*Feature* JPPE INTERVIEWS, YANIS VAROUFAKIS: Inequality, Financialization, and Populism Yanis Varoufakis is the co-founder of DiEM25 (Democracy in Europe Movement) as well as the former Minister of Finance for the Greek government. Additionally, Varoufakis has written several books including his most recent work Adults in The Room: My Battle With Europe’s Deep Establishment, which is a first-hand account of Europe’s hidden agenda and a call to arms to renew European democracy. As a self identified “libertarian Marxist,” Varoufakis calls for a radical new way of thinking about concepts like the economy, finance and capitalism. Fall 2019 JPPE : Many economists have their explanations about where inequality comes from, such as financialization, credit, globalization, technology, and bad policy. When thinking about the causes of inequality in the last thirty years, are there specific areas you think we ought to devote our attention to? Yanis Varoufakis : Well, there’s one word that answers your question: financialization. Financialization came on the back of the post-Bretton-Woods drive for completing a surplus society loop, where the United States operated like the world vacuum cleaner, sucking into its territory the net exports of the world on the basis of pushing down wages, lowering inflation, and, of course, Wall Street and the exorbitant power of the dollar. But the tsunami of capital that was going into Wall Street every day to close this loop and to pay for the increasing trade of the US was what shifted the center of gravity of power from industry to finance. JPPE : Private credit played a big role in that? Varoufakis : Of course. It’s all private credit. You know, financialization is 99.9 percent private money lending. Consider the financialization of blue-collar workers, in which their homes became the only way of catching up and competing with the Jones’, and since their average earnings were stuck at 1973 levels in real terms, it was only the appreciation of house prices that allowed them to continue the American Dream of rising standards and consumption. And in 2008 that came crashing down, and ever since then, you have a process leading to Trump. So today’s extreme inequality is due to a very significant class war against the American working class that started at the end of Bretton Woods. And Paul Volker, who recently passed, was central to this. All of this created a new phase in global history: financialized globalization. It pushed inequality back to 1920s levels, financialization collapsed, and then central banks and governments like that of President Obama’s refloated finance, creating socialism for the very few and permanent austerity for everybody else. That’s the answer in a nutshell. That’s my narrative. But, I have to tell you, since your focus is on inequality, I’m one of the very few left-wingers that doesn't much care about inequality or so much about equality. I don’t consider equality to be such a well-defined term. Equality of what? How do you define it? JPPE : What about income inequality? Varoufakis : Inequality is a terrible thing, but it’s a symptom. For me, it’s not the issue. The issue is exploitation. If we have huge levels of exploitation it is because we live in an extractionary economy in which the very few extract value from humans and from nature. Deep down, I’m a liberal, who thinks that liberalism has not served the cause of liberty. JPPE : You’re a liberal who thinks that liberalism has not fulfilled its promises. Varoufakis : No, it’s gone completely against its mission, like the Marxism of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union led to a regime that violated every principle of Karl Marx. Similarly, what passes as liberalism has created remarkable illiberties and spread them globally. So what matters to me is freedom from the extractive power of others over you and over nature. Capitalism, through its ever-expanding power, destroys the planet and the air that we need to breathe. JPPE : People like Harry Frankfurt argue that what we should care about is not the gap between the rich and the poor, but rather how well off the worst off are doing. Varoufakis : That’s rubbish. This willfully and purposefully neglects the source of the riches of the rich. It is as if it’s a random distribution based on DNA, on ability, and on god-given talents. In the standard debate between John Rawls and Robert Nozick, I was always far more impressed by Nozick than by Rawls because the Rawlsian veil of ignorance is lovely, but the critique of it by Nozick is devastating. He says ‘ok, let’s say we agree with Rawls and we work out what the uniquely just and therefore rational income distribution is. Let’s say we agree, so everybody gets slotted into the income distribution we agreed is uniquely just.’ And then suddenly he’s got this example from basketball, in which one of us becomes very famous for a particular kind of basketballing technique, and people are prepared to pay a lot of money to watch us. Do we ban ourselves from doing this and receiving the money that people are willing to give? Illiberal. Or do we allow ourselves to receive that higher income, in which case we have just proven that the income distribution we decided is uniquely just is not uniquely just? So in the end, what really matters is not what you have, it’s what you do in order to have it. That is perfectly Marxist to me. And, as a leftist Marxist, the point where I disagree entirely with Nozick is on his definition of entitlement. In his entitlement theory of justice, he says anything people agree to give you under any circumstances means you have it justly and that you are entitled to it. I say this is nonsense. So if you’re starving and I have some food to give you and your kids, and then I make you become my slave voluntarily, that is as coercive as it would be to point a gun at you. So, the distribution of basic goods according to Rawls is important because, without the minimum basic goods, you volunteer to give me things that I’m extracting from you coercively. That’s the Marxist critique. I’m neither Rawlsian or Nozickian, but the process that Nozick brings into the conversation, as well as Hayek, is crucial. But where we disagree with the right-wing is on what qualifies as, firstly, sustainable process and, secondly, just process. JPPE : Would it be fair to say the distinction also comes down to the difference between positive liberty—the capacity to act—and negative liberty— the right to act? Varoufakis : Here I think the theories of the Canadian philosopher CB Macpherson are helpful. He criticized the Isaiah Berlin distinction between positive and negative liberty by asking, very correctly, that if negative liberty is freedom from interference, how do you define interference? If you and I meet in the desert and you are dying of thirst and I have a glass of water and say ‘if you want this, you have to sign a contract saying you pass along all your belongs—your house, your car, and everything’. If you say yes because you are dying of thirst, is this interference? Is this a voluntary transaction? Am I impeding your negative liberty? According to Berlin, I’m not because I’m not forcing you to do anything. You are choosing to give me things for a thing. In my view, the inequality of access to basic goods like water allows me to exercise extractive exploitation over you and therefore to impede your basic freedom. If you accept the distinction between positive liberty and negative liberty, you end up saying, in the end, ‘we’re only going to accept negative liberty because who gives a damn about positive liberty—it’s too dangerous because it legitimizes all sorts of violations of negative liberty. My model is the following: if instead of negative liberty, you have freedom from extractive power, and instead of positive liberty, you replace it with the notion of developmental freedom—the freedom to develop as a character. JPPE : Would you say part of the reason it’s so important to object to high levels of inequality comes down to the fact that, in highly unequal societies, you have very different abilities to participate (e.g. unequal baskets of basic goods)? Varoufakis : When so much of one side doesn’t have enough to live on, then you have exploitative power and extractive power that functions to deny every liberty to the party that doesn’t have access to that basket of basic goods. This is, of course, the original argument by Karl Marx. JPPE : Do you think a big component of that comes down to education and access to education? Varoufakis : No, it comes to ownership. As long as we have shareholders, we’re going to live in an illiberal society. What do I mean by shareholders? As long as you have tradable shares and anyone can buy a share in a company in which they don’t work, then you create this situation where the majority of the shares of any company are going to be owned by people who have nothing to do with the company. And once you enter that process, you create an alliance with finance because finance creates the capacity to buy shares and fictitious capital minted out of thin air that allows the oligarchy the right to extract the value of others. Yet imagine a situation in which we have shares, but it’s one share and one vote for one person. So anybody working in our business has one vote. I think of it as similar to a library card. When you’re enrolled in a university you get a library. Everyone gets one. You can’t trade it. It would be similar, in this model I am proposing. As long as you work, you have your share. And then you have one vote. Imagine if corporations operated along those lines. There would be inequality because we would all vote on bonuses, and not everybody would get the same bonuses because we would collectively decide that a certain person is of high value to us and so this person deserves more of a bonus. But the differences would be much smaller. And that has to do with the way in which property rights are distributed. JPPE : Doesn’t this create an incentive for companies to hire fewer people because it would require cutting the company up into thinner slices? Varoufakis : I don’t think that holds water because if you and I create a startup and we add a third person to expand, and the growth rate is higher than the basic wage in our company, then we would do it because it’s in our interests to do it. And the fact that companies would be small and not have more than 300 or 400 people —because you can’t scale this up—is a fantastic thing. We need small companies. The whole point about competition is that you have many small companies competing. Now, we have no competitive markets. So one of my criticisms of capitalism is that it is completely anti-competitive. It’s monopolistic. JPPE : So on some level, it’s almost this Polanyi Esque argument about liberalism undermining itself and actually requiring government state intervention in order for it to even continue as liberalism. Varoufakis : Yeah, the Polanyi argument and also the Marx argument. Any attempt to set the state against the market or the market against the state is historically pathetic because the market was created by states. Even the enclosures in Britain that created the circumstances for capital to emerge in Britain would not have happened without the king’s army. To pit the state against the market is historical nonsense. The only reason capitalism happened in Britain and not in France is that there was a powerful central government in the former but not the latter. And the central government dispatched the army in support of the lords that pushed the peasants off the land and replaced them with sheep. The sheep had the capacity to produce wool which was internationally traded, and suddenly the land had value. Without the king’s army, it wouldn’t have happened. JPPE : Your focus is on financialization when explaining inequality since the 1970s, but do you think that technological innovations played a role in that as well? In the Industrial Revolution, you saw rising inequality because of increased productivity but stagnant wages. Today, researchers talk about how modern inequality seems at least partially a consequence of the hollowing out of middle-skill/middle-wage work because innovations automated work in that middle sector. Varoufakis : I don’t think we have seen this yet. I think we probably will see it. The hollowing out of the middle class is evident, but I don't think it’s because of automation. I think it’s simply a situation whereby two things coalesced. On the one hand, it was the introduction of two billion workers in capitalistic markets after 1991 through the Soviet Union satellite states and the rise of China. Two billion workers came from those countries. There were huge shifts of factories to those countries, whether it was Poland or China. But the proletarianization of former peasants is a standard process that has nothing to do with technology per se. That’s the first dimension. The second dimension is the increasing role and capacity of the financial sector in turbocharging private money minting. Through all the financial derivatives and fast trading, without having to press a button, I can transfer billions at lightning speeds. That technological innovation made a huge difference in shifting and increasing power from the industrial scene into the sphere of finance. JPPE : How did that work? I would imagine a lot of the competition would be between investing firms and companies with better algorithms and better technology. Varoufakis : Yes, but between 1980 and 2008, in 1980 dollars there was an average inflow of money into Wall Street every day of between five and six billion, on average. Now, if you give a banker five billion every day, even for ten minutes, they will find ways of multiplying it. It’s called derivatives, options, financialization. Computers helped them create really complicated instruments that totally blew up the multiplier. So from that five billion, they could create a hundred or two hundred trillion in securities, which very soon started to operate like money to the extent that they were mediums of exchange and a source of value. So effectively they created as much value as they wanted. And immediately, political power shifts to Goldman Sachs, and General Motors becomes a hedge fund that produces a few cars that nobody cares about. So that’s what I mean by financialization. And that creates huge inequality because just think of all the bonuses. JPPE : And very few people have a stake in the stock market. Varoufakis : Most of this was not in the stock market. The derivatives were traded under the table. And so you have a huge new body of the proletariat coming, factories shifting to china. The Chinese people were coming up very slowly in terms of per capita income, but of course, they lose a lot of the old values—community values, environmental values, cultural identity. And fifteen boys living in one room today might make 15 dollars a day, which in the world bank statistics is a fantastic improvement for them. But maybe their life is far worse than it was when they were in their village milking a cow. JPPE : Yuval Noah Harari makes the point that, for many people, even the shift to agriculture from hunter-gatherers resulted in a dramatic decline in standards of living. And the same was certainly true of people in the Industrial Revolution. So how do you reconcile that argument with the notion that all of those innovations resulted in improvements in the standard of living that were eventually felt by everyone? Varoufakis : I simply reject it as uninteresting nonsense. When people say to me, ‘look at the last 200 hundred years and the massive decrease in poverty’, I ask ‘how do you measure poverty?’ Take the Australian Aborigines. When Captain Cook arrived in what is now New South Wales. These people had zero income, but they lived very full and fulfilling lives. Today, an Aborigines person gets a hundred Australian dollars a week from some kind of social security fund, and they are obese, they have diabetes, and they are dying from a number of diseases, if not from police brutality. So you consider that to be an improvement because they went from zero to a hundred dollars? But going back to what you were saying—the hollowing out of the middle class—we should come to that. Given that financialization was based on this exponential growth in fictitious capital that made the very rich exceptionally rich, and at the same time, to have this money coming into Wall Street, you had to have American wages kept very low and below American standards. And this means prices must rise against the home so that people can afford to buy stuff and fill up their garage with rubbish. And then, of course, in 2008 this house of cards comes crashing down. With jobs moving to China and, at the same time, financialization collapsing under the weight of its own hubris, that’s what explains the hollowing out of the middle class. These people initially turned to Barack Obama. He betrayed them. And now they turn to Donald Trump. But AI and automation are going to hit us when we’re down already. I don’t think the hollowing out has to do with automation, but now that the hollowing out has taken place for reasons that don’t have to do with automation, automation will be the second part of the double whammy. JPPE : A lot of people are very happy about automation because they believe in its potential to improve productivity. However, if you believe technological change results in significant short-run damages to certain people’s livelihoods, is it worth trying to stop automation? Varoufakis : Automation would be catastrophic. But why would it be catastrophic? It’s a question of nationalizing it and of socializing it. It’s a question of who owns it. Because if the machines are owned by the very few like they are, then those who own them will look at them as a source of personal enrichment, which means there will be a serious crisis by which those machines will be replacing workers who have no access to the returns of that capital. And so they will not be able to buy stuff. So we’re going to have a collapse. But if we all benefit and we all own the robots collectively, we would not have that problem. This is why I keep coming back to questions of ownership. And this is where I find some commonality with the extreme libertarians, because they also put a great deal of emphasis, not so much on income distributions, but on property rights, and I do too. They want to defend the property rights of oligarchy. I want to socialize property so that everybody has equal access to it. JPPE : When you think about the recent UK elections and the failure of Jeremy Corbyn and the British left to challenge more traditional and conservative leadership, what do you think about the prospects for a US presidential candidate like Bernie Sanders? Varoufakis : Privilege has a remarkable capacity to reproduce itself and kill any challenge to its reproduction. If the challenger is Bernie, Jeremy, you or me, they will crush us. There’s no doubt about that. When I was elected, I never expected for a moment that I would not be vilified. If I wasn’t, then I would be worried, ‘why are they not vilifying me? Am I doing something wrong? Have I sold out already?’ What I find astonishing is that, in 2016, Bernie Sanders came so close. And he would have won it had he not been robbed by Hilary Clinton. This is what happened yesterday with the Labour Party, which was effectively defeated from within by the extreme center—the Blairites and the hard “remainers” that did everything they could for two years to undermine their own party and to undermine Jeremy Corbyn. Why? Because they were in concert with the privileged classes. JPPE : Tactically, what do you make of the primacy of emphasizing cultural issues over economic ones? Do you think the left makes a mistake when it focuses on the culture wars instead of socio-economic challenges? Varoufakis : Yes, the left has been catastrophic. Look, I’m an old Marxist. The economics is always at the base of it. It’s at the base of Brexit. Why did Brexit happen? Because you had a financial sector collapse and you had the rubbish assets of the banks put on the shoulders of taxpayers. But at the same time, the European Central Bank was contracting the money supply and the Bank of England was expanding. And that meant three million continental Europeans went to Britain. And for the country, this was substantial and some people felt they were being pushed out of their own country. So their grievances are economic, even if they don’t consider it clearly as an issue of economics. Whenever we have this kind of economic recession, it’s easy for a fascist to jump on the soapbox and say, ‘I’ll make you proud again by getting rid of foreigners.’ You see this with Salvini or Farage. Why did Trump get elected? He didn’t get elected because of the culture wars. He got elected because half of Americans, for the first time since 1923, could not afford the cheapest car on the market. These people felt betrayed, and here comes a guy who says ‘I’m not the worst person on earth, but there’s a good reason to vote for me: it will annoy the shit out of everybody you hate.’ Of course, the fascists take advantage of these economic grievances and build a narrative by saying that they will make you proud and look after you.

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.

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

Economics Not paying income tax timely leads to significant financial losses for the governments. What design changes could be made to tax collection policy to minimize these delays? Aryan Midha One Planet, One Oklahoma: Exploring a Framework for Assessing the Feasibility of Localized Energy Transitions in the United States Anna Hyslop The Pay Gap Among Academic Faculty for Higher Education in the U.S. Yucheng Wang Economics Archives Vol. IV | Issue II Against the Mainstream How Modern Monetary Theory and the Myth of Millionaire Tax Flight Challenge Conventional Wisdom Justin Lee The relationship between education and welfare dependency Aiden Cliff Vol. IV | Issue I The Black Bourgeoisie The Chief Propagators of “Buy Black” and Black Capitalism Noah Tesfaye God Save the Fish The Abyss of Electoral Politics in Trade Talks––a Brexit Case Study Eleanor Ruscitti Breaking Big Ag Examining the Non-Consolidation of China’s Farms Noah Cohen Vol. III | Issue II Federal 5g innovation policy Technological Competition between the US and China Will Matheson A "Shot" Heard around the WOrld The Fed made a deliberate choice to let Lehman fail Sydney Bowen UK Government Commitment to Sustainable Development Goals Good for the economy and business in general? Brooklyn Han, Patrick Leitloff, Sally Yang, Eddy Zou "Victorian Holocausts" The Long-Term Consequences of Famine in British India Adithya V. Raajkumar Vol. III | Issue I 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 Vol. II | Issue II John Taylor and Ben Bernanke on the Great Recession Who Was Right About What Went Wrong? Mikael Hemlin Financial Literacy, Credit Access and Financial Stress of Micro-Firms Evidence from Chile Lucas Rosso Fones Vol. II | Issue I A Fair Free Lunch? Reconciling Freedom and Reciprocity in the Context of Universal Basic Income Olivia Martin Enhancing Value or Stifling Innovation Examining the Effects of Shareholder Activism and Its Impact on American Capitalism Andrew Kutscher and Doug Saper The Individual Unfreedom of the Proletarian Cal Fawell Vol. I | Issue II Public Funds, Private Interest The Role of Private Companies in Shaping US Cybersecurity Policy Justin Katz Vermont Act 46 Implications for School Choice Quinn Bornstein Vol. I | Issue I Cannabis Latent Effects of Cannabis Legalization: Racial Disproportionality and Disparity in Washington State Drug Convictions, 2000-2015 Kaid Ray-Tipton Energy Embracing Renewable Energy for Sustainable Job Growth in West Virginia Jingpeng Shao

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*Feature* JPPE INTERVIEWS, STEVEN PINKER: Free Speech, Protests, the “Alt-Right”, and Jordan Peterson Steven Pinker is an experimental psychologist who conducts research in visual cognition, psycholinguistics, and social relations. He grew up in Montreal and earned his BA from McGill and his PhD from Harvard. Currently Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard, he has also taught at Stanford and MIT. He has won numerous prizes for his research, his teaching, and his nine books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, The Better Angels of Our Nature, and The Sense of Style. Fall 2019 JPPE : There’s considerable debate over the distinction between free speech and hate speech. How do we know when one meets the other? Is there a responsibility of college campuses or their students to help provide definitions or guidelines for these ideas and which views we believe are of academic merit? Pinker : There are limits on free speech that are recognized in all societies—even in the most libertarian societies when it comes to free speech—such as the incitement of imminent lawless activity, libel, extortion, and some cases of obscenity. There can be restrictions on the place, time, and manner in which speech is expressed. This is all contained in free speech jurisprudence. Nevertheless, those limits are pretty expansive in the United States, and I think laudably the “default” is the notion that speech is free except for very circumscribed exceptions. And that pertains to government strictures on free speech, which is not the same as the discretion that any outlet or platform has regarding who they give a voice to. And of course, a university is not going to invite any drunk on a soapbox in a public park or any ranter on Facebook. There are certain standards of scholarly accuracy and attention to academic literature. So I think the issue doesn’t arise in terms of whether a university ought to invite some provocateur who is just not part of the community of scholarly discourse and intellectual argumentation; but rather it arises when there are scholars who clearly do meet that standard but whose opinions just happen to be controversial, yet they can back up what they say with generally accepted academic standards. Of course, protests too are a legitimate form of free speech, so there can’t be any objections to protests. Although, there is jurisprudence; there are guidelines among defenders of free speech that you may protest but that you may not shut someone down. That is, there is no heckler’s veto, even though there can be of course protests that don’t disrupt the ability of heterodox views to be expressed. JPPE : From what you have observed, do you believe that students are keener to protest speakers than when you were an undergraduate? Pinker : I think there is a narrowing. It’s been going on for some time. It was certainly true when I was an undergraduate and that was a long time ago. And so despite some commentary, which blames it on the millennial generation or on generation z, there was plenty of this in my day. There is the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which monitors disinvitations and speech codes, and it found that things have gotten a little bit better in 2018 compared to previous years. They’ve only been monitoring it for, I think, 10 or 15 years. Things definitely got worse until last year, but there have been ups and downs. FIRE also monitors de-platforming, which is a disruptive attempt to prevent speakers from speaking once they’re there; they monitor speech codes. My sense is it’s gotten worse, although it definitely existed when I was a student. JPPE : Did you participate in these kinds of protests? Pinker : No (laughs). JPPE : It seems somewhat arbitrary to determine who is of “scholarly merit”. Pinker : It’s kind of what academics do all the time. We referee one another’s grant proposals, manuscripts, and tenure cases. There are disputes. There are unclear cases. But there is definitely a difference between a Richard Spencer on the one hand and a Charles Murray or a Heather Mac Donald or Jordan Peterson on the other. JPPE : That last name—Jordan Peterson—is someone speaking to a large and predominantly male audience. How do you explain the Jordan Peterson phenomenon? Pinker : I agree it’s a puzzle who he is speaking to. I think he symbolizes for young men two things: one of them is an intellectual engagement that transgresses some of the very narrow boundaries in elite universities and in media like the New York Times. While he’s not alt-right or all of the things that people lazily accuse him of, he is not New York Times or Brown University. He is clearly an erudite and intelligent person. He was a professor first at Harvard, then at the University of Toronto. He is an extremely knowledgeable political psychologist and expert on psychological personality testing. He stretches the boundaries of what you can say, however, not into the territory of white supremacists or neo-nazis and other kooks and crackpots and nutcases. The other thing is that the demographic of young men he speaks to often feel so marginalized by, on the one hand, leftist feminist discourse in universities and, on the other hand, the kind of nihilistic immature culture in advertising, extreme sports, and popular culture, which seems to glorify immaturity, hedonism, and decadence. And I think they realize that someone just saying pretty banal things like “be mature, be responsible for what you say, and clean up after yourself”; that strikes them—caught between these two worlds—as something noble and revelatory. And it can’t be a bad thing that you have a charismatic guy telling young men to be responsible, not to hurt people, and to make their bed. It’s astonishing that it has to be said. But apparently it does. JPPE : You said that there were highly literate and highly intelligent people that gravitate to the alt-right. What do you make of the blow-back you received from that statement? Pinker : The New York Times reported it under an op-ed titled "How Social Media Makes Us Stupid". That was Jesse Singal who wrote that op-ed. For one thing, many people misinterpreted that because their impression of the alt-right is tiki-torch-holding-neo-nazis, whereas the people that call themselves alt-right are not that. I think their views are often quite noxious, and I’ve argued against them. But I know, since some of them are former students that write back to me—I mean Harvard graduates—, that it is a mistake to write them off as tiki-torch-holding-skinheads and neo-nazis. Some of them are smart; they are intelligent, and they feel that there are so many topics that are forbidden in standard university settings. And they feel that mainstream scholars can’t handle the truth and that they feel privy to a kind of forbidden truth, which I argued is dangerous because it means that rather extreme views proliferate in this community without themselves being criticized by opposing views or data that bear on those views. And they can actually blossom in a kind of noxious form if they’re not expressed in an arena in which they can be criticized.

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*Feature* JPPE INTERVIEW, WALTER SCHEIDEL: Coronavirus and Why Inequality is Only Ever Reduced by Disaster Walter Scheidel (pictured) is a historian at Stanford University as well as the author of eighteen books, including “The Great Leveler”, which presents a history of economic inequality from “the stone age to the twenty-first century”. In the book, which won a number of awards, Scheidel argues that inequality has historically only ever been reduced by “four horsemen”: plague, civil war, mass military mobilization, and government collapse. You can buy “The Great Leveler” here . May 2020 JPPE: The Great Leveler presents this very ambitious thesis that inequality only ever gets reduced by mass military mobilization, plague, civil war, or government collapse. Your previous work dealt with demography, political economy, ancient history, and the classics. Why was a book studying the history of inequality something that you wanted to work on? Scheidel : Well, I should say I’m not much of a classicist. I’ve always considered myself a historian, and even though I specialize in ancient and premodern history, I’ve always been interested in world history and comparative history, more generally. And I guess the short answer is that I wrote this book because nobody had ever tried to write it before, and it would not have been possible even ten or fifteen years earlier because there simply weren’t enough case studies of the pre-modern period to piece together a broad survey of the evolution of income and wealth inequality across hundreds and even thousands of years. And then my more immediate inspiration was Thomas Piketty’s book “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”. I had been familiar with his work already even before this book came out, and when the book actually did come out and was a huge success, I figured that if I didn't sit down now and write the book, then someone else is going to do it. And so, I got going, and I had the thesis already in the back of my mind—Piketty had the same thesis that I did but just for the twentieth century. And what I was trying to do was see if it applied to world history, more generally, and somewhat to my surprise, it turned out this was the case. And because I didn’t run into any obvious counterexamples, I was able to write up a whole book in the course of about two years. JPPE: Do you believe that high levels of inequality might be partially responsible for producing the shocks that ultimately reduce it? Scheidel : What I focused on was the impact of violent shocks on existing levels of inequality. And I think, in that respect, we are on pretty solid ground in that there are long term patterns regardless of what stage of development you are. Whether you are dealing with an agrarian society or an industrial society, the underlying principle and the underlying dynamics assert themselves again and again—it’s this idea that certain types of violent shocks would drive down inequality. Now, it is tempting to think that there could be some sort of homeostatic system where, if inequality goes up and exceeds a certain level, it triggers violent events that then reduce inequality. And then inequality rises again, and you have a never-ending series of cycles. That’s intellectually quite appealing. I don’t think that theory is fully borne out by the evidence that I have been able to put together. I think the evidence is much stronger in terms of a consistent effect of violent shocks on inequality, but not in quite the same way the other way around. JPPE: Are there certain instances in which inequality is responsible for causing the leveling force that ultimately brought it down? One example that seems to speak to this is the case of Germany prior to the Second World War. The high inequality that took place during that time and the decline in German purchasing power seems to have contributed to the socio-political conditions that would ultimately lead to the Second World War and the leveling that took place then. Scheidel : I’m not familiar with that particular case study. I think that it is perfectly plausible and possible to tease out this conclusion by statistical analysis. Yet, if you look at world history more generally, you become very wary of cherry-picking. It’s easy to identify individual cases where you can observe such a connection. There are very powerful counterexamples that should give us pause, however. So, for instance, if you just looked at France in the late eighteenth century, you could say, ‘of course the French Revolution was driven in part by extremely high levels of inequality’, and that makes perfect sense. Yet then you have to bear in mind that France was surrounded by other countries—Britain, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Germany—that were just as unequal as France and had no revolutions. You also have to bear in mind that the revolution in Russia occurred in a country that was not only not very industrialized, contrary to what Marx expected; it was also not very unequal by the standards of the time. The most unequal countries were the only industrialized ones—Britain, for example. The same is true of China when Mao took over. So, once you put all of these individual cases in context, it’s very difficult to say that a particular level of inequality triggers some kind of societal breakdown, ferments revolution, or leads to other kinds of leveling. JPPE: In your book, you argued that leveling would not have happened without the presence of a violent shock. You conclude, however, by discussing the possibility that we have moved to a point in history where the “four horsemen” are no longer necessary to reduce inequality. What do you think now? Scheidel : I think the evidence supports the belief that violent shocks are necessary to bring about leveling. They may not be sufficient, and they also act as catalysts. So, if you go back a hundred years or over one hundred years, there were already trends on the way in favor of increasing education, unionization of the workforce, the spread of democracy, and certain kinds of progressive taxation. All these things already existed but they got an enormous boost by World War One, the Great Depression, the New Deal, and World War Two. And the counterfactual is to think about if they would have gotten an equally big boost had these shocks not occurred, and I’m very pessimistic about that. It’s not a black and white picture; it’s not to say nothing ever changes in the absence of such shocks. It’s just to say the changes would be far less dramatic, and I think that this is quite easy to substantiate empirically. Now, as for your other question, when I concluded the book, I had to look forward to the future and I came to the conclusion that the traditional four horsemen were dormant right now. We no longer fight mass military mobilization wars; there are no credible revolutionary movements (at least in high-income countries); states are much more stable in most of the world than they used to be; and pandemics, such as the one that we are encountering right now, are nothing like the pandemics of the past that leveled by reducing the workforce and driving up wages. We’ll see the exact opposite in this case with respect to wages. What I neglected to include is that climate change might become a fifth leveling force. I’m sympathetic to that view. It needn’t be a fifth leveling force, but it could revive some of the others. It could lead to conflict, to state breakdown, to more pandemics, and to all kinds of things along those lines. So that’s something I should have perhaps considered more systematically. Otherwise I never really said that you can’t do anything at all in the absence of such violent shocks. I just wanted to remind people how difficult it is, and I think that’s important to bear in mind when we develop policy programs. We can’t just say ‘let’s go back to the way things were in the fifties’, for a number of reasons. We have to be aware when we develop policy initiatives what the structural impediments are and what very special conditions had to be in place in the past to bring about significant leveling. That’s not a call to defeatism. But I think it’s the historian’s job to put those things in perspective, and in this case, I think our job is to remind people over and over again that it’s really hard work to reduce inequality. JPPE: Are there instances of policy successfully reducing inequality that we can try and mimic in the future? Scheidel : That’s a very good question. I think there are two cases to consider. One is historically Scandinavian countries—not just Denmark, but also Sweden and Norway—, which used to be highly unequal two hundred years ago with extreme inequality in land ownership and so on. And that already started to get a little better in the course of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. Those countries were not very heavily touched by the world wars. They were in some sense, however, and we see major contractions of inequality during those periods, but that’s clearly only part of the story. So, there is something going on in those countries, in particular, that put them on a trajectory towards lower inequality, and that was amplified and accelerated by the shocks in the first half of the twentieth century. Now, to what extent you can extrapolate from this is a very difficult question because those countries were—especially then— relatively small, not very populous, and they were extremely homogenous in a great many ways—linguistically, ethnically, socially, culturally, and so on. They were the exact opposite in many ways from the United States, which has historically always been very diverse, and there are studies that show that high levels of diversity can obstruct ambitious redistributive programs because there is simply less widespread popular support for those kinds of policies. So, we are talking about apples and oranges. It’s not quite clear to what extent you can transfer some examples and apply them to different kinds of societies. And I think this is where the case of Latin America comes in. Latin America is very interesting. It’s a major outlier because it never experienced a major reduction in inequality; inequality has always been very high because of its colonial past—slavery, plantation economies, for example. It also never experienced any major leveling shocks. It wasn’t really touched by the World Wars. There were hardly any revolutions outside of Cuba. And so, you had status quo for a really long time and not very many changes. And in terms of diversity, some of those societies are more similar to the United States. What you saw there in the first decade of this century was a quite significant trend towards lower inequality in most Latin American countries—such as Brazil—by peaceful means, and that’s very encouraging. It really depended on the concatenation of circumstances that may be hard to replicate—gains from increased investment in education, political changes, a commodities boom in China that shored up certain sectors of the economy. All kinds of things were coming together in just the right way to reduce historically high levels of inequality. As I was writing this book, I was wondering whether this peaceful trend might be sustainable, and there were already clouds on the horizon. There was a major economic downturn a number of years ago. And the trends seemed to have stopped in many countries. With what’s happening right now and will be happening as a result of the current pandemic, we can be pretty sure that this trend is not going to continue or be sustainable in the long term. We will have to wait for a revival of this trend. JPPE: It strikes me that when you ask scholars what the causes of inequality have been, people who study finance will blame financialization or the democratization of credit. Others will blame trade or technology. And others will blame policy. What do you believe the causes of inequality have been? Scheidel: It’s really like the story of the elephant and the blindfolded men who touch different parts of the elephant, and they try to describe the animal and come up with very different descriptions. In the existing scholarship on the reasons for the increase in inequality from the 1980s onwards, different studies identify different components— as you say, automation, globalization, deregulation, financialization, all kinds of “ations”, the weakening of unions, and the fact that enormous numbers of workers came online with the opening up of China. All of these effects really refashioned the post-war order in ways that revived economic growth, which had been flagging in the 70s, but also led to a higher concentration of income and wealth. And all these many factors have been interacting ever since, and this makes it so much more difficult to address the problem because there are so many different factors that are operational and active now and have been for a generation. So, if you just address globalization, or robots, or tax reform, you would only really touch one part of the elephant, so to speak. And it would be very difficult to implement comprehensive reforms without at the same time transforming the entire economic system that we live in and depend on. It may be possible in theory, but it doesn’t strike me as a very plausible policy goal in the short run. JPPE: You also argue that major economic transitions (e.g. the Industrial Revolution), often increase in inequality in the “short-run”. Do you think that we’re in the middle of something like this as we embrace digital technology? Scheidel: Yes, I’ve seen this argument a number of times and it makes perfect sense to me. I mean, at the beginning of agriculture, if you have a plow and someone else doesn’t have a plow, then you are better off than the other person. Now if you work in Silicon Valley, then you are well off, and if you don’t, then you are in trouble. So, these transitions—regardless of what they were like and what the specifics were like— certainly have disequalizing potential in the sense that they might make society overall richer, but they reward certain groups disproportionately. And frankly, the current pandemic is an excellent example. There are people who can work from home; their jobs are more secure; they have higher incomes on average. And there are people who do more traditional kinds of work, for lack of a better word, and they are much more heavily exposed to the economic downturn. You have students who can participate in online instruction because they have broadband access and laptops and those who can’t. All these inequalities already existed, but they are now actually amplified and made more painful by the existing crisis. And I think ultimately this is a symptom of the effects of a broader transition towards a more digital economy. JPPE: When we consider past plagues, do you think that there is anything fundamentally different about the Coronavirus Pandemic? Scheidel: Well, the most obvious difference is that even in a worst-case scenario, the coronavirus is going to kill a far smaller share of the population than pandemics of the past and even than the Spanish Flu did a hundred years ago. And mortality is, of course, concentrated among people in advanced ages and spares most of the active workforce and people who are about to enter the workforce. So, there won’t be any kind of demographic shock or Malthusian reset. Real wages are not going to go up because there won’t be a shortage of wages. In fact, mass unemployment is going to depress wages, if anything. So, we can mercifully forget about this. Nobody wants that kind of pandemic to ever happen again. And frankly, even if it did happen again in some future year, AI and automation would actually absorb some of those effects. We wouldn’t necessarily have to pay people more; we might just automate more, which aging societies are already doing if you look at Japan. So that’s a fundamental difference. In the short run, I think this pandemic is going to increase inequality for all the reasons we touched on and because unemployment is unevenly distributed. This is maybe not that different from earlier pandemics because, in the immediate aftermath of a pandemic, things tend to be quite chaotic. So, the real question is if the current pandemic has the potential to lead to some kind of equalizing change down the line—not tomorrow, but maybe a couple of years from now. That’s a very good question, and I think it depends ultimately on how severe this crisis is going to be because historically, the worse the crisis was, the harder the shocks and the greater the potential for equalizing change was. So if quantitative easing works and scientists come up with a decent vaccine within a year or so, there is a pretty good chance we will return to some modified version of the status quo, at least with the respect to inequality—i.e. that the existing inequalities will survive and maybe even be reinforced, which is what happened in 2008 after the Great Recession. The alternative is that things really get out of control, that creating new money turns out to be insufficient, that there will be a global depression that lasts for a long time, and that the virus turns out to be intractable—it mutates, and all kinds of horrible things happen. And, as a result of this, we may end up with levels of dislocation, misery, and despair that would drive our policymaking in a certain direction, which would be more like what we had in the 1930s, when conditions were so terrible and the social safety net so rudimentary or nonexistent that all kinds of measures had to be taken that would have been considered too radical just a few years before. So, it is quite possible that we find ourselves on the cusp of this sort of change. The ideas are already out there. There was no Bernie Sanders twenty years ago, and much of this will depend on how this is actually going to play out—just how big and disruptive this shock is going to be. JPPE: Are there specific policies you would like to see implemented? In your NYT op-ed, you called for a new era of progressive policy. Very practically, what are some of your positions? Scheidel : Well, I think outcomes are going to vary quite a lot by country. In the US, we live in a kind of low hanging fruit society, in the sense that inequality is higher than it needs to be and is higher than in other western capitalist countries for a number of reasons specific to the US—the political system, the fiscal structure, the weakness of unions, and so on. So, there are certain things the US could do that would have an effect longer-term on inequality. This includes campaign finance reform; there’s a clear connection between plutocratic influence and certain inequality outcomes. This includes providing better access to health care, improving access to education, protecting and reenabling collective bargaining and unionization. Whether it is tweaking the tax code to make it a bit more progressive and a bit more like what we see in Western Europe. None of these approaches would be radical. It’s not a new deal kind of scenario. It’s not a Green New Deal kind of scenario but it would certainly contribute to a reduction in inequality. It wouldn’t take us back to where we were after World War II, but that’s not to be expected anyways. It would certainly improve the situation. JPPE: Are there areas of the study of inequality that you believe are under covered by researchers and that you would like to see people work on? Scheidel: Well, that’s actually a very good question. Going back to what we talked about initially, it is still an open question to whether inequality can destabilize society in a systematic way. There have been studies on developing countries (low-income countries)—especially in post-colonial settings in Africa, Asia, and Latin America—that show high levels of inequality are associated with an increased risk of civil war, for instance, or some kind of societal breakdown. It seems that crossing a certain GDP threshold protects more affluent societies from these kinds of dislocations, but that doesn’t mean that inequality can’t lead to less extreme forms of social unrest and problems. And that’s something that has not been as well researched as maybe it should be. And if it could be shown that there is such an effect, that should galvanize policymakers and make them think twice about propping up the existing structures that enable the very high degree of inequality that we see right now.

Philosophy Body Ethics: Moving Beyond Valid Consent Christine Chen In The AugenBlick, Not the Moment A Heideggerian Critique of Temporal Inauthenticity Lukas Bacho Non-self through time Anita Kukeli FEATURED SECTION The Captain and the DoctoR On the Enchantment of Modern Men George LeMieux The Influencer Issue The Link Between Commodification and Well-Being on Social Media Enya Willems HOW ARE YOU THE SAME PERSON AS WHEN YOU WERE TEN Favoring the Brain Criterion View over Animalist and Neo-Lockean Views Henry Moon Divisive Identities Exploring the Interplay of Personal and Social Identities Ella Neeka Sawhney Philosophy Archives Vol. IV | Issue II From Sex to Science: The Challenges and Complexity of Consent The Challenges and Complexity of Consent Matthew Grady Shoring Against Our Ruin An Investigation of Profound Boredom in our Return to Normal Life Virginia Moscetti Unwitting Wrongdoing The Case of Moral Ignorance Madeline Monge Vol. IV | Issue I The Necessity of Perspective A Nietzschean Critique of Historical Materialism and Political Meta-Narratives Oliver Hicks The Growing Incoherence of our higher values Aash Mukerji Can Pascal Convert the Libertine? An Analysis of the Evaluative Commitment Entailed by Pascal’s Wager Neti Linzer Authenticating Authenticity Authenticity as Commitment, Temporally Extended Agency, and Practical Identity Kimberly Ramos Vol. III | Issue II KIERKEGAARD'S ADVICE ON THE UNCERTAINTY OF DEATH: The 'right' way is the pathless way Margherita Pescarin Teotl vs. tao Comparing Tlamatinime and Taoist Thought Richard Wu Punishment Human Nature, Order, and Power Ezekiel Vergara Happening on "polished Society" Towards a Theory of Progress and Corruption Alexa Stanger More than just a thought crime? A Retributivist View of Hate Crime Legislation Travis Harper Khadi Capitalism Gandhian Neoliberalism and the Making of Modern India Ria Modak Cause, causation, and multiplicity A Critique of E. H. Carr's "Causation in History" Kyu-hyun Jo Civil Disobedience and Desert theory of punishment Vance Kelley Tribes and tribulations Character as Property in Survivor Jasmine Bacchus Vol. III | Issue I A GRAVITY MODEL OF CIVIC DEVIANCE Justice, Natural Duties, and Reparative Responsibilities Woojin Lim CAN YOU RATIONALLY DISAGREE WITH A PREDICTION MODEL? Nick Whitaker The PANACEA PROBLEM Indifference, Servility, and Kantian Beneficence Benjamin Eneman Vol. II | Issue II Respect for the Smallest of Creatures An Analysis of Human Respect for and Protection of Insects Grace Engelman The Moral Futility of Contempt A Response to Macalester Bell’s Hard Feelings in the Era of Trump Jessica Li In Favor of Entrenchment Justifying Geoengineering Research in Democratic Systems Samantha M. Koreman Vol. II | Issue I Realism, Perspective, and the Act of Looking A Comparison of Chinese Cinematic Representations of the Second Sino-Japanese War Isaac Leong The Duty to use drones In Cases of National Self-Defense Lina Dayem Vol. I | Issue II Moral Manipulation A Kantian Take on Advertising and Campaigning Sylvia Gunn Health/Disease Distinction Normative Uses Margot S. Witte Statelessness A Contradiction in International Law with Asymmetrical Regional Solutions Samantha Altschuler Vol. I | Issue I Transcendental Self Reconceptualizing the Idea of the Self within Western Philosophy: The Existence-Reason Binary and the Nonrational Transcendental Self Jennifer Kim A More Perfect Union Inclusive Norms and the Future of Liberal Unity Benjamin Seymour

*Feature* JPPE INTERVIEWS, PAUL KRUGMAN: Inequality, Artificial Intelligence, Technological Disruption, and Assortative Mating Paul Krugman is an economist and writer, who currently serves as professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University, Centenary Professor at the London School of Economics, and as an op-ed columnist for The New York Times. Prior to his appointment at Princeton, Krugman served on the faculty of MIT; his last post was Ford International Professor of Economics. He has also taught at Yale and Stanford Universities, and prior to that he was the senior international economist for the President's Council of Economic Advisers, under Ronald Reagan. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society, a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a member of the Group of Thirty. He has served as a consultant to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations, as well as to a number of countries including Portugal and the Philippines. In December 2008, Mr. Krugman received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for 2008, honoring his work in international trade patterns. Fall 2019 JPPE : With US income and wealth inequality at a historical high, economists like Daron Acemoglu and David Autor have discussed the issue of job polarization and the idea that artificial intelligence and other modern labor-saving innovations might contribute to the widening of that skills gap and the further privileging of high skill work. Are you concerned that modern technology will make inequality worse? Krugman : I’m concerned but I’m not convinced. The belief that we’re living in an era of radical technological change has a problem, which is, if we were in such a period, we should see rapidly rising productivity. What we’re actually seeing is rather sluggish productivity. Rising productivity is just not being shown in the data. And then once you adopt that attitude you can ask yourself how—thinking about the kind of tangible technological innovations of our time—are we really seeing radical progress? The rise of the original smartphone or the iPhone was a really big deal. How excited are people about this year’s latest smartphone? You really can convince yourself that we’re starting to plateau. And that may not last, but it’s not clear that this is a time of very radical technological change. Aside from the fact that rapid technological change isn’t so obvious, the argument that technology is driving income polarization runs up against several problems. I think Autor does great stuff, and that “U shape” he finds is really interesting. But there is a problem if wage developments don’t seem to be following the kinds of labor that he says are being devalued—i.e. if middle-skill work isn’t experiencing worse wage gains than lower-skill work, which is the part that's growing. So if we’re seeing an economy that is polarizing with a greater number of low skill jobs, why are home health aids not getting better paid? Those are service sector jobs, so that makes you question whether there is some statistical artifact about the whole thing. It’s not for sure, but I’m unconvinced. And then there’s the general point that if we have technology that’s biased against labor, it needs to be biased towards something, which would be capital. This means returns to investments would be high, but the corporate sector is behaving as if returns on investment are low. They are not investing heavily despite extremely low interest rates. So I just think the whole thing is a story you can tell, and it might be true in the future but there really is no slam dunk evidence that it’s what is happening now. JPPE : Research by Robert Allen on the “Engels’ Pause” shows that because technological disruption tends to improve productivity, it also temporarily increases inequality as wages stagnate and returns to capital rise. Then eventually some leveling force brings it down. Do you think that that’s a fair way of looking at how theoretical technological disruption causes inequality? Krugman : It can happen. To the extent that we have a theoretical analysis of what technology does, that analysis says that it depends on the technology and it depends on the bias of the technology. Technology that replaces a worker with lots of extra capital should have a negative impact on wages and increase inequality. That’s not a particularly new insight. David Ricardo had it in 1821, and the reason he had it is because there’s a pretty good case that that’s what happened during the early phases of the Industrial Revolution in Britain. There’s an endless debate about what happened to real wages between 1800 and 1840, but the fact that we’re even having that debate tells you that there isn’t sufficiently convincing evidence of rising real wages to override the counterarguments. So stagnating wages due to technology is possible. It’s not clear that it has happened again since the Industrial Revolution. There is an argument that there was a kind of technological bias towards highly educated workers, which was driving the rise in income inequality in the 1980s and 1990s. That’s more debatable, but it’s also a story that doesn’t help much in developments since 2000. So technology can have an effect, and it’s very easy to write down a model in which technological change is, for some period—and maybe even an extended period—, bad for substantial groups of workers. But it depends on the story you tell. JPPE : There was economic research that found assortative mating was responsible for twenty percent of the rise in inequality since the 1980s. Is there anything college students can do about this, or are they just the vehicles of widening inequality? Krugman : It's not just assortative mating; it’s assortative lots-of-stuff. At the highest levels, everyone was roommates at Harvard. But I think a lot of those assortative mating things are mostly relying on inequality as measured by survey data, which doesn’t capture the really huge incomes at the top. Those incomes are measured by other things, and that’s a large part of the inequality. But, look, if we can restore adequate funding for high-quality public education so that we can have more great students at a wider variety of places, then maybe the mating won’t be so assortative. I’m not big on the notion that any intervention in people’s lives is evil socialism, but telling people who fall in love with is beyond even what I would consider. JPPE : Fair enough. Walter Scheidel came out with The Great Leveler where he wrote a history of inequality. His thesis was that periods of high inequality only ever get remedied by mass military mobilization, plague, civil war, or government collapse. In a time of historically high inequality, are you worried about that? Or do you think that effective policy and effective politics can actually play a role in reducing inequality? Krugman : The middle-class society that I grew up in—now gone— was the creation of policy. It was not the result of the invisible hand of the market, but a dramatic increase in unionization, the squeezing of wages, wage differentials, the establishment of norms, and changes in taxation, all of which were associated with World War II. So massive total war was the background for the Great Compression. Do we know that this is the only way that reducing inequality can happen? No. It’s the only way we’ve seen it happen in the past, but we don’t have a whole lot of samples, and you have to hope that we can do it differently. And I would say that there were significant equalizing reforms during the Progressive Era, and it’s true that some of the stuff took place after World War I, but some of it took place before. So I don't think history should give you total pessimism about our ability to enact change. And I'd like to see more equality and not total war.

Statelessness A Contradiction in International Law with Asymmetrical Regional Solutions Samantha Altschuler Brown University Author Ginevra Bulgari Vance Kelly Lillian Schoeller Editors Fall 2018 An analysis of statelessness and its difficulties as explored by case studies on Slovenia and Myanmar. “Witness accounts, satellite imagery and data, and photo and video evidence gathered by Amnesty International all point to the same conclusion,” contends Amnesty International. They continue, “Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya women, men, and children have been the victims of a widespread and systematic attack, amounting to crimes against humanity."[1] How exactly is a state able to perpetrate these crimes against its own citizens in the human rights age without consequence? The answer lies in the word “citizen.” According to Myanmar’s domestic law, the Rohingya are no longer considered citizens and thus do not hold the rights of citizens. They belong to no nation, are protected by no law. They are stateless. Introduction The phenomenon of statelessness has plagued the international community since the end of World War I. This paper investigates why, despite the rise of the human rights and refugee regimes, the issue of statelessness remains unsolved. To do so, it will review the legal reality of statelessness and then argue that there exists a fundamental contradiction in international law that makes statelessness uniquely difficult to address. This contradiction, which arises from international law simultaneously protecting the individual’s human right to nationality and the state’s right to determine its nationals according to domestic law, creates the opportunity to render peoples stateless. This paper will then examine two key case studies: Slovenia will represent a successful handling of statelessness while Myanmar will demonstrate a failure. After analyzing the similarities and differences between the two cases, this paper will suggest that given the legal ambiguity surrounding statelessness, the successful resolution of statelessness depends on the values and interests of the regional supranational organization to which the state in question belongs. Those regions that, shaped by their geographies and histories, are characterized by values and interests that support human rights and intervention are more likely to resolve issues of statelessness; those regions that place a higher value on sovereignty and have interests in non-intervention will be far less likely to intervene in states’ internal affairs. Defining Statelessness At this point, it becomes necessary to legally distinguish the stateless person from the refugee or internally displaced person (IDP). The refugee is legally defined as someone who “owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country."[2] Refugees, in short, are citizens who fled their states for fear of persecution. Once outside their state, however, they are well protected under clear and strong international law. This is not to say that all states always uphold their obligations to protect refugees, but that legally the refugee outside his nation is entitled to safe asylum, medical care, schooling, work, and basic human rights and freedoms as would be extended to any other foreign legal resident.[3] An IDP is a citizen forced to relocate within his or her state “to avoid the effects of armed conflict, situations of generalized violence, violations of human rights or natural or human-made disasters.”[4] IDPs, by definition, cannot have crossed an international border. Unlike refugees who are outside their state and entitled to international protections, IDPs “being inside their country, remain entitled to all the rights and guarantees as citizens and other habitual residents of their country. As such, national authorities have the primary responsibility to prevent forced displacement and to protect IDPs.”[5] The 1948 Study on Statelessness conducted by the United Nations Ad Hoc Committee on Refugees and Stateless Persons defines the stateless as “persons who are not nationals of any State, either because at birth or subsequently they were not given any nationality, or because during their lifetime they lost their own nationality and did not acquire a new one.”[6] The stateless, without citizenship, do not qualify as refugees or IDPs. Accordingly, they are not entitled to international refugee protections, nor are they protected by any state. Furthermore, acquisition of citizenship is not so simple as the above report might suggest; domestic laws often ban particular groups, primarily ethnic minorities, from acquiring citizenship. The domestic procedures for conferring citizenship are unique to each state, but typically include some combination of jus sanguinis and jus soli, that is right of blood (citizenship granted by parentage) and right of soil (granted by birth in the territory). Jus sanguinis laws prove particularly problematic, as they frequently serve to determine nationality along ethnic lines and in doing so render ethnic minorities stateless. The Difficulty: Contradiction in International Law The fundamental contradiction that allows for statelessness lies in the simultaneous sanctity under international law of the universal human right to nationality and the state’s sovereign right to determine its citizenship. The right to a nationality is upheld in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the Convention on the Nationality of Married Women, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families.[7] Furthermore, many international bodies and covenants assert that the right to a nationality protects against arbitrary deprivation of citizenship. The UDHR claims “No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.”[8] The ICCPR too holds that “No one shall be arbitrarily deprived the right to enter his own country.”[9] The ICERD further enshrines the “right to leave any country, including one’s own, and return to one’s country.”[10] In 2009, the United Nations Human Rights Council prepared a report on behalf of UN Secretary-General on “human rights and the arbitrary deprivation of nationality.” This report advocates, “The prohibition of arbitrary deprivation of nationality, which aims at protecting the right to nationality, is implicit in provisions of human rights treaties that prescribe specific forms of discrimination.”[11] Article 27 states, “Deprivation of nationality resulting in statelessness would generally be arbitrary unless it served a legitimate purpose and complied with the principle of proportionality.”[12] There is evidently no shortage of international conventions honoring the right to nationality and protection from arbitrary deprivation. At the same, however, international law grants the state the right to determine who is and is not a national. The Convention on Certain Questions Relating to Nationality law holds that “It is for each State to determine under its own laws who are its nationals. This law shall be recognized by other States in so far as it is consistent with international conventions, international custom, and the principles of law generally recognized with regard to nationality.”[13] The latter part of this 1st Article is rather confusing; which international conventions, customs, and principles it refers to is unclear. The case could and has be made by supporters of the human rights regime that it refers to international law discussed above. This would mean that states’ right to determine nationals would defer to international conventions protecting the right to nationality and protection from arbitrary deprivation. The opposite argument, favoring state sovereignty and the abundance of law protecting it, is bolstered by Article 2 of the same Convention, which states, “Any question as to whether a person possesses the nationality of a particular State shall be determined in accordance with the law of the State.”[14] This lack of clarity and the soundness of both arguments allow for each state to choose whether or not to act in accordance with conventions protecting against statelessness, and for other states in the global community to interpret whether or not they consider those acts legal. Many attempts have been made to reconcile the legal disconnect between the universal right to nationality and the domestic right of the state to determine its nationals. One such example is Special Rapporteur Córdova’s Report on Elimination or Reduction of Statelessness for the International Law Commission written in 1953. In Article 14, Córdova writes that “international law may also restrict the authority of the State to deprive a person of its own nationality. There are cases in which international law considers that a certain national legislation is not legal because it comes into conflict with the broader interests of the international community.”[15] Article 15 further clarifies that “the right of individual States to legislate in matters of nationality is dependent upon and subordinate to the rules of international law on the subject, and that, therefore, these questions of nationality are not, as has been argued, entirely reserved for the exclusive jurisdiction of the individual States themselves.”[16] These statements, however, remain both controversial and difficult to enforce. While the spirit of international law is arguably in line with Córdova’s call for states to defer to international convention, the letter of the law protects the sovereignty of states and does not directly address the gap between the individual right to nationality and the state’s right to determine citizenship. Paul Weis, co-author of the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, explains in his now standard work Nationality and Statelessness in International Law: “to the extent that there are no rules of international law imposing a duty on States to confer their nationality, and few, if any, rules denying or restricting the right of States to withdraw their nationality, one may say that statelessness is not inconsistent with international law.”[17] Without international law instructing the state to create in its domestic law a standard set of rules regarding citizenship, Córdova’s report is easily ignored or contested. Any such laws would constitute a breach of state sovereignty and it is extremely unlikely they will ever arise, at least in any form other than purely voluntary guidelines. Thus, the contradiction between the right of the individual and the right of the state remains, and with it the opportunity for states to deprive unwanted individuals, mainly ethnic minorities, of citizenship. Recognizing the weakness of international law concerning statelessness, the UN established the 1954 Convention relating to Status of Stateless Persons. Rather than address the cause of the problem by attempting to impose duties or restrictions on states, the Convention instead focused on easing the symptoms. According to the UNHCR, the “1954 Convention is designed to ensure that stateless people enjoy a minimum set of human rights.”[18] These rights, as will be discussed at greater length in the case studies below, are far from upheld. The 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, on the other hand, actually attempted to address the root of the problem by providing something very close to the laws Weis referred to as non-existent. It “requires that states establish safeguards in their nationality laws to prevent statelessness at birth and later in life… establishes that children are to acquire the nationality of the country in which they are born if they do not acquire any other nationality” and “sets out important safeguards to prevent statelessness due to loss or renunciation of nationality and state succession.”[19] This convention represents the most direct attempt to combat statelessness but has unfortunately been met with minimal success. Unsurprisingly, states were slow to forgo their right to determine citizenship. Only 61 states are party, as compared to the 83 that are party to the 54 Convention. Further, the two states that will now be discussed as case studies are not party to the convention, highlighting the weakness of protections for the stateless. Case Studies Having established that international law does not conclusively protect against statelessness, the question arises as to why statelessness is successfully addressed in some cases and not in others. In answering this question, this paper next presents an example of the successful resolution of an issue of statelessness, which occurred in Slovenia, and an example of the devastating consequences of statelessness left unresolved, which is currently occurring with the Rohingya people in Myanmar. While these two cases, of course, represent only two examples of statelessness, they were selected specifically to represent the two opposite ends of the spectrum, success and failure. Case Study 1: Slovenia The Republic of Slovenia is a rather young state, having only gained independence in 1991 amidst the dissolution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). The Slovene desire for independence, however, stretches back much further. The ethnically Slovene people (not to be confused with the “Slovenian”, meaning of Slovenia) have throughout history belonged to various states and empires, including the Roman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Habsburg Monarchy. After World War I, Slovenes for the first time attained a degree of independence through participation in the formation of the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs. The State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs later joined with Serbia to become the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, which was renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1929. After occupation by Germany, Hungary, and Italy during World War II, Slovenia joined the SFRY. Under the rule of Josip Tito, Slovenia enjoyed considerable economic rights and freedoms that allowed their economy to flourish. Upon Tito’s death, politicians across the SFRY, most notably Slobodan Milosevic, mobilized support by taking advantage of existing ethnic hostilities. In addition to ethnic tension, the Slovenes felt exploited by the SFRY, which redistributed the fruit of their economic success to support the less successful economies of other SFRY republics. Slovenia held a referendum in 1990 and became independent in June of 1991. a. Rendering Stateless: Domestic Citizenship Law The history of subordination instilled in Slovenes the desire for not only independence but also the establishment of a national identity. After discontent with the communist and multi-ethnic SFRY, Slovenia was quick to write its independence into law with the drafting of a new constitution for a democratic and ethnically homogenous state. As occurred in many post-Yugoslav states, Slovenia’s constitution and citizenship laws defined the emergent state along ethnic lines. The preamble to Slovenia’s constitution invokes the identity of the majority ethnic group, Slovenes, reading “[Proceeding…] from the historical fact that in a centuries-long struggle for national liberation we Slovenes have established our national identity and asserted our statehood.”[20] Igor Štiks describes the way Slovenia drafted their new legislation, saying, “[W]hat initially presented itself as ethnic solidarity and a nationalist vision of recomposition of previously existed communities into neatly divided ethnocultural groups governing ‘their’ territory was soon enshrined in legislation” through the use of “citizenship laws as an effective tool for ethnic engineering.”[21] Under the SFRY system, each citizen held citizenship both to the SFRY and to one of its republics. The same month they achieved independence, June of 1991, Slovenia adopted the Citizenship Act of the Republic of Slovenia. The Act provided that those individuals who held both SFRY and Slovenian citizenship prior to the referendum on independence in 1990 (a year before Slovenia was actually independent) were automatically considered citizens. Those who were not had a six-month period to apply for citizenship, after which they would become illegal aliens.[22] While on its face this law may seem innocent enough, Štiks explains, “[T]he law itself becomes quite controversial when we consider that it enabled policies of ethnic engineering.”[23] After the six months passed, those who had not acquired citizenship, either because they had not applied or had not been approved, were rendered stateless. Slovenia now recognizes it left 18,205 people stateless, while the European Court of Human Rights places the number at 25,671.[24] Many of these citizens never applied for citizenship because they were born in Slovenia and assumed jus soli they were citizens, because they were simply unaware of the law at all, or because they did not understand it applied to them.[25] Others did attempt to apply, but were limited by the “short application period of six months, confusing procedures, numerous difficulties in obtaining all necessary documents at the moment of Yugoslavia’s break-up and subsequent escalation of violence, and finally by the overall political confusion since Slovenia was still legally part of the SFRY and was not internationally recognized until January 1992.”[26] Another group had their applications denied, for example, for failing to satisfy the requirement that they not “endanger public order”[27] (which was not defined) or that they possess “assured residence and sufficient income that guarantees material and social security.”[28] The government did not provide notification or explanation to those in danger of losing citizenship. Štiks explains that this “confusion was only partly the product of an unstable political context” and that the government in reality “created confusion intentionally. Arbitrariness could be found in many of the legal prescriptions and actual administrative practices, and was clearly part of a general strategy” under which “the citizenship laws and the procedures for acquiring new citizenship proved to be the main weapon of administrative ethnic engineering.”[29] The result was that those of ethnically Slovene descent were accepted jus sanguinis as citizens, while thousands of ethnic minorities, despite being born in Slovenia or having extended residence, were denied. Those ethnic minorities who did not acquire Slovenian citizenship were literally erased from the national registries overnight. “Their documents (e.g. passports, driver’s licenses and IDs) were invalidated. They lost all civic and social rights, jobs, health care and social benefits, and became ‘dead’ from an administrative point of view – they were izbrisani, i.e. erased.”[30] To be dead from an administrative point of view has very tangible consequences. Losing their citizenship meant the loss of both health care and legal employment, which in turn drove many to homelessness.[31] b. Domestic Response: Judicial Failure Though Slovenia enjoys a highly functioning judicial system, the numerous attempts of stateless peoples to bring their case to Constitutional Court saw very little success. In 1999, the Constitutional Court did find the Citizenship Act illegal and called on the legislature to correct it.[32] However, when legislation to do so was drafted, voter turnout was “less than a third of the 1.6 million electorate, and the Act was rejected by almost 95 percent.”[33] Mild, yet certainly insufficient, progress came in the form of an amendment to the Citizenship Act in 2002 creating a new article stating that “An adult may obtain Slovenian citizenship if he or she is of Slovenian descent through at least one parent and if his or her citizenship in the Republic of Slovenia has ceased due to release, renunciation, or deprivation or because the person had not acquired Slovenian citizenship due to his historical circumstances.”[34] Essentially, this amendment provided the option for ethnic Slovenes who had been rendered stateless in the confusion of 1991 to reclaim citizenship. It did nothing, however, for those who had been born in Slovenia to non-Slovene parents and thereby required citizenship jus soli. For these individuals, the new law introduced naturalization, which required the applicant “have lived in Slovenia for ten years,” “not constitute a threat to public order,” “fulfill his or her tax obligations and has a guaranteed permanent source of income,” and possess the “required knowledge of the Slovene language.”[35] This last requirement included a language examination where none existed before. Many of the stateless possessed insufficient mastery of the language, their first languages being Croatian, Serbian, Italian or Hungarian.[36] These requirements provided opportunity for ethnic discrimination, both obviously in the language examination and more subtly via the undefined “threat to public order.” c. International Response: Regional Intervention In 2006, the case of the stateless of Slovenia was brought before the European Court of Human Rights. After deliberation, the Court found “in July 2010 that Slovenia had violated the right to private life under article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.”[37] Slovenia appealed and the case was taken up by the Grand Chamber, which held in July 2011 that Slovenia had breached Article 8, as well as Article 14, prohibiting discrimination, and Article 13, the right to an effective remedy.[38] The Court “ordered Slovenia to pay between €29,400 and €72,770 to each of the six applicants in the case,” which amounted to “€150 per person per month” [39] spent stateless. While this case represented only a handful of the erased, it has set both legal and normative precedent for other stateless persons of Slovenia, who now have 65 cases pending. [40] James Goldstone, executive director of the Open Society Justice Initiative, remarked, “This decision should enable thousands of the ‘erased’ to finally receive legal recognition…the judgment represents an important milestone in strengthening international norms against statelessness.”[41] Case Study 2: Myanmar “The word ‘Rohingya’ is a historical name for the Muslim Arakanese.”[42] Arakanese refers to the region formerly called Arakan, now a territory of Myanmar known as the Rakhine State. Arakan experienced periods of independence and domination until 1784, when it was “formally annexed by the Kingdom of Burma.”[43] This annexation later brought the ire of the British, who also had interest in the region. This resulted in the First Anglo-Burmese War, lasting from 1824 to 1826. It is important to note that this date of 1824 is now used in Myanmar as the marker of colonial rule. Research Professor Azeem Ibrahim explains, “Up to this point in time, the histories of Burma and Arakan were largely separate...”[44] A series of Anglo-Burmese wars thereafter ended in further British conquerings and their establishing “a clear division between a central region dominated by the Burman majority and outlying regions in which a complex patchwork of ethnic groups lived alongside one another.”[45] The ethnic origins of the Rohingya have recently been questioned. One group, including Ibrahim, contends “the Rohingyas settled in Burma in the ninth century, which, through the ages, have mixed with Bengalis, Persians, Moghuls, Turks, and Pathans, in line with the historically pluralistic population of Arakan State,” while the other considers them to be “illegal Chittagonian Bengalis who arrived as a by-product of British colonial rule.”[46] Unfortunately for the Rohinyga, the latter view has become widely accepted in Myanmar. In addition to being considered foreign, the association with British colonial rule is dangerous for the Rohingya. The British placed the ethnically Burmese Buddhist majority lower on the hierarchy during their rule than the Rohingya Muslims.[47] The Burmese deeply resented their inferior status, colonial rule, and the preferential treatment bestowed upon the Rohingya. Additionally, the Rohingya supported the British occupation. Ibrahim identifies this historical “link between religion, ethnicity and anti-British sentiment” as having a “profound influence”[48] in creating the intense ethnic hatred felt toward the Rohingya today. During World War II, Japan invaded and took over the region from the British. While the ethnic Burmese ranged from indifferent to supportive of the Japanese, the Rohingya supported British rule. This further heightened ethnic tensions in the area. The British recruited soldiers from both the Rohingya and ethnically Burmese, promising both groups independence after the war in exchange for their service. General Aung San famously led the Burmese to fight, first for the Japanese who made similar promises for independence, then later for the British. When Burma became independent in 1948, the Rohingya petitioned to join the Muslim state of East Pakistan. The petition was rejected, but had the effect of leading the “Burmese authorities to regard the Muslim population of Arakan as hostile to the new regime and to see them as outsiders whose loyalty lay with a different state. These events helped create a belief that only Buddhists could really be part of the new state.”[49] Burma’s history has been complex since achieving independence, but for the sake of brevity, it is here heavily condensed. Burma experienced a short period of democracy wracked with ethnic conflict and civil strife. General Ne Win first established a caretaker government, then later launched a military overthrow in 1962. Under military rule, Burma met protest and opposition with arrest and violence. In 1988, amid severe unrest, Ne Win stepped down. Student protests were met with police brutality, triggering demonstrations and further protests that were in turn met with military-grade violence. After a period of chaos and revolutionary fervor, General Saw Maung lead a coup, became Prime Minister, and instituted martial law. It was in 1989 that the military government changed the state’s name to Myanmar. Notably, in 1991, Aung San Suu Kyi, daughter of famed General Aung San who had helped bring independence but was assassinated before it was realized, received the Nobel Peace Prize while under house arrest for her words regarding peaceful reform. Throughout the 2000s, the military government made several small steps to ease Myanmar into democracy, culminating in 2011 with political reform and the release of Suu Kyi from house arrest. Under the new democracy, Suu Kyi won a seat in parliament in 2012. She was elected to the presidency in 2015, but is constitutionally barred from the presidency. She is the de facto state leader, but called officially “State Counselor.” a. Rendered Stateless: Domestic Citizenship Law It was during the time of unrest in 1974 that an intense need to divert public dissatisfaction resulted in the Emergency Immigration Act. The Act “imposed ethnicity-based cards (National Registration Certificates), with the Rohingya only being eligible for Foreign Registration Cards (non-national cards).”[50] These cards represented the first step in depriving the Rohingya of their citizenship. The 1974 Constitution of the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma then defined citizenship jus sanguinis, giving it to those whose parents were citizens in 1947 – a time when the Rohingya were not formally citizens (as they had never been required to register, given their assumed citizenship jus soli).[51] Finally, in 1982, the Burmese Citizenship Law created categories of citizenship grouped by ethnicity. The groups were meant to align with length of bloodline prior to 1824 (the date marking the start of colonial rule). If a group was not considered indigenous prior to British rule, they were declared foreigners. This is what happened to the Rohingya, who subsequently became stateless. The Law includes steps for naturalization, but as Ibrahim explains, “[T]he one category that is excluded is someone born to two parents neither of whom are already citizens (the Rohingyas are therefore, by definition, excluded).”[52] In the most recent census (2015), “Rohingya” was not listed among the 135 ethnic groups, and their status as illegal residents was cemented. The stateless Rohingya have been systematically abused for decades, but in 2012 there was an incident wherein an ethnically Burmese Buddhist woman was raped by a Muslim Rohingya man that escalated the crisis.[53] Violence against the Rohingya became severe and their status as stateless both intensified the hatred directed towards them (as it confirmed their status as illegal Bangladeshis) and left them without legal protection or recourse. For his report for the Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, Ullah conducted 29 interviews with Rohingya. He found the situation far worse than the lack of income or healthcare experienced by the erased in Slovenia. Rohingya women explained how their “status of statelessness makes them vulnerable to sexual attack at different levels by pirates, bandits, members of the security forces, smugglers, or other refugees.”[54] One interviewee, Mr. Kalam, explains his experience as follows: "We were born on this soil but we are called illegal migrants....my family is from Maungdaw, but we left a few days later the NaSaKa people raped my sister in front of my family members. My brother in-law tried to resist them but he was taken away by them and he never returned. They told us if we didn’t leave Myanmar they would kill us all brutally."[55] In October of 2017, Amnesty International reported that over 530,00 Rohingya attempted to flee the country.[56] Given Myanmar’s geographic position, that journey requires them to brave the sea. Ullah’s interviewees describe the danger of the journey, which included starvation, beatings, and observed suicide of many who threw themselves overboard.[57] Those who survived the crossing were often treated no better upon arrival. Human Rights Watch issued a report in 2009 entitled “Perilous Plight” following the emergence of graphic images of a group of Rohingya on board a boat from Myanmar to Thailand.[58] The report discusses “Thailand’s callous ‘push-back’ policy,"[59] calling out the Thai government for “saying that the Rohingya were economic migrants, not refugees, and that Thailand could not absorb the flow.”[60] Worse than sending the Rohingya back to Myanmar (which would breach non-refoulement laws if the Rohingya were legally refugees[61] , [62] ) is the reality that “In May 2015, gruesome mass graves were unearthed in southern Thailand, revealing scores of bodies belonging to mostly Rohingya refugees.”[63] The Rohingya represent the very worst possible outcome of statelessness. They exemplify the way in which a people without citizenship or refugee status become vulnerable. This vulnerability, when applied to a despised people, results in some of humanity’s darkest crimes, many of which are now being identified as ethnic cleansing[64] and crimes against humanity.[65] b. Domestic Response: Endorsement and Ignorance As described, there is an abundance of evidence supporting the fact that the violence against the Rohingya is state-sponsored. Ullah calls it “organized, incited, and committed by local political party operatives, the Buddhist monkhood, and ordinary Arakanese, directly supported by state security forces.”[66] There is no functioning judicial infrastructure to speak of in Myanmar, though if there were it would be useless given the intermittent application of martial law. Suu Kyi, to the great disappointment of the West who honored her with the Nobel Peace Prize, has been largely silent and apathetic regarding the Rohingya. She avoids using the word “Rohingya” in interviews, mentioning it only in connection with the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, a Rohingya resistance group, which she claims commits acts of terrorism.[67] In one interview, Suu Kyi downplayed the crisis to such an extent that she referred to it as a “quarrel.”[68] When cornered by the media, she claims the West exaggerates the crisis.[69] Furthermore, the government of Myanmar has been accused of interfering with humanitarian aid meant for the Rohingya. The Rahkine National Party spokesperson justified restricting the aid supply as follows: “When the international community give them [Rohingya] a lot of food and a lot of donations, they will grow fat and become stronger, and they will become more violent.”[70] In keeping with this logic, borders were shut to international agencies attempting to help the Rohingya, such as Médecins Sans Frontiéres (the French branch of the NGO Doctors Without Borders), in what the ISCI calls deliberate “state actions designed to systematically weaken the Rohingya community.”[71] c. International Response: Non-Intervention The international response has largely been that of naming and shaming. Both Amnesty International[72] and Human Rights Watch[73] have labeled the abuses in Myanmar as Crimes Against Humanity. The US has responded with words of condemnation. Rex Tillerson, US Secretary of State, stated in November of 2017, "These abuses by some among the Burmese military, security forces, and local vigilantes have caused tremendous suffering... After a careful and thorough analysis of available facts, it is clear that the situation in northern Rakhine state constitutes ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya."[74] Yet, the only action taken has come in the form of diplomatic visits, verbal urges, and sanctions that were lifted in 2015. The European Union also lifted their sanctions in 2013 (except for an arms embargo). The UN has crafted reports and condemnations, but there has been no mention of action beyond the normative sphere. The UN has plans drafted for providing the Rohingya in Bangladesh with resources and aid,[75] but despite the talk of crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing, there has been no movement in the General Assembly toward humanitarian intervention beyond aid. On the regional level, Myanmar is a member of the new supranational organization ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations). The 30th ASEAN Summit in April of 2017 notably did not include the crisis in Myanmar on its agenda and made no mention of it throughout the entirety of the Summit.[76] According to an article from The Diplomat, President Widodo of Indonesia expressed to Suu Kyi “that stability in Myanmar was important not only for the country but also the region.”[77] This passing comment, representing the most direct acknowledgement of the crisis from the Summit, is a far cry from intervention or even condemnation by fellow ASEAN states. As is typical of the culture of ASEAN (which will be discussed later at length), the problem is identified as an issue of stability rather than human rights. Bangladesh, which is not an ASEAN member, has worked with the United Nations Development Programme to create a Humanitarian Response Plan.[78] The Plan seeks to raise US $434 million for humanitarian aid, resources, and improved infrastructure in the host communities receiving the influx of Rohingya. The area to which most of the Rohingya arrive, Cox Bazar, has a “population of 2,290,000 predominantly Bengali Muslims, is one of Bangladesh’s poorest and most vulnerable districts, with malnutrition and food insecurity at chronic moderate levels, and poverty well above the national average.”[79] The Plan stressed the difficulty for Cox Bazar to accommodate the Rohingya who are “adversely affecting the food security and nutrition situation, and impacting the local economy by introducing a labor surplus which has driven day labor wages down, and an increase in the price of basic food and non-food items.”[80] The Plan also identifies a need for capital to address the issue of the increase in the illegal methamphetamine “yaba” coming from Myanmar and entering the local drug trafficking circles in Cox Bazar.[81] Case Study Analysis Similarities: Both cases of statelessness begin with the establishment of independent states freeing themselves from the influence of larger empires they felt exploited by. Slovenia emerged from the SRFY, while Myanmar gained independence from British colonial rule. Both states had preexisting ethnic tensions and upon independence used jus sanguinis citizenship laws as tools of ethnic engineering to establish national ethnic identities that privileged the ethnic majority over ethnic minorities. Slovenia’s citizenship law was written in 1990, while Myanmar’s was written just a few years prior in 1982. Both states are members of the UN and have affirmed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Both have chosen to join regional supranational organizations: Slovenia both the European Union and the Council of Europe, and Myanmar ASEAN. The Council of Europe has a doctrine of human rights, titled the European Convention on Human Rights, while ASEAN has formed the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights and has included human rights law explicitly in their Charter.[82] Differences: While both case studies feature a recent history of independence, only Myanmar has a colonial history. Among the many long-term effects of colonialism is the exacerbation of deep ethnic tensions.[83] While the ethnic Slovenes had a desire to assert their independence and bolster their ethnic identity, they did not have a history of ethnic conflict rooted in colonial oppression. The ethnic majority of Myanmar, however, harbors a hatred of the Rohingya for their support of the British colonizers and their privileged position under colonial rule. This hatred, left to fester for centuries and passed down through generations, helps to explain the view of the Rohingya dominant in Myanmar: that they are Bangladeshi foreigners that have no place in Myanmar. Another difference, also attributable (at least in part) to colonial legacy, is in development status. Slovenia is affluent and highly developed, as is typical of European states. Myanmar, like many Southeast Asian states, has been a Least Developed Country since 1987. For the last thirty years, they have not been able to reduce their Economic Vulnerability Index the requisite degree to graduate to a Developing Country.[84] Development Status, of course, reflects the state economy, but it also includes rates of literacy, undernourishment, child mortality, and education.[85] These factors influence the political realities of states. Slovenia has had the opportunity to invest in infrastructure and education that allows for high quality of life, reduced ethnic divide, and high levels of institutionalization and rule of law. Myanmar, on the other hand, has not had the resources to engage in those opportunities, and instead faced poverty that only hindered rule of law, aggravated tensions, and made people susceptible to mobilization along ethnic lines by military and political opportunists. While both states are part of supranational regional organizations, the strength, values, and interests of these two organizations are vastly different. The Council of Europe, founded in 1949, is characterized by a culture committed to Human Rights. Being an old organization comprised of wealthy and like-minded states, it has been able to develop strong institutions. The interest in and capacity to enforce human rights law manifests in the strength of the European Court of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights. This culture of human rights and strength of institutions combined with an interest from regional states absorbing the stateless together brought the Court to convict Slovenia of breaching the European Human Rights Convention. Slovenia, under the weight of this powerful regional organization, conceded. Additionally, Slovenia is a new member of the EU and has such had an interest in accepting the EU’s human rights norms in order to cement their status as an EU member (and to avoid EU sanctions). The fledgling ASEAN, on the other hand, only recently adopted their Charter in 2008. As such, the organization is young, weak, and not highly institutionalized. While its Charter seeks to “protect human rights,”[86] it lacks any judicial infrastructure for doing so. It does, however, contain articles explicitly outlining: “respect independence, sovereignty, equality, territorial integrity and national identity of all ASEAN member states,”[87] “non-interference in the internal affairs of ASEAN member states,”[88] “respect for the right of every Member State to lead its national existence free from external interference, subversion and coercion,”[89] and “abstention from participation in any policy or activity, including the use of its territory, pursued by an ASEAN Member State or non-ASEAN state or any non-State actor, which threatens the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political and economic stability of ASEAN Member States.”[90] From these articles it is abundantly clear that the culture of ASEAN is such that it values sovereignty and non-intervention far more than human rights. In addition to weak institutions and a culture that respects sovereignty, the ASEAN member states are not absorbing the Rohingya population and thus have no interest in intervention. Gruesome as it may be, the geographic reality of the Southeast Asian region is such that those who flee from Myanmar do so by boat, and many do not survive the oceanic crossing. Those who do are headed primarily to non-ASEAN member Bangladesh. The Rohingya who attempted to enter Thailand, which is an ASEAN member state, were either returned to Myanmar[91] or did not survive.[92] Findings: The Importance of Regional Asymmetry This paper maintains that nearly all of the above differences share a common factor: they are regional in nature. The realities of being a European state versus a Southeast Asian state are markedly different. These regions have different histories, resources, levels of institutionalization, values, cultures, and interests, all of which are reflected in the actions (or lack thereof) of their supranational organizations. Without clear international law, it falls on these regional organizations to choose whether to intervene on the part of the stateless in the name of human rights or to be silent and honor sovereignty. This essentially means that without the protection of international law, domestic law, or refugee law, the fate of stateless peoples is currently determined by the fortuity of geography. Should they be rendered stateless in a region with a strong, established supranational organization with a culture valuing human rights, their treatment will be wildly different than a stateless person born in a region with a young, weak supranational organization that values sovereignty. Conclusion This paper has demonstrated that the issue of statelessness is so difficult to address because of the fundamental contradiction in international law protecting the universal human right to nationality and the state’s right to determine who its nationals are. When these rights come into conflict, it remains unclear which law supersedes the other, thereby creating opportunities for deprivation of nationality. This paper examined one successful example of statelessness being addressed (Slovenia) and one devastating failure (Myanmar). The case studies reveal the common use of citizenship laws as tools of ethnic engineering in newly formed states. They also reveal the primary difference, and thus determining factor, to be regional. In these legally ambiguous situations it was the strength, values, and interests of the regional organizations that determined whether or not stateless peoples were protected. Moving Forward This paper contends that the highly unequal treatment of the stateless of Slovenia and Myanmar is unacceptable. Rather than allow the fate of the stateless to rest upon the nature of the regional organization in place, clear and strong legal rights and protections need be outlined for stateless peoples. One manner of achieving this goal would be an amendment to the laws of refugees to include stateless peoples. The refugee legally flees their nation for “well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group.”[93] Amending the law such that this definition also includes persons fleeing for well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of statelessness would suffice. A second, more difficult, option would be to bolster a body of law specifically for stateless peoples (like that for refugees), as the current state of international law protecting stateless peoples is evidently insufficient. As the legal system stands now, the global community will likely not intervene in Myanmar until the crisis becomes so egregious as to invoke the Responsibility to Protect, and even then it is not clear if intervention will occur, and if so what form it will take. Endnotes [1] "Myanmar: Crimes against humanity terrorize and drive Rohingya out," Amnesty International, October 18, 2017, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/10/myanmar-new-evidence-of-systematic-campaign-to-terrorize-and-drive-rohingya-out/ . [2] UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), The 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol, September 2011, available at: http://www.refworld.org/docid/4ec4a7f02.html [accessed 16 December 2017] [3] United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, "Protecting Refugees: questions and answers," UNHCR, February 01, 2002, http://www.unhcr.org/afr/publications/brochures/3b779dfe2/protecting-refugees-questions-answers.html . [4] "IDP definition," UNHCR|Emergency Handbook, https://emergency.unhcr.org/entry/67716/idp-definition . [5] "IDP definition," UNHCR|Emergency Handbook, https://emergency.unhcr.org/entry/67716/idp-definition . [6] Eric Fripp, Nationality and Statelessness in the International Law of Refugee Status (Oxford and Portland, Oregon: Hart Publishing, 2016), 96. [7] "Right to a Nationality and Statelessness," United Nations Office of the High Commissioner, http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Pages/Nationality.aspx . [8] UN General Assembly, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 10 December 1948, 217 A (III), available at: http://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b3712c.html [9] Article 12 (4), UN General Assembly, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 16 December 1966, United Nations, Treaty Series, vol. 999, p. 171, Article 12(4). available at: http://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b3aa0.html . [10] Article 12 (4), UN General Assembly, International Covenant, 5(d) (i) – (ii). [11] UN Human Rights Council, Human Rights and arbitrary deprivation of nationality: Report of the Secretary-General, 14 December 2009 (UN Doc A/HCR/13/34), available at: www.refworld.org/docid4b83acb2.html . [12] UN Human Rights Council, Report of the Secretary-General. [13] League of Nations, Convention on Certain Questions Relating to the Conflict of Nationality Law, 13 April 1930, League of Nations, Treaty Series, vol. 179, p. 89, No. 4137, available at: http://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b3b00.html . [14] League of Nations, Convention on Certain Questions. [15] ILC, ‘Report on the Elimination or Reduction of Statelessness’ (1953) UN Doc A/CN.4.64;ILC, Yearbook of the International Law Commission, vol II (1963) 167 [14]-[15] [16] ILC, ‘Report on the Elimination or Reduction of Statelessness’; ILC, Yearbook, 167 [14]-[15]. [17] Paul Weis, Nationality and Statelessness in International law (Westport, CT: Hyperion Press, 1979). [18] "UN Conventions on Statelessness," UNHCR, http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/un-conventions-on-statelessness.html . [19] "UN Conventions on Statelessness," UNHCR. [20] Constitution of the Republic of Slovenia [Slovenia], 23 December 1991, available at: http://www.refworld.org/docid/4c407ae62.html . [21] Igor Štiks, Nations and Citizens in Yugoslavia and the Post-Yugoslav States: One hundred Years of Citizenship (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), 20. [22] Citizenship Act of the Republic of Slovenia [], 25 June 1991, available at: http://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b5271b.html [23] Igor Štiks, Nations and Citizens in Yugoslavia and the Post-Yugoslav States: One hundred Years of Citizenship (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), 160. [24] Igor Štiks, Nations and Citizens, 160. 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[31] Open Society Justice Initiative, "European Court Strengthens Protections against Statelessness in Slovenia Ruling," Open Society Foundations, June 26, 2012, , https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/press-releases/european-court-strengthens-protections-against-statelessness-slovenia-ruling . [32] Rainer Bauböck, Bernhard Perchinig, and Wiebke Sievers, eds., Citizenship Policies in the New Europe Expanded and Updated Edition (Amsterdam University Press, 2009), 302. [33] Bauböck, Perchinig, Sievers, eds., Citizenship Policies in the New Europe, 302. [34] Rainer Bauböck, Bernhard Perchinig, and Wiebke Sievers, eds., Citizenship Policies in the New Europe Expanded and Updated Edition (Amsterdam University Press, 2009), 312. [35] Bauböck, Perchinig, Sievers, eds., Citizenship Policies in the New Europe, 312. [36] "Languages across Europe: Slovenia," BBC, http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/european_languages/countries/slovenia.shtml . [37] Sebastian Kohn, "Victory for Slovenia's "erased citizens" at the European Court of Human Rights," European Network on Statelessness, June 26, 2012, https://www.statelessness.eu/blog/victory-slovenias-erased-citizens-european-court-human-rights . [38] Kuric and others v. Slovenia, Application no. 26828/06, Council of Europe: European Court of Human Rights, 26 June 2012, available at: http://www.refworld.org/cases,ECHR,4fe9c88c2.html . [39] Toby Vogel, "Slovenia told to compensate Yugoslav citizens," POLITICO, April 23, 2014, https://www.politico.eu/article/slovenia-told-to-compensate-yugoslav-citizens/ . [40] Vogel, "Slovenia told to compensate Yugoslav citizens" [41] Open Society Justice Initiative, "European Court Strengthens Protections against Statelessness in Slovenia Ruling," Open Society Foundations, June 26, 2012, https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/press-releases/european-court-strengthens-protections-against-statelessness-slovenia-ruling . 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*Feature* JPPE INTERVIEW, ANDRE PERRY: Andre Perry is a fellow in the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings, a scholar-in-residence at American University, and a columnist for the Hechinger Report. His work centers around issues of race, structural inequality, and education. His book, Know Your Price: Valuing Black Lives and Property in America’s Black Cities , was published earlier this year, and he has had his work featured in MSNBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN, among others. May 2020 JPPE: Hey everyone, welcome to “The Difference Principle: Power and Inequality in America.” I’m speaking with Andre Perry, who is a fellow at the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings, a Scholar-in-Resident at American University, and a columnist for the Hechinger Report. His work tends to focus on race, structural inequality, and education, and it’s been featured in MSNBC, the New York Times, the Nation, the Washington Post, CNN, among other places. He’s also the author of a new book, Know Your Price: Valuing Black Lives and Property in America’s Black Cities, and the report deals with the devaluation of assets in black neighborhoods, which deals with findings he produced at Brookings in a study and presented to the U.S. House of Representatives. Hi Andre, how are you? Andre: I’m doing well, good to see you. You forgot to add that I was a fellow when you were an intern at the Brookings Institution, so good to see you again. JPPE: Good to see you again. So the first question is: when you look at the recent movements to shine light on race inequality in the US, what do you see? Andre: Oh, I see an opportunity to really transform policy in the United States in a way that produces equity and upholds the values that the constitution and other similar documents have promoted but not necessarily operationalized. So for me, as a researcher of policy, it’s encouraging to have so many different types of people marching in the streets, demanding change—structural change. So that just gives me the cover to really produce the kind of research and analyses I think is needed during this moment, but it is also part of my life’s work. I’ve been writing and researching structural inequality for years, and so this is my time— this is (my) equivalent of a super bowl—when it comes to structural inequality. There’s so much at stake, and we have an opportunity to truly change and transform the way we distribute resources and services in this country, so I’m looking forward to the years ahead. JPPE: And I saw that you began your earlier work with a focus on education. You spent time as an educator, and as a dean I saw as well, which I didn’t know, actually. And your most recent book and a recent report that you wrote for Brookings deals with these issues of housing, and you set up your book with what I thought was a really interesting anecdote where you describe your family background with an estranged biological mother and a father who was killed in prison at 27, and then you discuss it in the context of these feelings of not belonging and seem to extend that to the black experience in America. In your testimony in front of the House you said, “The value of assets building schools leadership and lend itself are inextricably linked to the perceptions of black people. How much of the demand that impacts housing price is affected by how people are perceived,” and it seemed that in your book you emphasized this point through the case studies that you highlighted in order to show this idea that our concept of equity is corrupted by an idea that white people are the “gold standard.” Practically, this manifested in the tangible form of black real estate being devalued by as much as 156,000,048,000 dollars. So, where did that shift to housing come from, and why did you choose to orient towards that? Andre: You know, kids don’t live in schools; they live in communities. Often times, when we are talking about academic performance, we ignore all of the other structural barriers that impede a child’s education. I wanted to examine all those other structures that impact children, so I could get at how they impact education, and what was clear to me is that it’s almost impossible to isolate education as a root cause of inequality, but a lot of people try to do that. They’ll say, “if we could only fix the school then everything will be alright.” JPPE: Right. Andre: And, you know, that’s just not true. So much of academic performance is predicted by forces outside of school: what kind of job your parents have, what kind of education your grandfather had, home prices, transportation, the criminal justice system. All of these things have an impact on children’s and parents’ lives, which end up playing out in the schools themselves. So I wanted to say, “hey, so enough of blaming schools for society’s problems with policy” because when you blame schools, you essentially have little room but to blame teachers and students and people in that school, and that’s just misguided. I say throughout my book—and it’s become a mantra of mine— that there is nothing wrong with black people that ending racism can’t solve. I say that to get to that we’ve got to stop blaming black people. There’s this white supremacist myth that says the conditions of black cities and neighborhoods are a direct result of people in them, and that white supremacist myth also plays out in our efforts to reform schools. We blame teachers, we blame students, we blame school boards, but we treat school boards and school districts like we treat black districts—we treat black school boards and black districts like we treat black people. “We will take them over, we will impose all kinds of restrictions on them, we do things we would never think of doing to a white district.” And so I started looking at other sectors and said, “hey, teachers are not to blame here.” In particular, black teachers: in my education chapter in Know Your Price, I outline the added value that black teachers bring in particular, and so when you see reform hit hard in many districts, and you see a reduction in the black workforce, you go, “hey, this is contradictory to what to the goal of reform is, and that’s to provide opportunity.” And people have to remember: kids eventually grow up and become adults, and we’re cutting off job opportunities for black folks—what the heck are we educating black people for? So the point is that I wanted to look beyond education in schools, because it is often used—or school reform is often used— to advocate our responsibilities for dealing with all the other structures that impede growth in black children and families’ lives. JPPE: So when you think about those other structures that impede growth, how do you delineate some of the other forces that have played a role in rising inequality since the 1970s that people might talk about: financializiation, technological disruption, globalization, and so on? How do you delineate that from the things that are specifically affecting black communities and the role of racism? Andre: Well, I took an approach where I wanted to identify assets that we could measure in terms of the impact of racism on it. And then what I did was I just started going asset by asset and just examining the impact of racism, and eventually I will have some grand theory of how all these things come together. But at least for now I just started looking at different sectors, and this is where housing came into play. Housing—there’s so much data that you can pull from to measure housing. And what we did in preparation for the book—and it’s sort of the anchor study—we examined housing prices and black neighborhoods where the share of the black population was greater than fifty percent and compared them to neighborhoods where the share of the black population was less than fifty percent. And a lot of people say, “yeah the black neighborhood prices are going to be lower because of crime, because of education.” So, we sought out just to control for many different social factors just to get an “apples- to-apples “comparison. And after controlling for all those things as well as many of the “Zillow metrics” you see, we found that homes in black neighborhoods are devalued by twenty-three percent, about 48,000 per home, accumulative there is about 156 billion in lost equity, and we know that people use that equity to start businesses. In fact it would have started up more than four million businesses based on the average amount blacks use to start up their firms. It would have funded more than eight million four-year degrees based on the average cost of a public four-year degree. It’s a big number. And I look at the devaluation, and the reason I say devaluation is because, again, these assets are strong, but they are devalued, often times purposely, through policy. And so my goal with this is—I’m not quite there where I can offer up a grand theory that could be applied to things like globalization and commercialization and things like that. However, I do know we have plenty of evidence to say that the value of assets are mitigated by their proximity to blackness. And we’re corrupted in terms of how we value these particular assets by the preconceived notions of whiteness and blackness, obviously whiteness being of higher value and blackness being of lower value. That plays out many different ways; you just saw, my study looked at home prices, but there was just a major study that was just released that’s getting a lot of headlines that shows that black communities pay more in property taxes than their white counterparts. Thirteen percent more. JPPE: Wow. Andre: And that generally comes about because there’s always been municipalities that charge black communities higher in taxes because of this perceived over-usage of services. They perceive black people overusing services, so they charge higher rates, but that’s also come from just a negative perception. These things play out many different ways. I just identified, like, six different ways devaluation occurs and hope to keep adding onto those ways so I’ll be able to offer a theory of sorts in the future. JPPE: Well, one question I have just listening to you talk about that is: I kind of wonder how you deal with the issue of hearts of minds, of there being these ingrained ideological forces that are just baked into the psyche of people, where there is a certain underlying racism. How do you deal with something like that? Because it seems like that might be difficult to address with just a single policy. Andre: I wrote the book—it’s a policy book, but it’s narrated using first-person narrative. I use a lot of biographical sketches, lots of case studies because getting at this issue of changing hearts and minds, I think you have to do both. You can’t simply make the head case to people. You also have to make a heart case, and more importantly, you have to make a case for culture change. I wanted to show how these racist ideas and devaluations play out in the lives of researchers, family members so they could see—in sort of real terms—what this means or what this says about our culture and what we need to change. So I think people will be pleased to see that I’m talking about a lot of heady policy ideas, and I try my best to scrub all the jargon off of them and really talk plainly. That’s something I always recommend policy folks do: don’t get caught up in your own policy community and talk your way out of compelling others to join in on the fun. But I purposely really try to bring out the data in the context of the lived experience so that people can really absorb them in a way that can excite change. You can’t do just a heart case or a culture case—you have to have something that addresses the real concerns in terms of intellectual nature of the policy. Is it harmful? Is it negative? And you have to show it in the numbers, and numbers don’t mean much when culture will overrun it. We see that in terms of bad policymaking. We will push bad policy because it fits into our notion of what America is or what we think it should be, and so we have thousands locked up in cages right now along the US-Mexico border because of negative perceptions of brown folks. We have got to look at culture when we talk about policy, and so that’s what I think my book does. JPPE: And when you look at how to build opposition to race inequality, in addition to cultural movements and engaging with people and as you said, changing hearts of minds, there are also these political questions of how you choose to champion policies that can help reduce race inequality and the effects of systemic racism wherever it might appear. One question I want to ask is about how best to do that. One the one hand, you might make the case that by championing general progressive causes that might level inequality and create equality of opportunity. You might be able to address some issues of race inequality through something like that, and it seems like there were subtexts of that when President Obama was running in 2008 when he was championing what became the Affordable Care Act. So how do you weigh the benefits and trade-offs of emphasizing these broad and underlying economic issues that really speak to—or attempt to speak to— everyone versus focusing more narrowly on: how do we deal with the specific problems that are spurring race inequality? Andre: People don’t understand how anti-black legislation negatively impacts the entire country. You can actually produce policy responses to racism that address the anti-black policies of the past while showing how this will have a positive impact on us all. You know, I look at housing devaluation and show how home prices in black neighborhoods are lower. Now, white people live in those neighborhoods too, and their home prices are lower, too. If you address the anti-black nature of housing pricing, then you improve the quality for a whole lot of people, not just black folks. So in addition, we still have to address race and racism. To say that the impacts of red-lining, which by the homeowner’s loan order corporations in thirties which drew red lines around black-majority neighborhoods, deeming them unworthy of investment in the form of low-interest home loans, that practice haunts black people to this day. The wealth gap is enormous. The immediate wealth of white families about 170 thousand and compare to seventeen thousand for black families. About ten times difference between the two. That was created because of anti-black policy, and we have to have remedies for those who have suffered because of that anti-black policy. So, what’s interesting is that after COVID—after three weeks of COVID and social distancing— people were saying, “give me . . . I need relief for my business, I need relief to pay the bills,” and I say, “well, try being socially distanced for generations.” And so yes, black communities need relief. You can call it a relief package, you can call it reparations, you can call it some type of race-based solution, but what COVID made clear is that the federal government has a responsibility of uplifting its citizens when times are hard, particularly when the federal government caused the harm. You know, between slavery, Jim Crow segregation, legal housing segregation, a biased criminal justice system. All of those things have caused harm—extreme harm—to the economics prospects, the social prospects of black Americans, and we need to remedy those. So yes, we can address anti-black policy by showing how it lifts all folks, so to speak, but if we really want to be equitable, the country should rally behind providing the kind of relief to black residents and citizens that is similar to how we provided relief to white people after the depression and other groups. JPPE: And certainly one thing that’s interesting about this moment, too, is that there are a lot of calls for policies and ideas that might have seemed radical a decade ago. Discussions of reparations or defunding the police seem much more widespread, at least to me, and I’m wondering, when you look at policies that are important to champion right now, what are some that you would like to see particularly? And if we removed the question of political feasibility, what are some policies that you ideally would like to see? Andre: Well, I have to say, I am absolutely ecstatic about the “defund the police” movement, and I’ll tell you why. Not only does it get at what is important in terms of increasing economic mobility, it also says that we need to move money in ways that reflect our priorities as a country and as a neighborhood. So, it’s clear that investments in police literally arrest economic mobility of the residents. I say this all the time: nothing says that a black man doesn’t belong in an economy like a police officer carefully kneeling in the back of the neck of a person and taking his life in broad daylight. That’s a statement about belonging in a community, and so for me, we’ve got to really look at this “defund the police” movement seriously as a framework. I’ve been telling people, “what’s your defund the police in education?” It’s obvious you can actually defund policing in schools—there’s a direct link—but the point is, what money are we going to move to excite economic growth? For me, I’m excited about this moment because we’re really putting a spotlight on the barriers—the structural barriers. It’s not upholding the tradition that black people are to blame, that parents are to blame. . . We’re getting at policy, real policy, real practices that have significant impacts on our daily lives. JPPE: I want to conclude with a quote from your book that I think speaks to a lot of what you just said. You said, “I want people to fight for power. It means getting elected. Sometimes it means going out in the streets. It means going into court with devaluation data that I’ve produced. It means suing the appraisal community. It’s going to take a lot of mobilization because again, racism doesn’t just go away. This is a conversation about power and taking what’s rightfully ours.” What do you say to people who say that they don’t necessarily want to work within the system; that it hasn’t gotten better and it won’t so long as they work within the system because the system has continued to find new ways to calcify inequalities on the one hand or generally preserve its towers of privilege? Andre: Well, I say, to them, protests and movements that are directly confronting the systems and the harms of systems—we need that. You don’t get change without outside agitation. And sometimes that might look like something burning in the streets. It might come in the form of marches. It might come from civil unrest in many different forms. But, let’s be clear: you don’t get police reform in this country by working within the system. You get it from what we’ve seen from over the last few months: by hitting the streets, demanding change, crowding the courtroom, and finding alternative means of being. At some point we need different types of housing structures. We need to look at cooperative housing, for instance. We need new ideas around community—neighborhood—safety. We need new systems, and that’s going to come from the outside. It’s going to come from demanding change. So for me, I see my role as an insider—you know I work at a mainstream think-tank—but I get energy from folks on the outside. I want to be a resource for folks on the outside. So now I have cover, as a member of a marginalized group, to put forth research and data that often is devalued because I am also devalued as a black man in a mainstream think-tank. So I’m all for working from the outside. That’s the only way change occurs, really—substantive change. For me, I look at television— I march as well, and I’m, like, giddy. I’m like, “yes, this is what we need: doing the things that insiders won’t do.” And that’s why we’re in the position we are today. JPPE: Andre, thanks so much for your time. Andre: Hey, thanks so much for having me.