this new ethnic minority is highly discriminatory. Therefore, in the case of South Ossetia, secession does not create a homogenous successor nor does it guarantee the respect of minority rights. In the case of South Ossetia, secession does not seem feasible unless the authorities make a commitment to guarantee the rights of its ethnic minorities. But, as Horowitz warns, “guarantees of minority protection in secessionist regions are likely to be illusory.”[36] While South Ossetia is considered a de-facto independent state, the viability of an independent republican democracy in South Ossetia is questionable when considering its high dependence on Russia. Historians Andreas Gerrits and Max Bader argue that “the economic and intergovernmental linkages with Russia … directly undermine the autonomy of the region.”[37] With a dual executive system, South Ossetia maintains political institutions based on those of Russia. The 2011 presidential election demonstrates the grip of Russia on the region’s politics and shows how the South Ossetian political process is highly susceptible to Russian influence. When a candidate who criticized strong ties with Russia won the popular vote, the Supreme Court annulled the results. Elections were repeated in 2012 with four new candidates, all pro-Russia.[38] As a result of the bilateral agreements signed in 2009, 2010, and 2015 that established economic, governmental and military links between Russia and South Ossetia, South Ossetia developed a high level of dependence on Russia.[39] Russia is South Ossetia’s only relevant trade partner, the ruble is the official currency, and South Ossetia’s imports and investments are exclusively from Russia.[40] More significantly, 91% of South Ossetia’s government budget is made up from Russian financial aid.[41] These limitations arguably derive from a lack of international recognition and from the consequences of the 2008 war. However, as Russian economist Mikhail Delyagin states, “South Ossetia does not exist as an independent economic entity due to its small size and extremely low-level management,” as well as due to its reliance on Russia’s long-term military presence to protect its territory.[42] As a result of this significant dependence on Russian aid, South Ossetia does not have a sustainable future as an independent nation. Another assumption that can be contested is that secession will lead to a diminution of violent conflict. This inevitable reality is highly flawed because devolution merely turns domestic conflicts into international ones. While a political divorce has not officially occurred, South Ossetia has been de-facto independent for at least 10 years. Though ethnic enmities linger, the recent history of the conflict shows how ethnic conflicts can mutate into primarily geopolitical ones when separatist movements thrive. University of Edinburgh Professor Emeritus John Erickson writes that the implications of Georgia’s Western push “are consequently dire for those [including high level Russian officials] who insist doggedly that the post-Soviet ‘space’ in its entirety, encompassing the former states of the Soviet Union, is and must remain a closed Russian geopolitical preserve.”[43] For Russia, the possibility of NATO encroachment on the South Caucasus precludes any significant decision concerning the separatist regions. As historian David J. Smith argues, German Chancellor Angela Merkle sealed the region’s fate when she said that the resolution of internal conflict was a prerequisite for NATO membership.[44] From that moment onwards, South Ossetia became a pawn in Moscow’s foreign policy strategy, described by Svante Cornell as a “revival of a classically modern, Realpolitik culture of security.”[45] The South Ossetian “secessionist” experience, along with that of other separatist states in Eastern Europe, illustrates how ethnic conflicts can be used to further geopolitical interests of powers like the Russian Federation in the post-Soviet space. The internationalization of the Georgian-South Ossetian conflict shows how secession does not necessarily lead to a diminution of violence. Therefore, the failure of South Ossetia to protect the minority rights of ethnic Georgians, its continued dependence on Russia, and likely mutation of ethnic conflicts into geopolitical ones suggests that secession is not a viable solution for this conflict. Implications There are no clear answers to Georgian-South Ossetian conflict. Though the director of the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies Cory Welt argues that “the reintegration of South Ossetia…poses no challenges to conventional understandings of democracy and human rights,” as time passes, the collective consciousness of both South Ossetians and Georgians acquires increasingly negative perceptions of the opposing ethnic group, making future interethnic cooperation difficult to achieve.[46] Additionally, the social linkage between South Ossetia and Russia continues to grow through the Russian domination of the media, the use of Russian as the lingua franca, and the promotion of educational exchange programs.[47] A symbolic link also comes from the large Ossetian diaspora in North Ossetia, an autonomous region within Russia. Thus, South Ossetia’s reintegration into Georgia becomes more unlikely by the day. With most citizens having dual citizenship to South Ossetia and Russia, further integration of South Ossetia into Russia can be anticipated. While Russia has not stated that it will pursue the annexation of the territory, its aggressive support of South Ossetia has managed to destabilize the region, prevent Georgia from joining Western organizations such as NATO. Moreover, through its involvement in Georgia, Russia has reasserted its influence in the Caucasus region. If secession occurred and South Ossetia was recognized as independent state by the international community, Russia would be encouraged to engage in even more aggressive foreign policy in the post-Soviet sphere of influence, possibly resulting in a domino effect of secessionist movements and a higher occurrence of violent conflicts. Georgia is a multiethnic country with two separatist movements (the experience of Abkhazia is very similar to that of South Ossetia), so the secession of one region would likely lead to that of the other. The disputed territories make up about one quarter of the Georgian territory, which means secession would severely destabilize the already weak country. The fear of a domino effect, not only in Georgia, but in other disputed territories that are currently under Russian control (i.e.: Crimea and Donbass, Ukraine; Transnitria, Moldova), is already a reality shaping international geopolitics. If the right to secede is accepted in relation to the South Ossetian dispute, the legal precedent set by Kosovo’s independence will be reaffirmed. With Russia’s “Frozen Zone” in mind, the emergence and legitimization of separatist movements of small and unsustainable regions can lead to the expansion of Russian sphere of influence in the post-Soviet territory and the further polarization of the present international political dynamics. Conclusion Peace talks and conflict resolution efforts have proven ineffective for almost 25 years, since both sides are committed to achieving predetermined preferential outcomes.[48] Both sides have been haunted by the impatience of political leaders such as President Saakashvili and by a lack of trust from both sides due to the lack of interethnic communication. But, most of all, the sides have been haunted by a pro-separatist Russian mediator. Cory Welt writes that Russia’s “function as a ‘hegemonic balancer’ interposed between conflicting parties resulted in the establishment of a level playing field for negotiations, allowing Abkhazia and South Ossetia to consider themselves equals to Georgia, not subordinates.”[49] While Georgia attempted to reach an acceptable political solution, the support from a major power endowed separatist group with a decisive sense of confidence and security that hindered the resolution of the conflict. Meanwhile, Western states and institutions failed to devise a coherent response to Russian policies that threaten stability and Europe’s own interests in the region. The de-facto independence of South Ossetia encountered a continued threat to rights of ethnic minorities, a strong dependence on Russia, and the quick escalation of violence in 2008 due to the internationalization of the conflict. The region’s experience thus supports the argument that secession is not a viable solution for ethnic conflict in the Caucasus. Endnotes [1] Donald L. Horowitz, “The Cracked Foundations of the Right to Secede,” Journal of Democracy, 11. [2] George Hewitt, Discordant Neighbours: A Reassessment of the Georgian-Abkhazian and Georgian-South Ossetian Conflicts, (Leiden: 2003), 22 -23. [3] Hewitt, 41. [4] Sonya Kleshik, "I Am My Language: Language Policy and Attitudes Toward Language in Georgia" (Master's thesis, Central European University, 2010), 11 - 12 [5] Hewitt, 57 – 58. [6] Stefan Wolff, "Georgia: Abkhazia and South Ossetia," Encyclopedia Princetoniensis. [7] Ibid. [8] Ibid. [9] Marietta Konig, "The Georgian-South Ossetian Conflict ," OSCE Yearbook 2004 (Hamburg: 2004), 242. [10] Ibid, 238. [11] Doris Vogl, "Missed Windows of Opportunity in the Georgian-South Ossetian Conflict – The Political Agenda of the Post-Revolutionary Saakashvili Government (2004-2006)," Failed Prevention: The Case of Georgia (Vienna: 2010), 68 – 71. [12] Vogl, 70. [13] Ibid. [14] Ibid, 72. [15] Wolff. [16] Cory Welt, “Balancing the Balancer: Russia, the U.S., and Conflict Resolution in Georgia,” Global Dialogue 7, no. 3-4 (Summer/Autumn 2005), 24. [17] Svante E. Cornell and S. Frederick Starr, eds., The Guns of August 2008: Russia's War in Georgia (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2015), 4. [18] Ibid, 7 – 8. [19] "The Blame Game," The Economist, October 03, 2009. [20] Ibid; Cornell, Popjanevski and Nilsson, “Russia’s War in Georgia”, 23 – 24. [21] Luke Hardinng and Jenny Percival, “Russian troops to stay in Abkhazia and South Ossetia,” The Guardian, September 09 2008. [22] Wolff, "Georgia”. [23] Andrew Higgins, “In Russia’s ‘Frozen Zone,’ a Creeping Border With Georgia,” The New York Times, October 23 2016. [24] Horowitz, “Cracked Foundations,” 8. [25] Ibid. [26] Ibid, 9. [27] Up In Flames: Humanitarian Law Violations and Civilian Victims in the Conflict over South Ossetia (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2009). [28] "World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples: Ossetians," Minority Rights Group International. [29] UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Intentions Survey On Durable Solutions: Voices Of Internally Displaced Persons In Georgia, June 2015. [30] UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Submission by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees For the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights' Compilation Report Universal Periodic Review: Georgia, January 2015. [31] Vicenews, The Russians Are Coming: Georgia’s Creeping Occupation, VICE News, November 04, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bv00Weif0Sw . [32] “Freedom In The World: South Ossetia," Freedom House, 2016. [33] Georgian Schools to be Abolished in S. Ossetia," Civil.Ge, July 28, 2017. [34] “Freedom In The World: South Ossetia”. [35] Ibid. [36] Horowitz, 6. [37] Andre W. M. Gerrits and Max Bader, "Russian Patronage Over Abkhazia and South Ossetia: Implications for Conflict Resolution," East European Politics 32, no. 3 (July 19, 2016). [38] “Freedom In The World: South Ossetia”. [39] Gerrits and Bader, “Russian Patronage”. [40] Ibid. [41] Paul Rimple, “Economics Not Impacting Russian Support for Georgian Separatists,” Eurasianet.org, February 13, 2015. [42] Mikhail Delyagin, "A Testing Ground for Modernization and a Showcase of Success," Russia in Global Affairs, March 8, 2008. [43] John Erickson, “Russia Will not be Trifled With: Geopolitical Facts and Fantasies,” in Geopolitics: Geography and Strategy, ed. Colin S. Gray and Geoffrey Sloan (London: Frank Cass Publishers, 1999), p. 260. [44] David J. Smith, "The Saakashvili Administration’s Reaction to Russian Policies Before the 2008 War," in The Guns of August 2008: Russia's War in Georgia (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2015), 126. [45] Cornell and Starr, The Guns of August 2008, 196. [46] Cory Welt, “Balancing the Balancer: Russia, the U.S., and Conflict Resolution in Georgia,” Global Dialogue 7, no. 3-4 (2005), 12. [47] Gerrits and Bader, “Russian Patronage”. [48] Oksana Antonenko, "Failures of the Conflict Transformation and Root Causes of the August War," Failed Prevention: The Case of Georgia (Vienna: National Defence Academy and Bureau for Security Policy at the Austrian Ministry of Defence, 2010), 83. [49] Welt, “Balancing the Balancer,” 2. References Antonenko, Oksana. "Failures of the Conflict Transformation and Root Causes of the August War." In Failed Prevention: The Case of Georgia, 79-93. Vienna: National Defense Academy and Bureau for Security Policy at the Austrian Ministry of Defense, 2010. "The Blame Game." The Economist. October 03, 2009. http://www.economist.com/node/14560958 . Cornell, Svante E., and S. Frederick Starr, eds. The Guns of August 2008: Russia's War in Georgia. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2015. Cornell, Svante E., Johanna Popjanevski, and Niklas Nilsson. Russia’s War in Georgia: Causes and Implications for Georgia and the World. Singapore: Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program, August 2008. Delyagin, Mikhail. "A Testing Ground for Modernization and a Showcase of Success." Russia in Global Affairs. March 8, 2008. Accessed August 19, 2017. http://eng.globalaffairs.ru/number/n_12538. Erickson, John. “Russia Will not be Trifled With: Geopolitical Facts and Fantasies.” Geopolitics: Geography and Strategy. Colin S. Gray and Geoffrey Sloan ed. (London: Frank Cass Publishers, 1999). "Freedom In The World: South Ossetia." Freedom House. 2016. https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2015/south-ossetia. "Georgian Schools to be Abolished in S. Ossetia." Civil.Ge. July 28, 2017. http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=30309. Gerrits, Andre W. M. , and Max Bader. "Russian Patronage Over Abkhazia and South Ossetia: Implications for Conflict Resolution." East European Politics 32, no. 3 (July 19, 2016): 297-313. Goble, Paul A. "Russian 'Passportization'." The New York Times. September 09, 2008. Accessed August 17, 2017. https://topics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/09/russian-passportization/?_r=0. Hardinng, Luke and Jenny Percival. “Russian troops to stay in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.” The Guardian. September 09 2008. Hewitt, George. Discordant Neighbours: A Reassessment of the Georgian-Abkhazian and Georgian-South Ossetian Conflicts. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Higgins, Andrew. “In Russia’s ‘Frozen Zone,’ a Creeping Border With Georgia.” The New York Times. October 23 2016. Jentzsch, Greg. "What are the main causes of conflict in South Ossetia and how can they best be addressed to promote lasting peace." The BSIS Journal of International Studies (2009). Kleshik, Sonya . "I Am My Language: Language Policy and Attitudes Toward Language in Georgia." Master's thesis, Central European University, 2010. Konig, Marietta . "The Georgian-South Ossetian Conflict ." OSCE Yearbook 2004 (Hamburg: 2004). Rimple, Paul. “Economics Not Impacting Russian Support for Georgian Separatists.” Eurasianet.org. February 13, 2015. UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Intentions Survey On Durable Solutions: Voices Of Internally Displaced Persons In Georgia. June 2015. http://www.refworld.org/docid/55e575924.html UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Submission by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees For the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights' Compilation Report Universal Periodic Review: Georgia. January 2015. Up In Flames: Humanitarian Law Violations and Civilian Victims in the Conflict over South Ossetia. New York: Human Rights Watch, 2009. Vicenews. The Russians Are Coming: Georgia’s Creeping Occupation. VICE News. November 04, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bv00Weif0Sw. Vogl, Doris. "Missed Windows of Opportunity in the Georgian-South Ossetian Conflict – The Political Agenda of the Post-Revolutionary Saakashvili Government (2004-2006) ." In Failed Prevention: The Case of Georgia, 59 - 77. Vienna: National Defence Academy and Bureau for Security Policy at the Austrian Ministry of Defence, 2010. Welt, Cory. “Balancing the Balancer: Russia, the U.S., and Conflict Resolution in Georgia.” Global Dialogue 7, no. 3-4 (Summer/Autumn 2005), 22-36. Wolff, Stefan. "Georgia: Abkhazia and South Ossetia." Encyclopedia Princetoniensis. "World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples: Ossetians." Minority Rights Group International. http://minorityrights.org/minorities/ossetians/.

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