State-Owned Banks and the Promise of an Equitable Financial Sector Elias van Emmerick Pomona College April 2021 This paper will propose that state-owned banks resolve many of the issues facing commercial banks today. To substantiate this claim, it will investigate specific areas where a state-owned bank would produce more favorable outcomes than a commercial bank, trace the steps required to establish such a bank, and evaluate a contemporary example of a state-owned bank, the Sparkassen 1. Introduction The financial sector increasingly takes up space in our economy. What originated as a means to an end (a middleman to collect and distribute funds) has for many become an end unto itself. Top students from prestigious universities across the globe desperately pursue jobs at investment banks, hedge funds, and private equity firms. For example, more than a third of Harvard’s class of 2017 pursued finance or consulting upon graduating. In fact, the finance, insurance, and real estate industries make up one fifth of domestic GDP, more than any other sector. At the same time, this industry has often brought us close to financial collapse. Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz describes the financial sector’s work as being at least partly “rent-seeking”: an economic activity that redistributes wealth (often from the poor to the rich), but does not actually generate meaningful increases in overall economic growth. As an economist would put it, they do not grow the pie, they simply take a larger slice of it. This paper will aim to investigate to what extent state-owned commercial banks could alleviate some of the major issues related to the financial sector we see today, and how they could do so. Subsequently, the paper will detail how the creation of a public bank could happen, as well as evaluate two existing state-owned banks, the Bank of North Dakota and the German Sparkassen. Finally, it will summarize contemporary efforts to establish government-owned commercial banks in the United States. Throughout this paper, I use a number of terms in a particular way. Specifically, I will make frequent use of the terms “liquidity,” “public,” and “bank.” I will take “liquidity” to mean the M2 money supply: the amount of cash, checkings and savings deposits, and time deposits available in the economy at a given time. “Public” will refer to ownership of an entity by the government, rather than an entity being publicly traded on the stock market. Finally, “bank” will refer to the commercial kind unless otherwise noted. This last distinction is important to draw, as many of the conclusions reached in this paper would not transfer to investment or merchant banks. 2. The Rationale Behind a Public Bank America has had a tumultuous relationship with private financial institutions, and a number of historical figures struggled with determining the role a finance sector should play. Andrew Jackson wrote that “if Congress has the right under the constitution to issue paper money, it was given them to be used by themselves, not to be delegated to individuals or corporations.” Jackson referred to what many contemporary economists consider to be a significant flaw of the private banking system: control over the money supply. Economists traditionally assume that the federal government regulates the money supply. The Federal Reserve (the Fed) can control the money supply by trading Treasury notes with commercial banks, or the Treasury itself can physically print more bills in order to increase the money supply. It is inherently desirable to have a government without a profit motive perform this function—unchecked increases in the money supply would lead to devastating inflation and a loss of faith in our currency. Furthermore, this also means that the government is able to control the amount of money in the economy during times of crisis, and to some extent prevent liquidity from drying up. Control over the money supply is a useful policy tool that is best wielded by the state, with the interest of its constituents in mind. The reality is that, by and large, the money supply is heavily influenced by the decisions of commercial banks. Economists have reached a consensus on what is known as the “fractional reserve theory of money creation.” This theory states that banks must lend out a percentage of each deposit they receive, equal to the total deposit minus the “reserve requirement”⁠—an amount set by the Federal Reserve that banks are required to retain of each deposit— as an insurance against bank runs. After the bank lends out this percentage of a deposit, the person who receives the loan theoretically deposits that money in another account, where a part of it is loaned out, and so on. Every person in this chain now has additional money in their account, and their spending decisions will be made accordingly. The original deposit was multiplied; thus, money was “created.” Conversely, banks may also decide to call back their loans or refuse to issue new ones. In effect, this results in a removal of money from the money supply. The diagram below illustrates how liquidity in the system increases through this process. Image 1: Illustration of the fractional reserve theory of money creation given a 10% reserve requirement The unfortunate truth is that this method of money creation works to exacerbate any swings in the wider economic environment. When the economy is heating up (and thus is experiencing inflationary pressures), banks will be more eager to lend money, which in turn will increase the money supply, thereby further increasing inflation. When the economy is in a rut, fewer loans will be extended, contracting the money supply and further pushing down spending and aggravating potential deflation. When banks follow “rational incentives,” meaning that they become less risk averse during periods of growth and more risk averse during economic slowdowns, the economy does not always benefit. One could argue that the Fed is tasked with preventing these swings. During economic booms they raise interest rates, which curbs lending, and during busts they lower them, which in turn boosts spending. The problem is that the government is now acting as a middleman, when this is a system they are supposed to have complete control over. Commercial banks’ role as distributor of liquidity has other downsides. Since these banks are asked to maximize shareholder value, they are incentivized to extend capital only to those who are likely to repay it. Individuals or businesses that are deemed high-risk are penalized with high interest rates and other unfavorable loan terms. This is not incompatible with prevalent economic theories. The bank is assuming the risk, and for taking on higher risk should be eligible to receive a larger reward. However, a closer examination reveals the perversity behind this idea. Access to capital is essential for a number of activities that can lead to prosperity. Home ownership, starting a business, or going to college all typically require some form of lending. Low-income individuals are thus required to pay a higher price, both in absolute and relative terms, for these opportunities. It is morally bankrupt, as well as socially undesirable, to make loans more expensive for those who already have very little, and there is substantial evidence that this system contributes to the “poverty trap.” Studies have shown that low-income individuals on average do pay more for any kind of loan. The Federal Reserve also found a positive correlation between income and credit score, and a number of other studies have further shown that minorities typically have lower credit scores, even when the data is controlled for disparities in income. There is a strong negative correlation between credit scores and interest rates payable on loans—the lower your score, the more you are asked to pay. It is understandable that banks employ this system, but that does not mean that it is beneficial to society as a whole. In essence, the credit score system is a regressive tax—the poorer you are, the more you pay. The graph below shows the average credit score of each income group on a bar chart and superimposes the median mortgage rate for each credit score. There is a clear positive correlation between credit score and income level, and a negative correlation between credit score and median mortgage rate. This data shows that income is in turn negatively correlated with mortgage rates; that is, the lower one’s income, the higher their mortgage rate is likely to be. Image 2: Median credit score and mortgage rate versus income. A public bank could step in and resolve this issue. It could extend loans not with the intent of making a profit, but rather with the intent of stimulating the economy. This might mean providing loans to low-income communities at break-even interest rates, as they are likely to spend that money in a way that benefits the wider economy. A public bank could further act as a tool for policymakers. If politicians want to stimulate homeownership and reduce emissions, mortgages could become cheaper and car financing more expensive. A public bank would provide a direct way of injecting money into desirable areas of the economy. Banks’ focus on generating returns for their shareholders costs the general public in a number of other ways as well. Most Americans have their checking and saving accounts with one of the major banks—37.6% of all deposits were placed with one of the five largest banks, and 30.82% were placed with one of the three largest. In fact, the five largest American banks control 56.9% of all assets held by U.S. banks. Today’s financial sector can be (and has been) accurately described as an oligopoly—a few key players control such a significant share of the market that they are able to work together and set rates in a way that is favorable to them. In this case, savings rates are artificially held down. As mentioned before, banks make money from each dollar they receive in deposits. Unfortunately, almost none of that money returns to their clients. Savings accounts at most commercial banks generate negligible interest, and checking accounts frequently cost money for those who deposit under a certain amount. Interest rates offered on savings accounts remain low, even as the Fed has increased its discount rate. The below graph shows the federal funds rate as compared to the average interest rate Americans received on savings below $100,000. Both were lowered after the 2008 financial crisis in an effort to discourage saving and encourage spending, but the federal funds rate has since increased significantly. In contrast, the interest rate on savings accounts has remained mostly stagnant. The profits banks make on deposits can be approximated by the difference between these two rates—the less they pay to depositors and the more they charge for loans, the more profitable lending becomes. Image 3: Average interest rate on savings accounts versus the federal funds rate A public bank would primarily aim to further public interest rather than make a profit, and is therefore more likely to offer a savings rate that closely mirrors the discount rate. Not only would this provide customers with a better alternative to the rates offered by commercial banks, it might also force banks to match that rate if they want to retain their clients. In effect, this would constitute a redistribution of wealth from the banks and their shareholders to the general public. Although online banks currently offer higher interest rates on savings accounts, they are rather niche and lack the visibility to threaten larger banks. An accessible, well-known public bank could succeed where these online banks have failed and significantly drive up the average interest rate on savings accounts. A lack of profit incentive would also reduce a public bank’s exposure to risk. In the years leading up to the Great Recession, nearly every bank filled their balance sheet with subprime mortgages and risky derivatives, even though they were aware of the risks associated with these products. Banks simply could not explain to their shareholders that they were going to hold off on products that were generating sizeable returns for their competitors. Commercial banks’ profit incentive has at times generated genuine financial innovation, but more often than not has caused them to cut corners and harm communities. Wells Fargo, for example, was convicted of engaging in predatory lending throughout the US in the years leading up to 2008. The bank knowingly extended credit to those who were unlikely to pay it back, charging high upfront fees and then passing the actual debt on to other firms. Wells Fargo knew the risks involved, but ultimately decided short-term profits were more important. Unlike traditional banks, a public bank would not answer to shareholders, but rather to elected officials who represent the public’s best interest. Research has already shown that banks who answer to a large number of shareholders are more risk-averse than those who answer only to a select group of the corporate elite. These findings could be extrapolated to infer that a bank that answers to the general population would be significantly more risk-averse than current financial institutions. Public banks clearly offer a solution to many of the issues our financial system struggles with today. A wholly different incentive structure would allow these banks to deploy capital where it would stimulate the economy, rather than where it would only generate profits for the bank. The absence of a responsibility to shareholders would lead to higher interest rates on savings accounts and the adoption of a more sustainable risk profile. As a competitor to commercial banks, a public bank would realign the industry to be more concerned with the needs of its customers. Regardless of a public bank’s merits, the US is currently home to just one public bank, whose assets total $7 billion–about 0.004% of total commercial bank assets. The next section will investigate the steps required to create a public bank and discuss potential pitfalls in the process. 3. Creating a Public Bank During the 2008 recession, the government could have created a national public bank simply by taking over an existing commercial bank. The value of most commercial banks’ balance sheets had dropped drastically following the collapse of mortgage-backed securities, making them an easy target for takeovers. Although this solution may have ultimately generated more returns for taxpayers and fewer for wealthy shareholders than bank bail-outs did, it would have created a set of unique and difficult-to-solve challenges. Balance sheets would have to be cleaned of toxic and risky assets, and the bank would have to gradually reduce its exposure to financial products that are not in line with the mission statement of a public bank. Entire divisions that handled these products would have had to be laid off, and many clients might find that services they used would no longer be on offer. Luckily, our current economic outlook is a lot rosier than it was a decade ago, and few banks (perhaps with the exception of the ever-troubled Wells Fargo) seem in danger of failing any time soon. A public bank would thus need to be created from scratch—something that would allow for greater control over the bank’s structure and design. A number of states and cities (Vermont, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Los Angeles, San Francisco, etc.) have conducted or are in the process of conducting feasibility studies for the creation of regional public banks, and as such, there is a substantial range of literature available with detailed descriptions of the steps required to start such a bank. Although many studies have focused on public banks as providers of capital for infrastructure investment and providers of solutions for state financing needs, the basic principle behind their construction remains the same. The technicalities behind a bank’s creation are simple. The bank needs to have sufficient assets to begin lending, a few employees, and physical branches. Typically, feasibility studies assume the city or state responsible for creating the bank would move its current cash reserves to the new bank, thereby providing capital without the need for loans or other costly financing techniques. The only existing American public bank—the Bank of North Dakota—was initially financed by a $2 million bond offering in 1919, which would amount to about $29 million today. Research suggests that, due to the increased complexity of the contemporary economy, the required capitalization would be closer to $325 million. Since most states hold a multiple of that amount in commercial banks currently, it is unlikely that a bond offering would be necessary today. California, for example, holds nearly $15 billion in its “rainy day” fund alone. A public bank would have the local government as its sole shareholder, and any returns it made would be returned to the state or city in which it is located. As such, public banks would prevent capital drain to out-of-state bondholders and keep profits within the local economy. The creation of a public bank would be relatively uncomplicated, and a variety of feasibility studies have cited high potential upsides. For example, a public bank in New Jersey would generate about $16-21 million in additional state output, and raise state income by about $3.8-5.2 million, for every $10 million lent out. Furthermore, for every $10 million lent out the bank would add roughly 60-93 new jobs. Yet, strong opposition to the idea exists. In Maine, a bill to commission a study on the effects of a public bank failed to pass the state legislature, even though 72% of small businesses and farmers in the state supported the creation of a state-owned bank. Opponents often cite currently adequate availability of credit through commercial channels and increased risk to state assets as arguments against a government-controlled bank. Internationally, the idea has also fallen out of favor with economists, who claim that public banks are often inefficient and influenced by political pressures. The next section of this paper will investigate a current example of a state-owned banking system to determine the merits of these arguments. 4. Public Banks Today a. The Bank of North Dakota The Bank of North Dakota (BND) is the United States’ only existing example of a government-owned bank, and it is often cited as an example of the potential benefits of such an institution. The bank certainly has reported impressive figures since its founding in 1919. As shown in the graph below, it has made a net profit every year since its founding, even during the Great Depression and the Great Recession. Image 4: Yearly profits of the Bank of North Dakota Additionally, the bank has managed to return much of that profit to the state government, keeping North Dakota from running a budget deficit when other revenue sources have fallen short. The historical context surrounding the bank’s founding is oddly reminiscent of our contemporary situation—around the start of the 20th century, a populist movement in North Dakota renounced the high fees farmers were being charged by out-of-state financiers and pushed for a local bank that would be tasked with “promoting agriculture, commerce and industry.” Local commercial banks were concerned that a public bank would drive them out of business and managed to convince the legislature to impose strict limits on what would become the BND. Initially, the bank was “prohibited from opening branches, engaging in retail banking, and providing commercial lending other than farm real estate loans.” A number of these restrictions were later loosened, but the bank still is not a real substitute for a commercial bank. The BND operates conservatively, shows itself to be risk averse, and sees “maintaining a strong and stable balance sheet” as a key priority. In this sense, it has been hard to use the success of the BND as an argument for public banks in the broader United States. The bank does provide affordable loans for small businesses (albeit not for individual consumers), but “roughly 50 percent of the bank’s loan portfolio consists of loan participations and loan purchases from community banks,” rather than regular loans. During financial crises, the bank helps to maintain liquidity in the markets, but it does so by purchasing loans from smaller banks rather than by actively extending loans. The BND is a successful experiment in state-ownership of banks, but the restrictions imposed on it by the legislature prevent it from being a truly transformative force. Its lack of access to consumers and emphasis on cooperation with commercial banks mean that most North Dakotans are still forced to obtain the majority of their financial services from for-profit companies. Furthermore, the legislature’s eagerness to use profits from the BND for state expenditures means that the bank is still required to make a profit—the only difference is that this money goes back into the local community, rather than towards mostly wealthy shareholders. The bank’s conservative approach to investments may also not produce socially optimal outcomes seeing as many investments with significant potential upsides, such as small business loans or mortgages for low-income families, have a fairly high risk profile. Instead of maintaining a low-risk balance sheet, the BND could focus on providing loans that “serve a social purpose but that the private sector would find too risky.” It is also important to note that the BND has operated independently of political forces. Rick Clayburgh, president of the North Dakota Bankers Association and former state tax commissioner and state legislator, has said: “Our legislature... has kept their politics out of the governance of the Bank of North Dakota”. The supposed interdependence between public banks and the legislature is an oft-cited criticism against public banks, and this paper will explore the veracity of this claim further in the following chapters. In the case of the BND, concerns of the legislature influencing the bank’s decisions appear to be unfounded. The Bank of North Dakota is a successful institution, but it has hardly lived up to the disruptive potential of a public bank. More than anything else, the BND shows that merely having a state-owned bank is not enough to achieve the goals set out at the start of this paper—a bank has to provide a viable alternative to the commercial banking sector, as well as have a set goal of promoting investments that serve a social purpose, if it is to meaningfully change the way the finance sector operates today. b. Germany’s Public Banks: The Sparkassen Germany’s commercial financial sector consists of three “pillars”: commercial banks, cooperative banks (owned by their customers), and public banks. Examples of the last include the aforementioned Sparkassen and Landesbanken, which engage in wholesale banking, as well as the LBS Bayerische Landesbausparkasse, a public sector loan and building association. Sparkassen are a unique example of state-owned, easily accessible banks that offer basic commercial banking services to consumers and small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The Sparkassen have been operating since 1778 and were originally founded by merchants hoping to support local communities. Today, the Sparkassen have over fifteen thousand branches and control over €2 trillion in assets. The banks operate in a decentralized manner with strong geographic boundaries, meaning that each city or region has its own Sparkasse that serves local clients and provides loans for local investments. The banks are owned by the cities or regions in which they operate but are also are backed by a national organization that maintains a “rainy day fund” which Sparkassen can tap into, so that a region of Germany experiencing financial distress can obtain support from Sparkassen in prospering regions. Image 5: Representative structure of the Sparkassen system Germany’s Sparkassen are mandated by law to serve the public interest and promote regional development. In fact, their success is measured not by returns generated for shareholders or profit, but by their impact on the communities they serve. Stakeholder value, rather than shareholder value, is the key metric by which these banks are judged. Instead of generating profits for those who invested in the bank, the Sparkassen are required to deliver returns for local stakeholders. Such stakeholders include local residents, small businesses, and municipal governments. The banks are highly popular with their audience, with about 70% of all SMEs obtaining their financing from a Sparkasse. About 60% of all Germans interact with these banks in some way, with low-income families specifically making up the largest part of the Sparkassen’s customers. This broad reach is partly because of their indiscriminate approach to banking—they are mandated to not deny anyone a savings account, and they must provide the same rate of return for each customer. Furthermore, the legislature explicitly states that Sparkassen are supposed to “satisfy the credit demands of local businesses.” Besides serving customers and enterprises, Sparkassen fund socially desirable projects with the express intent of promoting the public interest. The banks together provided €488 million (about $550 million) to social projects in 2018 alone, and a 2015 report estimated that the banks added about €20 billion in value to local communities that year, equal to about 0.66% of Germany’s 2015 GDP. They also provide significant funding for start-ups, infrastructure repairs, and other socially desirable activities. Notwithstanding the several benefits associated with the Sparkassen system, the banks have been regularly criticized by European and American economists alike. Many of these critics primarily take issue with the concept of a state-owned bank rather than with a specific issue present in the system, but others have identified some salient flaws in the way the Sparkassen are run. Political involvement in the day-to-day operations of the banks has been and remains an area of concern. A study by the Brussels-based think tank Bruegel notes that, in the eight states they surveyed, 83% of the Sparkassen’s board chairs were current county heads or municipality heads. In five out of eight states, every single board chair was a current politician. More broadly, 18% of board members were politicians. Moreover, in the only state where politicians publicly declare their income, board chair fees made up an average of 12% of a politician’s income. The mayor of Regensburg, the fourth-largest city of Bavaria, is currently standing trial for accepting significant campaign donations from a real estate developer, allegedly in exchange for a favorable loan from the Sparkasse where the mayor held a board seat. Such cases are rare, but the degree of entwinement between politicians and the public banks is certainly cause for concern. Little research has been done on inefficiencies in the Sparkassen system caused by political entanglement, so the severity of these findings remains unclear. An American public bank could certainly model itself after the Sparkassen, but it might benefit from an explicit separation between currently serving politicians and the bank itself, if only to maintain public trust in the system. 5. Looking Forward: Public Banking Initiatives in the United States The public banking movement has seen a resurgence of sorts in the last decade, and a number of states and cities have introduced legislation to either establish a public bank or to conduct feasibility studies. Most notably, current New Jersey governor Phil Murphy ran his campaign partly on the promise of establishing a public bank, and he sponsored a bill on his first day in office to achieve that goal. Maine, Vermont, and New York have also voted on bills to establish state banks. Image 6: Public banking efforts by state Feasibility studies have generally predicted positive results. For example, a 2011 feasibility study predicted that a public bank would generate 3,500 new jobs in Maine, a 2013 study found that a public bank would create about 2,500 new jobs and $200 million in value added to the economy in Vermont, and a study for the city of Santa Fe found that every $1 million in lending from a public bank would generate an additional ten jobs in the local economy. Exceptions are the feasibility studies for California and DC. Both studies found that establishing a public bank would be legally difficult and capital intensive. The DC study is interesting in that it heavily relied on advice from the Federal Reserve, which stated that the income a city or state can gain by having a public bank is "relatively minor" and that the risk of losses is "real.” It is important to note that the Federal Reserve might have an inherent aversion to public banks, as these are not placed under the Fed’s supervision. Aside from this criticism, the DC study also found that public banks would spur local economic development and infrastructure investment, as well as reduce risk exposure of the financial system. The final version of the DC report is still being edited and is due to be released sometime later this year. Feasibility studies may have produced mixed results, but there has been nothing mixed about the legislative response to the idea of public banks. Maine’s bill was sent back from committee with a majority saying it should not pass. Vermont’s bill to establish a public bank did not pass either (although the legislature did approve $350 million in local investment instead), and New Jersey seems to have put its plans for a public bank on hold. As of today, North Dakota remains the only state with a public bank. The idea is seen as overly socialist by many, and as overly complex and costly by others. The DC feasibility study claimed that direct government spending towards socially beneficial programs would be far less complex and costly than establishing a public bank, which seems to be an argument that many lawmakers have bought into. Legal challenges also cause many legislators to view public banks unfavorably. Specifically, many state constitutions have provisions against “lending the credit of the state.” However, the Supreme Court’s ruling in Craig v. Missouri holds that such provisions “[do] not interfere with the power of a state to authorize banks to issue bank notes in the form of due-bills or of similar character, intended to pass as currency on the faith and credit of the bank itself, and not of the state which authorizes their issuance.” As such, banks (public or commercial) are able to provide credit that passes as currency. In Briscoe v. Bank of Commonwealth of Kentucky (1837), the Court held that Kentucky’s state bank did not violate the Constitution, as its loans contained “no pledge of the faith of the state for the notes issued by the institution.” The issue at hand is whether activities that are at the core of the bank’s operations (lending, investing, etc.) are explicitly backed by a government guarantee. If so, public banks would have an unfair advantage over private banks. So far, no proposal for a state bank has indicated that the bank would rely on such a state-sanctioned “pledge of faith,” and as such, it is unlikely that the constitutionality of a public bank could be challenged on these grounds. Furthermore, the Bank of North Dakota is proof that it is constitutionally permissible to operate a public bank. 6. Conclusion: An Uncertain Future There is a strong case to be made for the establishment of regional public banks throughout the United States. Increased control over the money supply, greater access to affordable loans for low-income families and small businesses, higher returns on savings accounts, and a lower risk profile would all result from having a public bank in place. As it stands, commercial banks largely engage in rent-seeking behavior. Predatory lending practices, low interest on savings accounts, and high credit card rates serve to generate profits for large banks by taking money from the economically vulnerable. The IMF has found that, as the financial sector grows relative to the size of the economy, inequality increases. Recent research by economists at Columbia University confirms this rise in inequality, and further found that this effect is not significantly offset by the easier access to credit financial markets supposedly provide. As it stands, encouraging progress is being made in many places. Feasibility studies are an important first step in moving this idea into the mainstream, and we might soon see a bill to establish a state bank appear in New Jersey. However, the unfortunate truth remains that lawmakers view public banks unfavorably. Beyond the practical hurdles associated with establishing one, there seems to be a general sentiment that a public bank would not fit with the capitalist ideals of the United States. Lenin’s claim that “without [public] banks, socialism would be impossible. The big banks are the ‘state apparatus’ which we need to bring about socialism [...]” has fundamentally linked the idea of a state bank with an overly leftist vision for many. I would argue that a public bank is fundamentally American. It is a state apparatus that enables the government to more efficiently support entrepreneurship, local communities, and infrastructure. A public bank, if given proper direction, could facilitate the achievement of the elusive American Dream. The Founders vocally opposed monopolies, championed a stable currency, and believed all should be able to acquire property and benefit from public infrastructure. Stiglitz wrote that, Rather than justice for all, we are evolving into a system of justice for those who can afford it. We have banks that are not only too big to fail, but too big to be held accountable. [...] The only true and sustainable prosperity is shared prosperity. Commercial banks today are hurdles keeping us from innovation, wealth creation, and achieving equality. A bank should facilitate the dreams of entrepreneurs from all backgrounds, not just those from Silicon Valley. It should not charge the poor more than the rich. In many ways, commercial banks violate some of the core values on which this country was founded. In short, there is nothing un-American about a state bank. 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Divisive Identities: Exploring the Interplay of Personal and Social Identities Ella Neeka Sawhney Author Aimee Zheng Faith Li Editors I. Abstract Personal and social identity, whilst existing as two different entities, combine and interact to form our overall individual identities. Personal identity centres around how an individual’s fundamental beliefs and commitments are shaped by their personal experiences, whilst social identity arises from one’s belonging to various social groups, including one’s social relationships. This essay juxtaposes arguments from Amartya Sen and Bikhu Parekh to argue that our personal and social identities are profoundly intertwined and thus should not be viewed as separate from one another. By drawing on theoretical frameworks and real-life examples, I demonstrate how Parekh’s model offers a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of individual identity which encompasses personal and social dimensions as dynamic entities. Thus, through a critical examination of Parekh’s model and Sen’s respective criticisms, this essay concludes that Parekh’s model, by acknowledging the plurality and diversity of identities as well as the complex interplay between personal and social identities, provides a robust defence of individual identity as comprised of personal and social identities, expertly addressing concerns raised by Sen. II. Introduction Classical problems within this idea of personal identity can be categorised into families. For instance, the persistence problem and the personhood puzzle both focus on questions regarding the continuity and ethical implications of self-identity. I choose to concentrate on ‘The Characterisation Question’ which delves into what comprises our personalities. This question is important as it is one that we grapple with daily, permeating all aspects of our lives. Specifically, I focus on the debate between Parekh and Sen, as I find this debate to have strong implications for understanding individual identity In this essay, I investigate Parekh’s twofold model of individual identity, scrutinising its effectiveness in addressing the concerns raised by Sen. My thesis contends that through his emphasis on plurality and diversity, Parekh efficiently responds to Sen’s concerns about the divisive potential of social identities, ultimately undermining Sen’s criticisms. First, I explore the intricacies of the concept of philosophical (including both personal and social) identity. Next, I explain Parekh’s model and juxtapose it against Sen’s criticisms. I then evaluate whether Parekh’s theory can escape Sen’s criticism of dogmatic sectarianism. Lastly, I debate Sen’s critique of over-conformity to social roles as a result of combining social and personal identity. Prima facie, our identity addresses the ubiquitous question ‘Who am I?’, encompassing the beliefs, ideas and qualities that shape a person’s character. Yet, philosophical identity, namely individual identity, explores the intricacies of how an individual may deduce their identity from their various distinctive features. This individual identity is what “distinguishes” (Parekh, 2009, p. 267) agents, functioning as a “predicate” (Sollberger, 2013) used to describe specific attributes of a subject and identify its differentiators. Individual identity comprises two components: personal (shaped by one’s personal life experiences) and social (arising from one’s belonging in groups or a relationship), according to Parekh (2009). By examining personal identity one can better understand and analyse ‘The Characterisation Question’: ‘What is it that makes me the unique individual I am?’, a question originally termed by Schechtman (2007) who presented ‘The Characterisation Question’ as: “The question of which beliefs, values, desires, and other psychological features make someone the person she is.. [it] concerns identity in the sense of what is generally called… an ‘identity crisis’” (p. 1) My analysis of ‘The Characterisation Question’ throughout the remainder of this essay investigates the features which define one’s personal identity and how they render a person differentiable from others. Moreover, viewing personal identity as “contingent and temporary” (Olson, 2023) suggests that one’s definition of self changes throughout one’s lifetime. For example, an only child’s identity shifts when becoming an older sibling, following their younger sibling’s birth. Hence, personal identity evolves alongside changing exogenous factors and is influenced by introspective processes, such as changing religious beliefs. III. Parekh’s model Parekh’s (2009) model of “overall” (p. 268) identity, alternatively referred to as individual identity, encompasses both personal and social identity. Parekh’s concept of personal identity centres around how an individual’s “fundamental beliefs and commitments” (ibid., p. 267) shape their perceptions of the world and their role within it. This recurrent journey of “self-definition” (ibid., p. 268) permits individuals to make sense of their convictions, including values, beliefs and opinions, thus developing their inner comprehension of personal identity. Moreover, Parekh describes social identity as a key aspect of individual identity, arising from one’s belonging to various social groups. He interprets social identity as “inherently plural” (ibid., p. 267), acknowledging its multi-layered influence on a person’s identity. Social identity includes relationships and groups a person feels they belong to, which play a crucial role in shaping their self-perception. Hence, these interconnected layers contribute to one’s personal identity, allowing social identity to, more broadly, impact individual identity. Yet, an interpretive challenge lies in Parekh’s vague explication of the relationship between personal and social identity, leaving the permeability of the boundary, and the extent of their interaction unclear. These ambiguities in Parekh’s model make it difficult to interpret how personal and social identities coalesce. This is showcased in Parekh’s example of the two teachers: “For one it is nothing but a job that she would readily give up if she got a better one”, for the other “being a teacher means a great deal to her. She identifies with it, sees it as an integral part of who she is and would not even dream of giving it up” (ibid., p. 274) Here, the first teacher is mechanically fulfilling their role, while the other integrates teaching into their personal identity. This quote illustrates the challenge of unravelling the complex, and deeply intertwined web of overlapping personal and social identities. The interpretive challenge concerning Parekh’s claim that may arise here is how individuals navigate their identities and to what extent their social identities integrate into their overall identities. Thus, I acknowledge that there are some tensions within Parekh’s view that are slightly contradictory. Namely, when comparing this difficulty in interpreting Parekh’s view of the interaction between personal and social identities with Parekh’s persistent assertion that our personal and social identities are inherently linked, inconsistencies arise. This is something that I shall discuss further in my discussion of ‘dogmatic sectarianism’. IV. Sen’s concerns Sen (2009) presents three key objections to Parekh’s model of personal and social identity which I outline below: The proposition that “a change in social affiliation would make one a different person altogether” is flawed. Our personal identity shouldn’t be “combinable” with our social identity as our social identities can change, without our overall identity changing (p. 286). “One’s personal identity is not threatened by one’s decision to depart from the activities of others belonging to the same group.” Moreover, over-emphasising our social identity results in a lack of reasoning and mutual understanding between members from different groups (p. 287). “Once the priority of a social affiliation is accepted as an integral part of one’s ‘overall identity’, something substantial is lost.” This leads to a person’s lack of deviation from their group’s views and affiliations (p. 288). Sen critiques Parekh’s viewpoint on the combinability of personal and social identity. Specifically, he faults Parekh for overemphasising the impact of social identity on overall identity, asserting that his view is likely to foster dissent hence contributing to societal divides. Sen (2007, pp. xiii-xiv) further encourages the separation of our social influences from our personal decisions. This derives from his argument that a singular or “dominant” social “classification” may hinder deviation from one’s societal or cultural norms, impeding personal decision-making abilities. He stresses that acknowledging our “pluralit[y] of identity” prevents rigid adherence to social groups so that our personal decisions are not entirely dictated by them. A. Dogmatic sectarianism A key feature of Sen’s (2009, p. 286) first criticism is that Parekh’s model is illogical in strongly combining personal and social identity because this view suggests that a change in social affiliation will result in an entire change of personality. Thus, Sen reasons that, according to Parekh’s model “a change of social affiliation would make one a different person altogether” (ibid.). From this, Sen asserts that a likely consequence is the emergence of “dogmatic sectarianism”, meaning that individuals unwaveringly adhere to a strict set of beliefs which often leads to ignorance towards the views of other groups. This creates a lack of willingness to deviate from these norms, as well as ignorance towards and dismissal of other groups’ perspectives, breeding intolerance and hindering understanding between groups. I applaud Sen for identifying the dangers of dogmatic sectarianism. Specifically, he recognises a person’s reluctance to stray from their group’s collective views can foster strong antagonism towards outsiders with different opinions. For Sen, one must separate their personal and social identities to prevent this phenomenon. He asserts that through uncoupling one’s personal and social identity, one can retain a part of their social identity and remain associated with that social group without sacrificing one’s entire personal identity. Hence, Sen warns against Parekh’s model which arguably sees individuals as rigidly tying their personal identity to their social identity. An example supporting Sen’s reflections involves the separation of personal identity from religious affiliations, which falls within social identity. The consolidation of personal and social identity can lead to “sectarian violence” (ibid., p.287). Per Sen’s second criticism: individuals overly emphasise their religious identity and struggle to find areas of agreement or understanding with other religious groups. This is evident in the Northern Ireland conflict; a strong ethnoreligious divide which created a divergence between Catholics and Protestants (Ferguson, 2016). For the Northern Irish, this rigid adherence to religious groups blurred the lines between religious and social identity, fuelling violence and hostility between them. The entrenchment of religious identity within personal identity demonstrates the risk of overly combining personal and social identities, creating a scenario where separation becomes nearly unattainable. Moreover, one must acknowledge that Sen does not assert that dogmatic sectarianism is an inevitable result of combining personal and social identity. Instead, it is only a possibility that poses a significant threat and should be avoided. Thus, he envisions more than one potential outcome of combining personal and social identity, demonstrating his open-mindedness and nuanced analysis. However, I find that Parekh’s flexible and plural model can escape Sen’s criticism of dogmatic sectarianism. This is because Parekh’s (2009) emphasis on plural identities and his encouragement towards the usage of “plural perspectives” (p. 276) prevents the dominance of one single identity. Parekh’s interpretation allows a person to recognise different aspects of themselves, which combine to influence their overall identity. Sen fails to recognise the potential of Parekh’s model and emphasis on “plural identities” to counteract any dangers of dogmatic sectarianism. Under closer examination of Parekh’s model, his awareness of plural identities can provide an alternative solution to Sen’s criticisms, thus demonstrating his model’s versatility and robustness. Parekh’s ability to respond to Sen’s criticism can be demonstrated by applying his model to the aforementioned example of the Northern Irish conflict. Taking a more pluralistic approach, one can see that his model does not succumb to the pitfalls of dogmatic sectarianism. If Northern Irish citizens embraced a pluralistic understanding of their identities, recognising their shared nationality in addition to their differing religious affiliations, conflict might have been reduced. Thus, mutual recognition of plural social identities allows Parekh to maintain his argument of multifaceted and inter-connected personal and social identities, defying Sen’s criticism that Parekh’s model encourages rigid and unfaltering social divides. Therefore, Parekh expertly responds to Sen’s criticism of dogmatic sectarianism as his pluralistic emphasis and encouragement to recognise our own diverse social identities counteracts Sen’s concern that tying personal and social identities fosters inflexibility. B. Over-conformity and Combinability of Social and Personal Identity Sen’s third point criticises Parekh’s model for its over-emphasis of social identity when combined with personal identity. He argues that excessively coupling our personal identities to societal and cultural norms, renders our personal identity secondary. Consequently, people become compelled to strictly adhere to their social norms, constituting a loss of their personal sense of self. Sen (2009) criticises the apparent “reductionism” of a person’s identity to one aspect of their social identity such as their ethnicity or nationality, (p. 288) which, as Sen believes, arises from combining personal and social identities At first glance, Sen’s argument seems logically valid as over-conforming to one affiliation could correspond with disregarding other aspects of one’s overall identity. Sen terms this “epistemic failure” (ibid.) whereby people cannot understand certain aspects of their identity because one affiliation has taken priority. He illustrates this with the example of different groups such as ‘British Muslims’ in which over-emphasising religious identity “miniature[ises] human beings and their many affiliations” (ibid.). This leads to a neglect of plural identifying elements beyond religion, whereby people are reduced to this “single category” (ibid.). Sen further demonstrates his argument by referencing British Bangladeshis who are merely “defined” (ibid.) as ‘British Muslims’. Although a majority of Bengalis in Britain are Muslim, this reduction disregards the distinct culture of Bengali individuals, which may be secular and not solely defined by their religion, demonstrating how combining personal and social identities oversimplifies the manifold nature of individual identity. Moreover, Sen’s argument is further developed by his assertion that over-simplifying our identities leads people to seemingly lose their innate autonomous abilities. By “reducing” (ibid.) one’s identity, it becomes very difficult for one to perceive their identity outside of their social categorisation, thus obfuscating decision-making and threatening individual autonomy. When an individual’s social affiliations determine their overall identity, they confine themselves to making decisions only within these affiliations. For example, women forced to conform to their societal gender role as homemakers may have to forgo personal endeavours that exist outside of the home. This demonstrates how over-emphasising gender as a social affiliation can confine women and prevent them from exerting their agency. However, I believe Parekh’s model withstands Sen’s criticism by recognising the complexity of our identity, where combined aspects of our identity influence decision-making. Particularly, he acknowledges that there is great “variation” (Parekh, 2009, p. 273) in our perception of what constitutes individual identity. Here, Parekh emphasises the diverse interpretations of our social identities which can be assigned varying importance to different aspects. He specifies people can “define and relate” (p. 274) to their societal roles in various ways, demonstrating an awareness that people may choose to identify with different social identities to varied extents. In the above example, British Muslims can challenge their simplistic categorisation by prioritising their religious identity differently. Consequently, Parekh’s model evades Sen’s criticism of over-conformity by acknowledging social identities as qualitative, rather than objective, with some holding greater significance. Sen argues that, in order to prevent over-conformity, individuals can and should completely separate their personal and social identities. Yet, I cannot deem this as feasible, as I believe that personal and social identity cannot be viewed as two separate entities; instead, they constantly combine and influence one another throughout our lives. Specifically, our personal values are often shaped by our social context and so aiming to separate this largely oversimplifies our complex human identity. For example, growing up adhering to the Sikh faith, I was taught the importance of seva (selfless service) and helping those less fortunate than myself. These values instilled in me a passion for charity and volunteer work, which have become an integral aspect of my personal identity. I thus find that my social identity as a Sikh is deeply intertwined with my personal values and I therefore find it inconceivable to attempt to separate them. Therefore, I find Sen’s proposed alternative to Parekh’s model–in which an individual must divide personal and social identities–incomprehensible in practice. V. Conclusion My essay explored Parekh’s twofold model of individual identity, focusing on its capability to respond to Sen’s criticisms. Firstly, I disputed Sen’s point of dogmatic sectarianism, articulating the ability of Parekh’s pluralistic framework to evade Sen. Next, I asserted that Parekh’s acknowledgement of the differing importance of each social identity refutes Sen’s claim that Parekh’s combined framework leads individuals to over-conform to their social identity above personal identity. Ultimately, I conclude that Parekh’s framework expertly responds to each of Sen’s concerns about the divisive potential of social identities. References Ferguson, N. a. (2016). Social Identity Theory and Intergroup Conflict in Northern Ireland. In Understanding Peace and Conflict Through Social Identity Theory (pp. 215-277). Springer, Cham. Olson, E. T. (2023, June 30). Personal Identity . Retrieved from The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2023/entries/identity-personal/ Parekh, B. (2009). Logic of identity. Politics, philosophy & economics , 267-284. Schechtman, M. (2007). Introduction . In The Constitution of Selves (pp. 1-3). Cornell University Press . Sen, A. (2007). Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny. Penguin Books India. Sen, A. (2009). 285The fog of identity. Politics, Philosophy & Economics , 251-352. Sollberger, D. (2013). On identity: from a philosophical point of view. Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health volume , Article number 29.

*Feature* JPPE INTERVIEW, PASCUAL RESTREPO: Pascual Restrepo is an assistant professor at Boston University. His research focuses on the impact of technology on inequality, as well as labour markets and economic growth. Prior to joining BU’s faculty, he was a Cowles Foundation Fellow at Yale University, and earned his PhD in Economics at MIT. Besides research work, he has given numerous lectures at conferences, workshops and seminars across the country. October 2020 JPPE: Hi, everyone. I'm speaking right now with Professor Pascual Restrepo, who is an Assistant Professor at Boston University, whose research focuses on the impact of technology on inequality, as well as labor markets and economic growth. Hi, Pascual. How are you? Restrepo: Hi, Julian. How are you? Thanks for inviting me. JPPE: Thanks for taking the time to speak with me. So, the first thing I wanted to talk about is how you got into automation and inequality, and I saw that in your earlier work you tended to focus on the illicit economy--and from what I could tell, within that, the illicit economy in Colombia. And I wanted to know how you shifted from that towards automation and inequality. Restrepo: Yeah, absolutely. So I'm from Colombia, you know, and when I was doing my undergrad, I started doing my undergrad in mathematics, but then I got interested in economics. And the key topics in the public discussion in Colombia was always about violence, always about state capacity, always about corruption and political economy. And at the center of all of that, you always have these big illegal markets that were reinforcing, if not causing many of these things. So as a Colombian, it's natural to be interested in that, because it's a topic that is very close to our hearts, our history, and our future. And that's why I started doing research on that topic. Then when I moved to the US to start my PhD, the focus shifted a little bit. I guess that doing a PhD is a great opportunity to start seeing the world from a more global perspective, perhaps, and so I became more interested in problems that were perhaps not as important for Colombia. I mean, Colombia, I wouldn't say right now that automation, it's a big concern there. There's a lot of inequality, but for very different reasons. And so I became interested in these topics that I saw were very relevant for the developed world. And so I think that it's kind of nice that you get to do research on topics that you hear people talking about, right? So like, you open a newspaper, you read The Economist, and they're always talking about, you know, automation, inequality, technology, and so on, but when I was in Colombia, it was the case with illegal markets, so I guess that I'm just trying to follow that trail. You know, like, interesting stuff. JPPE: So the shift towards a more global topic, with far-reaching implications. So, do you remember, was there a specific thing that you read? That made you interested? Do you remember the moment when you thought that this is something you wanted to focus on? Restrepo: Yeah, I don't think that it was anything specific. I just think that it was like an accumulation of stuff. And you know, when I was starting my PhD, there was all of the fuss about Artificial Intelligence. Everyone was fussing about what it was going to be. And I was, like, listening to podcasts by, I don't know, Sam Harris and other people, or the book by Yuval Noah Harari, and I started reading all of these things, and I was like, "Oh, this is super interesting, I wonder if you can analyze this from an economics perspective," right? JPPE: Right. Restrepo: And then, like, Daron--who was my advisor--and Daron apparently was also super interested in this thing, so we started this collaboration. JPPE: Yeah, yeah. So, I- and I think that this is one of the things that is so interesting about the topic, too, is that it is something that gets discussed in these journalistic spheres like The Economist or more central, mainstream publications, but also in academia. And also in a slightly more sensationalistic way by futurists and so on, because the name 'Artificial Intelligence' is kind of, you know, some people think of Blade Runner, or cyborgs walking down the streets. So I think cutting through that is very interesting, which is why one thing I did want to ask is where you stand on the question of automation. And I have four or five studies that you wrote that I just wanted to briefly mention, in case some people aren't familiar with that. One is a piece that you co-authored called "Demographics in Automation," where--and correct me if any of these takeaways are wrong, but--you showed that robots tend to substitute for middle-aged workers. In the paper "Automation of New Tasks," you showed that there is a reinstatement effect of labor, these new digital, labor-saving technologies. In "Competing With Robots," you showed that the overall impact of robot adoption on an industry tends to reduce the employment in that same industry--the number of jobs, at least in the short run. And in "Unpacking the Skill Bias," which I believe is the most recent paper you showed that there is this powerful impact on inequality, and that there is a reduction in real wages. And that productivity increases might not even be that high relative to inequality, which I thought was a very interesting point. So to the extent that you can, where do you stand on automation and AI? Restrepo: Perfect, so let me try to reframe this question a little bit. One of the questions that you sent me earlier on--and feel free to tell me if you're going to discuss it later on, or where this is a good moment to discuss it, because you asked what's wrong with public discourse about automation, right? JPPE: That was my next one, so we can do that now. Restrepo: Perfect. So I guess that what would be useful for me is to tell you how I see public discourse, and where I see myself into the public discourse, and why I think that some of the perspectives that Daron and I have brought are different from the main views that you would find out there, right? Because you see that you are asking me where do I stand on automation. And I think that that's part of what's the problem with this topic, is that people want to divide themselves into two groups. There's kind of a false dichotomy, so either you believe in the robot-apocalypse: you know, robots are going to come and are going to take over all of jobs or you are a firm believer that this has happened before, and that we have already seen this, and technology is great, and nothing is going to happen. And I think that the reality's in the middle. Undoubtedly, technology is the only thing that has allowed us to achieve our standards of living. But I also think that there's no denying that technology sometimes achieves that at the expense of some groups of society. And I think that that's where I stand. Technology is a great force. Technology allows us to live better lives. But some technologies--not every technology, because technologies are all so different, right? Like, I wouldn't say that automation is the same thing as inventing new products, right? Those two things do different things. Some technologies, like automation in particular, have this peculiar feature that the way that they generate productivity--that the way that they generate additional capacity to produce--is by substituting very specific types of human labor. And those workers that get replaced and that get substituted, from their perspective, technology is a bad thing. Socially, technology is a good thing, but there are going to be losers--net losers. And I think that my thing is just to put the spotlight on those losers, and try to identify them and quantify those losses. The idea that technology generates winners and losers--I mean, people have that around, but we tend to think that the gains are so large that this is okay, we just need to redistribute. I don't know, the losses sometimes might be much more problematic than what you can compensate for with the gains. JPPE: Right, certainly. I think even in the way that people phrase it: 'short term losses,' 'disruption.' Some people might say that there's a slight underselling of what the human costs of that disruption are. But I wanted to ask about whether or not AI is fundamentally different in your view, because you said it's somewhere in the middle. And it sounded like you were saying it's not going to be "a temporary loss of some jobs, but it's fine because we'll create new ones" or "a complete joblessness apocalypse." It might be somewhere in the middle. And that seems to me very much in line with what past labor-saving technologies did during the Industrial Revolution. You know, the classic example where you had a spike in the automation- or, a spike in labor-saving devices that increased inequality in the short run--and we can talk about the extent to which that was tolerable--but in the long run, those jobs came back. So do you think that it is fundamentally different from how devices in the past performed, or is it in line with that history? Restrepo: Perfect, so that's a great question. You know, we talk a lot about Artificial Intelligence, but we don't really know what it does. Right? JPPE: [laughing] Yeah . Restrepo: Right, so I can talk about technologies that I know what they do. So for instance, automation of manufacturing via industrial robotics, or automation of white-collar jobs via software, right? So let's just start there, and then we'll speculate a little bit more about AI. So I think that industrial robotics and automation of white-collar jobs via software--the economic forces are very similar to what we saw in the past, let's say, with the mechanization of agriculture. Or the mechanization of textile production in England during the Industrial Revolution, right? You have very artisanal techniques where it took a bunch of people, kids and women, to weave and knit a particular piece of clothing. And then you come out with these machines where you just need one person to operate the whole machinery, and essentially what you did is you replaced all that artisanal and labor-intensive technique that used to be the main technique before. Like with agriculture, you see the same thing, right? Before it was like people with rudimentary tools, such as a scythe, or whatever who would reap the land. And then you have a tractor, right? And the tractor, there's just one person; and that person, the only thing that he has to do is drive the tractor. Nowadays they don't even need to drive the tractor, because these tractors are becoming increasingly self-driving tractors. And so, you can see that, essentially, we are moving to technologies that are more, more, more capital-intensive and that rely less and less and less on human labor. And I think that the consequences, to some extent, are similar. So like, many people say, "Oh no, we have a lot of mechanization in history, and we still have a bunch of jobs, so that's not bad." But then you look at historical records; that argument is not exactly right. Because for instance, England around the Industrial Revolution, there were about 60 years where wages were essentially stagnant. So yes, this technology created more bounty, they created higher incomes per capita, but most of this income went to the hands of capital owners: people who owned the machinery, people who owned the land. And those gains didn't trickle down to wages until after 60 years of these developments. 60 years is a long time. During these years we had a lot of unrest. We had many, many social reforms to appease, some of the unrest that resulted from these. We had the Luddites, right? That was kind of a response to all of these developments. So, you know, it was not a rosy- it was not an easy transition. Now, of course, that puts us into a fantastic path where eventually, people acquire skills; we came out with new industries, products, and so want to employ a bunch of people. But that was kind of like a choice, right? I mean, maybe that wouldn't happen. And so I guess that that's the next question: what are we going to be able to come out with? The jobs, the ideas, the tech force, the tasks, or all of the people that we displaced from manufacturing and all of the people that we are displacing from services. I mean, what are we going to employ all of these people, right? And perhaps, what if the future is one where we're going to have fewer jobs? JPPE: You really think that there's a chance that the future could look like, on aggregate, there are fewer jobs that the economy requires. Restrepo: Yeah. JPPE: So in essence, the whole principle of efficiency gains creating jobs in new industries, that that principle might break down. Restrepo: I mean, I think that that principle has worked in the past, but the fact that it has worked in the past does not guarantee that it's going to keep working in the future. I think that at least theoretically, conceptually, I mean, it's possible. I'm not saying that it's going to happen, but it's possible that we go into a future where the economy uses less labor. So you know, like, only 20% of the population works, and that's enough to supply all of the labor that the economy needs. I mean, this is a great thing if all of us only work one day per week. But the problem is that we might be going to a future where only 20% of us work the entire week. And that's very different because the implications for inequality are quite different, right? So I guess that that's kind of the challenge. The challenge to me is not so much whether the level of employment that you need to produce something is going to go down--for sure that's going to go down. I mean, we're going to produce much more with fewer workers. The question is, who's going to provide those hours of human labor, and who are the people in a position to benefit from that demand for labor that's going to be out there? JPPE: Mm. So, I'd love to talk more about the social and political implications of what you just said, but first I want to ask about a pandemic-related question. Restrepo: Yep. JPPE: So, The Wall Street Journal just ran a headline where they said that, essentially, meatpackers were, all of a sudden, beginning to automate more and more labor, and that that automated technology was not necessarily doing as good a job as the humans were, but the coronavirus had essentially hastened that shift. And I believe there are other instances of that in manufacturing as well. So is this something that you view as bringing automation much faster? Restrepo: Totally. One of the papers that you mentioned earlier on was this paper on demographics. And in that paper, what we showed is that a lot of what you see in terms of industrial automation--that is, automation by industrial robots and machinery in car manufacturing plants, for example--is driven by the scarcity of work. This is technology that responds to incentive. So what are the most automated countries in the world? Japan, Germany, Italy, countries where the population is aging very rapidly--where young workers with the muscle to weld a car are scarce. And so it's that scarcity of labor, in some sense, what has fueled a lot of this automation. And you can think of the pandemic as doing something similar; it's generating a scarcity of labor. Because workers--on the one hand, they cannot go to work because of either concerns or lockdown measures--but also, there's also some safety measures that might make some automation technologies more safe than human workers, right? So there's an element of that. On the other hand, you know, this pandemic also gave me another reflection that many of us- or, many people thought that humans were already kind of obsolete, and humans were no longer needed, and this pandemic kind of made me revisit that view because it does suggest that humans are still extremely important for the country. JPPE: [laughing] Yeah. Restrepo: Extremely important, right? You take out the human element, and the economy completely gets destroyed. JPPE: And human contact too. Restrepo: Yeah. Absolutely. So, you know, it's not only about production, but so much of our economy is about humans interacting with other humans, and human contact that- it also kind of gives me some pause. Yeah, maybe, sure, maybe we're going to automate a lot of jobs, but maybe there's- you know, the economy's increasingly becoming more intensive in the sort of activities that, by their nature, they're just not automatable. Or we don't want to automate them because the quality of the goods that we are consuming then, they're dependent on human interaction, right? JPPE: Mm. And certainly I think there are instances- I mean, the skeptics that I've talked to about AI have definitely brought up instances; they'll pull up a treasure trove of articles where someone says, "We can now automate kindergarten teachers." Restrepo: Exactly. JPPE: And then we could do some polling on the number of moms and dads that would be happy with a robot teaching their kids- or, their kindergarteners. Restrepo: Yeah. Absolutely. JPPE: [laughing] But, so, I did want to ask more about the social and political side of this as well, and I don't mean to be flippant with this question, but I wanted to know why inequality is necessarily a bad thing. Restrepo: Great. I think that that's a great question, and I think that the answer is that it's not necessarily a bad thing, at least in my mind. Let me tell you the feature about current inequality that I think is absolutely a bad thing. I think that the problem with current inequality is not- I mean, you can have inequality for two reasons. You can have inequality because everyone's incomes are growing, but some incomes are growing much more rapidly than others. Right? Maybe there are some political, philosophical, or ethical reasons to be opposed to that type of inequality. Okay. But there, I don't think there's a very strong argument that everyone should agree that that type of inequality is very bad. Because that type of inequality might reflect, "Oh, maybe the people whose incomes are growing more, it's because they started a business." Right? You know, like Bezos. But Bezos has- is like a billionaire. But I would say yeah, if you ask me, I think that--well, maybe I'm more stating my case here, but--yes, he deserves to be a millionaire because-and a billionaire, because the product that he created delivers a lot of value, right? So I think that there's a chunk of inequality that is good and that I'm not opposed, at least, in terms of first principle. But. I do think that the nature of contemporary inequality is very different from that story that I was telling. Contemporary inequality is not just about some people who came up with great ideas, and their incomes grow a lot, and all of our incomes kind of grow just if we happen to work hard, and so on. Contemporary inequality, if I had to describe it, has this feature that we see groups of society who are worse off than before. So it's not just how incomes are growing. It is that some incomes are falling in real terms. And for me, that is something that is just... the biggest contemporaneous problem. That we have people who are worse off than their parents, than their previous generation. So if, in the U.S., you are a person who has high school or less than a high school degree, who comes from a poor background, actually your parents were better off than you in terms of labor market income. And that's kind of the scary aspect of inequality, that it's not even progress, but sometimes it means no progress at all for some society. That's the reason that makes me worry. And those groups, of course--I mean, that's going to have political implications, everything. But just from a humanity perspective, I think that as a society we can afford- I mean, we should aspire for trying to make everyone gain from technology, everyone gain from globalization, there shouldn't be anyone who is worse off than a person like him or her 30 years ago. JPPE: Mm. Mm. Yeah, and so, I mean, there is the data from Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez that tries to quantify how that inequality is today; and from what I have seen, it shows that it's roughly where it was at in the early 20th century. And so when you think about automation in conjunction with the general financialization of the economy, the rise of private debt, the extension of credit in the economy, do you feel like now is a particularly vulnerable moment for a shock to inequality through digitally-enabled automation? Restrepo: Yeah, absolutely. I think that part of the problem is that there's no safety net in this country. I mean, the safety net is kind of like- I mean we are seeing that with COVID, right? There's people whose finances are in an incredibly vulnerable position. And so imagine that you're in your 30s, you're in 40s, you have some debts, you don't own a lot of assets, and then they come out with this software that can do exactly what you're doing at your work, right? You are screwed! There's nothing you can do. JPPE: [laughing] Yeah. Restrepo: And then we turn to economists and the economists said, ‘no, because people can re-train, and people can relocate, and we're going to take that person and make that a coder, right? Or a software engineer.’ That's not going to happen! That's kind of like a lost generation there. And I think that we should care more about that potentially lost generation. JPPE: Mm. And in terms of reducing inequality, I actually- a month ago, I got to speak with historian Walter Scheidel on his thesis and The Great Leveler, that inequality only gets reduced or leveled by mass military mobilization, civil war, plague, or government collapse. And what was so striking about reading his book and talking with him was, it seemed to--on some level--be in opposition to a lot of the language in economics that seems to frame inequality and shocks as almost cyclical in nature, where there's a short run and a long run. And it seemed like Professor Scheidel's point was essentially that actually, there's been these exogenous forces in the form of, essentially, catastrophe, that have reduced inequality. And I'm wondering what your thoughts are on that. Restrepo: Yeah. So I think that for economists in general, I wouldn't say that inequality's just a cyclical phenomenon. I mean, if you read the labor economics literature, there's a lot of literature kind of emphasizing these trends and it's long-run trends. So like, over the long run, what we are seeing is that someone who has a college degree is earning much more than someone who does not have a college degree. And that just keeps expanding and expanding and expanding, and decelerated a bit and so on. But you know, there are these big trends. I wouldn't say that it's only about shocks. But I do think that economists emphasize much more the role of technology than politics. Right? I mean, there are some fields in Economics that emphasize much more the role of politics, and I think that in these shocks that you're mentioning, what needs to happen is a big shock, so that it triggers political reform, and so on. And that perhaps hasn't been so much included into the language of economists. The other thing that I would like to say is that, while I think that thesis is kind of interesting, you also see a lot of variation across countries. When you look at the data that are countries that technology is kind of universal- I mean, I was telling you about, you know, the Germans were the ones who invented industrial automation, same as Japan. And they don't have as much inequality as we do here in the U.S., right? That's also kind of a choice; I don't think that you need to have a war to reduce inequality. But you need to have more progressive taxation, and I mean when you think about inequality, that's the first thing that you should do! I mean, it's very simple. I mean, simple, technically. Politically, it might be difficult, but the solution is clear. JPPE: Right. And so, what do you think about proposals like a universal basic income, or a progressive basic income, or any variation of that? Negative income tax, and so on. Restrepo: Yeah, I think that anything that looks like a negative income tax, I think that would be greatly beneficial. Anything that looks like an earned income tax credit, that is subsidizing work for low-wage workers would be very beneficial. Also because it helps convince firms not to automate those jobs, so part of those jobs are subsidized. Anything like a universal basic income, I mean, I think it's- again, I like the idea; I don't like the idea of a universal basic income essentially substituting the whole safety net. I think that still having a government that buys insurance and that supplies all our programs that are more targeted to whoever it's useful. But I think that the spirit of all of these things is the same. We need a better safety net, right? And so, if you implement it one way or the other; if politically this is more feasible than this...I don't know. I'm fine. I just think that we do need some more safety net. JPPE: Right. So the last question I wanted to ask is: looking to the future, what are some open questions that you think would be really interesting to look at, either on inequality alone, or on automation and inequality and so on? And also, if not questions, some areas of research that you think, thus far, have been untapped. Restrepo: Perfect. So let me start with the first one. I think that one of the things that I find more puzzling about current technologies is that if you look at the labor market, you would conclude that there is a lot of disruption. You would conclude that there's inequality; the prices of different skills are changing the nature of jobs is changing; the types of jobs that we are posting are changing the skills that the labor market is valuing are changing. From looking at that, you would think, "Oh, technology is advancing at this amazing pace," but when you look at productivity, there's not a lot of productivity growth. And you know, this lack of productivity growth has been used by many to argue that automation, or that technology, is not a concern. So like, I saw that you did an interview with Paul Krugman at some point. JPPE: Yeah. He brought it up. Restrepo: Yeah, and I think he made that point. And I think that that point is kind of misguided. Because I think that one of the interesting things about automation technologies is that--and you already mentioned that this is something that we emphasize a lot--is that you can have automation without big productivity gains. And let me just give you an example of why that is the case. Imagine that I'm a worker working in a supermarket checkout machine, right? And then someone comes and invents a self-service kiosk, or whatever, right? That innovation is going to substitute me; but in terms of cost, how much is it going to reduce the cost for the supermarket? Very little! Because the worker was already very cheap; the machine itself is very cheap, but not as much! Right? Installing all of the equipment, programming, all of that--at the end of the day, the productivity gains is, I don't know, 1%? Something even smaller than that, that's just a small part of the cost? So at the end of the day, you unroll this technology, you deploy this technology, you substitute all of the checkout clerks, right? So that's a chunk of the population, and what are the productivity gains from doing that? Not that big. They're not that big; it's just like, you saved a little bit on costs. So automation has this thing that as long as you save a little bit on costs, you're going to adopt it. So you can have the adoption of a lot of automation technologies that have very small efficiency gains. And I think that that principle has escaped current discussions about automation. People equate productivity or technology with automation. Automation is just one particular type of technology--concerning one particular component of productivity--that has this feature that it can generate big distributional impacts just by having small productivity gains. But I think that the interesting research question there is to try to understand, why are we adopting automation technologies that have such, very low productivity gains? And that our candidate- one candidate is perhaps taxation. Maybe we're doing this because we're taxing labor a lot so that's inducing us to adopt more automation, even if that's not very profitable, from an engineering perspective. Or maybe it's a cultural thing. So I think that those are the big, important questions. What determines the direction of technology? Are we going to keep focusing on automation, automation, automation? Or are we going to have a more balanced element of technologies that, in the long run, it's going to end up being more beneficial for all of those people--that I already discussed--that have experienced net losses in their income in the last 30, 40 years? JPPE: Professor Restrepo, thanks so much. Restrepo: Thanks. Thanks for having me, Julian.

Journal Features Online Features & Interviews Vol. II | Issue II JPPE Interview Steven Pinker Vol. II | Issue II JPPE Interview Paul Krugman Vol. II | Issue II JPPE Interview Yanis Varoufakis Vol. II | Issue II Foreword Editorial Board Vol. II | Issue II Vol. II | Issue I Sheldon Whitehouse United States Senator from Rhode Island Vol. II | Issue I Foreword Editorial Board Vol. II | Issue I Vol. I | Issue II Nicola Sturgeon First Minister of Scotland Vol. I | Issue II John R. Allen President of the Brookings Institution Vol. I | Issue II Foreword Editorial Board Vol. I | Issue II Vol. I | Issue I Jorge O. Elorza Mayor of Providence, Rhode Island Vol. I | Issue I Greg Fischer Mayor of Louisville, Kentucky Vol. I | Issue I Foreword Editorial Board Vol. I | Issue I

How Are You the Same Person as When You Were Ten: Favoring the Brain Criterion View over Animalist and Neo-Lockean Views Henry Moon Author Matthew Wong Daniel Coffield Editors I. Introduction I am the same person as when I was ten years old—this is common intuition [1]. In another sense, as I have a different body and psychology, it seems that I cannot be the exact same person as I was when I was ten years old [2]. In this paper I ask how exactly we were the same people when we were ten. This question is equivalent to asking what the persistence conditions for “an entity of our kind” to remain the same over time: call these diachronic persistence conditions [3]. In asking this question, we ask two separate questions (1) What should “entities of our kind” refer to? (2) What are the persistence conditions for these entities? First, I review the literature regarding the two most popular theories of personal ontology, or the study of what we are. In doing so, I will then introduce the brain criterion based on egoistic concern—the special concern about one’s future that arises from anticipation of continued existence. Providing justification in ontological coherence and ethical plausibility, I submit that the brain criterion is the superior ontology. In the second half of this paper, I will be responding to objections to the brain criterion, specifically regarding persistence by considering commonplace thought experiments. As a synthesis from these objections, indeterminacy thesis and multiple occupancy will be defended as part of the paper’s overall argument. II. What Should "Entities of Our Kind" Refer To? To determine the persistence conditions for some entity, one must start by specifying exactly what that entity is. I say this because whether entities can survive events is subsequent to what the entity is. For example, a square cannot survive being stretched in one axis whereas a rectangle can, because a square is defined must have four sides of equal length. This is to say, the persistence conditions of a square are informed by its ontology. In the same way, the persistence conditions for a person depend on personal ontology. Despite this, much of the contemporary literature on personal identity seems to treat personal ontology as a secondary question. Instead, the focus has been placed upon a gamut of thought experiments [4]. To this, in "What Are We”, Eric Olson blames “the unserious air of many discussions of personal identity” on this lack of focus on personal ontology [5]. There are two dominant answers to the persistence question: neo-Lockeanism and Animalism [6]. Neo-Lockeanism is the view that we are creatures with certain psychological traits essentially [7] Animalism says we are human animals essentially; we are identical with our human bodies. Each view is associated with at least one ontology. Neo-Lockean theory most popularly claims that we are constituted by our animal bodies or that we are temporal parts of our animal body. Most neo-Lockeans would not say we survive a permanently vegetative state, despite our animal bodies being able to survive, and to a neo-Lockean, this is an example of how we differ from our animal bodies. Animalists simply state that we are our human bodies; if our bodies were to enter a permanently vegetative state, we would enter that state as well. Neo-Lockean views lack the “metaphysical leg up” that ontologically focused views like animalism have [8]. Contrastingly, animalism often ignores normative concerns [9]. Despite this trade off between normativity and ontology, when we refer to others, we do not do so as moral agents and organisms separately, but as one unified forensic unit: otherwise this would be absurd [10]. Parfit also touches on similar ideas when he sets out two requirements that a theory of personal identity must satisfy [11] : (1) Whether a future person will be me must depend only on our intrinsic properties. It cannot depend on what happens to other people. (2) Since personal identity is of great importance, whether a future person is me cannot depend on a trivial fact. Parfit also seems to segregate requirements on the basis of (1) a strict ontological concern and (2), an ethical concern. What idea we have converged upon seems to be this: an account of personal identity (and thus, ontology) must be, as Olson puts it, both “ontologically coherent as well as ethically plausible” [12] In the following sections I will forward an account of personal ontology which describes entities of our sort as a human animal under two constraints: (1) That the entity has certain traits that warrant continuous egoistic concern (2) That the entity is the spatial part of a human animal in which (1) necessarily and sufficiently obtains (i.e part of the brain) Evaluating the contemporary two main theories of personal identity, along with our own as delineated above, I will recommend this account of personal ontology to have best fulfilled the need to be ethically plausible and ontologically coherent. A. Ethical Plausibility I propose that to say an account of personal ontology is ethically plausible is to say that it reasonably includes all entities that our normative and ethical concerns refer to when we use the everyday pronouns of ‘I’, ‘you’ or ‘we’, and reasonably excludes all entities that do not. Further, if it is said that you and I are ‘entities of our sort’, we can expect that normative claims which apply to you would also apply to me. We start with cases where the brain-criterion provides for a necessary liberalization of inclusivity. First, in contrast to animalism, brain views allow for entities of our kind to survive after brain transplantation. The common intuition that follows is that after the brain is transplanted into another person’s head, the entity follows with it [13]. Animalists must maintain that because the human organism is left behind and dies during the process of transplantation, we must die along with it. This is a strikingly unintuitive statement to endorse. On the other hand, because physical continuity of the brain is maintained and is presumably enough to warrant egotist function once transplanted, the brain criterion successfully represents the intuition that we would survive after transplantation. Second, in contrast to neo-Lockean continuity, we are able to account for individuals who lack meaningful psychological-connectedness, yet we must still include them as one of us. Jeff McMahan illustrates that in cases of Alzheimer’s, neo-Lockeans seem to imply that the individual ceases to exist and becomes a sort of “post-person.” [14] This is because insofar as a case of Alzheimer’s progresses so that almost no function of memory remains, neo-Lockean theories suggest that this is a case where the psychological connection is broken, and individuals cannot survive [15]. When considering the ethical plausibility of this, we suspect that instead, we would still consider the Alzheimer’s patient an entity of our sort, and that our normative claims and duties would still apply to them. Concretely, if the Alzheimer’s patient was my mother, just because she lacks psychological connection does not mean she is not “one of us”. In contrast to the brain criterion based on egoistic concern, as long as there is brain continuity supporting the function of egoistic concern, we may say the entity is one of us. For example an Alziemer’s patient still has egoistic concerns because she considers actions not as disconnected events that will only impact an entity similar but identical to herself (and that she exists only for a brief moment before her psychological connection deteriorates) but that her actions will influence her future. Note the difference here is that egoistic concerns need not be a degree of psychological unity in which even a semblance of qualitative identity is sufficiently obtained [16]. We see this when we consider two statements, that normatively we take as non-mutually exclusive: My mother has not been the same person recently and does not remember me. That woman who does not remember me is my mother. The first statement expresses our intuition that people can change drastically, even to the point where psychological unity according to a neo-Lockean would be lost. The second statement, however, speaks to our intuition that numerical identity can survive far more liberally, when considering strict psychological relation, than a neo-Lockean claims. Indeed, the exclusionary policy of the brain criterion is the most ethically plausible. There are also cases where the brain criterion restricts cases necessarily. The main difference between neo-Lockean views and general brain-views is that the brain-criteria explicitly requires a physical contingency. This is to say, a sufficient part of the brain which is necessarily part of a living being must remain continuously. From this, we can locate cases that should be excluded, such as that where an entity can survive a total loss of body. Neo-Lockeanism generally endorse teletransportation as an event in which we can survive. Despite whatever prima facie intuitions we may have, consider you were being transported, but a replica of an entity at some point B was created while you were still alive. Thus, you are not the entity at point B, and for there to be one entity, you must have been destroyed at point A [17]. Moreover, Animalist views consider a fetus and an individual in a permanently vegetative state to also fall under our general normative conventions, as they are simply stages in the human animal’s development. Extreme views notwithstanding, common ethical norms tell us otherwise: we have intuitions that it is permissible to kill an early stage fetus, for example, where we do not for toddlers [18]. This is a difference that Animalists do not account for. This difference is crucial in ontology: we say it is permissible to kill a week-old fetus because at that point it more closely resembles an unconscious collection of cells than the entity we normatively refer to we say “you” or “I”. The ethical norms about “entities of our sort” that Animalism implies do not match our commonly held ones; thus, we cannot say an Animalist conception of persons is ethically plausible. Considering both comparisons to neo-Lockean and Animalists views, it is only by using the definition of brains with egoistic concern that we can arrive at a superior ontology. B. Ontological Coherence To say that a theory is ontologically preferable to any other is to say that it answers key issues concerning personal ontology at as little cost in way of unfortunate implications that one must accept. In evaluating the seven main personal ontologies, Olson generally considers one issue as most important: the thinking animal problem. The thinking animal problem is the following argument: (P1) Presently sitting in your chair is a human animal. (P2) The human animal sitting in your chair is thinking. (P3) You are the thinking being sitting in your chair. (C) Therefore, the human animal sitting in your chair is you. The crux of the thinking animal argument is that insofar as rejection of P1-P3 requires us to accrue the cost of, as Olson puts it, an “impenetrable” [19] ontology, we must conclude that we are human-animals. By proving that we can escape this conclusion, we can prove the brain criterion is preferable to neo-Lockean theories which fall victim to the argument. I will now defend the second constraint using a generalization of the thinking animal problem: (P1) There is a spatial part of a human currently located where you are. (P2) The spatial part currently located where you are is thinking. (P3) You are the thinking being located in your chair. (C) Therefore, the spatial part of a human where you are is you. Note that this argument is analogous to the thinking-animal-argument so that we may adopt its conclusion. The difference is that the conclusion is such that we must be spatial-parts of the brain, some that we can be essentially reduced to a part of the brain. Note that any spatial part of an animal with greater inclusivity than what is necessary for a thinking part to think will fall trap to this argument, given the animal with greater inclusivity contained a non-essential part was incorrectly considered essential. This is to say that the argument implies “you” are identical to infinite smaller spatial-parts unless “you” refers to the smallest possible spatial-part of an animal which thinks. This smallest possible part is the only part that is not affected by the argument since, any less inclusive and the animal loses the property of thinking, so P2 falls, making the argument inapplicable. Dualist theories notwithstanding, this smallest spatial-part of a thinking animal must refer to some part of the brain, and so we have proven our second constraint on animalism. To conclude, this makes animalism and the brain criterion at least equal in ontological coherence, which combined with a brain criterion advantage in ethical plausibility allows us to recommend over the other theories. III. What Should “Entities of Our Kind” Refer To? Given we have answered first question of this paper, there are two main objections specifically to how the brian criteria persist : 1. That the brain-criterion is unnecessary and insufficient 2. That the brain-criterion is necessary but insufficient In this section, I will deal with both of these objections, and in doing so maintain that Brain Criterion is both sufficient and necessary. A. Unnecessary and Insufficient Parfit’s “combined spectrum” shows that any account based on “empirical fact” will have cases of indeterminate identity [20][21]. This is because any empirical criteria, such as psychological or physical continuity operate on a spectrum of absolute similarity to no similarity. If that is true, then there are cases on that spectrum where it seems that the connectedness between two entities is indeterminate to whether they are the same entity. Consider our brain criterion: existence is guaranteed in the case of 100% paradigmatic brain-function, and guaranteed false in the case of no function. However, there are cases in-between whereby it is indeterminate that consciousness is present: it is hard to see an argument for consciousness given 2% function, but what of 12% or 24%? There are two possible conclusions we can make of this: That indeterminacy cannot exist, and so some “further-fact” must be considered [22]. Or, we must allow for cases where indeterminacy arises. If we accept the consideration of a “further fact” in indeterminate cases, this implies the same further fact could determine the answer to the persistence question in any other case. What rejecting cases of indeterminacy entails is accepting a “further fact” ontology, such as immaterialism. I will comment that even if we cannot assuage the issue of indeterminacy, it may be preferable than to contend with the burden of proving dualism and other theories associated with immaterialism. In our paper’s defense of the brain criterion, indeterminacy would not mitigate claims that it should be recommended over animalism or neo-Lockean views –– both rely on empirical criteria. Yet as a foundational argument, I will contribute a defense of indeterminacy. Note that indeterminacy in things other than the existence of people is uncontroversial and common, for example, given a tallness spectrum where 7ft is guaranteed to be tall and 4ft guaranteed not to, there must be indeterminate cases of tallness in between. However, indeterminacy seems to be unreasonable when it comes to issues of persistence. Bernard Williams provides a thought experiment where one has to imagine that entity X, which is indeterminately identical to me, will be tortured tomorrow if indeterminacy is true. Does it follow that the feeling of great pain will be indeterminately felt by me? Noonan points out that this merely illustrates the “very great unnaturalness of this way of thinking” that is present in these cases, not that the cases themselves are unnatural [23]. Note then because it must be accepted that indeterminacy exists in other contexts, we must simply prove that indeterminacy in persistence is also acceptable. Many metaphysical arguments have been offered to this end; I will propose a practical one: to assume that issues of persistence must have determinate answers where other reducible substances do not is to assume there is something irreducible about selves. This begs the question on whether there selves are reducible in the first place, and thus we have no reason to reject indeterminacy in persistence. B. Necessary but Insufficient A hemispherectomy is a procedure where one half of the cerebrum is removed. Despite having half their brain removed, patients that undergo hemispherectomy expect to survive the operation. Our intuitions indicate they have good reason to make this assumption: we treat postoperative entities as the same people, and indeed, as their brain hemisphere adapts to serving the role of two, often cognitive function is returned as well [24]. In other words, if I receive a hemispherectomy, theoretically there seems to be enough brain continuity so that the resulting person is me. However, the reality is that whether you survive is indeterminate. If the brain criterion is necessary and sufficient in the light of indeterminacy, we must prove that for all conclusions that could be made, but are unobservable, there is still ethical plausibility and ontological coherence. If I end up in surgery or even if it is indeterminate that surgery kills me, the discussion ends here. Things are more complicated if you survive. Given that we can accept the transplantation of the cerebrum while maintaining continuity, it can be said that transplanting half of a brain also continues the entity. However, in a case there are two candidates, both sharing physical continuity of a human animal in which egoistic concern is retained, it seems that the brain criterion is insufficient to prove persistence which entity persisted. There are three interpretations to this case [25]. (a) I do not survive. (b) I survives as either candidate-A or candidate-B (c) I survive as both First consider (a), commonly referred to as the “non-branching view” [25]. Notice that I would survive if one half was destroyed, but in the case of both being preserved, I die. This seems immediately strange: How is double success considered a failure? Given the symmetry of the problem, (b) is incoherent as well, considering facts about both candidates are equal. We must then turn to (c), the only case in which brain continuity is sufficient. To avoid implicating that candidates A and B are the same, I forward that candidates A and candidates B are distinct entities that were once spatially coincident within the original, or multiple occupancy[26]. Given that either (a) or (b) are both untenable, the implication is that if one wants to reject “further fact” accounts, multiple occupancy must be endorsed [27]. Two things must be proven for us to adopt this: It does not affect the ethical plausibility of the theory It does not affect the ontological coherence of the theory If these two requirements are met, we will have a theory that sans fission preserves our original account and considering fission, will have the most realistic account in approaching it. C. Ethical Plausibility Let us first consider ethical plausibility. Firstly, given that pre-fission agents are unified, there is no change from our original theory. Moreover, the fact that an entity undergoes fission later down the road would not retrospectively change the normative considerations we give to the pre-fission entity. Does our criterion provide the most ethically plausible account of entities post-fission? Consider your spouse undergoing the fission operation. We may measure the ethical plausibility by considering how each post-fission theory affects your duties to your spouse. If (a) is true and whether your spouse lives if there is no second transplant but dies if fission takes place, if there is a gap in time between when half your spouse’s cerebrum is removed, and when it is transplanted into a host body, do you have marital duties toward your spouse during that gap where the second transplantation did not occur, but that these duties disappear the second the operation is successful? That our duty to people should be as arbitrary as the existence of another person seems strange. Strange conclusions are also reached when (b) is considered – why would you have the martial duty to love and be faithful to one of your spouse candidates and no qualms abandoning the other? If we maintain that it is immoral to abandon our duties on arbitrary facts, so (b) is also not a viable conclusion. (c) is the only scenario which is compatible with our conventional moral ideas. Yet it is also true that our commitments to our spouse are not exactly the same: they are, in a way, inflated. I must now commit to caring and providing for two bodies instead of one, being affectionate and loving to two bodies instead of one. However, while our duties to our spouse now split between two people is a commitment that is inflated, it is inflated based upon ideas we already accept as a posteriori moral—compare this to duties suddenly appearing and disappearing based on arbitrary facts. Consider a situation where your spouse is experiencing a mental health crisis. As a result of going through this situation, it is your duty to be more sensitive around them, spend more time and energy tending to their care etc—in other words, your commitment has been inflated. However, we accept this as a natural part of our duty because we hold a duty to a loved one in a difficult situation, despite having our commitments inflated. In the same way, our duties to a spouse do not change on account of this strange situation happening to them; duty is not situational. This is the principle that only multiple occupancy can reach, given all other seniors change duty based on the arbitrary details. Thus, being that it would be most accurate to say you have a duty to both, multiple occupancy is the most ethically plausible interpretation. What may be suspect is the impact on personal ontology. Multiple occupancy does not affect the arguments for ontological coherence we have laid out before if committing to its thesis does not require committing to additional burdens. We may prove this by considering each ontological assumption that our original theory could operate under and prove how multiple occupancy is compatible with the original metaphysical assumptions. Thus, if each assumption that is compatible with our original theory is also compatible with multiple occupancy, we can say that the original theory’s ontological coherence was not affected. There were two metaphysical assumptions we could make in which our account of personal ontology retained: that four dimensionalism was true, and that four dimensionalism was false. Under the assumption of four dimensionalism, the two separate entities after the fission operation are just temporal parts of the original entity that simply stand spatially distinct. This stands unproblematic among thinkers who accept four dimensionalism [29]. However, we require an account with the original metaphysical assumptions free of four-dimensionalism. Note that multiple occupancy seems absurd because common sense counting would suggest that 1 person becomes 2 people. We may resolve this by suggesting that it is possible to count 2 people before the fission operation as well. Before the operation, a singular entity is counted because counting was done by “spatio-temporal coincidence” rather than counting by identity [30]. This itself is also acceptable: if we can say that we can be identical to some entity that is not spatio-temporal coincident with us, as we do in everyday language when we say “my past self" or my “future self,” we are saying that identity and spatio-temporal coincidence represent two different things. Thus, given multiple occupancy can be integrated within either framework without necessitating a revision of our fundamental metaphysical assumptions, we can say it has not impacted the ontological coherence of the original theory. When we consider that both the ethical plausibility and ontological coherence has been preserved, while multiple occupancy is highly counter-intuitive, it must be accepted. IV. Conclusion In answering how we are the same person as when we were ten, I have considered two important questions in personal identity: what “we” are, which is a question of personal ontology, and how "we" persist. I have evaluated the merits of the brain criterion based on egoistic concern against both Animalism and Neo-Lockeanism, arguing that it is this paper’s variant of the brain criterion which best encompasses both ethical and ontological considerations when answering what “we” are. Then, I have argued that the persistence criteria which follow from the proposition that we are brains is necessary and sufficient, on the basis that one rejects a further fact ontology. What follows is the question of multiple occupancy, which seems quite counter intuitive when considering prima facie. However, multiple occupancy as I have proven, remains the only solution to deal with the cases of fission satisfyingly. Footnotes [1] Francisco Muñoz et al., “Spatio-Temporal Brain Dynamics of Self-Identity: An EEG Source Analysis of the Current and Past Self,” Brain Structure and Function 227, no. 6 (2022): 2167–79, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00429-022-02515-9 . [2] There is quite a lot of unintended semantic conflation in discussions of personal identity. Even the label by which we refer to it almost assumes person essentialism. When I use the term “person”, I refer to the colloquial usage, not the neo-Lockean kind, unless explicitly stated. Moreover, in usages where “person” may be easily conflated, I have substituted the more neutral “self” or “selves”. This is why I refer to the persistence questions with the set of rather than . Most clearly neutral is the term “entities of our sort”, which I have tried to use most often, but selves serves the same purpose with less of a word count cost. [3] Harold W. Noonan, Personal Identity (London: Routledge, 2019), 85-86 [4] David Shoemaker and Kevin Tobia, “Personal Identity,” The Oxford Handbook of Moral Psychology, 2022, 542–63, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198871712.013.28, 9. [5] Eric Todd Olson, What Are We?: A Study in Personal Ontology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), v. [6] David Shoemaker and Kevin Tobia, “Personal Identity” [7] Eric T. Olson, “Personal Identity,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-personal [8] David Shoemaker and Kevin Tobia, “Personal Identity,” [9] Ibid [10] Marya Schechtman, Staying Alive: Personal Identity, Practical Concerns, and the Unity of a Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 49-56 [11] Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 267. [12] Gendler, Tamar Szabo and Olson, Eric T, The Human Animal. (Philosophical Review, 1999) [13] Nichols, Shaun, and Michael Bruno. “Intuitions about Personal Identity: An Empirical Study.” Philosophical Psychology 23, no. 3 (2010): 293–312. doi:10.1080/09515089.2010.490939. [14] Jeff McMahan, The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 47 [15] Lukas J Meier. “Memories without Survival: Personal Identity and the Ascending Reticular Activating System” The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, no.5 (2023): 478–491. https://doi.org/10.1093/jmp/jhad028 [16] Two things are qualitatively identical if they share all their properties, and numerically identical if they are not two, but one. [17] McMahan, The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life, 57 [18] Steinbock, Bonnie. “Abortion.” The Hastings Center, February 22, 2024. https://www.thehastingscenter.org/briefingbook/abortion/ . [19] Olson, What Are We?: A Study in Personal Ontology, 214. [20] Noonan, Personal Identity, 18 [21] Parfit, Reasons and Persons, 236 [22] Parfit, Reasons and Persons, 210 [23] Noonan, Personal Identity, 191 [24] Noonan, Personal Identity, 5 [25] Parfit, Reasons and Persons, 248 - 253 [26] Noonan, Personal Identity, 18 [28] Noonan, Personal Identity, 140 [29] Olson, “Personal Identity” [30] Noonan, Personal Identity, 139

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 Nicola Sturgeon, MSP First Minister of Scotland Gen. John R. Allen President of the Brookings Institution Editorial board forward Volume I Issue II Introducing the second issue of JPPE Click to flip through the journal and see previous JPPE issues Philosophy Moral Manipulation Politics Transparency and Compliance A Kantian Take on Advertising and Campaigning The Strength of EU Lobbying Regulations By Sylvia Gunn By Abigail Borges Philosophy Health/Disease Distinction And Its Normative Uses Economics Vermont Act 46 Implications for School Choice By Margot S. Witte By Quinn Bornstein Politics Georgian-South Ossetian Conflict Philosophy Statelessness Is Secession a Viable Solution? A Contradiction in International Law with Asymmetrical Regional Solutions By Tathyana Mello Amaral By Samantha Altschuler Politics Imagined Isle Economics Public Funds, Private Interest The Role of Private Companies in Shaping US Cybersecurity Policy Irish Catholic Identity in the Restoration Era By Nathan Mainster By Justin Katz

Public Funds, Private Interest The Role of Private Companies in Shaping US Cybersecurity Policy Justin Katz Yale University Author Danai Benopoulou Graham Gonzales Hans Lei Marko Winedt Editors Fall 2018 This paper compares current cybersecurity policy with the Cold War military industrial complex to understand how links between the private cybersecurity industry and government impact federal policy. I. Introduction Collectively driven by increased awareness of cyber threats, fear of snooping by government agencies, and growth in intelligence budgets, the private cybersecurity industry has recently exploded. Global cybersecurity spending is predicted to hit $90 billion in 2018[1] and grow at an annual rate of above 20% to $232 billion by 2022.[2] Along with industry expansion, connections between private cybersecurity firms and the government have multiplied. Government intelligence agencies have enlisted the services of private companies for everything ranging from espionage operations[3] to the development of offensive capacities.[4] However, as government and industry deepen their ties, it becomes increasingly possible for misalignment between public and private interests to drive policy in the wrong direction. Given that US cybersecurity strategy is currently ill-defined and malleable, missteps could have impacts for decades. Nevertheless, collaboration between government and industry is also in its infancy, so the nature of public-private relations has yet to solidify. This means that is still time for the government to change course. This paper will analyze the evolving relationship between government agencies and private sector cybersecurity firms in four parts. The first will explore the forms of government contact with the broader cybersecurity marketplace. The second will consider historical connections between the defense establishment and private companies – the Cold War military-industrial complex and the use of private military contractors (PMCs) since the late-90s – as a template for potential policy risks associated with a modern alliance between defense and industry. The third will examine how that public-private cybersecurity connections are distinct from previous military-industrial linkages and analyze the policy implications of those distinctions. The last section will offer some ways to leverage the advantages of the private sector while minimizing harm. II. Government Contact with the Cybersecurity Industry Government agencies have developed ties with the cybersecurity industry in two main ways. First, agencies have spurred demand for information security technology both directly, through government contracts, and indirectly, by encouraging investment by the private sector. Second, a revolving door between government and the private sector has packed corporate boardrooms and staff ranks alike with former intelligence and defense personnel. With growing national security threats and opportunities in cyberspace, members of the defense and intelligence communities have emphasized the need to both secure US critical infrastructure and develop offensive cyber capacities. In response, Congress has approved growing budgets for cyber defense, allowing millions of dollars to go to contractors.[5] More recently, the Pentagon requested $8.5 billion for “cybersecurity-related activities,” while in the FY 2019 budget President Trump called for $15 billion in total cybersecurity spending, a 4% increase over fiscal year 2018 requests.[6] Growth in government demand for private cybersecurity services has directly fueled the industry’s expansion by causing the government to outsource a sizable share of its spending to private contractors.[7] Indeed, in DC, where most contractors are located, almost 24,000 new cybersecurity job openings were posted in 2015, about double that of the next highest region.[8] Government investment in cybersecurity has also indirectly led to market expansion. First, the shifting composition of federal budgets during the 8-year Obama administration in favor of cyber, encouraged large defense contractors to invest more in information security. Despite the overall shrinking of military spending, investment in cybersecurity significantly grew. In response, big tech-centered defense contractors like Boeing, Raytheon, and even consultancy Booz Allen Hamilton have created cybersecurity branches.[9] Seeking to win contracts with innovative new tools, these larger companies have continued to acquire boutique firms offering custom software with narrow applications.[10] Although the Trump administration won a substantial increase in defense spending as part of a February 2018 budget deal, those increases may be temporary, given that ten-year spending caps imposed by the 2011 Budget Control Act remain in place and could force steep cuts at the end of the decade.[11] Therefore, cybersecurity offers a more stable source of demand for contractors than traditional spending. Second, greater government interest in network defense suggests to private firms that cyber threats are widespread, meaning they should invest in their own cybersecurity capacities. While increasing their own cyber spending, federal agencies have published recommendations on how firms should bolster their defenses. For example, Obama’s 2013 executive order commissioning a framework for critical infrastructure protection stated that the government should “provide guidance” on which commercially-available cybersecurity services companies should buy.[12] The Trump administration has pursued continuity with Obama-era policies,[13] and in its 2017 National Security Strategy urged coordinated responses to major threats in both the private and public sectors.[14] Additionally, the intelligence community has invited private firms to attend classified briefings informing them about emerging cybersecurity threats. According to one NSA official, the meetings aim to “scare the bejeezus out of them.”[15] Frightened CEOs then turn to cybersecurity companies for help. The Chief Security Officer of Mandiant, a private security outfit, alleged that executives often buy the firm’s products after attending classified NSA briefings.[16] Federal policy decisions guide the industry’s scale and composition, so firms within the market have a clear profit interest in the government’s cyber strategy. That is not to say, however, that government officials are distorting the scale of cyber threats for private sector benefit. Scare tactics are often necessary to convince recalcitrant executives to make necessary upgrades. However, the outsized effect of federal policies on this industry risks creating real or perceived conflicts of interest. Many top cybersecurity firms are led by experts who once held high-level posts within law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Endgame, for example, sells zero day vulnerabilities and global maps of network weaknesses almost exclusively to government agencies.[17] Its board includes former NSA chief Kenneth Minihan and is chaired by Christopher Darby, the current CEO of the CIA’s venture capital arm.[18] CrowdStrike, a cyber forensics firm, boasts two former FBI officials as top executives – CEO Shawn Henry, former chief of worldwide cyber investigations, and the company’s general counsel, who served as the deputy head of cyber for the Bureau.[19] Many other senior administrators with experience in intelligence and defense sit on corporate boards or serve as executives at major cybersecurity firms.[20] The revolving door between government and the private sector exists for lower level employees as well. Some ex-hackers found their own companies. For example, Brendan Conlon, a Naval Academy graduate who worked as a hacker for both the NSA and CIA, recently founded Vahna, a firm that publicizes its employees’ time working for government agencies.[21] One former NSA official suggests that the best private security companies are founded by members of the “SIGINT” community, who apply the hacking skills they acquired during their time in government to assess system vulnerabilities and respond to breaches.[22] Large defense firms are especially interested in acquiring startups founded by former intelligence community members to secure contacts within the CIA, NSA, and the Pentagon. Knowing that big companies will scramble to buy their startup, government employees become more likely to move to the private sector. Lastly, even if government employees do not start their own company, they frequently move to the private sector with their training in hacking techniques. Though government agencies have taken pains to recruit technically skilled employees to work in their security and hacking divisions, the government lacks the resources to pay competitive salaries compared to the private sector. As a result, many military and intelligence personnel transition to industry work after receiving government training. The cycle has become so predictable that agencies now only plan to keep new hires for a few years.[23] Thus, almost all sectors of the cybersecurity industry have at least some form of contact with government. Private firms have an interest in shaping government cybersecurity policy for their benefit, and these firms may have a unique ability to do so based on these widespread connections. Of course, the revolving door between government and the private sector is not limited to the cybersecurity industry. However, this dynamic presents unique risks in the cyber sphere, given the differences between public and private interests in the cybersecurity industry and several unique characteristics of public-private relations on cybersecurity issues. The next two sections explore those concerns. III. The Cyber-Industrial Complex – Lessons from the Cold War and Private Military Contractors Relationships between the defense establishment and industries that seek government influence are hardly a new phenomenon. Throughout the Cold War, policymakers faced a military-industrial complex, where government demand for military goods and services propped up a lucrative defense contracting industry. In turn, this industry lobbied Congress and the Pentagon for ever-increasing levels of spending. More recently, during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon hired PMCs for operational support. Common challenges between those two episodes demonstrate how ties between the cybersecurity industry and government could negatively impact policymaking. A. Increasing Costs and Threat Inflation From the beginning of the Cold War, connections between private contractors and government encouraged policymakers to overstate Soviet threats and waste money on unnecessary military buildup. A classic example is Eisenhower’s attempt to downsize the B-70 bomber program during his first term. The bomber program involved contracts with thousands of private firms, with production so dispersed that a majority of congressmen had at least one important supplier in their districts.[24] Immediately after announcing the cuts, Eisenhower met fierce opposition from Congress, which accused him of jeopardizing American national security by letting the Soviets outpace American airpower. Eventually, Eisenhower caved and reinstated the program. Air Force officials later testified that claims of a “bomber gap” were invalid, since US capabilities far exceeded those of the USSR.[25] Private contracting had introduced new benefactors of military spending with considerable leverage over policymakers. To justify higher expenditures that kept contractors’ factories running, lawmakers manufactured exaggerated threats. The use of PMCs has also created the potential for overstating threats. Over 60 firms serviced contracts worth billions of dollars during the Iraq War, carrying out many crucial combat operations.[26] However, much of the stated pretense for the Iraqi invasion was unfounded – the Bush administration’s claims that Hussein helped plan 9/11 and that the Iraqi government was nearing the acquisition of nuclear weapons ultimately proved incorrect.[27] It is beyond the scope of this article to speculate on whether the connections between top officials and private beneficiaries of the war – most notably Dick Cheney and Halliburton – motivated the administration to distort the Iraqi threat for financial gain. However, the perception that those ties influenced the invasion undermined the administration’s credibility and damaged Bush’s Iraq policy.[28] These incidents suggest two related concerns for cybersecurity policy: cybersecurity industry players may encourage government officials to overstate the risk of cyber-attacks for private gain, or the public will perceive that they are doing so. There is already evidence that industry interests have outsized influence in national conversations. Former intelligence personnel with a financial stake in private contractors use their credentials as ex-government officials to support extensive cyber operations. After the Snowden disclosures, some of the most stalwart defenders of NSA snooping had both impressive government credentials and deep financial stakes in the agency’s contractors. Stewart Baker, former NSA general counsel who testified before Congress claiming that cutting back PATRIOT Act surveillance programs would help terrorists, now lobbies for NSA contractors including SAIC and the Computer Sciences Corporation.[29] Jack Keane, a former four-star general who defended the NSA’s programs on cable news, is also a board member of the NSA contractor General Dynamics. Retired General Wesley Clark emphasized the need for the PRISM program while simultaneously taking payments from a private equity firm with substantial financial stake in NSA contractors.[30] Of course, there is nothing wrong with former top brass opining about what they consider important defense issues. However, given that officials enjoy a privileged place in national security conversations, conflicts of interest potentially open up avenues for abuse and may cause speculation about corruption. Relationships between local governments and private firms may prevent elected officials from checking threat inflation. From Maryland to Texas, local and state governments have designed tax incentives and run advertising campaigns seeking to create a “cyber Silicon Valley.” Some have even used tax dollars for direct investment in startups.[31] If tech firms set up shop in regions desperate to keep the jobs they provide, then the congressional representatives from those areas will likely lobby extensively for greater government funds devoted to cybersecurity. Representatives of cybersecurity districts may warn of a B-70 bomber-style “cyber gap” as an excuse to spend more on firms with local power. The notion that the cybersecurity industry can influence public threat perception through multiple channels is worrying. Given current trends and cybersecurity’s rapid growth, there is a risk of creating even more problematic relationships in a poorly-understood industry. Besides leading to wasteful and unnecessary spending, an overemphasis on threats could prevent policymakers from properly assessing tradeoffs between security and other interests such as Internet freedom and governance. Even if private actors do not put pressure on policymakers to distort threats for personal gain, the appearance of close ties between industry and government can create perceived conflicts of interest. This might in turn lower trust in government and limit officials’ ability to craft constructive policy. However, despite similarities, the risks of malignant cyber threat inflation and massive government waste are lower than during the Cold War or the invasion of Iraq. First, apparent overstatement of cyber threats is at least partially due to the fact that many do not take threats seriously enough. Therefore, apparent threat inflation may be more indicative of attempts to increase stakeholder attention on an important issue than private sector manipulation of government policy. Second, powerful private interests have an incentive to counter the cybersecurity industry’s threat narrative. Large tech companies recognize that overstating the cyber threats may encourage Congress to mandate that companies meet certain cybersecurity baselines. Since those firms want to avoid burdensome regulation,[32] they have an incentive to lobby lawmakers and make cyber threats seem less severe. B. Inefficiency Even if public-private ties do not drive unnecessary spending, they can drive up costs and make it more difficult for governments to provide necessary services. Theoretically, private contracting lowers government costs by leveraging the competitive forces of the market. Federal agencies can allow firms to bid against each other and award the contract to the company that makes the best offer. However, when firms have government ties, it becomes easier to spend money by lobbying to win more lucrative contracts rather than offering the best one. During the Cold War, private contracts were the products of political negotiation, not competitive bidding, so the firms with the best lobbyists secured the most lucrative contracts. The Pentagon sometimes passed over firms offering the lowest price to grant awards to the firm whose “turn was next.”[33] That process both increased costs by granting contractors monopoly power and privileged firms that already had connections in the system.[34] The use of PMCs increased costs in other ways. By offering salaries that exceeded military pay, contractors lured talented soldiers into the private sector. Then, the contractors sold their services to the government at a higher per-soldier cost to cover their overhead.[35] It is possible that links between the cybersecurity industry and government could create similar inefficiencies. First, former government workers now working as contractors can leverage connections to negotiate deals, even if they do not offer the best package. Second, as traditional defense contractors pivot towards the cybersecurity market, they may use their status as trusted collaborators to win awards over more competitive firms. The fact that many of the biggest cybersecurity contractors are companies with longstanding connections to the intelligence community could raise suspicions that the most entrenched firms, and not necessarily the best, receive government funds. Also, cybersecurity contracts may require that companies have security clearance, limiting the pool of competitors to insiders.[36] Third, cybersecurity firms poach the best technical personnel from government. If federal agencies contract government-trained hackers at a higher cost, then the government ends up paying more for an identical service. Already, some agencies, unable to keep sufficiently skilled technicians away from the private sector, plan on contracting with cybersecurity firms who hire government-trained personnel.[37] Although the government should leverage its own monopoly power to bring down prices and maximize efficiency, current trends suggest that the influence of private firms will serve to increase their margins and waste federal funds. C. Differing Roles and Constraints Even when the government and the private sector carry out similar functions, they occupy different roles and face different constraints. Those distinctions become clear when examining the PMC industry. Private contractors are just that: private. This means they can perform tasks that governments are either legally or politically constrained from doing. Relying on PMCs to carry out combat operations reduces the danger faced by US service members, thereby lowering the political barriers to conflict. Additionally, PMCs are not subject to congressional constraints – for example, the Bush administration used PMCs to circumvent limitations on US military involvement in the Colombian civil war.[38] While the US has used PMCs to expand its operational flexibility, contractors are in no way beholden to American interests. PMCs have worked with dictatorships, drug smugglers, and al-Qaeda-linked terrorist organizations.[39] By increasing demand for PMCs, US operations in Iraq encouraged investment in startups and the expansion of existing firms. As operations in Iraq wind down, those firms need new customers – and there is no guarantee that Washington will like them. US demand for privately-produced cyber weapons and security products raises similar concerns. First, private tools can provide ways for governments to evade legal prohibitions on certain cyber techniques. For example, while CrowdStrike CEO Shawn Henry worked at the FBI, he developed technology to remotely monitor a target’s computer undetected. However, the FBI needed a court order to use the technology. At CrowdStrike, he uses a similar tool, but, as a private entity, he can deploy it without going to court.[40] In an attempt to indict WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange, the Justice Department organized a group of small cybersecurity firms, mostly tied to the public-sector security community, to dig up dirt. The group planned to launch an intimidation campaign against WikiLeaks’ followers and discredit the organization by tricking it into publishing fake documents.[41] If performed directly by part of the federal intelligence community, such tactics would spark outrage. While that operation failed, it suggests that, by unloading dirty work onto private companies, the government could skirt political and legal barriers. That may seem like an attractive option in the short run, but in the long run it risks eroding public trust and landing intelligence agencies in even greater legal trouble once laws catch up with technological innovation. Second, the US government has no guarantee that cyber weapons firms will not peddle their wares to countries that threaten American interests. For example, the Mubarak regime and the Bahraini government cracked down on political dissidents allegedly using software purchased from Gamma, a UK firm.[42] US-based Blue Coat has sold Deep Packet Inspection, a technology used to censor journalists and track down dissidents, to Syria, Myanmar, Egypt, Qatar, China, and Venezuela, all countries with spotty human rights records.[43] At first blush, given that the US government does not deal with these companies, it seems that US connections to the cybersecurity industry have no bearing on the development of a worldwide network of cyber mercenaries. While demand from authoritarian regimes for surveillance products would exist regardless, US reliance on private firms to build cyber weapons compounds the problem in two ways. First, demand from the US government increases the size of the market. This is an issue in the market for zero-day exploits, cyber-attacks that exploit previously-unknown technical vulnerabilities. When the US pays millions in government contracts for zero-day exploits, it encourages more companies to enter the business, some of which will inevitably sell to whoever wants to buy.[44] Second, by buying exploits from private companies, the US legitimizes an international cyber arms market. That makes adversaries more likely to brazenly seek out private firms to meet their intelligence needs. An unregulated international trade in cyber vulnerabilities leads to the proliferation of offensive capabilities, multiplying the threats that the US will face in the future. IV. Unique Characteristics While many challenges look similar to those arising from past public-private relationships, several unique characteristics of the cybersecurity industry create new dynamics. First, government dealings with the cybersecurity industry are subject to higher levels of secrecy than most other public-private relationships. The intelligence community hides its contracts behind a shroud of hyper secrecy. One of the documents in the Snowden dump emphasizes the importance of preventing any association between the NSA and one of its contractors, the Computer Sciences Corporation.[45] Similarly, in 2010, Endgame’s modus operandi relied on avoiding any mention in media at all, let alone in relation to the NSA.[46] In this context, intelligence contractors often have better knowledge of the government’s projects than lawmakers, meaning they can use their inside scoop to lobby Congress and win even more contracts.[47] As a result, it is difficult to conduct an appropriate cost-benefit analysis of the tradeoffs associated with existing ties. Second, the cybersecurity industry has other customers besides the government. While PMCs and defense contractors can only sell their services to government agencies, most cybersecurity firms can market and develop products for the private sector as well. Therefore, the size, scope, and composition of the cybersecurity industry is largely determined by factors outside the government’s control. On the one hand, that means the government may have trouble reversing any negative effects of the industry on policy. If a strong cybersecurity industry causes poor government policy, rather than the other way around, then improvements in protocol surrounding agencies’ relationships with industry will not have much of an effect. On the other hand, if firms are participants in a broader private cybersecurity industry, then they will have to adjust their behavior to market realities. For example, if firms encourage government to adopt policies that lead to artificial demand for cybersecurity products, then they risk creating a bubble[48] that would hurt them financially if it bursts. Therefore, firms either avoid extensive lobbying for unnecessarily favorable policies, reducing their distortionary effect, or they engage in such lobbying and weaken their influence in government in the long run once the bubble bursts. Additionally, companies may have less of an incentive to engage in the sorts of problematic rent-seeking behavior explored earlier. If they cannot win government contracts, instead of spending millions on lobbying campaigns, firms might just look for customers in the private sector.[49] Finally, contracting may stymie vital information sharing. During the Cold War and the Iraq invasion, the Department of Defense could hire a single contractor (or group of contractors) to complete a single product or mission. The intelligence and defense establishment have largely replicated this model – single firms produce discrete software tools that the agencies subsequently integrate into their operational doctrine. However, in doing so, agencies lose the ability to work collaboratively and share information to solve important security problems.[50] In fact, with most contractors in direct competition with one another, firms are likely to guard their methods as proprietary secrets. In the current system, the only way contractors can integrate their teams to work on a single project is if one firm buys out another. But that, in turn, reduces competition in the industry as a whole, which can also stifle innovation. While certain characteristics of the cybersecurity industry allow it to self-correct for some of the negative policy effects of public-private ties, the government must take additional steps to be able to eliminate them all. V. Ways to Mitigate the Threat The government benefits from contact with the private cybersecurity sector – contractors allow the intelligence community to tap into the industry’s innovative power and give agencies the flexibility to temporarily increase the size of its workforce for time-sensitive projects. Therefore, policymakers should make changes that retain those benefits while minimizing the costs. First, government agencies should rely less on contractors and more on public-private partnerships to develop new technologies. For example, after Google told the NSA that hackers in China breached their networks, the NSA drafted a “cooperative research and development agreement” where the government and a firm collaborate to develop a new product. The government fronts the R&D costs, while the company participates in the development phase and has the right to patent and build the product designed. In addition, the government can “use any information gained from the collaboration.”[51] This sort of agreement allows the government to access the productive capacities of the private sector, but reduces superfluous spending. While under a traditional contract, a firm gets paid so long as it produces a desired product, under a public-private partnership such as the one formed between the NSA and Google, the firm only profits if they produce a useful tool that someone is willing to buy. Therefore, under this less traditional agreement, firms have no incentive to engage in completely spurious projects without any commercial value. Additionally, all tax dollars go directly towards research and development, eliminating the increased costs resulting from the markup rate that firms would charge the government under a traditional contract. Lastly, a less reliable stream of payments reduces the incentives for big contractors to acquire smaller ones and develop monopoly power in the industry, increasing the number of competitors in the industry and encouraging innovation. Second, the government should try to bolster its in-house cybersecurity capacity. If it can provide more of the services it needs on its own, then it can limit the prevalence and influence of cybersecurity contractors on policy. To do so, all agencies should include a non-compete clause in their employment contracts that prevents former employees from being hired back in a contracting role for a certain period of time.[52] Moreover, agencies should consider adding incentives to stay in government. Additional compensation would be a start, but government needs to find an incentive that is unique from the private sector, such as the intangible benefits of public service or additional prestige. Third, when the US does need to use contractors, it should improve its protocol for awarding contracts. Agencies should implement mechanisms to fast track approval of security clearances to allow more firms to compete in the bidding process, allowing the government to drive down the cost of securing contracts. Fourth, the government should negotiate multilateral agreements to prevent the export of cyber weapons systems to countries on the arms export blacklist for NATO, the US, and the EU. The EU and the US have already banned the export of surveillance technology to Iran and Syria, but efforts should go further. However, such an initiative faces two challenges. First, “cyber weapons” are difficult to define, given the overlap between offense and defense in the cyber sphere. Second, it seems almost impossible to control the cross-border flow of software over the Internet. Despite these challenges, a ban would at least discourage large firms in Western countries from selling to rogue regimes. Since those companies likely offer the best products, a ban would succeed in limiting the proliferation of advanced cyber technologies to adversarial actors. Finally, public and private actors alike should make efforts to increase transparency. Expanding in-house capacity and reducing reliance on contracts should make intelligence and defense agencies more accountable to the public. However, the best way to hold agencies accountable is to subject them to greater scrutiny. When former government officials make statements, media outlets and lawmakers should investigate and report their financial conflicts of interest. Then, policymakers can evaluate whether the speaker’s testimony is biased, enabling nuanced debate on US cyber threats. When intelligence agencies or the Pentagon request more money for cybersecurity, they should disclose, at least to Congress, specific details about how that money will be spent. That disclosure should make it easier to identify unnecessary spending, parse out corporate interests, and prevent agency officials from awarding contracts based on connections instead of merit, making bidding processes more competitive. Of course, some aspects of intelligence ought to be kept secret. But it is impossible to make informed policy judgments without some understanding of where money goes. Endnotes [2] "Cybersecurity Market by Solution (IAM, Encryption, DLP, UTM, Antivirus/Anti-Malware, Firewall, IDS/IPS, Disaster Recovery, DDOS Mitigation, SIEM), Service, Security Type, Deployment Mode, Organization Size, Vertical, and Region - Global Forecast to 2022." Markets and Markets Research. July 2017. Accessed April 18, 2018. https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/cyber-security-market-505.html. CAGR from author’s calculations. [3] Talbot, Daniel. "The Cyber Security Industrial Complex." MIT Technology Review. December 06, 2011. Accessed May 09, 2016. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/426285/the-cyber-security-industrial-complex/. [4] Robertson, Jordan, and Michael Riley. "US Contractors Scale Up Search for Heartbleed-Like Flaws." Bloomberg. May 2, 2014. Accessed May 08, 2016. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-05-02/us-contractors-scale-up-search-for-heartbleed-like-flaws. [5] Bamford, James. "NSA Snooping Was Only the Beginning. Meet the Spy Chief Leading Us Into Cyberwar." Wired Magazine. June 13, 13. Accessed May 09, 2016. https://www.wired.com/2013/06/general-keith-alexander-cyberwar/. [6] United States. White House. Office of Management and Budget. Analytical Perspectives, Section 21: Cybersecurity Funding. Washington, DC: US Government Publishing Office, 2018. 273-87. [7] Fox-Brewster, Thomas. "Embracing The Awful Irony At A Huge Counter-Terrorism Fair In Paris Days After ISIS Attacks." Forbes. November 22, 2015. Accessed May 09, 2016. http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2015/11/22/paris-hosts-milipol-homeland-defense-expo-after-isis-attacks/#7fc15fc97da6. [8] Sorcher, Sara. "The Race to Build the Silicon Valley of Cybersecurity." The Christian Science Monitor. December 2015. Accessed May 09, 2016. http://passcode.csmonitor.com/goldrush. [9] Bamford, “NSA Snooping.” [10] Byrt, Frank. "U.S. Defense Contractors Are Scrambling To Fill Massive Cyber Security Contracts." Business Insider. November 19, 2010. Accessed May 09, 2016. http://www.businessinsider.com/obama-is-spending-a-ton-on-defense-spending-in-cyber-security-2010-11. [11] O'Brien, Connor. "Military Hawks Win Big in Budget Deal — for Now." Politico, February 9, 2018. Accessed April 18, 2018. https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/09/budget-deal-military-hawks-333128. [12] Exec. Order No. 13636, 3 C.F.R. (2013). [13] Fazzini, Kate. "Under Trump, Some Subtle Cybersecurity Changes." The Wall Street Journal, December 13, 2017. Accessed April 18, 2018. https://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2017/12/13/under-trump-some-subtle-cybersecurity-changes/. [14] United States. The White House. National Security Strategy of the United States of America. 2017. [15] Harris, Shane. War the Rise of the Military-Internet Complex. Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014. 180. [16] Ibid, 180. [17] Harris, @War, 104. [18] Greenberg, Andy. "Inside Endgame: A Second Act For The Blackwater Of Hacking." Forbes. February 12, 2014. Accessed May 09, 2016. http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2014/02/12/inside-endgame-a-new-direction-for-the-blackwater-of-hacking/#5da8ea7a52d9. [19] Harris, @War, 109. [20] Benner, Katie. "Cybersecurity's Money Men." The Information. January 21, 2014. Accessed May 9, 2016. https://www.theinformation.com/cybersecuritys-money-men. [21] Harris, @War, 121. [22] Ibid, 120. [23] Ibid, 223. [24] York, Herbert. Race to Oblivion: A Participant's View of the Arms Race. Simon and Schuster, 1971. Accessed May 11, 2016, 53. http://www.learnworld.com/ZNW/LWText.York.Race.Ch03.html. [25] Brito, Jerry, and Tate Watkins. "Loving the Cyber Bomb? The Dangers of Threat Inflation in Cybersecurity Policy." Harvard National Security Journal 3 (2011): 39-84. Accessed May 11, 2016. HeinOnline. 66. [26] Singer, Peter. "Outsourcing War." Foreign Affairs 84, no. 2 (March/April 2005): 119-32. 122. [27] Brito and Watkins, "Loving the Cyber Bomb?,” 43. [28] Martha Minow, Outsourcing Power: How Privatizing Military Efforts Challenges Accountability, Professionalism, and Democracy, 46 B.C.L. Rev. 989 (2005), http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/bclr/ vol46/iss5/2. [29] Fang, Lee. "Many of the NSA's Loudest Defenders Have Financial Ties to NSA Contractors." The Intercept. May 12, 2015. Accessed May 11, 2016. https://theintercept.com/2015/05/12/intelligence-industry-cash-flows-media-echo-chamber-defending-nsa-surveillance/. [30] Ibid. [31] Sorcher, “The Race to Build the Silicon Valley of Cybersecurity.” [32] Etzioni, Amitai. "The Private Sector: A Reluctant Partner in Cybersecurity." Institute for Communitarian Studies, December 19, 2014. https://icps.gwu.edu/private-sector-reluctant-partner-cybersecurity. [33] Markusen, Ann. "Defense Spending: A Successful Industrial Policy?" International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 10, no. 1 (1986): 105-22. Accessed May 11, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.1986.tb00007.x. [34] Adams, Walter. "The Military-Industrial Complex and the New Industrial State." The American Economic Review 58, no. 2 (May 1968): 652-65. 658. [35] Singer, “Outsourcing War,” 129. [36] Chesterman, Simon. "‘We Can't Spy …If We Can't Buy!’" European Journal of International Law 19, no. 5 (November 2008): 1055-071. [37] Harris, @War, 223. [38] Singer, “Outsourcing War,” 126. [39] Ibid, 125. [40] Seabrook, John. "Network Insecurity." The New Yorker. May 20, 2013. Accessed May 11, 2016. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/05/20/network-insecurity. [41] Ibid, 115. The collaboration dissolved in 2011 when Anonymous hacked into one of the coordinators’ emails and released correspondences about the group’s plans. [42] Keating, Lucy. "Surveillance: A Thriving British Industry." The Bureau of Investigative Journalism. December 01, 2011. Accessed May 11, 2016. https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2011/12/01/surveillance-a-thriving-british-industry/. [43] Reporters without Borders. Enemies of the Internet. Publication. 2013. 7. [44] Bamford, “NSA Snooping Was Only the Beginning. Meet the Spy Chief Leading Us Into Cyberwar.” [45] Shorrock, "How Private Contractors Have Created a Shadow NSA." [46] Greenberg, “Inside Endgame.” [47] Chesterman, "‘We Can't Spy …If We Can't Buy!’" [48] Some commentators think government policies might create a bubble. See Harris, @War, 122; for evidence that the value of cybersecurity firms has declined in the last year, see King, “Under Pressure, Cybersecurity Ripe for M&A This Year.” [49] Naturally, none of those principles strictly hold – look no further than the success of IT lobbyists in recent years to win government money. See Brito and Watkins, "Loving the Cyber Bomb?,” 69. [50] Chesterman, “We Can’t Spy…If We Can’t Buy!” [51] Harris, @War, 175. [52] The CIA already does this: see Chesterman, “We Can’t Spy…If We Can’t Buy!” References Adams, Walter. "The Military-Industrial Complex and the New Industrial State." The American Economic Review 58, no. 2 (May 1968): 652-65. Bamford, James. "NSA Snooping Was Only the Beginning. Meet the Spy Chief Leading Us Into Cyberwar." Wired Magazine. June 13, 13. Accessed May 09, 2016. https://www.wired.com/2013/06/general-keith-alexander-cyberwar/ . Benner, Katie. "Cybersecurity's Money Men." The Information. January 21, 2014. Accessed May 9, 2016. https://www.theinformation.com/cybersecuritys-money-men . Byrt, Frank. "U.S. Defense Contractors Are Scrambling To Fill Massive Cyber Security Contracts." Business Insider. November 19, 2010. Accessed May 09, 2016. http://www.businessinsider.com/obama-is-spending-a-ton-on-defense-spending-in-cyber-security-2010-11 . Chesterman, Simon. "‘We Can't Spy …If We Can't Buy!’: The Privatization of Intelligence and the Limits of Outsourcing ‘Inherently Governmental Functions’." European Journal of International Law 19, no. 5 (November 2008): 1055-071. Chief Financial Officer, Office of the Undersecretary of Defense (Comptroller). Defense Budget Overview: US Department of Defense Fiscal Year 2017 Budget Request. Washington, D.C.: Department of Defense, 2016. "Cybersecurity Market by Solution (IAM, Encryption, DLP, UTM, Antivirus/Anti-Malware, Firewall, IDS/IPS, Disaster Recovery, DDOS Mitigation, SIEM), Service, Security Type, Deployment Mode, Organization Size, Vertical, and Region - Global Forecast to 2022." Markets and Markets Research. July 2017. Accessed April 18, 2018. https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/cyber-security-market-505.html. Etzioni, Amitai. "The Private Sector: A Reluctant Partner in Cybersecurity." Institute for Communitarian Studies, December 19, 2014. https://icps.gwu.edu/private-sector-reluctant-partner-cybersecurity . Exec. Order No. 13636, 3 C.F.R. (2013). Fang, Lee. "Many of the NSA's Loudest Defenders Have Financial Ties to NSA Contractors." The Intercept. May 12, 2015. Accessed May 11, 2016. https://theintercept.com/2015/05/12/intelligence-industry-cash-flows-media-echo-chamber-defending-nsa-surveillance/ . Fazzini, Kate. "Under Trump, Some Subtle Cybersecurity Changes." The Wall Street Journal, December 13, 2017. Accessed April 18, 2018. https://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2017/12/13/under-trump-some-subtle-cybersecurity-changes/. Fox-Brewster, Thomas. "Embracing The Awful Irony At A Huge Counter-Terrorism Fair In Paris Days After ISIS Attacks." Forbes. November 22, 2015. Accessed May 09, 2016. http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2015/11/22/paris-hosts-milipol-homeland-defense-expo-after-isis-attacks/#7fc15fc97da6 . Greenberg, Andy. "Inside Endgame: A Second Act For The Blackwater Of Hacking." Forbes. February 12, 2014. Accessed May 09, 2016. http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2014/02/12/inside-endgame-a-new-direction-for-the-blackwater-of-hacking/#5da8ea7a52d9 . Harris, Shane. War the Rise of the Military-Internet Complex. Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014. Keating, Lucy. "Surveillance: A Thriving British Industry." The Bureau of Investigative Journalism. December 01, 2011. Accessed May 11, 2016. https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2011/12/01/surveillance-a-thriving-british-industry/ . King, Rachel. "Under Pressure, Cybersecurity Market Is Ripe for M&A in 2016." The Wall Street Journal. February 29, 2016. Accessed May 08, 2016. http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2016/02/29/under-pressure-cybersecurity-market-is-ripe-for-ma-in-2016/ . Markusen, Ann. "Defense Spending: A Successful Industrial Policy?" International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 10, no. 1 (1986): 105-22. Accessed May 11, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.1986.tb00007.x . Martha Minow, Outsourcing Power: How Privatizing Military Efforts Challenges Accountability, Professionalism, and Democracy, 46 B.C.L. Rev. 989 (2005), http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/bclr/ vol46/iss5/2. O'Brien, Connor. "Military Hawks Win Big in Budget Deal — for Now." Politico, February 9, 2018. Accessed April 18, 2018. https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/09/budget-deal-military-hawks-333128. Office of the Press Secretary. "Cybersecurity National Action Plan." The White House. February 09, 2016. Accessed May 09, 2016. https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/02/09/fact-sheet-cybersecurity-national-action-plan . Panetta, Leon. Speech, The Global Threat of Cyber Attacks, Business Executives for National Security, New York City. Accessed May 11, 2016. http://www.cfr.org/cybersecurity/secretary-panettas-speech-cybersecurity/p29262 . Robertson, Jordan, and Michael Riley. "US Contractors Scale Up Search for Heartbleed-Like Flaws." Bloomberg. May 2, 2014. Accessed May 08, 2016. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-05-02/us-contractors-scale-up-search-for-heartbleed-like-flaws . Reporters without Borders. Enemies of the Internet. Publication. 2013. Seabrook, John. "Network Insecurity." The New Yorker. May 20, 2013. Accessed May 11, 2016. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/05/20/network-insecurity . Shorrock, Tim. "How Private Contractors Have Created a Shadow NSA." The Nation. May 27, 2015. Accessed May 09, 2016. http://www.thenation.com/article/how-private-contractors-have-created-shadow-nsa/ . Swartz, Jon. "Cybersecurity Spending to Hit $90 Billion In 2018: Report." Barron's. February 23, 2018. Accessed April 18, 2018. https://www.barrons.com/articles/cybersecurity-spending-to-hit-90-billion-in-2018-report-1519405299. Singer, Peter. "Outsourcing War." Foreign Affairs 84, no. 2 (March/April 2005): 119-32. Sorcher, Sara. "The Race to Build the Silicon Valley of Cybersecurity." The Christian Science Monitor. December 2015. Accessed May 09, 2016. http://passcode.csmonitor.com/goldrush . Talbot, Daniel. "The Cyber Security Industrial Complex." MIT Technology Review. December 06, 2011. Accessed May 09, 2016. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/426285/the-cyber-security-industrial-complex/ . United States. National Institute for Standards and Technology. US Department of Commerce. Framework for Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity. 2014. United States. The White House. National Security Strategy of the United States of America. 2017. United States. White House. Office of Management and Budget. Analytical Perspectives, Section 21: Cybersecurity Funding. Washington, DC: US Government Publishing Office, 2018. 273-87. York, Herbert. Race to Oblivion: A Participant's View of the Arms Race. Simon and Schuster, 1971. Accessed May 11, 2016. http://www.learnworld.com/ZNW/LWText.York.Race.Ch03.html .

Catherine Nelli Interview with Danielle Bainbridge Catherine Nelli Danielle Bainbridge is a professor of theater, African American Studies, and Performance Studies at Northwestern University. Her background is in theater, English, African American Studies, and American Studies. She completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Pennsylvania in 2012 in English and theater and completed her PhD in African American Studies and American Studies—cultural history—in 2018 from Yale. Interview has been edited for clarity. JPPE : I’ll start by asking you to introduce yourself, your background, and your research, as well as the questions you find most interesting or important to explore at the moment. Bainbridge : Right now, my most important questions or areas of inquiry are thinking about the intersections of race, disability, gender, sexuality—like, how do we perform difference on stage? As well as thinking about the important role than performance and theatre and art have played in the establishment of new nations or nationalism. To that end, I’m working on two projects. The first one is called Refinements of Cruelty , and I’m collaborating with NYU press at the moment hopefully to place the book there. The book is about 19th and early 20th century sideshow and freak show performers who were born with physical disabilities and also born into slavery, and the process through which they were doubly subjected to systems of oppression, both as disabled people and also as enslaved Black people. So that book is my primary project. My secondary project is a general history book that’s called How to Make a New Nation . It’s about the performances of nationalism in early postcolonial nation-states. So I’m curious about how things like the professionalization of the Olympics, early TV politics, radio broadcasts, who gets put on the money, and the building of monuments. How these performative objects were used to establish the idea of nation and to recognize nation on an international scale. So those are the kind of questions that I’m thinking about right now. JPPE : Our journal is focused on interdisciplinary scholarship, and I know that what you do is very interdisciplinary as well. I’m curious how your work has benefited from interdisciplinary practices. Bainbridge : My background in every phase of my academic career has been very interdisciplinary. As a double major in college, I was always thinking of the intersections of history, literary analysis, theatrical history, theatrical performance studies, and performance practice. That was where I started to ask these questions and when I was introduced to scholars who were also thinking through that critical lens. And then when I went to graduate school, I was in an interdisciplinary PhD program because African American Studies is a field that encompasses lots of other disciplines. So you think through political science, anthropology, sociology, and history, and you’re thinking about all of these questions at the same time. And American Studies was similarly oriented, even though it was a degree that really focused on cultural history. So, I think that interdisciplinary work became really interesting to me at an early phase of my career. When I was an undergrad, I didn’t think of it as a career, I just thought of it as college. But by the time I started thinking about wanting to be a professor and wanting to teach at the undergraduate and graduate level, I was really curious about how I can bring different kinds of media and different kinds of inquiry in different fields together. Some of that was also influenced by the fact that I’m a practitioner—I’m an artist. I do creative scholarship, digital media work, and digital storytelling like my PBS series Origin of Everything . I have also done some docuseries work with Youtubers and PBS. And I’m currently working on a couple different shows, like some of the Crash Course series through Complexly, which is a company that focuses on making educational media for young people. Right now, I’m really invested in how scholarship can be brought to larger audiences outside of the academy through digital media in a democratic way, where it’s not necessarily about how much you can afford but more about your natural curiosity and desire to learn. I am also a writer. I write for theater, and I’m working on my first documentary that just got funded. I’m always trying to look for new ways to interpret information and translate it for different audiences. It’s appealing to me to think about interdisciplinary work as something that combines disparate fields. I think that sometimes, when we say interdisciplinary, we mean fields that are adjacent to each other, that are touching. But for me, combining theater, digital media, performance, documentary, and mashing these things together makes me excited because it stretches me as a scholar to think about the ways that I could actually benefit people and the way that my work travels through the world. Sometimes when you think in strict disciplinary lines, your work has a narrower reach. And I’m really interested in how I can reach people. I really want them to learn and be excited about the things I present, so I’m always looking for interdisciplinary ways to bring stuff to new audiences. JPPE : What’s the relationship between the scholar and the artist, and what’s the importance of that relationship? Bainbridge : It wasn’t always the smoothest transition. When you enter a Ph.D. program, you’re really there to commit to doing book-length and article-length research. That’s the discipline; that’s what’s expected of you. And I think it’s really important stuff, I mean, I wouldn’t be able to do any of the public-facing work I do if folks weren’t writing books and articles about it because I’m not an expert in everything that I make videos about. And I think that at the heart of our fields, book projects and articles are really the foundation. But I think because I had a background in theater and then went to grad school for more cultural history and African American Studies, it became important to me to continue to express myself. I always say that the difference for me between being an artist and a scholar is that I try to let every project express itself as what it wants to be. If I have an idea for something and I think, “This would be a really fun script,” or, “This really wants to be an essay,” or “This really needs to be in my book,” I try to make those decisions very consciously, about what’s the best way for this information to be shared with a larger audience and what does this piece of information demand of me as a maker, as a creator. There are plenty of things that I think, “Oh, this would make a great 12-minute online video, really punchy, good graphics, and people will be into the question,” and that’s a good primer for folks who are thinking about gender, race, sexuality, ethnicity, international politics, or whatever. Sometimes I have ideas like that, and then sometimes I have ideas like my documentary that I think, “Oh, this really demands a longer look and a more intense focus.” So it all depends on what the archive and that object I’m studying or the subject I’m studying demands, and how best to translate that for people to learn from it. JPPE : What is the subject of your documentary? Bainbridge : I am working on a documentary right now called Curio . In 2018, I was Artist in Residence and also a facilitator and writer of a piece called Curio: A Cabinet of Curiosity , which was based on the research for my book Refinements of Cruelty . It is focusing specifically on the lives of Millie and Christine McKoy who were two conjoined twins born in 1851 in North Carolina, who were touring the world and became international celebrities as freak show performers. So, they would sing and dance and there was also a heavy amount of exploitation and medicalization in their archive. The McKoy twins were who I started researching in grad school when I decided to work on freakshows and the intersections of slavery and disability. So, I am really intimately acquainted with their archive, and I made this performance piece out of it that a group of undergraduate students at the University of Pennsylvania staged. I loved working with those students, I think that they were really game to do a lot of weird stuff with me. I had them learning the handbell, I had them singing songs from the 19th century, they were tied together in a conjoined dress, and they were doing all sorts of really weird and experimental stuff with me. I learned a lot from that process, and I always wanted to rewrite and then restage it. So, in my early days at Northwestern—I came here in fall of 2018 as a postdoc right after the play had opened—I did spend some time with the piece thinking about revamping it. And then, you know, the world turning upside down the next academic year because it was 2019-2020 and COVID happened and all theaters went dark, and there was no opportunity to rethink the work, except in my own head. So I started thinking, wouldn’t it be great if I can make a documentary, because it combined my interest in digital media and my experience making these explainer videos and docuseries. It would be great to do a documentary that combines some of the creative elements of music from the play with traditional documentary storytelling. So, I started working on that idea and thinking it’d be great to do it, especially because it was funny that I started to see this explosion of digital theater overnight since there weren’t any opportunities to perform except on Zoom or through recorded stuff. And I just wanted an opportunity to combine my areas of interest under this same topic, so I pitched it to Northwestern for a research grant and I got some funding. And now I’m going to be working on that for the next year and a half or so, making maybe a 20- to 30-minute documentary that combined some of the elements from the stage production that I thought were really successful along with traditional documentary storytelling, like interviewing the McKoy descendents, looking at archival footage, and you know, figuring out ways to bring that story to life and to a larger audience. JPPE : Theater and performativity are in a rudimentary sense acted and therefore fictitious, but in recent years I think we’ve had a wider awareness that it isn’t that simple. So, how does the theory that you study translate into real world politics, representation, and change? And can you speak about this in relation to your Refinements of Cruelty? Bainbridge : It’s interesting because I’ve always been interested in the work of people like Moisés Kaufman, Anna Deavere Smith—people who do documentary theatre, just because it offers something really insightful and interesting, especially Anna Deavere Smith, I’m a big admirer of her work. So I think, when I write and when I create stuff, I do know where the line between reality and fiction is, I think that’s the first step, but I am also really interested in ways that theater could impact and bring about empathetic and lasting political and social change. I do think that the pieces that we make and things we put into the world have an impact on the way we view representation, on the way we view politics, on the way we view people from groups that aren’t our own. And so, when I’m teaching my students, it’s not just that I want them to be good storytellers, or good creators of fiction. I also want them to be good people, good global citizens, good people who think about the world in really critical and crucial ways. And I think there’s so much to be said for performance in general. Not only the creation of it, but the consumption of it is this huge engine for empathy and huge engine for understanding. So, when I’m making work or when I’m thinking about theater or writing criticism, I’m thinking about it in those ways—specifically about how we can create lasting and sustained social and political change through the creation of art. And I don’t think every piece is for every person. But I do think that there’s a lot that can be done. And a lot of artists are thinking really critically, especially as we’re starting to see new generations of artists making work that’s really critically looking at race and gender, not that these things are new, but that they’re really important questions that are being brought up. I do think there is a history of work making new social movements or new social possibilities for people. JPPE : What is the most impactful example of art that has created or propelled lasting change or social movements? Bainbridge: One of the things I teach is a course on African American theater history that starts in the 19th century and ends with A Raisin in the Sun . And I think most of my students who are young, Gen Z, savvy, politically active folks think of Raisin in the Sun as that old-fashioned play from the 50s that they had to read in high school or early college. And the thing for me about why I staged the class this way that ends with Raisin is that we have all of this activity of Black theatrical innovation and genius that comes before it. We have plays from Black artists in the 19th century, we studied things like slave narratives, we study Frederick Douglass’s oratory, we look at W.E.B. DuBois’s theories of artist propaganda, we look at some of the darker aspects of the representation of Black people like blackface minstrelsy, Vaudeville—you know, performance of minstrelsy as well as early instances of Black people performing in blackface. So we also see some of that as well in this time period. But what I want to chart for my students is the slow progress that we start to see in Black representation from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century. We start to see improvements in realism, improvements in domestic drama, and then we have this revolutionary moment with A Raisin in the Sun , where it’s this big critical success, but it’s also one of the first plays that we see by a queer, radical Black woman that represents Black people as people and fully human. And so by the time my students arrive at A Raisin in the Sun , you can see that they’re excited, that they say, “Oh my god, finally something that looks like real people, fully fleshed out people.” And I think oftentimes, Hansberry’s work gets read as conservative because it comes from a particular historical moment, but actually, it was this radical revelation in the representation of Blackness on popular stages. And it represents early emerging Pan-African identities through the character of Beneatha, it talks about the role of gender through characters like Ruth and Mama Younger and Walter. We see early integration politics that represent Black desire as not a desire for integration because they want to be in proximity to whiteness or close to whiteness, but because they want greater opportunity for themselves and their children. That subtlety and that keen hand that Hansberry has was so revelatory, and I really like having it at the end of the quarter so that students can finally put it in its context and say, “Oh, this really was a lot different than what came before it. This really is espousing something radical and fresh when you think about what came before it.” So that’s one of my favorite examples, and then I also teach the second half of that course, which is A Raisin in the Sun to contemporary theater. JPPE : What has been your research methodology on the Refinement of Cruelty project, and what has surprised you or not surprised you the most about the process? Bainbridge : As a writer, I write a lot of creative nonfiction, as well. And I was really surprised by what the archive demanded of me in terms of ethics. I'm looking at this archive of people who were exploited, essentially, in multiple ways. And I'm trying to make sense of this story while I'm also having complicated and complex feelings as a Black woman, as someone who has experienced the trials and tribulations of the American healthcare system, and medicalization and fetish, and all of these other things. And so, you know, when I first started the project, it was 2012. So it's been, like 10 years. So that's overwhelming. But I think when I first started the project, I was just surprised by how hard it was for me to look at the material, because I primarily before then had been studying feminist theatre from Jamaica in the 1980s. So it was more celebratory and more self-fashioning, because these women were creating their own stories and writing their own work, deciding what went into the archive. Things about the performers I study largely when they're either against their will or without their consent, at the very least. And so methodologically, I started thinking through two primary questions. The first was, what does it mean to enter something into the archive? What does it mean, to put something on the official record? And the second question was, what are the ethics or responsibility that I have as a Black queer woman telling this story? What do I need to do to make this feel okay? The first question I kind of answered with what I'm theorizing is the future perfect tense of historical recording. The future perfect is a tense that you see in romance languages, like Latin and Spanish, which is the past tense of the future. So it’s, “it will have been.” I started to fool around with that idea because I thought, when you are entering something into the record as a historical actor, as someone who is concerned with history—so say, I have things that I think are historically significant, I entered into an archive—I’m concerned with how history is going to be told 10 years from now, and 15 years from now and 100 years from now, that's why I put it in the archive. I wanted to trace sort of what those impulses were, and why people began to think through those terms. And I thought the archive that I was engaging in, especially because a lot of it is ephemera, and sort of freak show stuff, and things that people think of as lowbrow culture, I was thinking, why would someone enter this in an archive? What's the impetus? And why are they thinking that historians 100 years from now should be able to view this? They put this in a protected place for a reason. And then the second question methodologically, I'm answering was what I'm calling an ethnography of the archive. So it's a lot of auto-ethnographic writing that I do about archival ethics, essentially. And I put that in the project itself and fold it into it itself because I think one of the things that felt unsatisfying to me was speaking in the sort of disembodied historian’s third-person voice. I wanted it to feel as if I was considering the questions of what the archive is demanding of me and my own subject position as a descendant of slaves. And I started doing that writing mostly in grad school to satisfy myself. It wasn't something that I thought would really end up in the project. And then when I saw that people were responsive to it, and that the questions being asked by this ethnography of the archive were leading me somewhere methodologically, I started writing more and more and more and more. So I think you really have to consider what the archive demands of you before you start working. Because if I was working on another archive, or a completely different subject, I don't think I would have the same questions. JPPE : Right, so really considering positionality. Bainbridge : Yes. JPPE : What are the cultural and economic legacies of the freakshow and performance archive that you’ve found? Bainbridge : There are some interesting economic quirks of these archives. In one chapter of my manuscript, I call it the “Alternative Ledgers of Enslaved Labor.” That’s where the economic angle of this archive really becomes most evident. The chapter itself focuses on this really long ledger kept by Chang and Eng Bunker, who are two other subjects in my study. Chang and Eng were conjoined twins, just like the McKoys. They spent most of their life in North Carolina, just like the McKoys, but they were actually born in Thailand, or then known as Siam. They are the twins around which the phrase “Siamese twins” was established, so they are the original so-called “Siamese twins.” This ledger is interesting to me particularly because they are included in my study not because they were enslaved, but actually because they were racialized, BIPOC people who were slave owners. When they retired from the freakshow stage, they invested their money in buying two adjacent plantations, they married two white sisters—each married to one sister—and they divided their time between these two plantations, they owned a few dozen slaves, and they invested all their money in Confederate currency. So ultimately, we all know the historical outcome of this, that Confederate current went defunct. It became valueless after the war ended, and they were forced to re-enter the freakshow stage as performers, essentially to support their family and to support themselves. I’m interested in this ledger, particularly because it’s so detailed and so nitty gritty, but it doesn’t recount any of the expenses of all of the enslaved souls that lived on these plantations. So it doesn’t have a lot of information about the women and men that they enslaved, but it has things like, “gave daughter five cents to repair her gloves,” “25 cents in postage for publicity, five flyers,” I’m sifting through this ledger primarily to think about ways that performance labor is recorded, but slave labor is erased. And I’m also curious about how we think about performance labor through these enslaved performers. So folks, not like the Bunkers, but more like the McKoys and Blond Tom Wiggins and Joice Heth, who are other people who are in my study. I’m interested in how we could reconfigure this as not just performance practices, but thinking about labor because at its heart, slavery is a labor system. It is an economic system—to live in a slave society is an economic system. So I’m thinking through scholars like historian Stephanie Smallwood’s Saltwater Slavery , I’m thinking through things like Jennifer Morgan’s Laboring Women , where they think really intimately about the connection between finance and enslavement and what it means, particularly for Black women. I’m curious about how all these things could be read through performance, where we’re not necessarily seeing these performers do things like pick cotton, or perform housework, or take care of children because they were presumed to be valueless, essentially, because of their physical disability. But many of them ended up becoming the prize of their master’s plantation because their performance labor actually netted more money than they could do any of those domestic tasks or fieldwork. So I’m curious about that relationship and how it can be explicated. JPPE : Switching over to your project on nation and how the nation is imagined and born, what is the relation between literature and performance and the idea of nationhood? How do postcolonialism and Black Feminist Theory interact with, shape, or reflect these ideas and forces? Bainbridge : I first became interested in this topic because I was teaching a class which used to be called State-Funded Theater of the Americas and now is called State-Funded Theater of the US and Caribbean, which looks at state-funded theater from the 20th century after postcolonial movements have started to emerge in the 1930s until about the 1970s. It is concerned with why and how so many states, these newly formed independent nations, as they were entering the postcolonial period, why they were funding theater. That was my initial question that started the idea for the book. What is it about theater or these plays—you know, they’re funding plays by Dereck Walcott about the Haitian Revolution, they’re funding plays by Sylvia Winter, they’re funding plays by lesser-known playwrights and we’re seeing this explosion of work from really important folks who would later become important poets, playwrights, postcolonial theorists, and they’re essentially being put to work by these states making theater? And then at the same time, in the US during the Great Depression, we start to see things like the Works Progress Administration and the Federal Theater Project, which are funding what they’re calling “Negro Units,” in the parlance of the day, of all-Black theater companies that are doing this really interesting work. I was introduced to a book by a scholar named Stephanie Batiste, who wrote a book called Darkening Mirrors . The book is about how these Negro Units of the Federal Theater Project were also thinking about US imperialism and internationalism in their performances because they often staged things like a production of Macbeth that’s set in Haiti or a version of The Mikado that’s set in the Pacific. And they’re doing these really interesting internationalist works, and I was also really taken in by a book called Sachmo Blows up the World which thinks about how Black jazz artists were sent around the world during the Cold War essentially as ambassadors of American identity. I became interested in all of these questions around the same time, which is: why is it important to use art to express national identity or a nationalist identity? I really started thinking about how these works could be connected, and I started to find other examples of how these places, these newly formed nations were thinking about their own national identities. Then the second thing I became really interested in was the professionalization of the Olympics, which sounds completely disparate and sounds like it has nothing to do with it, but basically I wanted to know how the Olympics went from being what was considered an amateur event—so, one of the requirements of the Olympics prior to, I want to say the 1970s or earlier, was that folks had to be amateur athletes, so they couldn’t be making money, either from sponsorship or they couldn’t be involved in professional leagues. And this was supposed to be a leveling of the playing field, but also was a big hallmark of the Olympic Games. As that transitioned to becoming this multibillion-dollar industry with TV ads and Coca-Cola sponsorships and all this other stuff, we start to see some of these newly independent nations start to get this greater recognition beyond the scope of their political impact. So we start to see places like my family’s home country of Jamaica become really famous for track and field, even though on the international politics scale, they weren’t considered a necessarily huge player by other nations because of global anti-Blackness and general disregard for Caribbean politics. So, we see smaller nations get this chance to now be considered competitors of larger nations. Those are the two archives that I started digging around in that made me want to ask these questions, and as I got more and more into thinking about these things, I just started pulling that thread and saying, “What are other instances of ways that nations perform their own identity?” I started thinking about monuments because we were in this endless news cycle of Confederate monuments being torn down and colonial monuments being torn down around the world. And then I started thinking, “Well, what’s another performance that’s supposed to signify something?” And I started looking into the performance and writing of national anthems, who gets put on money, who becomes a national hero, who’s considered an emblem of the nation? And I think all of these questions come because I am a scholar who’s deeply invested in Black Feminist Theory. They come from a Black Feminist perspective because I’m not just concerned with how we perform masculine leadership in new nations. I’m concerned with how all of these disparate things come together, but I’m also curious about the performance of nationalism or the performance of the nation-state particularly because I just haven’t had as many satisfying answers. I have a rule, basically: if I’m in a meeting and I have an idea, I have to be willing to do the thing that I’m suggesting, or else I don’t suggest it, because I hate being that person who says, “It’d be great if someone …would do this.” I have a similar thing with my scholarship, which is: if I have a question and it needs answering, I should probably write it down and write the answer because I can’t wait on someone else to do the project or do the thing. The question of nationhood became really interesting to me, not because I’m so much invested in the idea of the nation-state, but because these early independent countries as they’re starting to formulate their own idea of themselves, are turning to things like parades, and festivals, and literature, and theater, and are funding it at an incredibly high rate in comparison to what we see today. I mean, now it’s hard to get money out of a government to do anything artistic because other things are considered more practical. But it’s curious to me that so many nations are experiencing that same impulse at the same time—they’re saying “Oh, it’s important for us to have anthem, it’s important for us to have a national team at the Olympics, it’s important for us to put on plays and give people a sense of cultural heritage and pride.” It just seemed like too many coincidences not to be something, and that’s really where the idea came from. JPPE : How has the relationship between nationhood and culture and performance in literature or literary methods shifted over time and geography? How have different power systems influenced this? Bainbridge : From what I’ve done in terms of preliminary research and writing the proposal, in the early days of these postcolonial movements, there was a lot of effort made to put a good face on independence. There was a sense of celebration, liberation, where we start to see things like emerging Pan-Africanism, Black Nationalism, a sort of international perspective that’s thinking of people of color and oppressed people as in league with each other, as having shared destinies. And I think that’s really, really fascinating. I also think that as time goes on, and we start to see some of the hangover of postcolonial excitement, we start to see less and less of these performances, at least in my early stages of research for this second project. While there’s this big boom at the beginning of, “we need to have plays and pageantry and all this stuff to celebrate postcolonial identity,” it starts to slowly wane, not necessarily because I think the interest in promoting cultural identity goes away, but because other emerging issues of forming an independent nation come to the fore, things like being recognized internationally, economic downturn, the strength of the dollar—these become more prevalent at the front. As many nations became sort of undermined by the international community, we just see less and less of it. That’s the trajectory that I’m tracing now. Why is there this period of just explosion of creativity? And then the creativity doesn’t go away, the creation doesn’t go away, but some of the funding goes away, and when people are less inclined to put money behind something, it becomes less visible. And now, my work as a historian is to trace what became less visible. JPPE : Did the burst of creativity also come during independence movements? Bainbridge : Yeah, so we start to see them in the line with a lot of independence movements. I start the book with Aimé Césaire’s and others’ formulation of Négritude in the 1930s, which is interesting because Césaire himself is a politician, poet, theorist, global citizen—you know, he’s doing all this stuff. So I start with that, and then I think as time goes on—like anything, creativity is a plant, it needs water to grow, it needs funding to grow, it needs support to grow—we start to see people investing, especially because a lot of these early politicians had a sense of culture and literature that was more acute. They’re reading Marx, they’re reading cultural theory, they’re exchanging ideas, they’re organizing festivals and things together. There’s a lot of shared destiny in their thinking. But I think, because the idea of nation-state often gets framed, especially from a Western perspective, as individualistic—there’s the idea that you have to support and protect the boundaries and borders and we hear that rhetoric all the time here in the US—we start to see that it doesn’t disappear, people are still engaging and writing and making the stuff, but we just see a shift in focus, and I think that’s really where art reaches its limit a little bit. JPPE : How can theory and literature help us understand modern imperialism and the continuing legacies of past imperialism? Bainbridge : That’s really a great question. I’ll reference again Stephanie Batiste’s book because I think she does an excellent and really articulate job of discussing the connection between imperialism and performance. I do think that the work we make in any given historical moment is informed by what’s happening around us. Even if you set a sci-fi thriller in the year 3500, it’s informed by the moment you write it in. We know that implicitly as people who study literature and study performance, but I think it’s also curious as we start to see work now take up that charge but in a commercial sense. The work that I study was primarily funded by governments, and I’m interested in that aspect of things, but I was teaching the Swing Mikado (or the all-Black cast of the Mikado ) to my students a couple weeks ago, and one of them brought up—so I can’t take credit for this—they brought up that it’s really interesting to see that this moment is so concerned with US militarism and involvement around the world, and we’re coming off the wake of World War I, launching right into World War II, and then the Korean War and Vietnam, and we’re seeing all these things. And they made an analogy between the Swing Mikado or the all-Black cast of the Mikado and Hamilton , and how those two things speak to each other. They were saying that if the question of the moment when Swing Mikado came out in the 1930s was emerging US military involvement and imperialism, then the question of Hamilton is the hangover and wake of multiculturalism and what moment we’re in now as a society. And there’s lots to be said about Hamilton , I don’t know if I necessarily need to go down that rabbit-hole, but one thing that I find fascinating about it—and I didn’t see a live production, I saw the Disney Plus recording of the stage version—is that I think the music is actually quite good but I think that what it’s doing in terms of cross-racial casting is actually really confusing and not necessarily as successful as people think. So, I’m curious about that connection because, if the question of that moment was emerging imperialism, the question of this moment is now entrenched imperialism coupled with the hangover of 90s and early 2000s multiculturalism, and the promise of that moment. When I was a kid in the 90s, multiculturalism was everywhere. There was this idea that if we just put people forward enough, if we just represent people enough, if we just have enough TV shows with diverse casts, that will solve the problem of race or solve the problem of classism or xenophobia. And now, many years later, we see the failings of that. But I think the hopefulness of something like Hamilton is directly linked to that movement and that moment. Previous Next

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 .

A More Perfect Union Inclusive Norms and the Future of Liberal Unity Benjamin Seymour Brown University Author Ginevra Bulgari Vance Kelley Julia Rock Jakob Wells Editors Spring 2018 This essay analyzes the most dire threats to political unity today b y critiquing historical approaches to this subject. Given the sprawling apparatus of the modern state, it’s easy to wonder how such an entity—one that requires the complex and cumbersome coordination of complete strangers every day—exists and persists at all. Indeed, endless tomes of regulations guide this bureaucratic behemoth’s daily affairs; and yet, these volumes seem inadequate to address the philosophical question of what motivates humanity to come together despite differences and form a project directed toward mutual advantage and a common good. An answer to this question would need to identify a more essential aspect of our constitution as persons, a continuity that underlies the diverse interests and identities that coexist in a state. Generations of political theorists have grappled with the problem of national unity and, through their attempts to theorize this fundamental impulse, realized that unity is the sine qua non condition of possibility for the state; therefore, upholding this unity is of vital importance for national stability and longevity. The German political theorist Carl Schmitt, who was an active member of the Nazi party, virulent anti-Semite, and chief architect of the Third Reich’s justificatory underpinnings, was chiefly concerned with national unity. He uses his principle of national unity as homogeneity and exclusion to challenge the inclusive liberal notion of unity through shared values, by arguing that the liberal approach poses an existential threat to the survival of the state. Despite the clarity and thoroughness of Schmitt’s critique of liberalism, liberal political thinkers such as John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas remain unconvinced by Schmitt’s account and instead defend the liberal conception of unity, which avoids the drastic conclusions and totalitarian implications of Schmitt’s thought. While Rawls’ responses to Schmitt’s normative arguments prove compelling, Habermas, by recognizing the central importance of identity in Schmitt’s critique, lays the groundwork for a new defense of liberal unity that retains a substantive interest in questions of national identity. To reformulate and reaffirm the liberal notion of unity, this paper will: (I) explore Schmitt’s notion of national unity through enmity as a critique of liberal inclusivity; (II) examine Rawls’ account of overlapping consensus as a foundation for social unity that resists Schmitt’s most problematic commitments; (III) clarify how Habermas’ preoccupation with identity further strengthens the Rawlsian notion of liberal unity against Schmittian ethno-nationalism; and finally (IV) realize Habermas’ conception of inclusive unity by, counter-intuitively, embracing the very fragmentation of social identities that appears to be the greatest threat to national unity today. Rooted in radical exclusion and the constant threat of violence, Schmitt’s conception of the political situates unity in a homogenous populace’s allegiance against a common enemy. As an inheritor of German existentialist thought, Schmitt analyzes political life with a systematic approach that emphasizes an ontological and philosophical hierarchy, wherein certain concepts are metaphysically prior to higher-order notions. The absolute foundation of this hierarchy, from which all political entities ultimately derive, is Schmitt’s conception of the political. Indeed, the first sentence of his treatise, The Concept of the Political, confirms this hierarchical approach: “The concept of the state presupposes the concept of the political” (Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, 19). For Schmitt, a concept only derives its meaning by referring to a concrete reality in the world. While the referent of the more intuitive concept of the state is the state’s sprawling apparatus and daily operations, Schmitt believes that his more fundamental notion of the political denotes an equally tangible reality. Schmitt’s famous friend-enemy distinction instantiates the concept of the political within his system. As a theorist whose philosophy is defined by its political principle of radical negation and exclusivity, Schmitt believes that every discourse is defined by an insoluble antithesis or distinction. Like the contrasts between good and evil in ethics, beautiful and ugly in aesthetics, and profitable and unprofitable in economics, Schmitt contends that the political is defined by the antithesis between friend and enemy. Such a reductionist analysis establishes the political as independent from moral questions and postulates the friend-enemy distinction as ontologically irreducible: The political enemy need not be morally evil or aesthetically ugly; he need not appear as an economic competitor, and it may even be advantageous to engage with him in business transactions. But he is, nevertheless, the other, the stranger; and it is sufficient for his nature that he is, in a specially intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in the extreme case conflicts with him are possible (Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, 27). The dehumanizing and fascistic possibilities of a conception of politics based on a distinction that treats another person as existentially alien marks Schmitt’s philosophy as a clear antipode to liberal notions of equality and intuitive morality. But Schmitt’s existentialist conception of meaning imbues his notion of the political with a dangerous urgency, as the concrete referent of the friend-enemy distinction, and thus the very concept of the political itself, is the constant and real possibility of physical violence with the enemy. By establishing a principle of difference, negation, and enmity as the foundation of his conception of politics, Schmitt makes his principle of unity the ontological epicenter of his philosophical project. Fully aware of the power of the fear and hostility on which his notion of the political is founded, Schmitt contends that only the sheer force of the friend-enemy distinction is sufficient to fuse a collection of individuals into a genuine social unit. Schmitt’s emphasis on collectivity is likewise essential to his understanding of the political. The friend and enemy of Schmitt’s antithesis necessarily refer to collectives, transforming these enemies into public enemies and these friends into the other members of one’s political group. Thus, the concept of the political only becomes efficacious by virtue of the shared quality of the friend-enemy distinction. But when a group of individuals is united, through a common and homogenous sense of who the friends and the enemies are, it partakes in the sublime force of the political, which transfigures this collective into an entirely new kind of entity—a people. In Schmitt’s ontological hierarchy of politics, a people are second only to the political antithesis that defines and unites them. Yet a new property emerges at the higher metaphysical order of a people that both allows for the possibility of an organized state and proves significant to another dimension of Schmitt’s critique of liberalism: “If such an entity [of a people] exists at all, it is always the decisive entity, and it is sovereign in the sense that the decision about the critical situation, even if it is the exception, must always necessarily reside there” (Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, 38). By virtue of its sovereignty, which Schmitt equates with an ability to make certain decisions, a homogenous people becomes capable of forming the institutions and norms of a state. Like his conception of political unity through radical exclusion, Schmitt’s formulation of sovereignty similarly challenges another fundamental liberal tenet: the commitment to norms exemplified by the rule of law. As set forth in his collection of essays, Political Theology, Schmitt’s notion of sovereignty receives a succinct expression in the book’s famous first sentence: “Sovereign is he who decides on the exception” (Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, 5). Related to the idea of a state of emergency, the exception refers to an abnormal situation in which the Schmittian sovereign decides that the general rules do not apply. In this exceptional situation, the sovereign then suspends the general norms and acts by virtue of its own authority. Thus, for Schmitt, a law or norm is only legitimate when it is recognized by the ontologically prior sovereign power, yet this recognition consists precisely in the sovereign acknowledging its own authority to suspend or violate this rule in exceptional cases. By arguing that norms are only defined by their exceptions and limits, Schmitt undermines the liberal commitment to the rule of law, which insists that sovereign powers are not exempt from their own laws and norms. Schmitt’s critique of liberalism thereby rejects a normative approach to politics that extends back to the Magna Carta and inscribes authority within definite bounds. An even more disturbing feature of Schmitt’s notion of sovereignty, however, is that the ambiguous phrase “on the exception,” means not only that the sovereign decides in exceptional cases, but also that the sovereign decides which cases are to be treated as exceptional. As Schmitt writes: “He [the sovereign] decides whether there is an extreme emergency as well as what must be done to eliminate it. Although he stands outside the normally valid legal system, he nevertheless belongs to it, for it is he who must decide whether the constitution needs to be suspended in its entirety” (Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, 7). The sublime and even transcendent authority that Schmitt attributes to the sovereign is problematic beyond merely challenging the rule of law, which forms the very foundation of the liberal constitutional state—since sovereign authority ontologically derives from the political, Schmitt argues that the unchecked power of the sovereign must therefore serve to maintain and strengthen this antagonistic principle of unity. Thus, according to Schmitt, the state must act in such a way that most promotes the homogenous unity of the political, upon which the very possibility of a state depends. Schmitt’s ontological hierarchy, by exalting his notion of the political as the unity of a sovereign people, imbues political entities with a telos. The political, as the foundation of all public associations and institutions, also becomes their vital principle and their ultimate purpose. In Constitutional Theory, Schmitt’s most influential legal text, the sinister principle of national unity assumes a more concrete and recognizable form. Fundamental liberties, as established in this text, are usually non-political in the sense that they attach to individuals in their private lives or in a non-social manner. For example, freedom of worship is a basic liberty that, according to Schmitt, should be respected by the state as long as one’s religious views or practices merely affect one’s private behavior. This right could be suspended if members of a certain religion used their faith as a vehicle for political change, as in the case of the Civil Rights Movement or the Indian Independence Movement. While Schmitt recognizes that there are often de facto limits to the political in a state, there is no limiting principle to stop the intrusive expansion of the political. Thus, the reach of the political can and even should expand if it serves to strengthen national unity. To pursue our example, the sovereign could decide to suspend even the right to privately believe in a certain religious doctrine if the sovereign decides that this doctrine is affiliated with its Schmittian enemy. This expansion of the realm of the political, if continued, culminates in what Schmitt celebrates as the ideal of the “total state,” in which all aspects of life are re-politicized and thereby subsumed into an all encompassing friend-enemy distinction: “Every religious, moral, economic, ethical, or other antithesis transforms into a political one if it is sufficiently strong to group human beings effectively according to friend and enemy” Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, 37). The total state in which everything reflects and strengthens the friend-enemy distinction would, for Schmitt, possess the highest possible degree of political unity, as its people would have a completely homogeneous sense of friend and enemy. It requires no small leap of the imagination to see how Schmitt’s ideal of the total state coincided with Nazism, which attempted to build an empire based on an ethnic friend-enemy distinction that indeed encompassed all aspects of life. Yet despite this repulsive extremism, Schmitt’s model is a considerable challenge to liberalism—one that requires a liberal response that can defend an inclusive account of national unity and a norm-based approach to politics that leaves the rule of law intact. Rawls provides a liberal antidote to Schmitt by formulating an inclusive conception of national unity based on shared norms. John Rawls proved to be a preeminent liberal philosopher by offering analyses of the principles underlying modern constitutional democracies, distinguished by Rawls’ interest in promoting the just and fair treatment of all members of these societies. Indeed, Rawls’ background in Kantian moral philosophy is evident in his persistent belief in the equal dignity of persons—a liberal tenet that Schmitt rejects through the ontological inequality imbedded in his friend-enemy distinction. In place of the exclusion and homogeneity that suffuse Schmitt’s conception of the political, Rawls affirms an inclusive principle of unity that is woven into the very fabric of his philosophical system as a crucial background assumption. In Political Liberalism, Rawls describes how he assumes a plurality of different worldviews to be a fundamental feature of liberal democracies: “the diversity of reasonable comprehensive religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines found in modern democratic societies is not a mere historical condition that may soon pass away; it is a permanent feature of the public culture of democracy” John Rawls, Political Liberalism, 36). Rawls defines comprehensive doctrines as complete and fully realized normative worldviews. In his assumption, Rawls flatly rejects the homogeneity that Schmitt argues is the essence of political unity. Though this assumption appears to be a factual claim about the nature of liberal democratic societies, Rawls gives this claim normative weight by distinguishing between the notion of mere pluralism—wherein members of a society subscribe to different comprehensive doctrines—and that of reasonable pluralism. For Rawls, reasonable pluralism refers to the idea that free institutions actually promote a diversity of comprehensive doctrines that a reasonable person could subscribe to. As a radically pluralistic and inclusive notion, reasonable pluralism, as a fundamental feature of liberal democracies, creates the space in which democratic deliberation and debate can occur. As a vital condition for the proper functioning of a democratic and liberal society, reasonable pluralism ensures that inclusivity and diversity occupy a fundamental position in Rawlsian liberal society. But this rebuke of Schmitt’s notion of the political, as defined by the friend-enemy distinction, does not yet provide an alternative account of national unity. Through his notion of overlapping consensus, Rawls proposes a theory of national unity grounded in shared norms and similarity across difference. Given the profound diversity of individuals’ values within a liberal society that reasonable pluralism implies, national unity, at least from the perspective of Schmitt’s critique, appears precarious. Yet Rawls denies that national unity is unattainable in liberal democracies, by exploring the distinction between an individual’s comprehensive doctrine and their non-comprehensive political views. Along these lines, two individuals—for example a Christian fundamentalist and a socialist atheist—could deeply disagree over many issues by virtue of their conflicting comprehensive doctrines; however, they might also hold some political views in common, like a commitment to the right to free speech. Thus, despite the radical heterogeneity and diversity of worldviews in a multicultural liberal society, there are certain principles that Rawls argues would be shared amongst opposing but reasonable comprehensive doctrines. These shared principles, to which any reasonable person would assent, constitute Rawls’ notion of the overlapping consensus, which unites individuals whose comprehensive doctrines may nonetheless be extraordinarily different. As establishing a common national commitment to certain principles, the overlapping consensus serves to unite a reasonably pluralistic society around inclusive norms. Rawls also frames his discussion of the overlapping consensus in explicitly normative terms, beyond the mere fact that the overlapping consensus is a collection of normative principles, by relating the overlapping consensus to liberal notions of legitimacy and autonomy: Since political power is the coercive power of free and equal citizens as a corporate body, this power should be exercised, when constitutional essentials and basic questions of justice are at stake, only in ways that all citizens can reasonably be expected to endorse in the light of their common human reason (Rawls, Political Liberalism, 139-140). Rawls’ insistence on certain limiting conditions under which coercive political power should be employed reveals a striking divergence from Schmitt’s unlimited notion of sovereign authority. Only authority exercised within these limits is legitimate in the Rawlsian sense. Furthermore, Rawls’ particular formulation of legitimacy is intimately related to the notion of autonomy, which literally means self-lawgiving. Since political coercion is only legitimate when any reasonable individual would assent to it, the state’s sovereign authority is strictly limited by the overlapping consensus, i.e. what reasonable citizens would mutually agree to. In stark contrast to Schmitt’s unlimited notion of sovereignty as rooted in a unifying principle of profound exclusion and homogeneity, Rawls outlines a liberal notion of unity through an overlapping consensus that emphasizes shared norms across reasonable differences and inscribes the state’s coercive authority within determinate limits. Rawls’ insistence on the rule of law and an inclusive notion of national unity becomes even more apparent through the concrete and realized form it assumes in Rawls’ reflections on the importance of constitutions for liberal societies. For Rawls, constitutions perform the essential function of codifying certain shared and fundamental values—aspects of the overlapping consensus—to ensure that they are consistently respected. In contrast to Schmitt, Rawls is an adamant supporter of the rule of law, who affirms the importance of consistently and impartially upholding rules. In A Theory of Justice, Rawls devotes a section to the rule of law, wherein he provides a simple and intuitive counter-argument to Schmitt’s contention that a rule is essentially defined by its ability to be suspended in exceptional cases: “The rule of law also implies the precept that similar cases be treated similarly. Men could not regulate their actions by means of rules if this precept were not followed” (Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 237). Indeed, under a regime whose laws are frequently suspended or changed by the sacrosanct power of the sovereign, it would be prohibitively difficult to follow laws at all, given their constant mutability. Like Schmitt, however, Rawls argues that constitutions should and do reinforce his notion of national unity in important ways. First, the constitution provides specific procedures for conflict resolution that diffuse intra-societal tensions, instead of merely redirecting these antagonistic energies toward a common enemy. Second, Rawls claims that a state’s constitution, when successful, can reinforce reasonable pluralism and foster a positive feedback loop that stabilizes and unites the diverse members of a liberal society under their shared values and institutions: The basic political institutions incorporating these principles and the form of public reason shown in applying them when working effectively and successfully for a sustained period of time (as I am here assuming)—tend to encourage the cooperative virtues of political life: the virtue of reasonableness and a sense of fairness, a spirit of compromise, and a readiness to meet others halfway, all of which are connected with the willingness to cooperate with others on political terms that everyone can politically accept (Rawls, Political Liberalism, 163). In a gesture similar to Schmitt’s claim that the constitution must serve the telos of his exclusive conception of national unity, Rawls maintains that the constitution can be an important component in securing unity in a pluralistic liberal society by strengthening certain common virtues that promote inclusivity. Rawls therefore formulates a liberal conception of national unity that offers an attractive alternative to Schmitt’s vision of unity through a mutual enemy. Indeed, Rawls’ response to Schmitt also seems far better equipped to handle the multicultural realities of an increasingly globalized world, whose largest and most prominent states are and continue to become ever more pluralistic. While Rawls’ responses to Schmitt fail to explicitly address the problematic role of identity in Schmitt’s critique of liberal unity, Habermas addresses this issue from a liberal perspective similar to Rawls’. Although educated in different philosophical traditions, Rawls and Habermas share commitments to many fundamental liberal values. Like Rawls, Habermas begins with the factual assumption that contemporary liberal democracies are defined by their multiculturalism and plurality of worldviews. Given this diversity, Habermas likewise claims that these disparate groups can be brought together through shared norms and an inclusive attitude that rejects the radical homogeneity of the Schmittian political. Despite these shared preoccupations between Rawls and Habermas, their divergent emphases reveal crucial aspects of their philosophical vantage points. For example, Habermas imbues the question of national unity with an urgency and importance comparable to Schmitt. Although Rawls undeniably thought about and wrote on the question of national unity with acuity and insight, Schmitt and Habermas examine the threat of political fragmentation as fundamental because of their shared German inheritance of a national history marked by perennial partition and disunity. In contrast to both Schmitt and Rawls, however, Habermas turns to a nation’s constitution to provide—not merely a supportive element in fostering a unified national community—but a veritable foundation for a unified and inclusive liberal state. Referring to this political model as “constitutional patriotism,” Habermas proposes an alternative liberal principle of unity, one highly related to and coherent with Rawls’ liberal project, that Habermas argues can challenge Schmitt’s claim that liberal inclusivity cannot provide a substantive identity to the members of a society. Habermas’ groundbreaking essay, “The Postnational Constellation and the Future of Democracy,” explores how globalizing forces have fundamentally altered identity-forming processes in a way that renders unity through nationalist identities no longer viable. By reflecting on the contemporary prevalence of immigration, the complex ways in which localities interact with globalized mass media, and the ease of communication across national and cultural lines, Habermas arrives at the conclusion that people have adapted a new sense of identity in response to these multifarious forces. Because ‘traditional’ modes of identity, in the nineteenth century for example, were more stable and consistent across localities, identifying with a particular town, religion, nation, and worldview was a more socially unifying and coherent process. Habermas contends that today, however, a single individual might identify with multiple hometowns, two or more national heritages, and a familial as well as a personal religious identity. Habermas vividly describes: [T]he dynamic image of an ongoing construction of new modes of belonging; new subcultures and lifestyles, a process kept in motion through intercultural contact and multiethnic connections. This strengthens a trend toward individualization and the emergence of ‘cosmopolitan identities,’ already evident in postindustrial societies Habermas, "The Postnational Constellation and the Future of Democracy," 76). This process, whereby interaction with global forces leads individuals to adopt layered identities, simultaneously threatens traditional models of national unity and underscores the need for a more inclusive and norm-based model of political unity. Undoubtedly, Schmitt’s conception of political unity would qualify as a ‘traditional,’ model of national belonging, whose unqualified insistence on the importance of national homogeneity does not seem capable of prevailing under these new conditions. Indeed, Habermas writes that Schmitt’s friend-enemy distinction most often appears along ethnic lines, as in the case of National Socialism, although for Habermas this is a historically contingent fact. Regardless, Habermas considers Schmitt’s notion of the political a reflection of the ethnonationalist conception of national identity whose unity is predicated on a sense of belonging to a shared heritage: “‘ethnonationalism’ blurs the traditional distinction between ‘ethnos’ and ‘demos.’ This expression emphasizes the proximity between an ‘ethnos,’ a pre-political community of shared descent organized around kinship ties, on the one hand, and a nation constituted as a state that at least aspires to political independence on the other” (Habermas, "On the Relation between the Nation, the Rule of Law and Democracy," 130). The absolute nature of Schmittian homogeneity, especially when considered along ethnic lines, appears all the more reactionary and unviable in light of Habermas’ account of contemporary, complex identity formation. Thus, Habermas proposes constitutional patriotism as an inclusive way of identifying with the national community that opposes Schmittian ethnonationalism. Like the liberal commitment to shared norms and inclusive pluralism outlined by Rawls, Habermas’ constitutional patriotism entails a national culture that identifies with the values embodied by that nation’s constitution. Since liberal democratic constitutions use highly generalized language in order to encompass as many situations as possible, constitutional norms embrace the tolerance and equality that Habermas sees as vital to ensuring national unity in the contemporary, globalized world. In contrast to constitutional patriotism, Habermas characterizes ethnonationalism as entailing a pathological and exclusive fusing of the national culture with mere majority culture. Consider the case of Germany, wherein a conception of German identity that relies on a certain ethnic, religious, or even linguistic affiliation would exclude significant portions of the populace. For Habermas, the immediate gains of the Schmittian exclusionary approach will in fact undermine national unity on the long run, due to the unstoppable process of global connections forging complex identities within societies whose homogenous histories are quickly becoming relics of the past. Habermas therefore arrives at a normative claim intended to provide a solution to the problem of achieving unity through identity in a contemporary liberal state: “the majority culture must detach itself from its fusion with the general political culture in which all citizens share equally; otherwise it dictates the parameters of political discourses from the outset” (Habermas, "The Postnational Constellation and the Future of Democracy," 146). Constitutional patriotism is realized in this very act of uncoupling majority culture from national culture, wherein the national culture transforms into the identification with the shared norms and inclusive equality of constitutional values. Only then can national unity be achieved without resorting to Schmittian ethnonationalism, which Habermas argues excludes vast communities within contemporary liberal democracies. Although Habermas himself acknowledges that constitutional patriotism is more abstract than the primitive power of Schmitt’s friend-enemy distinction, he embraces it as a normative necessity that citizens of liberal democracies should undertake, to ensure the stability and longevity of their nation’s political culture. By arriving at a moral injunction, Habermas fails to provide an adequate incentive for the majority to adopt constitutional patriotism; however, a Habermasian approach that more fully embraces the aforementioned fragmentary identity-forming processes solves this issue by pointing the way towards the dissolution of majority culture itself. The prospect of uncoupling national from majority culture is undeniably daunting, as the widespread introduction of constitutional patriotism as a national identity would involve the loss of significant privilege, status, and power for those who are current members of this majority culture. The roots of ethnonationalism continue to grip the political foundations of ostensibly liberal democratic societies, less because the public is convinced by the ideas of thinkers like Schmitt—although segments of these populations undoubtedly are, as the so called “alt-right” has recently demonstrated in the US—but rather because the majority gains an elevated status through exclusionary forms of national unity. The ethical cost of this exaltation of the majority culture on a national scale is the demeaning alienation of minority communities and, while Habermas is right to advocate for a more inclusive national identity that would remain faithful to liberal values, it seems unlikely that the majority would freely give up its status by adopting constitutional patriotism only to benefit the greater good. If one believes that people tend to act out of self-interest instead of morality, then the incentive to preserve the connection between majority and national culture itself must be nullified before constitutional patriotism can prevail. The tools for solving this problem are present in Habermas. To take Habermasian thought a step beyond Habermas himself, one can imagine what the process of complex identity fragmentation and formation would look like in the long term. In this scenario, the majority of people would no longer subscribe to a singular or even predominant identity. On the contrary, the very fragmentation that Habermas argues unsettles national unity would transform the populace of a liberal democracy into a vast network of many small communities, whose individual members would each belong to a great multitude of them. Such a nation would be so deeply fragmented that any given aspect of one’s identity would not provide a sufficiently large community to establish a majority. Instead, majority decisions would be made entirely by heterogeneous coalitions whose interest overlap for the time being, but who remain fragmentary constellations of various communities without a single or cohesive identity. Under such conditions of extreme fragmentation and individualization, Schmitt would argue that the nation itself has ceased to exist, even if its political institutions persist. From a Habermasian perspective, however, everyone would finally have an incentive to adopt constitutional patriotism, as the majority culture itself has dissolved. To some, this thought experiment may appear extreme, unfounded, or idealistic; but, by revealing a path to constitutional patriotism that does not rely on the mere moral goodness of an entire population, it offers a compelling reason to embrace the fragmentation that Habermas himself ambivalently describes. In doing so, the positive potential of fragmentation provides the possibility of a more hopeful future, in which liberal unity can be fully realized through the widespread adoption of identities as malleable, personal, and idiosyncratic as their individual subscribers. Thus, the future of liberal unity can only be attained through a confrontation and embrace of the very fragmentation that political theorists have feared for far too long. A Habermasian solution to the problem of national identity’s role in fostering political unity thereby completes the liberal project, developed by Rawls and Habermas, of formulating an adequate response and alternative to Schmitt’s critique of liberalism. As the nation-state continues to assert its relevance in the global consciousness of the 21st century, the naïve question to ask would be when the nation-state will fall into obsoleteness and thereby cease to exist. On the contrary, the deep political impulse in humanity and the social need for some form of unifying structure mean that the future of the liberal state will entail a transformation instead of an extinction. But the new political arrangement awaiting humanity at the end of this metamorphosis is yet undecided—making the path to be pursued all the more crucial. By recognizing that national unity as we know it will need to be radically reshaped and may even appear in the guise of what we now perceive as fragmentation, a new path toward this future emerges that rejects neither globalizing fragmentation nor the national community. Only through such affirmation can the enduring negativity of exclusion and perpetual violence someday be overcome. Endnotes 1 Readers may question the philosophical value of engaging with a theorist as reprehensible and repulsive as Carl Schmitt; however, I remain convinced that vigilant opponents of fascism must constantly challenge its foundations, not only to demonstrate the intellectual illegitimacy of totalitarianism, but also to better discern the fascistic modes of thought insidiously purveyed by alleged proponents of liberalis 2 This empirical claim is disputable, but simply assumed in this paper. I ask that skeptical readers grant it arguendo. References Böckenförde, Ernst-Wolfgang. “The Concept of the Political: A Key to Understanding Carl Schmitt's Constitutional Theory.” Law as Politics: Carl Schmitt's Critique of Liberalism. Ed. David Dyzenhaus. Durham: Duke UP, 1998. Print. Habermas, Jürgen. “On the Relation between the Nation, the Rule of Law and Democracy.” The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory. Ed. Ciaran Cronin and Pablo De Greiff. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1998. Print. Habermas, Jürgen. “The Postnational Constellation and the Future of Democracy.” The Postnational Constellation: Political Essays. Trans. Max Pensky. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2001. Print. Müller, Jan-Werner. Constitutional Patriotism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2007. Print. Rawls, John. Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia UP, 2005. Print. Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Belknap of Harvard UP, 1971. Print. Schmitt, Carl. The Concept of the Political. Trans. George Schwab. Chicago: U of Chicago, 2007. Print. Schmitt, Carl. Constitutional Theory. Trans. Jeffrey Seitzer. Durham: Duke UP, 2008. Print. Schmitt, Carl. Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty. Trans. George Schwab. Chicago: U of Chicago, 2005. Print.

Racial Capitalism Racial Capitalism in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Challenging the Fallacy of Black Entitlement under Service Delivery Protests. Olerato Mogomotsi University of Cape Town Author Miles Campbell Allie Dolido Sydney Munro Editors Spring 2018 This essay focuses on racial capitalism in post apartheid South Africa, with reference to service delivery protests. I. Introduction There is a domineering narrative within South African white liberal spaces that black people who have failed to escape the shackling cycle of poverty are lazy, incompetent, and sit on their verandas the whole day waiting for a job to fall in their hands (Biko, 2017). This narrative is conventionally understood as ‘black entitlement.’ White liberals erroneously believe that black poor people, who are in fact dispossessed and agentless, do not want to seize the opportunities South Africa has. With reference to the trend and nature of South African service delivery protests in post-Apartheid South Africa, I argue that South Africa has been and still is plagued by systemic racial capitalism that has persisted through South Africa’s transition into democracy. I argue that racial capitalism has manifested through the adoption of a neo-liberal economy, initiated by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission compromise. Consequently, the pre- and post-apartheid impact of a racially segregated and unilaterally white-benefiting capitalist economy is a rash on the black mind which has not seen adequate redress. I will first show how Marxist and Liberal authors have attempted to merge the concepts of race and capitalism. I will then highlight the Marxist and Liberal shortcomings in validating racial capitalism as a comprehensible and historically visible concept. I will then call for a holistic re-conceptualization of racial capitalism that makes up for the Marxist and Liberal shortcomings. This new conceptualization will inform the rest of my argument around the fallacy of black entitlement in South Africa. I will show that even a black majoritarian government has not been enough to correct the historic economic disadvantage that presently plagues the black poor majority. II. Conceptualising Racial Capitalism In this paper, I will make use of the micro and macro levels of political analysis to understand South Africa’s racial capitalism. This analysis will observe the condition of black South African lives over time in order to explain the persistence of racial capitalism from Apartheid until today. Additionally, by addressing inconsistencies in the Marxist and Liberal conceptions of race and capitalism, I will argue that the effects of colonialism and South African oppression politics have integrated racial capitalism into South African society. Liberal scholarship on racial capitalism in the Apartheid era focuses disproportionately on the socio-legal systematic framework of Apartheid to explain the relationship between race and capitalism. This literature almost regards race in South Africa as inherently anti-capitalistic and claims capitalism was incompatible with Apartheid, primarily because “free-market” capitalism requires equality of opportunity and agency (Schneider, 2003). In truth, liberal scholarship on the intersection of capitalism and racism in South Africa is incomplete because it fails to fully account for institutionalized racism, dispossession and the displacement of black people in South Africa. Liberal scholarship has completely ignored provisions made for white monopolized capitalism, so much so that an Apartheid-like economy could persevere constructively for 46 years. The writing of Merle Lipton exemplifies the liberal perception of an intersection between race and capitalism under the Apartheid regime which I critique. Lipton took no issue in disapproving of Apartheid on a moral basis. He argues that the legalized systematic exclusion of black people in South Africa was unwarranted and unsustainable (Hirsch, 1987). Lipton argued that South Africa, if it were to revive any sign of liberties or democracy and have a sustainable capitalist economy, needed to end Apartheid and replace it with multi-racialism (Hirsch, 1987). While admitting that the South African economy relied on the coerced, cheap labor of black people, it seems surprising and somewhat contradictory that Lipton also states that capitalism never required or supported Apartheid (Hirsch, 1987). This point by Lipton, that capitalism never required Apartheid, is incomplete because it fails to recognize the role that racism and white supremacy has had in the distribution of socio-economic resources, as well as with regard to the historical discrepancies of intergenerational endowments for Blacks relative to Whites. Lipton’s form of liberalism does not account for disproportionate endowments of historical value, such as education, property, wealth and capital that has enabled the legalization of a systematic exclusion and deskilling of black people. In particular, Liberal writing about South Africa tends to minimize the impact of the Bantustans. Liberal writers downplay the role of black people’s economic contribution (Murray, 1987). It is undeniable, as Colin Murray says, that the Bantustans excluded 'blacks from rights of access to jobs and housing in white South Africa;' thereby making blacks economic foreigners in their own country (Murray, 1987). There is a strong indication that due to a lack of education and skills, black migrant cheap labor was the backbone of the agricultural and mining sectors of the South African economy. This produced a “whites as owners” and “blacks as laborers” framework of traditional capitalism being practiced in South Africa between the 1960s and 1970s (Schneider, 2003). Thus, it is clear that we cannot discount the impact of systematic exclusion from economic activity in the form of adequate welfare provision, labor mobility and deskilling, which incites consistent wealth creation disproportionately along racial lines. It is the discounting of the abovementioned systematic exclusion that accounts for the incompleteness of the liberal attempt to conceptualize racial capitalism. Alternatively, Marxist scholarship places disproportionate emphasis on capitalism’s need for class creation and reproduction, thus ignoring the role of racial subjugation (SACP, 1987). In historicizing class creation through racial lines, Marxist conceptions completely sidelined the historical impact, nature, and intent of settler colonialism in changing the psychology of South African blackness. While I admit that cheap black labor is a manifestation of racial capitalism, racial capitalism cannot be removed from the narrative of settler colonialism in South Africa. The experience of continual dispossession of blacks from their social and economic endowments is informed by the institutionalization of settler colonialism as bedrock of racial capitalism. Marxist conceptions of racial capitalism in South Africa focused primarily on the issue of Black cheap labor. The economy of South Africa was sustained by black unskilled workers, who were forced to migrate from the Bantustans to South African economic hubs such as Johannesburg to find work (SACP, 1987). The views of neo-Marxist writers, such as Nancy Leong, provide a revisionist yet historically deficient view of racial capitalism, stating that racial capitalism is the “process of deriving social or economic value from the racial identity of another person” (Leong 2013). Leong comments on how liberalism has made blackness a desirable entity, which is to be captured, possessed and used (Leong 2013). While this type of Marxist conception focuses on the importance of race relations in driving capitalism, it still lacks an adequate explanation of why Black people are disadvantaged in a capitalist system. It is arguable that more can be done in the literature to hone in on the extent to which settler colonialism was the fundamental determinant the native’s structural economic exploitation. This may further inform how the subjugation of natives in South Africa became a structurally inherited and sustained method of fostering a type of capitalism which is drawn along racial lines. The South African Communist Party’s “Colonialism of a Special Type Document” fittingly substantiates my argument about this point, as it too claims that South Africa’s capitalism maintained the norm of colonial dominance, where the colonial ruling class (White people) and the oppressed black majority live in one country (SACP, 1987). The structural reinforcement of capitalism by the white owning class has not changed with the changed South African Political climate, which should be seen as a factor solidifying racial capitalism in post-Apartheid South Africa. While racial capitalism occurred in the Apartheid system, it is not reliant on that particular regime. Rather, we must understand that racial capitalism exists today because of the intersection of settler colonialism intent, historical dispossession and the deskilling of black people. Thus, by merging Liberal and Marxists concepts of race and capitalism, I conclude that racial capitalism is best defined as follows: Racial capitalism is a malleable term that defines the conditions under which racial identities are used to reinforce coercive power relations, which are seen in the racialization of socio-economic resources. It is informed by the domination of a particular racial group in order to extract economic gain for the benefit of the dominant class (Leong, 2013). Racial capitalism at its core makes use of racial prejudice as an instrument of maintaining unequal participation in the market resource allocation process by reinforcing systematic dispossession and deskilling of the oppressed race under a typically liberal economy ideological set. III. Racial Capitalism in the New South Africa This above-mentioned definition of racial capitalism recognizes that the birth and persistence of the capitalist economy in South Africa is inseparable from the unjust system of domination encapsulated by settler colonialism and the maintenance of black dispossession. This definition indicates that the black body is considered valuable so long as it can provide labor and be remunerated with subsistence wages. This leads to its commodification. I anticipate that liberal critics of my working definition might find that this conception of racial capitalism is incompatible with the current condition of South Africa post-1994, a country that adopted what is argued as the best constitution in the world, and maintains a predominantly black-ruled democratic state. However, I counter the supposed positive effects attributed to the process of democratization and liberal constitutionalism, by arguing that there was very little redress, which has resulted in the transferal of racial capitalism into the democratic state, even after 1994. I argue this because the South African government, at a pivotal time of regime change, chose to focus on a creating a globalized neoliberal economy rather than leveling the intergenerational effects of distorted socio-economic endowments along racial lines. To assert this argument, I will refer particularly to the period of transition and ten years post-transition into democracy. Additionally, I will address the way in which uncertainty and neoliberal compromises informed economic policy in the period of democratic transition in South Africa. There is a vivid indication of how compromise politics, which played out through the African National Congress (ANC) primary and National Party negotiating agents, is coupled with the consolidation of neo-liberalism and the protection of racial capitalism in South Africa. The ANC initially had hoped to enact radical economic transformation in South Africa. This is evident from the drafting of the Freedom Charter by the ANC and its allies in 1955 to the introduction of the radical “Reconstruction and Development Programme” policy in 1996. In particular, the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) was an ANC document that stated the intent to use the resources of the country to explicitly eradicate Apartheid, moving towards building a non-racialized society (RDP, 1994). The RDP Policy document recognized the effects of “repressive labor policies” under colonialist domination (RDP, 1994). Furthermore, the document also admitted that the economy was built through systemic racial division, and finally recognized that a political democracy could not flourish with the mass of South Africans remaining impoverished, landless and having no tangible prospects for an increasing standard of living (RDP, 1994). Therefore, the ambitions aimed at addressing these observations and conditions around the past and future of South Africa necessarily are ambitions aimed at the eradication of racial capitalism in South Africa. I claim that it is highly probable that if the ANC, in assuming power, had religiously followed the Freedom Charter and the Reconstruction and Development Plan (RDP), racial capitalism would be well on its way to eradication in the foreseeable future. Upon receiving much negative feedback on the RDP plan by organizations such as the IMF and World Bank, the ANC was pressured to put the interests of economic liberalization over racial justice in redressing the impact of historical racialization of wealth creation. This compromise is evident in the 1996 adoption of the Growth, Employment, and Redistribution (GEAR) neoliberal policy, which favored the deregulation of markets and opposed state intervention in the economy (Schneider, 2003). Such privatization clearly ignored the fact that the poor black majority would be made unable to participate, considering there is no substantial effort in GEAR that aims to equitize and equalize the starting positions of black and whites in economic participation (Reddy, 2011). The adoption of neoliberal policy, despite unconvincing theories on neoliberalism and the perfecting nature of capitalism, was a compromise that allowed continued white monopolization with only one or two elements of emancipation for the black poor (Schneider, 2003). In short, the adoption of neoliberal policies after Apartheid protected and consolidated white economic interests. The adoption of an unregulated capitalist market with limited government intervention meant that white people could retain the wealth and endowments they accumulated over 200 years of settler colonialism and Apartheid in South Africa (Schneider, 2003). While it is true that negotiation and compromises during the regime transition made provisions for political emancipation, they did very little in reality to provide sizeable and immediate economic emancipation, leaving South Africa in a crisis of racial capitalism. Despite an attempt at political negotiation and economic compromises, white people still earn five times more than blacks in South Africa, despite the country being majority black (Stats SA, 2017). There is a systemic economic problem, which cannot be removed from the clawing effects of a historically racially discriminating economy; endowments and privileged market access still remain largely skewed to the white minority in South Africa. It is unlikely today that South Africa will be able to get rid of racial capitalism - especially if the government fails to account for the influence of racialized intergenerational endowments. IV. Racial Capitalism as Material Life: Service Delivery Protest and Black Entitlement Service delivery protests in post-Apartheid South disprove the idea that racial capitalism is incompatible with the new black majoritarian democracy. As I have discussed, moderate economic policy approaches to poor black people can, to some extent, be held responsible for the lack of improvement of the material life of black people post-Apartheid. The service delivery protests display the anger in the black living memory of Apartheid, characterized by a feeling of imprisonment under racial capitalism. These protests can be used to explain that the traditional notion of black entitlement must be replaced by a new understanding, which normatively asserts poor black people’s entitlement to decent service delivery from the government. Black entitlement should not imply the unwillingness of black people to be active participants in the free market economy, but rather, black people fighting back the dispossession faced at the hands of their government. The concept of black entitlement is barely developed in existing literature. It is a concept discussed in the early 2000s when the ANC government first attempted to create a welfare state by providing free housing to the poor in the township communities. There were frequent claims that black people were waiting for the government to do everything for them while remaining idle and free riding on taxpayers’ money. Thus, black entitlement has been used to describe a negative character trait which I believe has been fallaciously attributed to the black poor class. I believe that this concept remembers the past with amnesia by ignoring the economic effects of settler colonialism and racial capitalism. By implying that we are all equals today, it wrongly attributes the continuing economic inferiority of black people to their choice to rely on the government rather than uplift themselves. To date, it is clear that neoliberal policies have not benefited those who need economic reform the most in South Africa: The black poor. In 2016, Aljazeera reporter Sophia Hyatt wrote about the living conditions of a 28-year-old woman from the township of Langa in Cape Town. This woman slept on the floor of a small hostel room with her parents, two sisters, and son, and had to use unhygienic and damaged communal toilets a long distance away from the safety of home (Hyatt 2016). This reality is not just hers, but that of over half of South Africa’s population. This low standard of living is common in most townships and slums all over South Africa, which perversely find themselves cheek to cheek with South African economic hubs - for instance, Alexander township borders Sandton, “Africa’s richest square mile”. Despite the government’s mildly socialist attempt to provide basic services, many poor black South Africans still find themselves living the memory and legacy of Apartheid. It is due to these poor living conditions and the constant reminder of the opulence of white monopoly capital that we have seen a large surge in protest action all over South Africa over the last fifteen years. A service delivery protest is essentially public unrest caused by citizens in response to the government’s failure to address their key welfare concerns. The unrest comes in the form of rioting, marching and the general destruction of normalcy in government operations. In the government’s RDP plan, the ANC promised to provide free water, electricity, housing, and education to the South African poor and to create jobs to decrease the 23% unemployment rate (ISS, 2009). However, the government has proven to be highly inefficient in delivering on these promises, resulting in a disgruntled and disillusioned civil society which seeks to express their grievances the only way they believe they will be heard: through the very language of protest that brought black people political freedom under the ANC. Therefore, there is a certain frustration-aggression as put by Ted Gurr, which arises and brings about behavior that has the propensity to be violent (ISS, 2009). As they did during Apartheid, black poor people still have to find employment in urban areas, thus leaving their families in horrendous conditions in slum townships. These people wake up in the early hours of the morning to commute to city centers where they work predominantly in low skilled labor positions, such as cleaning and gardening. Given that their elected government’s policies have done little to improve their living conditions since the end of apartheid, black poor people are increasingly disillusioned with their political emancipation. It is due to these discouraging conditions that poor black South Africans are angry and protest violently all over the country, with what Carl Death terms the return of the imagination of rolling mass action, as seen in the height of civil disobedience in South Africa in the 1980s (Death, 2010). Poor black people have turned to angered demand and mass mobilization to advance their struggle for economic emancipation, replicating the tactics that secured the victory of political emancipation and the end of Apartheid (Death, 2010). This explains the rioting and protesting around dissatisfaction with democratic South Africa, as seen in the service delivery protests. V. A Small Step Towards Conceptualising Black Entitlement as a Response to Racial Capitalism in South Africa It is worth asserting that black people must be entitled to an equal footing in South African economic life. It is also erroneous to believe that the government has adequately addressed the impact of a historically racially segregated economy, law, and society on black opportunities to participate in economic life. The continued underrepresentation and dispossession of black people validate my claim that it is unfair to use black laziness and incompetence to explain black economic inferiority. Rather, racial capitalism must be identified as the cause. However, it is unlikely that racial capitalism will disappear if we do not start viewing black entitlement as a normative prescription - that black people should be entitled to radical economic redress. Black people should continue to feel entitled to adequate services and economic emancipation, as this is the only remaining fuel to the fire of resistance against racial capitalism. To legitimize the concept of racial capitalism as an explanation for South Africa’s present political economy, I recognize that there is one crucial question that needs to be tackled: Will racial capitalism persist over time or was it an isolated historical occurrence? I believe that racial capitalism can explain how historical disparities in endowments necessary for social mobility have generated economic inequality along racial lines. Since white superiority still remains at the core of resource allocation in our society, it is highly unlikely that race-based inequality will dissipate anytime soon, and thus racial capitalism will remain a relevant and powerful explanatory concept. VI. Conclusion By analyzing the intersection of race and capitalism in South Africa, I have shown that both Marxist and Liberal literature fails to account for the historical commodification of black people through racial inequality. While Liberal scholars state that racism is incompatible with capitalism, Marxist scholars erase black suffering at the hands of settler colonialism. The depiction of racial capitalism offered in this paper better represents the complexities of race relations in neo-liberal South Africa. Furthermore, my paper has challenged fallacies around black entitlement by highlighting that racial disparities in socioeconomic endowments have not been redressed. Thus, I have shown that irrespective of regime type in South Africa, racial capitalism has, and still does, dispossess and disempower the black poor, leaving them to feel that demanding economic emancipation through protest is the only way to make their voices heard. References Biko, Hlumelo. "Racist Stereotyping Threatens SA". The M&G Online, 2017. https://mg.co.za/article/2017-04-18-racist-stereotyping-threatens-sa/. Schneider, Geoffrey. "Neoliberalism And Economic Justice In South Africa: Revisiting The Debate On Economic Apartheid". Review Of Social Economy 61, no. 1, 2003: 23-50. doi:10.1080/0034676032000050257. Hirsch, Alan. "Capitalism And Apartheid Capitalism And Apartheid: South Africa, 1910–1986. By Merle Lipton. Aldershot: Wildwood House, 1986.". The Journal Of African History 28, no. 03 (1987): 450. doi:10.1017/s0021853700030243. MURRAY, COLIN. "DISPLACED URBANIZATION: SOUTH AFRICA's RURAL SLUMS*". African Affairs 86, no. 344 (1987): 311-329. doi:10.1093/oxfordjournals.afraf.a097916. "The Path To Power -- Colonialism Of A Special Type". SACP, 1989. http://www.sacp.org.za/main.php?ID=2638#3.1. Leong, Nancy. "Racial Capitalism". Harvard Law Review 126, no. 8, 2018: 2151-2226. History, SA. The Reconstruction And Development Programme (RDP). Ebook. Reprint, SA History, 1994. http://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/the_reconstruction_and_development_programm _1994.pdf. Reddy, E.S. "Freedom Charter And The United Nations". South African History Online, 2018. http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/freedom-charter-and-%20united-nations-es-reddy. Writer, Staff. "Whites Earn 5 Times More Than Blacks In South Africa: Stats SA". Business Tech, 2017. https://businesstech.co.za/news/wealth/153485/whites-earn-5-times-more-than-blacks-in-south-af rica-stats-sa/. Hyatt, Sophia. "South Africa's Housing Crisis: A Remnant Of Apartheid". Aljazeera.Com, 2016. https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/09/south-africa-housing-crisis-remnant-aparth eid-160929094237631.html. "The Reasons Behind Service Delivery Protests In South Africa". Polity.Org.Za, 2009. http://www.polity.org.za/article/the-reasons-behind-service-delivery-protests-in-south-africa-200 9-08-05. Death, C. "Troubles At The Top: South African Protests And The 2002 Johannesburg Summit". African Affairs 109, no. 437 (2010): 555-574. doi:10.1093/afraf/adq039. Osterhammel, Jurgen. Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview (Translated By Shelley L. Frisch). Reprint, Princeton: Markus Wiener Pub., 2010.

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 Journal of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics Volume III, Issue I scroll to view articles Current Issue Philosophy A Gravity Model of Civic Deviance: Justice, Natural Duties, and Reparative Responsibilities Woojin Lim Can You Rationally Disagree with a Prediction Market? Nick Whitaker The Panacea Problem: Indifference, Servility, and Kantian Beneficence Benjamin Eneman Read More Politics We the Prisoners: Considering the Anti Drug Act of 1986, the War on Drugs and Mass Incarceration in the United States Sophia Scaglion Read More Economics Read More State-Owned Banks and the Promise of an Equitable Financial Sector Elias van Emmerick No Place Like Home: Extending the Equity Home Bias Theory to Foreign Portfolio Investment in Emerging Markets Qiyuan Zheng Applications for JPPE Now open! See Available Positions