Noah Tesfaye The Black Bourgeoisie: The Chief Propagators of "Buy Black" and Black Capitalism Noah Tesfaye Introduction Following the murder of George Floyd, there was a resurgence in a phrase all-too-common in the recent US political zeitgeist: “Buy Black.” Instantly, Black businesses received an overwhelming outpour of support as many non-Black people sought performative or material actions to support the Black Lives Matter movement. Centering the narrative and vision behind these ideas of “Buying Black” was not only affluent white people but the Black commercial media and the Black bourgeois at large (1). Amidst claims to defund and abolish the police, wealthy Black people called, as rapper and activist Killer Mike said in reference to Atlanta, “to not burn your own house down” but to instead support Black businesses and seek justice righteously (2). In this press conference with Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, the stark contrast between the masses of Black people who own little to no land in the city and the select few bourgeoisie celebrities who proclaim “Buying Black” as a liberatory practice for Black people was evident. Therefore, developing a framework of a political economy of racialization allows us to view the racialized motivations of capitalism to diversify and maintain power with a critical lens. For instance, revolutionary scholar Cedric Robinson attributes the origins of racism to “the ‘internal’ relations of European peoples” (3). He maintains that racial capitalism arose from “the development, organization, and expansion of capitalist society [that] pursued essentially racial directions” (4). There is a vested interest in subverting claims of Black liberation by the Black bourgeoisie to build up the “myth and propaganda of Black buying power,” as Jared Ball coins in his book of the same title, to maintain their capitalist interests. It is through the collective efforts of the Black bourgeoisie to propagate Black capitalism that they accept the continued exploitation of working-class Black people. A Relevant History to US Racial Capitalism To develop a political economy framework of racialization and examine how Black people have assimilated into capitalism, it is imperative to center the conditions of Black Americans more broadly today. First, we will look at how race has played a role in the justification of the exploitation of Black people in America. Then, we will investigate how wealthy Black people have been able to exploit these conditions to further perpetuate such inequality within a racial capitalist hierarchy. Race is integral to understanding the economic position of Black people, not just because of the way Black people arrived on the continent but also in the legacy of government policies that have contributed to the economic segregation of today. As a result, Black people have next to no wealth in the United States; by 2053, it is estimated that median Black household wealth will be zero (5). The asset that many Americans often associate with wealth-building is buying a home. However, for decades, Black people have had little access to affordable housing and loans at market interest rates. Established in 1933, the Home Owners Loan Corporation institutionalized abstract criteria, such as “desirability,” to fulfill a loan (6). Furthermore, “the HOLC’s actions attributed property values to the racial or ethnic identity of residents then helped codify it into a national housing policy” (7). This resulted in the creation of domestic colonial projects through restrictions on the purchase of real estate and allowed for the “economic serfdom of Negroes by its reluctance to give loans and insurance to Negro businesses” (8). Meanwhile, mortgage lenders redlined neighborhoods by deeming populations as having “detrimental influences,” as a means to justify offering conservative loans with bad terms or no loans at all to Black people (9). Practices executed by the HOLC as well as state and local legislators to justify redlining also expanded into the creation of what is known as the “ghetto tax,” whereby grocery and convenience store items in inner-city communities were sometimes more expensive and sold under exploitative installment plans (10). It is not just that the economic conditions of Black people have been poor or fraught with challenges, but that with that context and contrast, a vision of “Buying Black” is hollow. Today, instead of focusing efforts towards highlighting the much higher risks Black people have faced concerning eviction since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Black bourgeois have asked Black people to build and support Black business (11). Origins of Black Buying Power & Black Capitalism The origins in this rhetoric about Black capitalism and “Buying Black” in more modern examples are not from Black Americans but from the US government. Corporate America, in conjunction with the Black bourgeoisie, further developed the rhetoric of Black capitalism to exacerbate racial inequality. As discussed in Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America, it was the Nixon administration that began to prop up this vision for Black capitalism as a means towards suppressing radical movements. The author Marcia Chatelain notes that “[i]n lieu of supporting critical civil rights protections for fair housing and school desegregation, Nixon promoted legislation that provided business loans, economic development grants, and affirmative action provisions on federally contracted projects as a means of suppressing black rage and securing black endorsements” (12). Amidst Nixon’s efforts towards building his Southern Strategy and winning the 1968 presidential election, he ran on the premise that Black capitalism would ensure racial equality (13). Yet, due to the logistical restraints of there being so few Black entrepreneurs along with the clear intentions Nixon had in stifling revolutionary activity, Black capitalism was, from the outset, designed to selectively help Black people (14). What is more surprising than the Nixon administration seeking to subvert and crush Black radicals is the way in which wealthier Black people began to propagate Nixon’s agenda. As fast-food restaurants were being established in areas where Black people were offered franchisee licenses during the 1970s, Black “franchise pioneers believed that business would save the day and the days to come for their people” (15). Franchise owners were complicit in letting the federal government and those in control of capital across the country use the support of their businesses as a justification to divest from public programs and instead invest in less accessible resources. In the 1980s, Black fraternities and sororities, one of the more prominent symbols of the Black elite class, even went so far as to partner with McDonald’s on an advertising campaign commercial called the “Fraternity Chant” (16). If corporate America could get the Black bourgeoisie to more openly endorse and support policies centered around Black capitalism, instead of seeking people’s programs or organizing with Black liberation groups such as the Blank Panthers, US racial capitalism could persist. Significance of Race to Studying the Bourgeois There is no shortage of books, New York Times articles, or 60 Minutes segments on the racial wealth gap. Texts like How to Be an Antiracist or articles that imply that racial inequality is simply a matter of a “battle between the souls of America” do not adequately address, with nuance, the Black bourgeoisie’s influence on upholding racial capitalism (17). Rather than seeking to identify how and why these conditions continue to be perpetuated, many point to “the government” or “Republicans.” As Cedric Robinson theorized, race has been integral to capitalism since its foundation. Due to the development of neoliberalism in the US and the heightened sense of individualism in a consumerist society, Black neoliberal politics manifests into upholding the status quo of American politics rather than taking significant measures to directly address inequality. Amidst the advancement of globalization spearheaded by the Clinton administration, the Black working class was abandoned even further due expansion in the prison industrial complex, aided by the passing of the Crime Bill of 1994. This, in conjunction with the rise in the commercialization of hip hop and mainstream Black art writ large, helped propel Black individualism to its prominent position today as an antagonism to the “superpredator” attitude the likes of Hillary Clinton and other politicians had for Black people. Black people can also utilize and exploit racial capitalism to their benefit at the expense of others. To really understand how Black people continue to be exploited and disincentivized from seeking collective organization and liberation, we must look beyond Black entrepreneurship, Twitter, and Black real estate Instagram pages, for these are individualized success stories within racial capitalism. In their article “Black Politics & the Neoliberal Racial Order,” Michael C. Dawson and Meghan Ming Francis attempt to trace through the ways in which Black people have assimilated into neoliberalism and diversified capitalism. As they see it, Black neoliberalism emphasizes “self-reliance, excessive consumerism, and individualism” (18). To buy into capitalism, Black people must shed their traditions in collectivism and community-building. Neoliberalism demands Black people to concede grassroots organizing and to instead make the most of society as it is currently constructed. That became the central mindset and rhetoric espoused as the Black bourgeoisie began to take shape. Former President Barack Obama once equated “raising one’s children, paying a decent salary,” and other private, voluntary acts to “marching” (19). Rather than proposing Black people seek to remedy the conditions they face, the same conditions that are routinely echoed throughout mainstream media, Obama implied that mere existence was a form of fighting for one’s rights. This is an example of individualizing systemic oppression; instead of calling to dismantle the entire class system that exploits poor Black people, the Black bourgeois would rather make poor Black people feel as though they are largely responsible for their class position. Obama is asking Black people to focus on their own immediate conditions as a form of struggle, instead of demanding for a greater fight for Black liberation because that call protects his class interests and not poor Black people. The Black Bourgeois and their Propaganda What makes this development of Black neoliberalism so insidious is how “neoliberalism often allows small segments of communities to be helped through community/voluntary action and activists’ searches for best practices and policies” (20). The emphasis here is “small segments.” It is not that a Black business would not benefit from more financial support as we saw in the summer of 2020, but the larger ramifications of supporting Black businesses can only go so far when correcting for centuries of irreparable harm done to Black people in and by America. Black people can and continue to receive small wins amidst the continuously shrinking wealth within the population as a whole. If Black people are truly building power and seeking to create cooperative businesses that sustain communities instead of cultivating resources within capitalism, corporations would not advertise or publicly support Black businesses like they have since June. Are we supposed to presume that Oprah or Tyler Perry or any prominent members of the Black bourgeoisie are unaware of the centuries of inequality and believe that “Buying Black” will be a substantive fix for the plight of the Black masses? No. It is not to say that wealthier Black people are acting completely with malicious intent; however, Black bourgeoisie members collectively are helping sell and deliver this Black capitalism, “Buy Black” propaganda to the masses of working-class Black people. They continue to perpetuate and oftentimes expand on rhetoric that upholds Black capitalism by blaming individuals for not working hard enough or not being smart enough to make more money. “The Story of O.J” by JAY-Z, a song released in 2017, breaks down how Black people are not building enough wealth and how Jewish people spent money on real estate while Black people would spend it at the strip club. The song in short “is a metaphor for opportunities wasted due to poor individual choices and is meant, as Jay-Z has said, to be more than just a song, saying that it is really about ‘... we as a culture, having a plan, how we’re gonna push this forward...’” (21). In reality, “The Story of O.J.” symbolizes revisionist Black history - of the centuries of exploitation Black people have faced. As JAY-Z continues to profess that the only means towards freedom is to flip buildings, buy paintings, and “Buy Black,” his words limit the scope and imagination of the masses for a politic beyond the present conditions. Even if JAY-Z is from a working class background and he was lucky to attain massive success with his music, his current class conditions prevent him from adequately calling for more substantive changes to correct for centuries of Black inequality. To a similar end “the expressed ‘plan’ is to eschew politics in favor of a sole focus on economics, Black capitalist economics with buying power as a central philosophy as the ‘only hope’ for freedom, and all presented as progressive, pro-Black, empowerment messaging” (22). If there exists any chance to adequately analyze the US through a comprehensive political economy framework of racialization and come up with solutions to free people of such dehumanizing conditions, it must be with the consideration that even those of oppressed backgrounds can uphold racial capitalism. The Black bourgeoisie has shown through their actions that they are not interested in engaging substantively or seeking to liberate the masses because they themselves have become comfortable with the comforts of capitalism evenwhile the rest of their “people” suffer. Looking forward Black radical organizers in America today are not “interested in making capitalism fairer, safer, and less racist. They know this is impossible. Rather, they want nothing less than to bring an end to ‘racial capitalism’” (23). The policy proposition that rose to prominence again this summer, in spite of uprisings and more imaginative visions for a just world, was instead to “buy Black” and “support Black businesses.” It was through the likes of Killer Mike, Beyoncé, and other members of the Black bourgeoisie who touted such demands rather than stand in line with the movement-building going on in the streets. Rihanna, for example, benefits from Black capitalism because her consumers consider supporting her business as “woke” even as it is financed and backed by white capital. “Buying Black” can act as a means not just towards individualizing the ends of this policy plan, whereby the owner of a particular business will reap the benefits of sale, but it also individualizes the way that we as citizens need to behave. We are asked to consume and spend more rather than create and collectively stand together. It is not that the Black elites are unaware of the conditions that working-class, poor Black people face, but rather they collectively have sought to propagate this vision of “Buying Black” as a means to an end to centuries of state-waged war against Black people - an end for which there is no economic policy that could help the masses. There is a reason why James Warren coined this group in 2005 “The Black Misleadership Class.” The Black bourgeoisie traffic misinformation and are purposefully complicit in the continued strife of the masses of Black people in the United States. If we hope to build a political and economic vision for a world where Black people are no longer exploited, oppressed, marginalized, or silenced, it is crucial that we seek to contextualize both the race and class position of Black people within American society to then mobilize against the Black bourgeois and against US racial capitalism. If history is anything to go by, we must be prepared to stand and organize together, collectively, against the Black Misleadership Class to build a world where Black people can truly be liberated. Endnotes 1 The term “Black bourgeoisie” used here is not directly related to E. Franklin Frazier’s text Black Bourgeoisie in which the term is used to refer to the Black middle class rather than the Black capitalist class. Along these lines, by the capitalist class, I am referring to the class that does not earn money solely through labor but also through the accumulation and exchange of assets. 2 Emmrich, Stuart, “Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms’s Press Conference Shows True Leadership During A Crisis.” 3 Robinson, Cedric, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition, 2. 4 Ibid, 2. 5 Asante-Muhammad, Dedrick et al, "The Road to Zero Wealth: How the Racial Wealth Divide Is Hollowing Out America’s Middle Class,” 5. 6 Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta, “Back to the Neoliberal Moment: Race Taxes and the Political Economy of Black Urban Housing in the 1960s,” 189. 7 Ibid, 189. 8 Ibid, 191. 9 Ibid, 189. 10 Ibid, 195. 11 Thomas, Taylor Miller, “Coronavirus Relief Favors White Households, Leaving Many People of Color at Risk of Being Evicted.” 12 Chatelain, Marcia, Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America, 14. 13 Weems, Robert E., and Lewis A. Randolph, “The National Response to Richard M. Nixon’s Black Capitalism Initiative: The Success of Domestic Detente,” 67. 14 Weems, 68. 15 Chatelain, Franchise, 15. 16 Ibid, 177. 17 Kendi, Ibram X, “A Battle between the Two Souls of America.” 18 Dawson, Michael C. and Meghan Ming Francis, “Black Politics and the Neoliberal Racial Order,” 46. 19 Ibid, 48. 20 Ibid, 48. 21 Ball, Jared, The Myth and Propaganda of Black Buying Power, 2. 22 Ibid, 2. 23 Robinson, Black Marxism, xi. Works Cited Asante-Muhammad, Dedrick, Chuck Collins, Josh Hoxie, and Emmanuel Nieves. Rep. The Road to Zero Wealth: How the Racial Wealth Divide Is Hollowing Out America’s Middle Class. Institute for Policy Studies, September 2017. https://ips-dc.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/The-Road-to-Zero-Wealth_FINAL.pdf . Ball, Jared A. The Myth and Propaganda of Black Buying Power. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. Chatelain, Marcia. Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America. Liveright, 2020. Dawson, Michael C., and Megan Ming Francis. “Black Politics and the Neoliberal Racial Order.” Public Culture, vol. 28, no. 1 78, 2015, pp. 23–62, https://doi.org/10.1086/685540 . Emmrich, Stuart. “Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms’s Press Conference Shows True Leadership During A Crisis.” Vogue, May 2020. Frazier, E. Franklin. Black Bourgeoisie. The Free Press, 1957. Kendi, Ibram X. “A Battle between the Two Souls of America.” The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, November 16, 2020. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/americas- two-souls/617062/ . Robinson, Cedric J. Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition. University of North Carolina Press, 1983. Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta. “Back to the Neoliberal Moment: Race Taxes and the Political Economy of Black Urban Housing in the 1960s.” Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society, 2012. Thomas, Taylor Miller. “Coronavirus Relief Favors White Households, Leaving Many People of Color at Risk of Being Evicted.” POLITICO. POLITICO, August 7, 2020. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/07/coronavirus-relief-racial-eviction-392570 . Weems, Robert E., and Lewis A. Randolph. “The National Response to Richard M. Nixon’s Black Capitalism Initiative: The Success of Domestic Detente.” Journal of Black Studies 32, no. 1 (September 2001): 66–83. https://doi.org/10.1177/002193470103200104 . Previous Next

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 Author Maxwell Robinson Vittorio Nazzi Matthew Wong Editors Abstract Behavioral economics challenges the notion that humans are always rational and capable of making good decisions. Humans often rely on various heuristics under uncertainty making them irrational at times. Heuristics is a mental shortcut or rule of thumb that simplifies decision-making and problem-solving. In this paper, we discuss the use of behavioral economics in improving tax policies by considering the status-quo bias, framing, and conformity heuristics. Status-quo bias causes taxpayers to stick to their default condition (i.e tax non-payment.) Framing refers to the formulation of the problem and how the information is presented to the decision maker. Further, conformity encourages taxpayers to pay their taxes by appealing to personal and social norms. Using these heuristics, I will explore how tax collection policies can be refined to minimize financial losses for the government. I. Introduction Einstein said, “The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax, ” which remains relevant today as tax computation and the payment process remain complicated. This leads to procrastination and non-payment, creating detrimental financial losses for the government. For example, In the US, between 2014 to 2016, the tax gap, the difference between true tax liability and amount paid on time, was $496 billion (IRS, 2022). The tax liability increased by more than 23% between the two periods, 2011-2013 and 2014-2016 indicating a need to change the tax policy. Studies show that tax policies that implement behavioral economics are more impactful and efficient compared to traditional tax policies (World Bank Group, 2018; Behavioral Insights Team, 2012; OECD, 2021). Behavioral economics assumes that humans have limited capability to compute large amounts of data at once. The World Bank splits the tax-paying process into four stages: understanding, deciding, declaring, and paying (World Bank Group, 2008). Behavioral policies can improve compliance at each stage by addressing systematic errors which are “cognitive biases or heuristics that consumers use to make pragmatic choices that are not rational or optimal ”(Kahneman, 2011). This paper will explore three main biases, namely Framing, Status quo, and Conformity, and take them into account to create a viable tax policy that targets the four stages mentioned above. Every year, more than 170 million taxpayers have to file taxes in the US. With the tax code becoming increasingly complex, taxpayers have to spend a significant amount of time filling out the 1040 form, various schedules and keeping records of their transactions. This leads to some individuals failing to pay taxes in a timely manner or take up benefits such as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). II. Framing Kahneman and Tversky define framing as the formulation of the problem and how the information is presented to the decision maker (Kahneman and Tversky, 1981). This shows how information is presented impacts the decision-making process. Framing is indeed a bias, as it leads to decision-makers making different choices with identical information. Their choices are not uniform. Governments can use this to their advantage by presenting income tax letters in a way that encourages taxpayers to pay their accurate tax amount on time hence improving compliance. A study by Jones (2017) further found that at least 30% of the extra revenue accrued to the government from overwithholding arises from loss-averse behavioral response. He claims it is possible to manipulate a taxpayer’s perception of what constitutes a gain or a loss—potentially through relatively cheap manipulations to phrasing or presentation. Loss framing could be induced to increase the take-up rate of a specific tax-based incentive in targeted populations. Gain framing could be induced to reduce evasion motives among traditionally non-compliant groups, potentially in a cost-effective manner when compared to audits. Hard Tone vs Soft Tone A study in Poland (World Bank Group, 2018) showed the effect of using a hard tone versus a soft tone on tax compliance. To do so, they created two types of letters: public good positive and public good negative , where both letters informed the taxpayer how the tax revenue would be used to provide public goods such as preschools, schools, roads, and safety. The public good positive treatment creates a perception of the taxpayer as a responsible member of their community who is helping provide public goods by paying their taxes. This appeals to the taxpayer on a very personal level making them aware of the public benefitting infrastructure provided by the government, which encourages them to pay on time. The public good negative treatment frames non-payment as an implicit threat where all the municipal benefits currently enjoyed would be lost without sufficient tax revenue. It uses the principle of loss aversion to motivate taxpayers to pay. The reaction of the taxpayer, as a result, will be to pay taxes to avoid losses. Loss aversion is defined as: “changes that make things worse (losses) loom larger than improvements or gains ” (Kahneman, Knetsch, and Thaler, 1991). The key contrast between both approaches is the “inability of the government to continue providing ” vis-à-vis “potential losses suffered by the individual in the future ”. These treatments are considered soft tones as they do not mention any form of punishment for non-payment. To create a comparison, “hard tone” was also used to clearly understand what encourages taxpayers the most to pay taxes on time. The World Bank used four different hard tone samples, including: deterrence, deterrence with an execution order attached, omission, and omission combined with deterrence together. These treatments explored the different effects of using a harsher tone. In the deterrence treatment, actions such as blocking bank accounts and salaries could be implemented as a punishment. Furthermore, payment of any execution expenses that arise must be covered by the non-complier. The deterrence with execution order treatment had the same contents as the deterrence letter however a sample execution order form was attracted to the letter. This evokes guilt and fear of the possible consequences of delayed payments. Taxpayers are illuminated to the harshness of the consequences. In an omission model the government chooses to see the non-payment of taxes as accidental and gives the benefit of the doubt to the defaulter. This method of framing is used to overcome status-quo bias, which will be explored in detail later in this paper. The effectiveness of the hard and soft-tone letters was compared in three parts: payment rate, payment amount, and outstanding tax liability. The payment rate is the percentage of the tax-paying population that pays their tax on time. The control group received an official enforcement letter called a dunning letter. Of this group, 40.2% made on-time tax payments. On average, the soft-tone letter increased payment rate to 43.8% while the hard-tone letter raised payments to 46.9% with p=0.01. This suggests that proper framing can increase payment rates and that overall hard tone is the most effective choice. Additionally, the use of hard-tone and soft-tone letters increased the payment amount received per letter sent. In the control group, taxpayers paid on average 1,122.7 PLN (Polish Zloty), the soft-tone letters yielded 1278.0 PLN ($341 USD), while the hard-tone letters yielded 1368.3 PLN ($365 USD). The increase in payment received is significant as the total revenue collected increases greatly with the average payment. Lastly, the use of different tones reduced the overall tax liability. The dunning letter group had an average of 6.26% in tax liability, while behavioral letters had a tax liability of 6.17% for soft-tone and 6.10% for hard-tone letters. This shows that more people were filing their taxes and the number of short fillers was reduced giving the government valuable insight on the methods to use to increase tax compliance. Lastly, this study delved deeper into how different taxpayers react to give a more insightful result. Letters reveal that taxpayers in their mid-40s are most responsive, with responsiveness decreasing afterwards. The hard-tone messages (omission commission + deterrence) perform best among those in their 50s, while softer messages reduce compliance, especially among older taxpayers. Younger taxpayers (20–29) respond positively to soft, public good messages, but these same messages have a negative impact on those aged 50–64, likely because older taxpayers don't benefit directly from services like schools. The 5.2pp difference in response is statistically significant. Customizing messages by emphasizing relevant public goods for each age group could improve tax compliance. Both men and women’s highest paying rate from all the treatments was in the hard-tone treatment showing both genders respond more to the hard-tone letters. However, a difference emerges between parents and non-parent taxpayers. Parents were not very responsive to any of the treatments and the behavioral letter was the most effective. Conversely, all the hard-tone letters performed better than soft-tone and the behavioral letters showing hard-tone messages work on non- parents, but not on parents. Given these differences in effects across groups, a targeting system could be used to send out appropriate toned messages to increase tax compliance. These studies concluded that hard-tone letters were the most effective in increasing tax compliance payments over outstanding debts. This does not negate that using soft-tone letters was also beneficial. The efficacy of these different tones depends on the individual characteristics of the taxpayer, such as age, gender, and parental status. Complexities Another major reason for tax noncompliance is the excessive use of legal jargon that impedes taxpayers’ understanding and ability to pay (Alm 2012, p.53). Fatigue and lethargy often influence an individual’s decision when a choice depends on a large amount of data as they are often unwilling to spend too much time or energy on that decision. Blumenthal and Slemrod (1992) found that, on average, taxpayers spent 27 hours recording and reporting their taxable activities. This leads people to employ heuristics such as intuition in decision-making. Thaler and Sunstein (2008) found that humans have two systems for making decisions: an "automatic system" that quickly finds a solution and a "reflective system" that logically reasons out the problem. The use of intuition falls in the realm of “automatic systems.” Most of the time, the “automatic system” comes up with the same solutions as the reflective system, which uses logic, but sometimes it does not due to the usage of heuristics. As mentioned earlier, the tax payment process has four steps: understanding, decision to pay, declaration, and payment. Complexities can be present in the “understanding” or “declaration” phase. Taxpayers have to individually compute the total value of taxes, a process which may be tedious due to inexperience or a lack of clarity regarding current tax laws. Additional problems arise during payment. Technology is constantly improving, thus, paying taxes has become much more simple. At times, too many options and related guidelines confuse and frustrate the taxpayer, causing them to abandon the process midway. Lastly, the complexity of the system makes the taxes seem unfair due to the lack of transparency in the income tax process which makes the taxpayer reluctant to pay their taxes on time or in full. Economic models have customarily recognized three costs which might deter the take-up of tax benefits which are: the transaction costs of applying for a benefit, the costs of learning about eligibility and application rules, and lastly, the stigma associated with enrollment (Currie 2006). These concerns could be a consequence of confusion regarding program eligibility or incentives (e.g., Liebman and Zeckhauser 2004), inattention (e.g., Karlan et al. 2015), or psychological aversion to program complexity or the small “hassles” often involved in claiming (e.g., Bertrand, Mullainathan, and Shafir 2006). This reflects a failure of policy to deliver benefits to those who most need them. As a case study, the United Kingdom released simplified letters to test whether they would increase tax compliance among dentists and doctors (Behavioural Insights Team, 2012). The simplified letters contained three short and easy-to-read sentences, outlining the actions and procedures required for compliance. This treatment saw a 15-30% higher response rate than other types of messaging, which shows that even highly skilled and well-educated people can be influenced to pay their taxes on time by simplifying the process. Furthermore, in Belgium, different methods were tested to overcome complexities in tax payment (Spinnewijn, Tsankova, and Luts, 2019). They simplified the tax letter by shortening the length of words, reducing the information overload, and highlighting the action-relevant information. This led to an increase in compliance by 10 percentage points (pp)(23% of the control mean). Moreover, late payers from the previous year were 2.6 pp more likely to file their taxes on time. Complexities affect individuals in developed countries and underdeveloped countries similarly. Taxpayers in low and middle-income countries are also particularly adversely affected, due to lower literacy rates and a lack of trained accountants. This causes difficulty in accurately maintaining records, filing returns, and comprehending tax laws, resulting in partial filing, late filing or non-filing making them partial or non-compliant. This backs the findings of Gangl (Gangl et al., 2015b) where perceived fairness and legitimacy lead to deliberate trust in the tax authorities. By removing these complexities, taxpayers can understand how much they are paying and how it is calculated, building trust and improving compliance. Complexities can lead to notable inefficiencies in government-run programs such as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). Simplifying the tax system and reducing compliance burdens could increase benefit take-up, reduce forgone benefits, and enhance revenue collection. The EITC, initially designed as an incentive for low-income individuals to work, demonstrates the barriers taxpayers face in claiming available benefits. Studies estimate a program take-up rate of 75% (Plueger 2009). A substantial portion of non-participation stems from informational barriers, with 16% of eligible individuals not filing taxes and 9% failing to claim the credit despite filing. This highlights the need for clarity in tax communication and simplification of claim procedures. Experimental evidence further underscores the sensitivity of benefit take-up to reduced informational complexity. Simplified notices, shorter worksheets, and enhanced salience of benefits through targeted messaging have demonstrably increased EITC claims, with a field study resulting in $4 million in claimed benefits out of $26 million identified as unclaimed (Manoli, 2015). Moreover, over-withholding demonstrates how simplifying processes can benefit both taxpayers and the government. Employers withholding excess taxes reduces taxpayers' need for year-end adjustments, leveraging loss-averse behavior to generate 42% more revenue than expected from interest costs alone. Simplification strategies can similarly mitigate tax manipulation, increase voluntary compliance, and maximize revenue efficiency. Governments can reduce complexities in tax policy to increase the legitimacy and perceived fairness of tax administration. Simpler tax systems will increase compliance and reduce the opportunity for tax evasion and avoidance by making the steps of paying taxes easier and reducing the mental computation required of taxpayers. III. Conformity Conformity refers to individuals changing their beliefs, attitudes, behaviors, or perceptions to complement the beliefs of a group to which they want to belong, and so they yield to group pressures (Crutchfield, 1955). Herbert C Kelman, an American psychologist, analyzed this behavior and distinguished three different forms of conformity: compliance, internalization, and identification (Kelman, 1958). For this paper, compliance and internalization are relevant. Compliance refers to “when an individual accepts influence [...] to gain specific rewards or approval and avoid specific punishment (Kelman, 1958, p. 53). This is a heuristic as many people become irrational and fall in without considering the benefits and drawbacks of their decision. According to an analysis (Zafar, 2011) people conform to groups because they are uncertain about their beliefs and believe that the group is more likely to be correct, a pattern denoted descriptive conformity . The second category is internalization which happens “when an individual accepts influence because the content of the induced behavior - the ideas and actions of which it is composed - is intrinsically rewarding. They adopt the induced behavior because it is congruent with their value system ” (Kelman, 1958, p. 53) which is also considered injunctive conformity. In this form of conformity, the group’s beliefs become part of the individual’s belief system and the behavioral change is permanent. Examples of personal norms could include the individual desire to live a healthy lifestyle or help in social causes. The World Bank tested conformity bias in Latvia where The informal economy was estimated at 20.3% of the GDP in 2016 (World Bank, 2019). The shadow economy refers to people who operate entirely outside the tax and regulatory system (US Treasury). The World Bank intervened by sending out tax letters which incorporate behavioral changes in this case social norms. These modified letters are called behavioral letters. There is a social norm to return favors where people feel obligated toward those who have done something for them. This is called reciprocity. The social norms letter boosted timely tax filing compared to the control group by 5% (3.2pp). Social norms messages also generated the maximum number of tax declaration submissions as compared to other methods like simple reminders and an omission/commission letter when given to non-compliers. This experiment further showed that the social norms messages had a greater impact on women than men as women responded to the messages by 3.0 pp more when compared to the control group. This coincides with the findings of Cross (Cross, 2017) where women are more likely than men to conform to social norms. The social norms letter even increased the average amount paid per taxpayer by $13.97 (210% increase from control group). The field experiment in Latvia concludes that using social norms improves tax punctuality and increases the payment amount. In Poland, The World Bank tested the use of social norms (World Bank, 2017). The payment rate for the dunning letter was 40.2% while payment rates increased to 43.7%, the average payment amount increased from 1,123 PLN to 1,300 PLN, and outstanding liability was reduced from 6.26% to 6.17% where letters mentioning social norms were used. This experiment corroborates the findings of the Latvia experiment. According to an OECD report (OECD, 2010) on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), SME compliance is highly influenced by personal norms. Phrases such as “Doing the right thing,” “Because it is the law,” and “Presumption from Revenue that you have been honest,” are indicated as having a strong influence on compliance. Social norms affect these SMEs less compared to personal ones as the owner's personal norms may be more prominent. Personal norms are feelings of moral obligations to do “the right thing” (Schwartz & Howard, 1981). The owner can also easily implement changes based on their prioritized heuristics . Social norms may not play a crucial role in the taxpayer's mind as the owner would want to be unique compared to larger firms. Therefore when the government tries to evoke conformity by using other firms as an example small businesses might not be encouraged to pay taxes. Responses related to personal norms are therefore stronger from a compliance perspective. Hence,it would be much more beneficial for the government to use personal norms on SMEs to improve tax compliance. A field experiment in the UK (Behavioural Insights Team, 2012) examined the effect of various types of norms on taxpayers who had declared their income but had yet to pay their taxes. Three norm statements were used: “Nine out of ten people pay their tax on time” (basic norm); “Nine out of ten people in the UK pay their tax on time” (country norm); “Nine out of ten people in the UK pay their tax on time. You are currently in the very small minority of people who have not paid us yet” (minority norm). Upon receiving the responses the economists learned that the basic norm statement produces a treatment effect of 1.3%, and the country norm statement produces a treatment effect of 2.1%. If these letters were sent to the entire tax-paying population there would be a £623,000 and £980,000 increase in total taxes paid within 23 days. In comparison, the minority norm statement had a much greater impact of 5.1%, which would represent a £2.367 million increase in taxes paid within 23 days. This underscores the highly effective method of using the conformity bias to improve tax payments. A follow-up experiment was done to replicate the most effective treatment from the first experiment to increase credibility. The effect of descriptive (what others do) and injunctive (what others think should be done) norms were also compared. Results showed that reminder letters with the norm framings have a 7.1-7.8% effect on payment. Letters with norm statements motivate people to pay their taxes, especially when a minority norm frame is used. This boosts overall tax compliance. Moreover, when comparing descriptive and injunctive, the data indicates that the descriptive treatment group has a 1.44% larger effect on payment than injunctive norms. Furthermore, this work reinforces wider evidence that descriptive norms are most effective when they can be targeted at a specific population or group, which in this case was achieved by referencing their local area. Applying successful messages throughout HMRC’s (UK's tax, payments, and customs authority) debt management practices led to £210 million being brought forward in the 2012/13 financial year alone. This would benefit the government greatly as they can use this revenue to provide subsidies and provide fiscal stimulus to the economy when needed. By using social norms, taxpayers gain a sense of fairness, knowing that their neighbors and fellow citizens are held to the same standards. This creates transparency between the government and taxpayers. Taxpayers are more willing to file taxes on time when they have faith in their government (Jimenez, Iyer, 2016). To inform taxpayers and foster healthy personal norms, tax administrations may attempt to communicate messages that emphasize the significance of compliance. Engaging with young professionals can have an impact on their beliefs, which improves long-term tax compliance. Individuals are less likely to avoid their taxes if there is a sense that tax evasion is rare and the bulk of people are compliant. People frequently assume that disobedience is more common than it is. Therefore, dispelling misconceptions about the extent of evasion strengthens compliance and has a marginal cost for the policymaker. This increases tax compliance and reduces financial losses for the government. IV. Status Quo Status quo bias refers to the tendency to stick to one's current situation (Samuelson and Zeckhauser, 1998). Most decisions have a status-quo option and studies show that individuals tend to unjustifiably stick with the status quo (Samuelson and Zeckhauser (1988); Anderson (2003)). People are often unwilling to change primarily because of the effort it takes to understand other available options or the lack of awareness about the alternatives. Christopher J. Anderson researched status quo bias and characterized this behavior as “conservation of energy” (Anderson, 2008) where humans do not decide unless a deadline is coming. In terms of income tax, this can be seen as taxpayers continuing to avoid paying taxes as they have already done so for an extended period. Not paying taxes has become the status quo of these taxpayers. Now there are many methods of filing taxes that are faster and more efficient, however, taxpayers seem to stick to the older methods. This could cause financial losses for the government as they don’t receive the full tax amount they are expected to collect. There also could be incomplete taking up of tax benefits such as Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), Standard Deductions or Itemized Deductions in the USA when that is not their status quo. People tend to favor minimal changes and choose the default option (Kahneman, 1991). Even if there are better options, they will not change their actions or choices. Most real-world decisions have the status quo option. That is, do nothing and keep the current or previous state showing the significant influence default choices have on behavior. The World Bank (World Bank Group, 2018; World Bank Group, 2019; World Bank Group, 2020), experimented with status-quo bias and its societal prevalence. They used a deliberate choice method to overcome the bias wherein non-compliance was considered a deliberate choice. This technique is intended to eliminate omission that serves as an excuse for non-compliance. Taxpayers unknowingly evade taxes by following the status quo. When they received letters they were made aware of their status quo so that lack of information can no longer be the reason for non-payment. Framing noncompliance as intentional minimizes uncertainty regarding inaction, heightens moral duties to take action and boosts the perception of deterrence. For instance, the deliberate decision letter in Guatemala (World Bank Group, 2020) contributed to an increase of $17.95 (269% increase compared to no letter) in the average amount paid per taxpayer. Taxpayers in Guatemala who received the behavioral letters in the first year paid four times as much in taxes. Over time, these gains have been maintained. The intentional choice letter, when received, raises the average amount paid by $23.05, according to local average treatment effects (LATE). If this letter was sent to all the sampled tax-payers an estimate of US$757,837 of extra tax revenue could be generated in 11 weeks compared to when no letter was sent. This is over 35 times the cost of sending the letters highlighting the benefit to the government. The experiment with the status quo made use of framing as well. The phrase also exempts the taxpayer from failing to declare previously, which introduces a concept of reciprocity as the taxpayer is driven to feel he has been offered a favor. The wording suggests that the taxpayer's actions are being closely monitored, which heightens the feeling that noncompliance will result in penalties. In Guatemala, the deliberate choice letter, social norm letter, national pride letter, and behavioral letter were tested. Out of them, the deliberate choice letter was the most effective letter for improving declaration rates, boosting declarations by 5.4 pp (46% increase) compared to the control group. The average amount paid conditionally on payment grew by 38.5 percent, and the payment rate increased significantly by 1.4% points. Further, the average unconditional amount increased from US$6.70 the control group average to US$17.95 showing an increase of US$11.25 in tax revenue for each letter sent. The average cost of sending behavioral letters lowers as the rate of payment and payment amount increases. Omission is the failure to fulfill a moral obligation, in this case, taxes. The World Bank used 3 different behavioral designs to overcome the status quo in Poland (World Bank Group, 2018), the treatments were "Omission + Deterrence", "Omission vs Commission" and "Omission Taxpayer-Perspective". These letters all suggested that the government had given the taxpayers the benefit of the doubt, presuming that non-compliance had been due to oversight and not dishonesty. The letters inform the taxpayer about non-compliance and the potential consequences of non-compliance in the future Upon analysis, it was found that the letter combining omission and deterrence messages was the most effective. It resulted in a 48.6% payment rate (8.37% increase) and increased taxpayer payments by 25.9%. The "omission + deterrence" letter also had the most significant reduction in outstanding tax liability, 19.3%. The use of only a deterrence message does not improve the standard behavioral letter as the standard behavioral letter had a payment rate of 46.3% compared to 44.8% for only deterrence. However, there is a significant gain when paired with the omission letter as payment rates jump from 44.8% to 48.6%. The other omission letters, which offer an excuse for noncompliance, do not yield a significant improvement in payment amounts over the standard behavioral message, despite increasing the compliance rate. The "omission + deterrence" letter was found to be the most effective out of the 3 categories of letter design and was always in the top 4 in increasing tax revenue. The omission letters also performed better overall than the behavioral letters suggesting that the omission message encourages payment mostly among tax- payers with a smaller liability; combining it with the threat (omission + deterrence) is very effective for taxpayers who owe more. In Latvia (World Bank Group, 2019), an experiment using a simple reminder, a social norms letter, and an omission/commission treatment was done. The omission/commission treatment was found to be most effective in increasing compliance with taxpayer filing deadlines and the annual income statement (AID) process. It led to a 9.4% higher filing rate than the control group, a statistically significant improvement. It can be inferred that including social norms is not as effective as using omission in improving tax compliance as the omission/commission treatment increases compliance with taxpayers following deadlines. Another experiment in the UK (Behavioural Insights Team, 2012) related to reducing the cost or inconvenience of filling out forms to pay taxes was done. Initially, only a simple letter with details of the payment form attached, was sent which achieved a response rate of 19%. Subsequently, this letter was updated to include the tax timelines and a link to the online system as well as contact information in case of questions. This significantly reduced the effort of the taxpayers. The simplification of the process helped many taxpayers overcome the status quo as they could start the tax filing process by just clicking on the link. This resulted in an improved response rate to 23%. This reduction in work aligns with Anderson's research, which suggests that individuals tend to default to the status quo as a way of conserving energy. Online tax calculators could also be made more readily available so taxpayers can calculate the total tax they need to pay. This can help avoid delays due to dependence on tax accountants and overcome the status quo bias of relying on the accountant completely. The benefits of simplification and digitalization are transferable over different aspects of a tax structure. In the USA taxpayers have two options to reduce their taxable income: standard deduction or itemized deduction. The standard deduction is a fixed amount that reduces taxable income without requiring documentation, while itemized deductions allow taxpayers to subtract specific expenses (e.g., medical costs, mortgage interest) if they exceed the standard deduction, though it requires detailed record-keeping and filing. Most taxpayers opt for the standard deduction due to its simplicity. This decision to itemize deductions versus claiming the standard deduction provides another lens into how complexity influences taxpayer behavior. While itemizing can result in larger deductions, it imposes higher compliance costs, including meticulous record-keeping and additional forms. Revealed preference analysis suggests taxpayers perceive the burden of itemizing as equivalent to 19 hours of regular work or approximately $617, deterring many from pursuing this option (Benzarti, 2015). Consequently, two-thirds of taxpayers opt for the standard deduction, potentially leaving money on the table. This highlights another aspect of the tax system that is often overlooked by taxpayers and sticks with the status quo. If information was more readily available and digitalization of calculating deductions itemized income could be implemented, it could nudge taxpayers to choose the options with greatest savings. Throughout the year, individuals make taxable income and make payments based on anticipated liabilities. On tax day, any discrepancy between total taxes owed and payments made is refunded, resulting in either a "loss" (balance due) or a "gain" (refund)(Jones, 2017). Kahneman and Tversky (1979) demonstrated that the perceived value of a marginal dollar declines sharply as a taxpayer moves from losses to gains. This loss aversion drives taxpayers facing a balance due to manipulate their liabilities more aggressively. Empirical analysis done by Jones of the 1979–90 IRS Statistics of Income Panel of Individual Returns, revealed significant shifts in the balance due distribution consistent with higher manipulation in the loss domain. Individuals facing a loss pursue an additional $34 of tax reductions above and beyond what would be pursued if they faced a gain. This highlights how taxpayers allocate more value to perceived losses and are more likely to change their behavior by changing their status quo to minimize their losses. This is particularly pronounced among high-income earners, underscoring how loss aversion exacerbates tax manipulation, ultimately depriving the government of revenues that would otherwise have been collected. It was estimated that if tax filers owning a payment were as motivated to manipulate as those facing a refund, 1.4 billion dollars of additional tax revenue would be collected. Addressing this behavior by incentivizing over-withholding or reducing opportunities for manipulation could mitigate these losses and enhance revenue stability. V. Possible tax policy With the help of these field experiments, we realize that status quo, conformity, and framing biases play a pivotal role in tax revenue collection. These biases are often used by taxpayers to make their lives easier by doing what others do or sticking to their original choice. Governments should implement these behavioral findings into their current tax policies. By doing so, overall tax compliance from taxpayers would increase and cause less financial loss for the government as seen from the above case studies. They can successfully plan and fund projects and schemes that benefit the country's citizens. Below is a proposed framework outlining plausible policies and strategies that can be implemented to overcome the aforementioned biases. The use of hard-tone language in tax letters, such as deterrence messages and execution letters, can increase tax compliance. Field experiments in Poland show that hard-tone letters were more successful in mobilizing payments and reducing tax debt compared to soft-tone letters. This method is particularly effective for older working age groups, who need a greater nudge. They have been paying taxes for a long period and have developed lethargy regarding this continuous and tedious process. Soft-tone letters were also found to be effective in improving compliance rates, but not as impactful as hard-tone. In most cases, only hard-tone should be used throughout the letter to make the need to pay taxes seem more urgent and prevent defaults. However, to increase tax compliance overall, governments should use a soft tone in letters to certain taxpayers based on their social identities. For example, hard-tone letters may not be effective with taxpayers who do not support the party in control. Soft-tone letters could also be used for younger taxpayers (ages 20-30) who may be more willing to comply with rules and regulations. Additionally, using a soft tone in letters to taxpayers with school-going children may be effective as they may be more willing to pay taxes to support the public education system. A hard-tone could be used for older taxpayers (50+) as they are more receptive to the hard-tone than the soft-tone. Moreover, the hard-tone can be implemented on non-parents as they need to be nudged more as they have lesser responsibilities (no children). Simplifying the tax letter by removing legal jargon and providing clear steps to follow for tax paying will expedite the process and will increase tax revenue. This can overcome status quo bias and reduce the complexity of decision-making. Evidence from the UK and Belgium shows a positive correlation between clear and concise tax letters and compliance rates. Simplification also reduces the reliance on automatic systems and encourages timely payments from both late filers and payers. The government can take advantage of the status quo bias by making tax deductions from employee salaries by the company the default choice. The company can pay the income tax collected directly to the government along with its corporate taxes. This is called an opt-in policy as the status quo is to opt in. Most employees would prefer to stay with the status quo as it reduces hassles for them. Another opt-in policy could be where the government directly estimates how much the employee has to pay. At the end of the financial year, the taxpayer can compare how much tax was estimated and collected by the government compared to how much they need to pay. This works on similar principles of advanced taxes where the employee estimates his payable tax amount and pays it to the government quarterly. This solves the problem of how to pay taxes for the taxpayer as the government is doing it automatically for them and helps them overcome their status quo. The use of social norms was also greatly experimented with in Latvia, Guatemala, Poland, and the UK. This underlines the importance of social norms in tax policies. It was found that personal norms hold a higher value than social norms in individuals and small and medium enterprises. Governments can use these findings to implement personal norms. These can be simple pieces of information regarding an individual's belief systems. Descriptive norms were found to be more impactful than injunctive norms in the UK. Governments should use personal norms when distributing tax letters to small-scale companies but use descriptive norms in the letters they send to individuals. Lastly, along with these norms described above the government can club it with a minority norm. This puts a spotlight on defaulting taxpayers who feel like they are not part of the desired group encouraging them to file their taxes. This will make the most efficient use of the conformity bias. Using a "worst offenders" list will also be effective as there would be a perceived social consequence to being on the list. People will increase their tax compliance so that they are not the exceptions. This phenomenon of feeling uncomfortable when not conforming is called the “spotlight effect” (Gilovich, 2000). The Australian tax office's real-time analytics initiative sends customized prompts to taxpayers filing annual tax returns (OECD, 2021). For example, a taxpayer may see a pop-up notifying them that they have reported work-related expenses unusually high and prompting them to confirm their entries. The initiative prompted 25% of taxpayers to voluntarily amend their tax returns, generating approximately AUD$ 22.4 million in revenue from 2018 to 2019. This method can also be used so that tax filings are honest and accurate. Along with these customized prompts, Another small change that can be implemented to the tax filing website is subtle environmental cues such as smiling faces and a friendly telephone voice. These small nudges can stimulate cooperation among taxpayers and overcome the status quo of not paying taxes or partial payment of taxes. Similarly, this also implements a soft tone to gently nudge taxpayers to be honest with their tax fillings. 5.1 How does behavioral economics advance cost-effectiveness as opposed to traditional economics? Behavioral interventions are extremely effective while having minimal additional costs as compared to the original tax letters. The average revenue collected is more than the average cost, hence highlighting that this method is extremely cost-effective for the government. The field study conducted in Guatemala (World Bank Group, 2020) helped increase revenue generated but at the same time was particularly cost-effective. It was estimated that the deliberate choice message would have generated revenues of USD 778,927 at a cost of $21,090 if sent to the entire sample of 43,387 taxpayers. This equates to 36 times the return on investment for tax authorities. It was estimated that $303,366 in revenue was generated and declared a profit of $288,301 for the Guatemalan Tax Authority showing it is beneficial to apply behavioral changes. Moreover, since there are no statistically significant differences in delivery method outcomes, the option of sending reminders by regular mail can simplify execution procedures in Poland without affecting revenue collection. However, for tax payments, tax authorities can use existing technology, such as websites and smartphones, to facilitate compliance on a modest budget. In Kosovo (World Bank Group, 2019) emails and SMS messages were used to send out behavioral tax letters instead of paper mail. This slightly reduces the overall costs resulting in increased tax revenue. The only major cost would be incurred while setting up the infrastructure. In years to come only small maintenance costs would be incurred making it a cost-effective solution in the long run. The government can make these design changes to its tax policies and use these biases to its advantage and work towards effectively increasing its tax revenue. These changes are uncomplicated, cost-effective, easily implementable, and have achieved a positive impact worldwide. Hence it is the best possible solution available to limit the financial loss currently being sustained by the government due to non-payment of taxes. VI. Conclusion The World Bank Group has extensively researched how to successfully implement behavioral changes to tax policies. Behavioral changes are very helpful as they increase tax revenues and receiving correct tax amounts on time helps reduce financial losses for the government. They have run field experiments in various countries, like Guatemala, Poland, and Kosovo, and have found compelling evidence on how to nudge taxpayers to be more compliant. The 3 biases explored in this paper are only a few, many other biases and heuristics such as availability and loss aversion are present in the tax-paying process which also negatively affect the government. 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A.S.E.A.N The Long Game: ASEAN, China’s Charm Offensive and the South China Sea Dispute Hisyam Takiudin Brown University Author David Golden Orwa Mohammad Sean Sullivan Editors Spring 2018 Identifying why multilateralism is weakening in Southeast Asia in the wake of the South China Sea Maritime Dispute. The South China Sea (SCS) is a 3.5 million-square-meters body of water within the rims of Southeast Asia. It contains islands, reefs, and low-tide elevations that are mainly grouped into the Spratly and the Paracel Islands. The SCS is of strategic importance as it is a trade route carrying $3.4 trillion worth of goods every year – an equivalent to 21% of global maritime trade – and boasts strategic sea lanes whose blockade could disrupt entire economies (O’Rourke, 2015). Recent studies estimated the SCS to contain 11 billion barrels of oil and 190 trillion cubic feet of natural gas (Fisher, 2016). It also accounts for over 10% of the global fishing trade. While its value is undisputed, determining who owns what in the SCS gets very complicated. There are overlapping claims between China, Japan, Taiwan, and several Southeast Asian states which has led to military standoffs, international court arbitrations, as well as disruptions to revenue-generating activities in the waters (O’Rourke, 2015). To understand the root causes and find potential solutions to the SCS dispute, this paper argues a focus on two key players: China and the Southeast Asian states. Beyond China’s lofty ambitions to become the de facto power center in the region, there needs to be a consideration of China’s modus operandi. In July 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) rejected China’s ‘nine-dash claim’ in the SCS. China responded by discrediting the ruling and continuing to assert its claims by adding sediments to low-tide elevations to build artificial islands, chasing out non-Chinese vessels, and engaging in military exercises (Fisher, 2016). This is a precedent-setting behavior, and the potential for additional players to follow the same law-defying strategy should sound an alarm for increased checks on Chinese influence in the region. More explicitly, other SCS claimants should create a more united front with the collective goal of upholding international law. Secondly, Southeast Asian states technically operate within a regional bloc called the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). ASEAN is primarily an economic bloc, but that is precisely why it is crucial to solving the dispute. A study of the economic relationship between the claimants in the dispute reveals a two-faced nature. There is a clear pick-and-choose strategy by more developed claimants (e.g. China, Japan) towards Southeast Asian states which are largely emerging markets. Capital flows can thus be an influencing instrument by more developed claimants to steer negotiations in their favor. The Southeast Asian claimants then could benefit from a more integrated economic strategy via ASEAN to ensure a level playing field. The question that remains then, why has the status quo persisted? Why is it that seemingly logical strategies such as the above not followed? Perhaps more constructively, what incremental steps are realistic and feasible for stakeholders to take in line with these big picture strategies? The rest of this paper will expand on the contexts of these observations, use data to justify the need to change the status quo, and outline potential strategies that can maximize the long-term outcome for stakeholders. The core argument will be this: a combination of ASEAN’s flawed structure, inefficient nature of international law, and the economic-incentive dependent nature of ASEAN claimants all lead to a political scenario where free-riding on other parties’ confrontations with China while reaping China’s economic incentives will bring about the best individual outcome. This is what is called a collective action problem, a Marcus Olsen (1965) notion that stresses the inability for individual actors to achieve a goal in providing a public good – in this case, a buffer against Chinese bullying (Oatley, 2016). There is then a recognition of a larger Chinese strategy to dismantle ASEAN and to shift Member States into China’s sphere of influence. Solving the SCS conflict is then not quite the priority ASEAN Member States should be giving. ASEAN as an organization is an important medium to balance against China’s creeping influence, and its Member States will need to see past the short-term benefits of China’s handouts and consider the long-term consequences of the current free-riding strategies. This paper will reveal how following a long-term strategy focusing on building ASEAN’s internal capabilities can be instrumental to maximize individual interests while ensuring China’s actions are checked. I. ASEAN and the SCS Dispute ASEAN is a regional bloc consisting of 10 Southeast Asian states and aims to promote economic, political, and security cooperation amongst its Member States. Its biggest achievement is first and foremost its ability to rally an economically, politically, and culturally diverse group of nations. By promoting regional dialogue, ASEAN, in turn, promotes regional peace and stability, a no easy feat for a group of post-colonial states (except for Thailand). However, it is important to note that in practice, ASEAN focuses on economic cooperation more so than others. This is because ASEAN decision-making is on the basis of consensus, meaning the controversial nature of political and security cooperation is by default constrained. While ASEAN managed to eliminate significant amounts of trade tariffs, no military agreements have been signed beyond joint exercises or on matters of illegal migration between its Member States. In context of the SCS dispute, the most important fact is how ASEAN as an organization has never been mandated to resolve the dispute; this responsibility falls under the claimants themselves “through legal arbitrations or political negotiations, bilaterally or multilaterally,” (Storey, 2017). In a rare exception, however, ASEAN and China did sign the non-legally binding Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC) in 2002, which entails the promotion of “confidence-building measures”, engagement in “practical maritime cooperation”, and “the discussion and conclusion of a formal and binding Code of Conduct (COC).” The COC is intended to be a formal, legally binding document that would facilitate maritime engagements in the SCS. The signing of the DOC is a remarkable achievement because it also acts as a litmus test for ASEAN’s ability to act as a political unit. The decision to partake in the COC negotiations is in line with China’s current charm offensive strategy in the region –explained further in Section IV, but negotiations have been significantly delayed, so much so that even the basic provisions of non-violence and non-disruptive clauses in the DOC have not been implemented (ASEAN, 2012). The DOC also created the opposite of its intended effect: creating distrust and discouraging further cooperation. This is because the DOC lacks an enforcement mechanism, leading to rampant and unchecked interpretations, where claimants have accused each other of violating the document (Storey, 2017). China sees the Philippines’s decision to take up the case to the PCA violates Article 4 which stipulates conflict resolution “through friendly consultations and negotiations by the sovereign states directly concerned”, while other claimants see China’s sand dredging to build islands fit for military use do not exemplify an act of “self-restraint” (Storey, 2017). It was not until September 2013 – a full eleven years since the DOC was signed – when the first China-ASEAN Senior Officials’ Meeting on the COC was held (Storey, 2017). Talks remained slow until after the 2016 PCA ruling, in a move believed to be China’s way of deflecting criticisms it received from rejecting the Tribunal’s result. More strikingly, the draft contents of the COC, as of November 2017, is devoid of the term “legally binding”, raising doubts whether countries should be invested in the COC at all (Storey, 2017). Even if the final version of the COC does come with a binding clause, a few things are still worth noting. First, the insistence to take time to negotiate could mean the region remains at risk of violent escalations – there is an immediacy to have the COC passed soon considering the ongoing military installations by China and Vietnam. Secondly, the COC will not mean an end to the dispute since it will not include mechanisms aimed to do so –it will not be equipped to resolve existing conflicts. Most importantly, the DOC experience and China’s precedent-setting decision to ignore the PCA ruling calls for caution whether signatories would even honor it. Internally, cracks in ASEAN solidarity towards the SCS dispute are becoming clearer. In 2011 the ASEAN Summit failed to issue a joint statement on how to approach the dispute and in 2017, it failed to mention the dispute altogether (Hutt, 2016). President Duterte of the Philippines made the surprise move to set aside the PCA ruling – in which the Philippines was overwhelmingly favored – and strengthened ties with China through trade deals worth $13.5 billion (BBC, 2016). Malaysia held joint military exercises and signed big budget infrastructure projects with China (Permal, 2017). Vietnam, on the other hand, is in a ‘cold war’-like state with China, with both parties actively participating in reclamation efforts in the region. Vietnam has also increased strategic cooperation with the United States and Japan who both condemn China’s activities in the region, further increasing tensions (Ives, 2017). The final twist: apart from Singapore, other Southeast Asian states remained quiet on the matter altogether. The key observation here is how increasingly divergent individual ASEAN states are towards the SCS dispute. As per above, the spectrum ranges from outright confrontation to normalization and all the way to blatant disregard of the issue altogether. All things considered, it seems a balancing-against-China strategy is no longer a possibility – a clear indication of the collective action problem discussed earlier. Why then, should any stakeholder in the dispute care about ASEAN? Would it not be more productive to shift the conversation towards the maximizing the interest of an individual claimant? The following sections will peel away these questions to arrive at a two-fold argument: 1) disregarding the importance of a regional Southeast Asian strategy undermines the relevance of ASEAN as a regional bloc, and 2) ASEAN is an instrumental medium in limiting China’s questionable and precedent-setting actions in the region. II. Why Bilateralism (and Limited Multilateralism) Is Preferred To understand why and how ASEAN’s relevance could be compromised, we need to look at both internal and external factors guiding ASEAN’s current principles, and then tie these to how they play to China’s best interests instead of the ASEAN region. Internally, the baffling puzzle is why has Southeast Asian multilateralism in solving the SCS dispute been limited to the flawed DOC and COC. A good way to study this is to deep dive into why bilateralism is heavily preferred. On a surface level, the obvious explanation is because not all ASEAN states are involved in the conflict. Only five Southeast States are technically involved in the dispute – the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and Indonesia. Others are either more involved in territorial disputes with each other or are geographically irrelevant to the dispute. As Section IV will argue, it may well be the case that there are strong incentives for individual states to maintain an amicable relationship with China. Still, what this argument does not explain, is why individual ASEAN states refuse to forgo these incentives for the greater good of the regional bloc, especially in light of China’s devious actions in the SCS. One explanation could be how bilateralism has worked to solve past disputes in the region. When oil and gas reserves were found in the 70s, the Philippines moved in first in 1976, establishing a commercial field in the Reed Bank near its Palawan Island. This received strong opposition from China, Taiwan, and the newly reunited Vietnam, who all claimed the Reed Bank to be within their territories (Muscolino, 2013). Bilateralism took center stage, with each claimant stressing the importance of a peaceful resolution. Negotiations with each claimant avoided escalations for the rest of the decade (Muscolino, 2013). More recently in 2008, Malaysia and Brunei agreed to resolve their dispute by demarcating the land and maritime boundaries, while also collaborating in the exploration of hydrocarbon resources. These became resounding evidence amongst ASEAN leaders that bilateralism could prevent escalations while still maximizing the interests of all parties involved (Roach, 2014). The preference for bilateralism is perhaps better explained by the oddest feature for a regional bloc: a non-interference policy where member states could not interfere with the affairs of another. In context of the SCS dispute, it effectively means that there are no binding mechanisms for the more confrontational Vietnam to coerce the more pro-China Malaysia into shifting its policy stances, for example. The non-interference policy is a result of a shared trauma from colonialism (9 out of 10 ASEAN states are former colonies), with the idea of self-governance becoming a centerpiece when state leaders signed the ASEAN Bangkok Declaration in 1967 (Molthof, 2012). It means there is a heavy reliance on political goodwill for any regional level cooperation to work. It is not surprising then, that the multilateral-centric strategies outlined earlier in this paper remain unrealistic under current conditions. A united front between ASEAN states on the SCS dispute will first require internal disagreements to be solved, which will require a regional supranational body that could fairly rule over the overlapping claims. Amassing enough political goodwill to do this considering the already contentious internal maritime politics is nearly impossible. The practical short-term solution then, as per evidenced by current strategies, is to rely on micro-level, government-to-government negotiations. III. The Role of International Law The second dimension that explains the Southeast Asian states’ current strategy is the complications brought about by international law. The earlier discussion on the DOC and COC was only one part of the legal dimension in the SCS dispute. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS), intended to mitigate disputes over maritime claims such as in the SCS, exacerbated the situation in the region. This is a two-part issue: 1) vagueness in UNCLOS language allows for different interpretations, and 2) opt-outs from arbitration processes defeat the mechanisms that could have overcome the vagueness. For there to be a universally recognized dispute settlement mechanism, there also needs to be a universally recognized set of definitions for what is being disputed. UNCLOS stipulates legal definitions for the rights of states over waters beyond their shore, most controversially the provision of Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs). It legally gives states the right to exploit resources 200 nautical miles off their shores (The Economist, 2012). There was no practical need for this beyond an incentive for states to sign onto UNCLOS, and that short-term incentive backfires. There is a two-part implication: 1) the importance of owning physical features in the SCS becomes of a strategic importance since EEZs establish a sizable control over a revenue-generating region, and 2) signatories regardless of size and military strength are now able to join in the conversation, which is good, but convolutes the already messy conflict by adding more players to the mix. Note also that Southeast Asian states are primarily emerging markets, and the opportunity to reap benefits from riches of SCS can be vital growth drivers. There is also a more patriotic perspective to this; states could also be pursuing purely nationalistic campaigns to enforce historical claims. The Singapore-Malaysia dispute over Pedra Branca and China-Japan dispute over the Senkaku Islands are prime examples. Irrespective of what motivates the states to enter the dispute, the demarcation process would be delicate as the SCS outlines the shores of at least nine states. Even so, a fair and peaceful delimitation of boundaries would be possible if the arbitration process is thorough all the way to the enforcement stage. This is unfortunately not the case with UNCLOS. Article 298 in UNCLOS gives signatories the option to be excluded from arbitrations of “sea boundary delimitations”, “military activities”, and those within the allowable functions of the Security Council (United Nations, 1982). This clause is effectively an ‘opt-out’ from the very legal proceedings UNCLOS was built for. It allows UNCLOS signatories to circumvent the accountabilities that come with violating the document. China, as expected, opted out of Article 298, giving it the legal backing to not have to act on the 2016 PCA ruling. Consider Section II’s discussion on ASEAN states’ preference towards bilateralism. Government-to-government negotiations can be effective if and only if both sides agree to make themselves accountable to the outcome of those negotiations. Once this accountability becomes optional, it begs the question whether it is still wise for ASEAN to rely heavily on bilateral talks. Another way to put it, what are the consequences of ignoring the apparent systemic flaws in the way ASEAN operates? IV. China’s Golden Paradise A good way to understand the full consequences of the systemic flaw referred in the previous section is to study how that flaw has been used against ASEAN. Again, China is a key player here. With ASEAN preferring bilateralism over multilateralism, there is an opportunity for China to tailor its strategy to individual ASEAN countries. Furthermore, with non-interference policy in full effect, any bilateral relationship an ASEAN country builds with China cannot be questioned even if that relationship adversely affects ASEAN as an organization. While this may not necessarily be the case, it will be argued that China’ current strategy suggests it may be pursuing a Southeast Asian political realignment to Beijing. On ASEAN’s part, with its Member States focusing on building a closer relationship with China, there exist trade-offs in capacity building an already fragile ASEAN, whose social, economic, and political linkages remain underdeveloped. In context of the SCS dispute, this could mean a chipping away of the very foundation of ASEAN as a potential balancing power. A grimmer picture could be that, in the long term, the very existence of ASEAN may be endangered, should its weak organizing power falter under a Chinese realignment. To capture how this can play out, one needs to first understand how China specifically has come to hold the bargaining chip it currently has. The obvious is China’s economic strength; with a gross domestic product (GDP) of $11.2 trillion (2016), China dwarfs even the that of a combined ASEAN at $2.6 trillion (2016) (Asian Development Bank, 2017). As primarily developing markets, Southeast Asian countries are right to leverage on larger economies such as China or the United States, where injections of investments can help speed up their development process. Nonetheless, China’s economic strength does not explain why Southeast Asian governments are leaning heavily towards China more so than the region’s traditional hegemon, the United States (US). A traumatic colonial experience for most ASEAN Member States towards the West, in general, could partially explain this (Wilson, 2017). More recently in 1997, the International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s unpopular austerity policies in Thailand and Indonesia lead to disastrous results. This tattooed skepticism among Southeast Asians on long-term relationship building with the West, chiefly the US which holds the IMF’s largest voting power. An even more recent development is unrelated to ASEAN public sentiment at all; the United States is seeing a wave of populism that is pressuring both ends of the political spectrum to be more inward-looking. The election of conservative populist Donald Trump as president further solidified that the US may no longer focus on Southeast Asia. The final confirmation was in Trump’s decision to pull the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), history’s largest regional trade accord (Granville, 2016). The vacuum created by a receding US adds to the already favorable conditions for Chinese dominance in Southeast Asia. All that is left is an execution plan that avoids painting China as another superpower taking advantage of weaker nations. In a 2004 speech, China’s Prime Minister Wen Jiabao made a compelling remark, stating that China’s rise “will not come at the cost of any other country, will not stand in the way of any other country, nor pose a threat to any other country” (Kurlantzick, 2007). This was in the wake of China’s Peaceful Rise strategy, when it realized that its aggressive, military-centric and coercive tactics backfired badly (Kurlantzick, 2007). This is what is called a charm offensive. The strategy draws from a concept political scientist Joseph Nye calls ‘soft power’, “the ability to shape the preferences of others...It is leading by example and attracting others to do what you want,” (Kurlantzick, 2007). To exercise its soft power, China needs to first change the rhetoric surrounding China’s position in Southeast Asia. The turning point was the 1997 Asian financial crisis, where China made the smart move to lessen the devaluations of the Thai baht and the Indonesian rupiah by refusing to devalue its own currency. The decision was publicized as an Asian solidarity measure, which reframed the conversation on China in the region. China’s charm offensive was then timely; it quickly moved to establish relationships with each Southeast Asian country through cooperation in cultural, educational, and business spheres. China invested heavily to improve its diplomatic outreach, visiting its Southeast Asian neighbors twice as many times as its US counterparts (Kurlantzick, 2007). China has also integrated Southeast Asia into its larger plan to create “the world’s largest platform for economic cooperation”, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). BRI is an ambitious modern iteration of the Silk Road trade route, and it aims to promote physical, economic, and social connectivity (Jinchen, 2017). China’s $113 billion pledge in infrastructure building along the proposed trade route is a catnip for ASEAN states who, according to The McKinsey Global Institute, need over $2 trillion investments between 2016-2030 “in road, rail, port, airport, power, water, and telecommunications infrastructure across ASEAN to maintain economic growth,” (McKinsey Global Institute, 2016). This is the key dilemma created by China’s charm offensive: there is a clear need to address its questionable actions in the SCS dispute, yet the allure of Chinese economic incentives is at the same time too good to ignore. While China continued to deny any geopolitical agenda behind BRI, two observations seem to imply otherwise: 1) the timing of BRI coincides with China’s increasingly aggressive position in the SCS, and 2) selective awarding of valuable economic packages to pro-China ASEAN Member States, most evidently the Philippines $13.5 billion pledge upon President Duterte's U-turn from the PCA ruling. The latter observation is further supported by a tripling of Chinese investment value in Malaysia between 2014 and 2015, curiously coinciding with Malaysia’s refusal to answer calls by the Philippines’ then-President Benigno Aquino III to stand up to China. This sparks speculation that the fluctuating Chinese investment value in Vietnam is a means of Chinese retaliation towards Vietnamese reclamation efforts in the SCS (Cheok, 2017). Therefore, ASEAN states tiptoe the line between maintaining their sovereignty in the SCS and appearing favorable to China to exploit its generous handouts. On the one hand, maintaining control over geographical features in the Spratlys and Paracels could come with additional revenues through EEZs, but cost-benefit analyses could prove economic ties with China to potentially bring in much higher revenues. At the core of this argument is the fact that the commodities at stake in the SCS are primarily in oil and fishing stocks. Consider the difficulty of extracting oil, its price volatilities, and its grim long-term prospects: in 2016 BP estimated that the global oil reserves will last only for the next 53.3 years. A recent study by the OceanAsia project estimates depletions of up to 59% in key fishery stocks by 2045, putting the value of controlling fishery areas at stake (Sumalia and Cheung, 2015). Even in the potential unsustainability of income streams in the SCS, nationalism is such a big part of ASEAN – evidenced by an earlier discussed non-interference policy– that it begs a closer study on whether economic incentives are all it takes for China to assume a winning position in the SCS dispute. Earlier, it was argued that ASEAN’s non-interference policy creates a collective action problem where strong forms of multilateralism are hindered. This argument is also applicable to ASEAN’s inability to achieve the level of market integration required for a seamless intra-ASEAN trade and capital flows. ASEAN’s single market initiative, the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), has made way for tariff reductions of 99.2% in ASEAN-6 (Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand) and 97.52% of tariff have been reduced to 0-5% in others (ASEAN Economic Community, 2015). Albeit slow, this is a remarkable achievement and signals a strong ASEAN solidarity in spite of its shortcomings. However, a closer look reveals a different story: there is almost a four-fold increase in non-tariff barriers and measures (NTB/NTM) from 1,634 measures to 5,975 leading up to AEC’s launch in 2015 (Zulfakar, 2017). Essentially, while ASEAN Member States markets their tariff reductions as proof of their commitment to ASEAN, the apparent shifting of potential loss of income to NTB/NTM suggests a collection of countries focused on individual economic gains more than Southeast Asia’s collective wellbeing. And by virtue of non-interference policy, ASEAN Member States cannot pressure each other to change their policies, at least not within the ASEAN framework. The inference is that yes, China may have struck gold through its charm offensive strategy. V. A Chinese Takeover – Blessing or Curse? As each ASEAN Member States form a closer bilateral relationship with China, it effectively means China will compete with ASEAN to become the common denominator in the Southeast Asian region. Should it succeed, it theoretically would put the entire region under its sphere of influence. The key puzzle this section will answer is whether a pivot to China would be detrimental to the development of ASEAN. Measuring this will first require a modeling of what a Chinese ‘takeover’ of the region would look like. One way to do that is to look at Member States who are now already highly dependent on China; a good example is Cambodia whose Chinese FDI amounts to 61% of its total FDI inflows. The fascinating aspect of the Cambodian example is that its Prime Minister, Hun Sen, has not always been friendly to China, once calling the country “the root of everything that is evil”. Within twelve years, Hun Sen altered the description to “Cambodia’s most trustworthy friend”. China covered Cambodia’s shortages in aid during a 1997 coup. This has led to an over-reliance on Chinese aid, which in turn prevents Cambodia from doing anything that may irk China. One expert describes Cambodia “as an extension of China’s foreign policy,” (Hutt, 2016). This is proven by the country’s constant blocking of official ASEAN statements on the SCS dispute, all while using the term ‘neutrality’ to justify its position. Drawing a parallel to ASEAN, the Cambodia model could very well be China’s vision for the whole Southeast Asian region. Unlike the European Union (EU), ASEAN’s highest decision-making power remains at the state level, hence the logic should follow that individual Member States’ interests precede regional goals. Therefore, consider the endgame following a Chinese takeover as the region’s de facto common denominator. China’s ability and willingness to fill in investment gaps, the considerations towards ASEAN’s inherent flaws, and the realization that resources in the SCS are unsustainable all points to the perspective that China may be an ASEAN alternative Southeast Asia needs. Beyond the push and pull of power play between China and its Western counterparts, what then, is wrong with Southeast Asia embracing China? For one, several red flags exist in the Chinese brand of regionalism. Firstly, China’s ignorance of the PCA ruling – a rejection of its ‘nine-dash’ claim in the SCS – sets a precedent of disrespect towards the international law. Secondly, there are contradictions in China’s narrative to create a harmonious cooperative environment while at the same time aggressively building up military capacity in the SCS, creating an environment of skepticism and distrust. Last and perhaps most dangerously, China’s support of authoritarian regimes such as in Cambodia and Laos does not bode well for human rights improvements. A Chinese sphere of influence appears to promote norms contrasting to that of ASEAN Member States at large. Should the consensus model remain a feature of Chinese-led regionalism – which it realistically will – the aforementioned norms would not promote healthy intergovernmental relationships. To prove this point, it is appropriate to use game theory to compare Southeast Asian cooperation between ASEAN’s framework and a Chinese-led regionalism. This is because Southeast Asian regional cooperation much resembles cartels seeking oligopolistic profits; the consensus model mirrors a similar decision-making process in a cartel where each firm’s decision could not be questioned by another. Collusion returns a higher producer surplus than a market competition would. In Southeast Asia’s case, economic benefits from free trade agreements (FTA) outweigh trade without barriers eliminated. However, cartels are generally unstable due to strong incentives to deviate. Without going too much into the underlying mathematics, the price or quantities set in a cartel, while bringing overall higher profits to the market, do not follow the best response possible for each firm. This is already happening in Southeast Asia: the AEC’s effort to eliminate trade barriers. Section IV outlined that while ASEAN Member States made significant inroads to eliminate tariff barriers, it was found that non-tariff measures and barriers (NTB/NTM) had in fact increased, signaling a mere shift income stream rather than a thorough elimination. This increase in NTB/NTM is a form of deviation, following obvious calculations that Member States stand to enjoy above average benefits through NTB/NTM while still reaping from the advantages of an FTA. Game theory states that for collusion to be sustainable, it requires for there to be: 1) only a few actors in the cartel, 2) a multi-market competition, 3) a transparent market for detection of deviations, and 4) symmetry between the firms (Policonomics). ASEAN Member States violate three of these conditions. With ten players, an often-opaque regulatory framework that makes detection of NTB/NTM difficult, and diverse economic strengths, from a game theory perspective it makes perfect sense that multilateralism is weak within ASEAN. However, at least within the ASEAN framework, there is a conscious effort – a strong political goodwill – to address the issue of NTB/NTM, so much so that the AEC Blueprint 2025, a 10-year action plan for the area, includes a focused and detailed effort to tackle this very issue (ASEAN, 2015). Consider this case in a Chinese-led regionalism, with the norms of disrespect towards international law and untrustworthy narratives coming into play. In a framework that relies so much on political goodwill, an air of distrust not only discourages cooperation to solve the underlying issue, but it further incentivizes deviations in a cartel-like arrangement. There is the true danger of a Chinese realignment in Southeast Asia. While the short-term economic incentives may be attractive and essential to fill in Southeast Asia’s infrastructure gap, there may be significant losses in economic benefits of an integrated Southeast Asian region compared to a bilateral-focused, Chinese-led model. VI. Moving Forward The previous section provides a strong case for there to be check and balances in China’s charm offensive in Southeast Asia. Analyzing the root causes of the SCS dispute’s prolongation revealed China’s apparent strategy to engulf the Southeast Asian sphere of influence into its own. Any strategy moving forward then must go beyond the SCS dispute; it also needs to address China’s long-term strategy in the region. In a way, China’s charm offensive has been a blessing because it also revealed what needs to be done to counter China’s rise. The crux of the strategy should be to look for economic-incentive driven strategies to encourage multilateralism in ASEAN, thus balancing against China. There are three ways to do this: 1) diversifying FDIs, 2) creating an ASEAN investment distribution mechanism, and 3) capitalizing on state strength to engage in less lucrative, intra-ASEAN investments. For starters, there needs to be a paradigm shift from the hunt of immediate gains that appeals to voters. This refers to China’s hefty financial investments, which, as shown, in states like Cambodia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, had apparent geopolitical agenda behind them. Cambodia especially, perhaps because it has no conflicting interests in the SCS as a landlocked country, is now practically a proxy for China in the region. It was the reason behind the failure for ASEAN to issue joint statements in recent years. With the Cambodian case in mind, the logical step would be for individual ASEAN Member States to be careful not to let China be in a dominant position in any form of monetary assistance. The guiding strategy here is then to diversify the pool of incoming capital, be it in terms of FDI, aid, or trade. There are two ways ASEAN Member States can diversity, by increasing their extra-ASEAN and/or intra-ASEAN sources. In the extra-ASEAN strategy, the impending puzzle would be to find other partners as able and as willing as China in handing out economic incentives. The best alternative is perhaps Japan, another Asian economic power which, despite stagnating FDI contribution to ASEAN, remains the Chinese amount in net terms ($17.6 billion compared to China’s $8.2 billion in net inflows at 2015 levels). What needs to change in Japan’s strategy is the distribution of its investments in the region. Japan’s investments are focused on manufacturing, the largest in the region by far, which does imply that it is playing a role in filling in the infrastructure gap required by the industry. However, Japan’s factories are highly concentrated in Thailand and Indonesia, and are highly insignificant in the CLMV (Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam) countries, with FDI shares in the single digits (ASEAN, 2017). The CLMV countries are key because their low-income status creates an easier path for China to supplant its influence. Apart for Vietnam’s historical adversity towards China, the country holds a giant’s share of FDI inflow into Cambodia and Laos – 22% and 66% respectively – and is currently Myanmar’s largest trade partner at a third of its total (ASEAN, 2017). The key difference between China and Japan is their motivation behind investing heavily in Southeast Asia. While both seek to balance each other out with regards to the SCS dispute, Japan does not have an apparent geopolitical agenda comparable to that of China. At least from an investment perspective, it appears Japanese companies are flocking for its economic incentives, and not for any Japanese-government mandated charm offensive. CLMV states will need to provide better economic incentives to Japan than the ASEAN-6 (Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Brunei, Indonesia, the Philippines). At the moment, this is unrealistic because even with their high growth rates –averaging at 6.1% compared to 4.1% in ASEAN-6 in 2016, GDP per capita in CLMV remains 2.7 times lower than the ASEAN-6. Should ASEAN Member States fail to find a suitable substitute for China’s inflowing capital, an alternative proposal could instead be to create a regional-level capital distributing mechanism. The idea is to have all capital inflows to ASEAN to first go through a central collecting agency, which will then distribute them to areas of the highest need. An advantage of this strategy is in eliminating the ‘carrots and sticks’ strategy China currently employs in the region. China can then no longer reward obedience and punish confrontations. The strategy also encourages a more equitable development within the region, which, as stated previously, remains disparate between CLMV and the ASEAN-6. As compelling as this idea may be, it faces several challenges. First, it will face an uphill battle from ASEAN Member States because a centralized collection agency essentially implies a violation of the non-interference policy. Given ASEAN’s diverse economies with varying returns to investments, a central collecting agency may deter potential investors since they will not be able to control where their investments go. The final caveat is that the political feasibility of this strategy, given China’s charm offensive, nears impossibility. China will likely use its leverage in Cambodia and Laos to veto any binding decisions on the strategy. Taking such roadblocks into consideration, perhaps a modification of this idea can work. Instead of a centralized collection agency that becomes the middleman for foreign investments, ASEAN Member States can opt to create their own version of the ASEAN Infrastructure Fund (AIF), an initiative under the Asian Development Bank (ADB) that gives financial assistance for infrastructure building. AIF on its own is insufficient because it remains capped at $300 million a year, far below the what is needed by the region. Indonesia, for example, needs $358 billion worth of investments in infrastructure spending by 2019 to keep pace with its targets (ASEAN, 2017). More tellingly, AIF funds are tied to projects endorsed by the ADB, in which China holds the largest voting share amongst Asia-Pacific shareholders. The proposed ASEAN Regional Fund (ARF) ought to be within the full jurisdiction of ASEAN, where it can dispense funds without having to answer to China or other superpowers. It will become obvious that ASEAN governments will not be able to gather the funds necessary on their own. One possible model to follow is to engage in a public-private partnership (PPP), only instead of a single company doing a joint venture with a particular ASEAN Member State, the proposed ARF will be responsible to pool money by their relevant sectors. Any infrastructure building projects will then be on a shared value basis. That way, state-owned companies cannot exert any geopolitical agenda behind proposed projects. In 2016, intra-ASEAN investments accounted for a quarter of FDI flows in the region ($24 billion), a 500% increase from 2003 levels where an upward trend has been observed since. What is more compelling is how intra-ASEAN investments in CLMV are also getting the lion’s share of total investments (ASEAN, 2017). These figures show an increasing regionality of ASEAN businesses, and that an ASEAN-led ARF may not be far from reality. In terms of feasibility, it is to be expected that ARF’s implementation will take a long time since there remains the issue that ASEAN Member States possess varying regulatory frameworks. It would require some minimal level of harmonization to avoid issues such as double taxations. As far as short-term strategies go, ASEAN Member States are fairly limited by the constraints echoed throughout this paper. A viable short-term strategy has to navigate through the inability to legally coerce other ASEAN Member States, an international law framework that does not have a real enforcement power, and high reliance on economic incentives. Therefore, it can be argued that a state-level solution remains the most viable option. The explicit suggestion here is for Member States to individually forgo trade deals with China, and signing less lucrative deals with other external partners or other ASEAN Member States. What the strategy aims to do is to capitalize on ASEAN Member States’ incentive-driven nature to promote multilateralism. How is this politically viable on a local level? Intuitively speaking, foregoing valuable financial assistance may paint incompetence to local voters, thus potentially costing elections. ASEAN Member States, however, are ‘strong states’, where “policymakers are highly insulated from [domestic interest-group pressures]” (Oatley, 2016). It suggests that ASEAN governments have significant room to follow policies that the public may not agree with, which includes the proposed strategy above. The core logic of the strategy is the following: increasing intra-ASEAN trade and capital flow to facilitate capacity building in ASEAN. These intra-ASEAN investments will help to create formal and informal linkages that intertwine Member States’ interests beyond their own geographical border. These newfound linkages may pressure Member States to also think about their regional investments on top of China’s investments, especially as China becomes more fearless in exercising its ‘carrots and sticks’. In the long run, this could mean a greater need to align policies, hence promoting more multilateral dialogues. In context of the SCS dispute, this could also encourage the option of joint explorations in the waters, solving the dispute at least between ASEAN Member States. The three strategies outlined above focus heavily on trying to balance against China’s creeping charm offensive, but it requires a closer look to determine whether they would automatically solve the SCS dispute. On the one hand, each of these strategies seeks to cripple China’s ability to use money to pressure its ASEAN dependents to respect its interests. On the other, a decaying Chinese influence is not an easy solve; it merely equates to a leveling of the playing field. Another dimension remains unsolvable: the failure of current legal frameworks to fairly arbitrate the dispute. Unless China submits itself to the binding mechanisms under UNCLOS, or voluntarily respects the original PCA ruling, the SCS will remain a contentious issue. A further argument could be made on the possibility that the SCS is not a fight worth fighting. This is in consideration of an earlier cost-benefit analysis of maintaining EEZs in the SCS. The natural resources, namely oil and fish, are unsustainable and are expected to deplete in the near future. Beyond the pretense of sovereignty, it seems clear cut for ASEAN Member States to abandon an unwinnable battle to focus on more actionable strategies. VII. Conclusion A study of the South China Sea maritime dispute requires focus on two key players: China and ASEAN. A surface level observation sees China engaging in questionable behavior in the SCS through its aggressive militarization, island building, and blocking of fishing activities. As for ASEAN, it is striking why there is not a strong multilateral opposition against China, given the high-stakes nature of the disputed areas. A preliminary analysis of how China and ASEAN have approached this dispute so far reveals an insufficient Code of Conduct, where recent negotiations indicated China’s unwillingness to succumb to rule of law at its own expense. There is also the observation that an increasingly diverging ASEAN Member States position also weakens multilateral approaches to solve the dispute. On reasons why the boundary delimitation process has been slow, the argument is two-fold. First, the preference for bilateral process stems from a historical success of such dialogues in the past. Digging deeper, ASEAN’s own structure appears to be at fault. By having a consensus model, and a non-interference policy towards Member States, ASEAN lacks a punishment or coercion mechanism. It means that any regional-level initiatives will require the political goodwill of all Member States. A second dimension that explains the SCS dispute’s prolongation is in the role of international law. UNCLOS, designed to mitigate disputes such as in the SCS, is found to be inherently flawed in two ways. First, UNCLOS’s legal definitions for what states can claim complicates the SCS dispute; the unnecessary inclusion of EEZs contributed towards increasing competition to take control of features in the SCS. Secondly, the use of opt-out clauses from certain parts of the arbitration process defeats the whole purpose of the arbitration process altogether. Another catalyst for Chinese domination in the region is in a receding US trend, at least in terms of its soft power. China recognizes the weakness of its hard power; hence, it exercises its soft power through a charm offensive strategy. This entails changing China’s rhetoric among ASEAN Member States as well as handing out generous economic incentives. The observation that China channels capital to Member States that protect its interests, and pulls out of those who do not, showcases the country’s ‘carrots and sticks’ gameplay to become the region’s new common denominator. Between the fight for sovereignty and economic incentives, it was shown that fighting for sovereignty in the SCS may not be the best strategy after all. Depleting fisheries and oil reserves does not amount to the same long term economic benefits of a Chinese infrastructure splurge. Also, the increase in non-tariff measures and barriers (NTM/NTB) upon the launch of the AEC in 2015 shows that ASEAN Member States are inherently incentive driven. Therefore, a Chinese-led regionalism is clearly the profit-maximizing outcome. In exploring the downsides of a Chinese-led regionalism, comparing the operation of ASEAN to a cartel, leads to the equilibria where Member States are strongly incentivized to deviate from a cartel-like arrangement. The difference from an ASEAN-led regionalism is in the norms China practices. China’s rejection of the PCA, for example, shows brazen disrespect for international law. Norms practiced by China does not promote healthy intergovernmental relationships moving forward. There is now a recognition that the SCS maritime dispute is only a small part of a larger, more existential threat towards ASEAN. Strategies moving forward should not then be short-sighted to any single aspect such as the SCS dispute alone. The first recommendation would be to diversify the sources of foreign investments in the region. Japan was given a suitable alternative, but a balancing against China can only happen here if Japan invests in the same sectors and locations, which is unfortunately not the case in such a segmented region. The second strategy is to create a capital distribution mechanism to promote equitable development hence reducing the ability of external powers such as China to influence the foreign policies of any Member State. A central collecting agency may prove to be too intrusive, hence a modified version centered on pooling money through public-private partnerships (PPP) may be a good way to do this. The only downside of this strategy is that it requires significant advances in ASEAN’s regional regulatory framework. One potential short-term solution to the existential threat posed by China would be to capitalize on ASEAN Member States’ ability to pursue sometimes unpopular policies in their respective countries to encourage intra-ASEAN investments. The whole point of this strategy is to further intertwine Member States’ interests within the region, but beyond their own national borders. These will create formal and informal linkages which will pressure governments to protect their now far-reaching investments. This is a form of an economic incentive-led way of encouraging multilateralism. All in all, as the strategies proposed show, ASEAN remains an essential medium in managing internal and external threats to Southeast Asian nations. ASEAN’s flaws are being used against it, but it also exposes where it can improve on moving forward. That is good progress. Endnotes 9To meet its energy demands, China imports 54 percent of its oil from the Middle East, 80 percent of which passes through the southern SCS passage. 10 Southeast Asia technically consists of 11 countries, with Timor-Leste remaining as an observer of the bloc 11 Cambodia, widely considered as China’s “most faithful client state”, has been behind the blockade of at least two post-summit statements; their position could be because China remains Cambodia’s largest aid provider, an incentive the low-income state sorely needs to catch-up with other ASEAN Member States. 12 Malaysia’s military exercise is part of a growing bilateral military cooperation between the two countries. It has grown from cooperation in disaster relief towards sea lane protections in Straits of Malacca. China also signed a ~$13.5 billion contract to build a rail link that will cut cargo shipping by 30 hours. 13 Vietnam began dredging its military-controlled Ladd Reef in 2016, and signed a gas-drilling venture with ExxonMobil due to be in full operation by 2023. 14 Singapore is in an ongoing dispute with Malaysia over Pedra Branca and South Ledge; Thailand and Cambodia both dispute overlapping claims over Koh Kut; Myanmar does not have shore in the SCS; and Laos is a landlocked country. 15 “In the mid-1990s, China had tried to use military strength to intimidate other countries in Asia, by aggressive moves like sending ships to unoccupied, disputed reefs in the South China Sea. At the same time, Beijing called on other nations in the region to abandon their alliances, mostly with the United States, arguing that these had been made obsolete by the Cold War. This strategy backfired. Countries across the region condemned Beijing’s aggressive behavior and solidified their military links with the United States, drawing the US armed forces closer into the region, and closer to China—exactly what Beijing did not want.” 16 The FDI is on a net basis, and computed as follows: Net FDI = Equity + Net Inter-company Loans + Reinvested Earnings. The net basis concept implies that the followings should be deducted from the FDI gross flows: (1) reverse investment (made by a foreign affiliate in a host country to its parent company/direct investor; (2) loans given by a foreign affiliate to its parent company; and (3) repayments of intra-company loan (paid by a foreign affiliate to its parent company). As such, FDI net inflows can be negative. 17 Japan’s FDI share in 2016 are as follows: Vietnam, 10%; Myanmar, insignificant (collapse into Others; Lao PDR, 4%; Cambodia, 9%. 18 In 2016, intra-ASEAN investments account for: Cambodia, 28%; Laos, 18%; Myanmar, 58%; Vietnam, 18%. References ASEAN. Declaration on the Conduct of the Parties in the South China Sea (2012). http://asean.org/?static_post=declaration-on-the- conduct-of-parties-in-the-south-china-sea-2 . ‘ASEAN Economic Community Blueprint 2025’. ASEAN, November 2015. ASEAN Secretariat. ‘ ASEAN Investment Report 2016’. ASEAN, September 2016. ———. ‘ASEAN Investment Report 2017’. ASEAN, September 2017. Cheng, Nicolas. ‘Malaysia and China Hold First-Ever Joint Military Exercise Read More at Https://Www.Thestar.Com.My/News/Nation/2014/12/23/Malaysia-and-China-Hold-Firstever-Joint-Military Exercise/#ggir37xVhJj1D1mj.99’. The Star Online, 23 December 2014. https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2014/12/23/malaysia-and-china-hold-firstever-joint-military-exercise/ . Cheok, Melissa. ‘China Is Increasing Its Share of Southeast Asia’s Infrastructure Pie’. Bloomberg, 17 August 2017. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-17/china-s-growing-its-share-of-southeast-asia-s-infrastructure-pie . ‘Duterte in China: Xi Lauds “milestone” Duterte Visit’. BBC News, 20 October 2016. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia 37700409 . Fisher, Max. ‘The South China Sea: Explaining the Dispute’. The New York Times, 14 July 2016, sec. Asia Pacific. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/15/world/asia/south-china-sea-dispute-arbitration-explained.html . Granville, Kevin. ‘What Is TPP? Behind the Trade Deal That Died’. The New York Times, 20 August 2016, sec. Business Day. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/business/tpp-explained-what-is-trans-pacific-partnership.html, Hutt, David. ‘ How China Came to Dominate Cambodia’. The Diplomat, 1 September 2016. https://thediplomat.com/2016/09/how- china-came-to-dominate-cambodia/ . Ives, Mike. ‘China Cancels Military Meeting With Vietnam Over Territorial Dispute’. The New York Times, 21 June 2017, sec. Asia Pacific. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/21/world/asia/china-vietnam-south-china-sea.html . Jinchen, Tian. ‘“One Belt and One Road”: Connecting China and the World | McKinsey & Company’. McKinsey Global Institute, n.d. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/capital-projects-and-infrastructure/our-insights/one-belt-and-one-road-connecting-china-and-the-world . Kongrawd, Somjade. ‘Thailand and Cambodia Maritime Disputes’, 2009. https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/2009/thailand-cambodia.pdf . Kurlantzick, Joshua. Charm Offensive: How China’s Soft Power Is Transforming the World. New Haven, Conn.; London: Yale University Press, 2008. ‘Make Law, Not War’. The Economist, 25 August 2012. https://www.economist.com/node/21560849 . Molthof, Mieke. ‘ASEAN and the Principle of Non-Interference’. E-International Relations Student (blog), 8 February 2012. http://www.e-ir.info/2012/02/08/asean-and-the-principle-of-non-interference/ . Muscolino, Micah S. ‘Past and Present Resource Disputes in the South China Sea: The Case of Reed Bank’. Cross-Currents Cross Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review 2, no. 2 (2013): 80–106. Nordquist, Myron, and Satya N. Nandan. United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982, Volume VII: A Commentary. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2011. Oatley, Thomas. International Political Economy. 5th edition. Boston: Longman, 2013. O’Rourke, Ronald, Library of Congress, and Congressional Research Service. Maritime Territorial and Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) Disputes Involving China: Issues for Congress. Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, 2012. http://cq.com/pdf/crsreports-4169781 . Roach, J. Ashley. ‘Malaysia and Brunei: An Analysis of Their Claims in the South China Sea’. CNA, August 2014, 44. Rothschild, Mike. ‘Why the US Might Go to War Over China’s Fake Islands’. ATTN, 5 February 2017. https://www.attn.com/stories/14724/explaining-south-china-sea-dispute . Storey, Ian. ‘ASEAN’s Failing Grade in the South China Sea | The Asan Forum’, 31 July 2015. http://www.theasanforum.org/aseans-failing-grade-in-the-south-china-sea/ . ———. ‘Assessing the ASEAN-China Framework for the Code of Conduct for the South China Sea’. ISEAS Perspective 2 (August 2017). https://www.iseas.edu.sg/articles-commentaries/iseas-perspective . Sumaila, U. Rashid, and William W. L. Cheung. ‘Boom or Bust: The Future of Fish in the South China Sea’. University of British Columbia, 5 November 2015. Vadnjal, Nathan. ‘The Changing Face of Chinese Investment in Myanmar’. Foreign Brief (blog), 9 June 2017. https://www.foreignbrief.com/asia-pacific/south-east-asia/changing-face-chinese-investment-myanmar/ . Zulfakar, Mergawati. ‘Najib: Remove Trade Barriers within Asean - Nation’. 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Vance Kelley Civil Disobedience and Desert Theory of Punishment Vance Kelley I. Introduction In this paper, I discuss how the state ought to punish civil disobedience given a desert theory of punishment. By “desert theory of punishment,” I mean the view that lawbreakers ought to be punished according to what they deserve. Other considerations, such as what would best deter or incapacitate lawbreakers, are to be ignored according to desert theory. Since there are many distinct notions of “civil disobedience,” I will also clarify my use of this phrase. I use “civil disobedience” to mean “breaking the law in order to communicate to the public and the state that a policy violates the lawbreaker’s moral convictions.” My definition leaves aside whether civil disobedience is nonviolent or a last resort (as John Rawls supposes), although these features could marginally affect how civil disobedience ought to be punished (1). Ultimately, I conclude that states ought to punish all civil disobedience less harshly than typical offenses. I arrive at this “mercy for all” view in a roundabout way. In fact, I initially point out a shortcoming with this view in Section III. In Section IV, I examine an alternative view that advocates lesser punishment only for civil disobedience done from correct moral convictions. I argue that this “mercy for correct moral convictions” view is impractical, since the state cannot identify who disobeyed from correct moral convictions and who disobeyed from incorrect ones. This leads me to argue in Section V that the state must punish all civil disobedience uniformly, without regard to the correctness of civil disobedients’ moral convictions. I then conclude that the best uniform punishment is indeed to treat all civil disobedience with mercy, since this avoids over-punishing those who act from correct moral convictions. II. Why Desert Theory? As I have said above, my central claim is that given desert theory of punishment, the state ought to punish all civil disobedience mercifully. Some may find it perplexing that my central claim accepts desert theory as the correct theory of punishment, and indeed this needs to be justified. Simply put, I accept desert theory because it best captures our intuitions about disciplining lawbreakers. Most of us share the intuition that it is wrong to punish innocent people as well as the intuition that it is wrong to over-punish the guilty. Desert theory offers an explanation of these intuitions; it is wrong to punish the innocent and to over-punish the guilty because these conflict with what people deserve . Innocent people do not deserve to be punished at all, and guilty people deserve to be punished in proportion to the severity of their crimes. Yet alternatives to desert theory—such as theories that recommend punishments based on their incapacitation or deterrence value—have a difficult time explaining why we hold the above intuitions (2). In fact, these “consequentialist” theories of punishment would suggest punishing the innocent or over-punishing the guilty if doing so deterred or incapacitated lawbreakers. For example, suppose that by executing a petty thief the state could deter all would-be thieves from stealing others’ property in addition to incapacitating the executed criminal. Consequentialist theories of punishment would recommend executing the petty thief even though this conflicts with our intuition that over-punishing him with death is wrong. Therefore, the problem with consequentialist theories of punishment runs even deeper than what Walen suggests. Not only do consequentialist theories fail to explain our intuitions about punishment; they also render verdicts that directly conflict with these intuitions. Of course, one could write volumes on the merits of different theories of punishment, and what I have written above merely scratches the surface. But I hope to have at least made the argument that desert theory is compelling, and my do- ing so should assuage concerns that I am unduly neglecting what consequentialist theories would say about punishing civil disobedience. Desert theory is the most plausible account of how we ought to punish lawbreakers, and I will now move on to my central concern: how should the state punish civil disobedience? III. The Shortcoming of “Mercy for All” One initially plausible view is that given desert theory, all civil disobedience ought to be punished less harshly than typical offenses. Kimberly Brownlee discusses this “mercy for all” view in her Stanford Encyclopedia entry, writing that civil disobedients deserve mercy because they are motivated by moral convictions. The idea is that lawbreakers generally deserve mercy if obeying the law would have been very difficult for them, and civil disobedients’ moral convictions indeed make obeying the law quite difficult (3). Additionally, perhaps civil disobedients deserve mercy because their motives are less reprehensible than those of typical offenders. Breaking the law because of one’s moral convictions seems far less shameful than doing so out of self-interest, and this has long been held by legal scholars (4). The view that all civil disobedients deserve mercy because they act from moral convictions may therefore seem plausible, but it is not quite right. Surely, granting mercy even to civil disobedients who have incorrect moral convictions is too broad. These misguided disobedients do not deserve lesser punishments than typical offenders, and an example shall make this clear. Suppose a man publicly refuses to obey a law that protects gay citizens from discrimination. Believing that homosexuality is immoral and that the law unjustly protects wrongdoers, the man refuses to serve same-sex couples at his restaurant as a way of protesting the law. Clearly, the fact that his disobedience is done from a moral conviction does not make the man deserve lesser punishment than normal offenders (5). His moral conviction is severely misguided, detestable, and undeserving of mercy. Therefore, it seems that only civil disobedients who act from correct moral convictions deserve reduced punishments. IV. The Impracticality of “Mercy for Correct Moral Convictions” I have just shown that only civil disobedients who act from correct moral convictions deserve mercy. Disobedience done from incorrect moral convictions, on the other hand, deserves no lesser punishment than normal. On desert theory, then, it seems rather straightforward that states ought to punish civil disobedients who hold correct moral convictions less harshly than normal offenders, while those with incorrect moral convictions ought to be punished at the standard level. However, this “mercy for correct moral convictions” view faces a significant problem. In practice, the state cannot administer the different levels of punish- ment that the view calls for. During sentencing, judges would need to discern who disobeys from correct moral convictions and who disobeys from incorrect ones. Yet typically judges will not be able to discern this, and instead they will view both types of civil disobedients as having incorrect moral convictions. This is because all civil disobedience expresses moral convictions contrary to those of lawmakers—that is the entire point of civil disobedience—and typically lawmakers’ convictions will also be held by judges. After all, in most democratic systems, lawmakers choose judges whose views accord with their own. Given that judges’ own moral convictions will agree with those of lawmakers and conflict with those of civil disobedients, judges will regard all civil disobedients as having incorrect moral convictions, for it will not matter that some civil disobedients’ convictions actually are correct and some are not. Admittedly, there may be cases where acts of civil disobedience convince judges that their moral convictions are wrong and that the disobedients’ convictions are correct. In such cases, judges could perceive that civil disobedience is being done from correct moral convictions, since here they do not allow their own moral convictions to cloud their judgment. That said, these cases are rare. Civil disobedients often fail many times before persuading the state that their moral convictions are correct. For example, the civil rights period in the United States lasted many years and required numerous instances of civil disobedience before judges and lawmakers were persuaded to end Jim Crow segregation. Generally, judges will view civil disobedients as having incorrect moral convictions even if some actually are correct; consequently, the state cannot give the different types of civil disobedients the disparate punishments that they deserve. V. “Mercy for All” Revisited So, how can the state punish civil disobedience? It cannot discriminate between disobedients who have correct moral convictions and those who lack them. In- stead, the state must punish all civil disobedience uniformly, without regard to the truth of disobedients’ moral convictions. This may cause us to conclude that desert theory is false if “ought implies can.” If states only have moral obligations to do what is possible, then it is not the case that they ought to give different punishments to civil disobedients depending on the truth of their moral convictions. As I have shown in the previous section, it is generally impossible for the state to assess the truth of these convictions and give out different punishments for them. Yet “different punishments depending on the truth of civil disobedients’ moral convictions” seems to be exactly what desert theory entails. The view claims that states ought to punish lawbreakers according to what they deserve, and civil disobedients deserve different punishments depending on the truth of their moral convictions. Since desert theory seems to entail a false conclusion, it appears to be false. However, there is a way around this problem for the view. We can add a proviso to desert theory that handles cases where the state is unable to give lawbreakers the different levels of punishment that they deserve. According to this proviso, if a state cannot identify and administer these different levels of punishment, then it no longer ought to give lawbreakers these different levels. Instead, the state ought to choose a uniform level of punishment that gives no one harsher punishment than she deserves, even if this lets some lawbreakers receive undeserved mercy (6). One may wonder why this proviso places so much emphasis on treating no one worse than she deserves. But in fact, many people agree with the spirit of the proviso. We often say that it is better to let guilty people go free than to imprison someone who is innocent; this idea was formalized by British jurist William Blackstone and has remained a part of jurisprudence ever since (7). With this proviso added to desert theory, it no longer imposes a moral obligation that violates “ought implies can.” Now, states are simply obligated to impose a uniform level of punishment on civil disobedients, and this should pose no practical difficulties. Given this proviso, what uniform level of punishment does desert theory recommend for civil disobedience? This could take one of two forms (8). First, the state could show no mercy to any civil disobedients and punish all of them at the lev- el appropriate for normal offenders. But this would over-punish those who have correct moral convictions and deserve mercy, so it is ruled out by the proviso. Alternatively, the state could show mercy to all civil disobedients and punish them at the reduced level appropriate for those with correct moral convictions. This under-punishes civil disobedients with incorrect moral convictions (who deserve full punishments), but it avoids over-punishing those with correct moral convictions. Since this second option avoids over-punishment, it is favored by the proviso. Therefore, states ought to show mercy to all civil disobedients and punish them at the reduced level appropriate for those with correct moral convictions. VI. Conclusion I have shown that given desert theory, we ought to punish all civil disobedience mercifully. I began in Section II by justifying and accepting desert theory, which claims that people ought to be punished according only to what they deserve. Then, in Section III, I examined my preferred view that all civil disobedients ought to be punished less harshly than typical offenders. I initially argued that this “mercy for all” view has a shortcoming: civil disobedients with incorrect moral convictions do not deserve mercy. Nonetheless, I returned to this view after recognizing in Section IV that it is impractical to give mercy only to disobedients with correct moral convictions. As I then explain in Section V, punishment of civil disobedience must therefore be uniform with respect to the truth of lawbreakers’ moral convictions. After adding a proviso to desert theory which accounts for this fact as well as our intuition that under-punishing is preferable to over-punishing, I return to the “mercy for all” view and accept it as the only one compatible with justice. Endnotes 1 John Rawls, A Theory of Justice. Harvard Belknap Press, 1971. 320, 327. 135 2 Alec Walen, “Retributive Justice”. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Fall 2020 Edition. https://plato.stanford. edu/entries/justice-retributive/. Section 1. 3 Kimberlee Brownlee, “Civil Disobedience”. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Fall 2017 Edition. https:// plato.stanford.edu/entries/civil-disobedience/. Section 4.2. 4 Harrop A. Freeman, “The Right of Civil Disobedience”. Indiana Law Journal, Vol 4 Iss 2, 1966. https://www. repository.law.indiana.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3628&context=ilj. 228-254. 5 It might be hard to imagine the “normal offender” for this case. Here, it would be someone who refuses to serve gay citizens but does not do so to protest the antidiscrimination law. Perhaps this person thinks that serving gay citizens will cause him to lose the business of homophobic customers. 6 One might question why the new level of punishment must be uniform. For example, perhaps different levels of punishment could be administered on a random or arbitrary basis. But surely, such punishments would be unjust. 7 William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, 1893. 358. 8 It could also take a third form, at a level somewhere between what the two groups of disobedients deserve. But this would obviously over-punish those who have correct moral convictions and be thrown out by the proviso. Previous Next

The Captain and the Doctor: On the Enchantment of Modern Men George LeMieux Author Alexander Gerasimchuk Fatima Avila Editors Though we be on the far side of the world, this ship is our home. This ship is England. Introduction Modern man is lost. He is not home to himself. He lacks the longings that great men once had. While Nietzsche, Rousseau, or Burke might better articulate or explore this problem, I intend to explore how it might be remedied, a possible antidote to our modern poison. From the Western canon, I have identified three such antidotes or rather three figures who might re-enchant the modern man, the man of the democratic age. They are the vanguard of Marx, the conqueror of Nietzsche, and the disciple, which is first constituted Biblically but later in Toqueville among others. I shall conduct this search through the metaphor of a ship’s captain, in this case, Captain Jack Aubrey as depicted in the celebrated series and film Master and Commander , which I will briefly outline. Before that outline is given, I will first justify this metaphor by the virtue of captaincy itself (despite the fact I would shoehorn this favorite film of mine into anything). Then in the aftermath, I will examine these three figures as our “captains.” In this examination, I hope to reveal that modern man may only be enchanted, or at least enchanted to humanity’s benefit, by a disciple. For our captain, only the disciple offers a path that does not self-destruct and looks beyond worldly motivation. A Metaphor Since there is a long and storied history of philosophers making use of the ship and other nautical nomenclature as metaphor for their sophisticated views on man, government, and what other nonsense comes to their minds, I see no reason to deviate from the tradition. For what is better than a ship with captain and crew? She, like her nation, must suffer through trial and tribulation, storm and battle. She must adjust her sails so that she catches the wind but not let loose so much as to rip her masts apart. She must have a rigid hull built to withstand cannon and carronade, but she must also have flexibility, lest the changing temperatures and humidity crack her hull. She must be led by a captain, strong and decisive in his command. Yet he must not be a tyrant. He must court the hearts of his men so that he may win their will. If not, his men will mutiny. The uninspired crew would have no other reason to entertain the otherwise insufferable conditions of life at sea. Indeed, I do think this will be a fitting metaphor. The Captain Captain Jack Aubrey of His Majesty's Royal Navy is a man caught between two worlds, between two times. Behind him is the aristocracy of old: kings, queens, lords, ladies, and government by the few for the many, at least ideally. In front of him stands modernity: merchants, naturalists, revolutions, counter-revolutions, Napoleon, the new world, America, and democracy. Such is the world of Captain Aubrey as depicted in Patrick O'Brian's novel and Peter Weir’s film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. Jack is a man of tradition. He respects the Crown. He reads his scripture. He loves his country. Jack’s hero is none other than Duke and Admiral Horatio Nelson, a brave and sturdy man who dies defending his love of king and country. And yet Jack sees his idols, his pillars crumbling. He has witnessed the chaos of the revolutions in France. He holds the Burkean sentiment that it is the modern radicals that “despise experience as the wisdom of unlettered men; [...] they have wrought underground a mine that will blow up, at one grand explosion, all examples of antiquity, all precedents, charters, and acts of parliament. They have ‘the rights of men.’” It is this modern threat with its rights and revolutionaries that is epitomized by the two foils of the film. The first foil is the Acheron —the ship of the modern age. She is at the forefront of naval technological advancement. Her hull is braced by three layers of live oak and white oak, making her near impenetrable for any ship of her class. She is the largest of any frigate built, able to carry more guns, yet also more aerodynamic, “heavier, but faster spite it” (Weir, Collee). In every way, she outclasses the H.M.S Surprise , Jack’s nimble but aging frigate. And where is the Acheron built? Boston. While Peter Weir had the financial sensibility to make the antagonist of the film French, i.e. Acheron , Patrick O’Brian’s ship was called U.S.S Norfolk . It is with this name that the dichotomy O’Brian intended is much clearer. It is the new world and the old world, His Majesty and Mr. President. And the new world is winning. The second foil is not a figure of oak and iron but of flesh and bone. Doctor Stephen Maturin is the ship’s surgeon and a savant of a surgeon he is. He is also a naturist, collecting, diagraming, and recording the various species he encounters on the ship’s voyages. Upon the ship’s travel to the Galapagos Islands, the parallels to the young Darwin are evident. More important, however, than any of this, he is Jack’s best friend. Despite sharing little common interest, much less a common worldview, Jack confides in Stephen what he confides in no one else. Stephen, in turn, voices his dissent to Jack, when no crew member nor officer would otherwise dare. He is both his greatest ally and greatest challenger. He is the check to Jack’s ambition and the prosecutor of his reason. He is the liberal to Jack’s conservatism. He echoes the voices of democracy, of the social contract, and the danger of tyrants. His respect for Jack comes not from his title or station but from how he leads, how he governs. It is Stephen who most quickly becomes the radical, the revolutionary, when Jack steps out of line. The Jack we see at the film’s beginning is willing to die on the hill of order and naval tradition. He is unable to see anything but the objective of his mission. Stephen and even the other officers are unable to go as far. To Jack’s credit, it is his daring and force of will, despite insurmountable odds, that makes him a great captain. In his pursuit of the Acheron , Jack takes risks that make his moves unpredictable and effective; his crew calls him Lucky Jack for a reason. But those risks do not come without their costs, even if Jack is lucky more often than he is not. Eventually, Jack carelessly pursues the Acheron into a storm and loses a man and a mast in the process. Still, Jack does not turn tail, despite Stephen’s pleas. He refits and refocuses. Only by the film's end does Jack reform and he does so not through reasoning but out of his friendship with Stephen. When Stephen is injured in an accident on board (a marine shoots him while aiming for a bird), Jack sends his ship ashore to one of the Galapagos islands instead of continuing his pursuit, likely to his detriment. This act of compassion, as it turns out, is the saving grace of the Surprise. Not only is the Acheron spotted on the far side of the island, but Stephen inspires Jack on how to capture her. While Jack's act of compassion does not separate him from his ideology, it reveals a complexity in his nature. In not letting his warrior-like nature subjugate the other parts of his conscience, Jack demonstrates his command of self, making him a good captain in more ways than one. His compassion for Stephen, despite their differences, allows him to occupy a middle ground between old and the new, between those of high and low station, between those conservative and radical. Despite their differences, Jack and Stephen end their days together with music, with a duet, playing the cello and violin as the Surprise sails into the sunset. Looking at this time and this day, in this new world, one must wonder if such bonding, such good feeling, such balance between the conservative and the liberal is possible. Every day the position of the radical, of the accelerationist, becomes more compelling even to the conservative. In America, the rigging and line that once held hull and sail together have frayed and torn, not in the harshest winds but in their daily use. The physical lines that once held men together are now virtual, connections in the cloud and the internet. These lines between men were once tangible things; now, there are few of these left. The conservative now must ask himself what he intends to conserve and if he is capable of such conservation. With conservatives far to the right, liberals far to the left, and a confused chasm in between, can those old ropes hold society together any longer? Perhaps, it is time to cut the rope. Perhaps, it is time for both right and left to become radical. Or, perhaps, there is faith to be had in those old ropes. Perhaps, there could be a man to renew their strength, reorganize them, and apply a fresh coat of tar to protect them. Perhaps, there might be a man who could tie new ropes without cutting away the old. Is there such a captain for this ship of modernity? Is there a Jack who can reason with the moderns, take heed of their desires but not be dragged off course? What does such a captain look like? The Captain’s Virtue Before one can talk of any mystical quality a good captain must have, one must first talk about his primary obligation, his duty, his vocation. For if this station is not sound in virtue, the metaphor is not fit for its goal. A captain, such as Jack, is the leader of a warship and of its crew. He would not be a good captain if he could not sail, navigate, or command the ship in battle. He must understand every part of his command and responsibility. It was for such reasons that those men who became captains most often started their time at sea from their early teens as Midshipmen, who were responsible for commanding gun crews of sailors twice their age. It is this good practice, of physical strain and tangible purpose, that makes the vocation virtuous. Virtue is not found in sophistry or the professing of morality but in good works and deeds. Both Rousseau and Marx recognized that the “sensible” men of the world are not the magistrates but the “workers” and the “people.” In this way, the captain is a unique station. It is a position that reaches downward to the grit and servitude that is required but reaches up toward order and inspiration. On one hand, a captain must stand amongst his sailors and with his marines facing the enemy, taking with them every shot fired, equally as likely to be impaled by shrapnel and splinter, equally as likely to take grapeshot from a swivel gun, equally as likely to take a cannonball straight through his gut. On the other hand, a captain must reach upward. He must engage in strategy, diplomacy, and negotiation. He takes his orders from admirals, parliament, and the King. He must, with his officers, stand apart and govern the crew, making sure he does not fraternize with them or become too social. He must whip those who are insubordinate. And it is he who gives the parting sermon after his men die in battle. The captain is both above and below, a man who mediates between king and country, between God and his men. Vanguard For Marx, the nature of our captain is clear. He must be a vanguard, a man who can reach from the high to the low, from bourgeois to proletariat, a man who has the means to lead the proletariat to “acquire political supremacy” and “ constitute itself the nation” (Marx 488). The vanguard can not be of the lower classes as they do not hold the means of production or own sufficient property. The vanguard will not be the bourgeois socialist who wants “all the advantages of modern social conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting from them.” That man would not lead nor fight in the “impending bloody conflicts” that the revolution requires. But the captain might. He, by virtue of his practice, gains access to the epistemic standpoint of the working man. He can call his men into battle because he will be in that battle himself, because he will stand in front, with pistol and cutlass in hand, because he knows their plight and their struggle. Yes, the captain might be the perfect vanguard, if he had the disposition and the courage required to lead the revolution. But no vanguard will heal or reinspire the whole nation. He will take the radicals he agrees with and burn the rest. The ideal vanguard may be the captain, the general, or some other man of higher but not so noble station, that comes down to act on behalf of the proletariat. But the unifying captain is, in the root of his position, opposed to such a severing. More fit, would be the treasonous first officer who leads a mutiny against the captain and the remaining loyal officers. To be a vanguard is to be a “slash and burn” farmer who wreaks devastation on the present vegetation so that the soil may be made fertile again. There will be no healing, under the vanguard. Conqueror Then perhaps the captain, who must fight to re-enchant our new world, must be a conqueror. The conqueror does not require a revolution, or at least not an ideological one, for the conqueror has no need for the traditional radical who operates on moral principles. He is not the vanguard who cries out to the poor that they must liberate themselves. The conqueror only asks for good men, inspired to fight for their home and fatherland, inspired to make something more of what they have been given. The conqueror rises in rank and comes to lead a nation because of his proven success on the battlefield. This captain inspires not because of his pleasant sailing or wise words but because he sinks ships. Nietzsche asks “[m]ust the ancient fire not some day flare up [...] More: must one not desire it with all its might.” Is it not blood that would surely wake the modern man from his slumber, wake the animal instinct inside of him? Perhaps the true conservative can only believe that “antiquity incarnate” arises through a conqueror, a superman, a Napoleon. And yet one must ask of Nietzsche, what is to happen after the conquest? What is to happen after one has conquered all he can or has been defeated? What was Napoleon to do, having failed in Russia? What was Alexander to do when he lay sick and dying in his bed? What is left to hold a nation together when the expansion has stopped and the wars have come to an end? How is a conqueror to at last govern his people? If the measure of man’s vitality is only to be strength and victory, then there will be no man who finds purpose in times of peace. When the soldier again becomes the carpenter after his service is done, he must now aspire to be the superman of carpentry. He must strike down all other table builders and door makers in his path if he is to achieve vitality. He will feel not for his fellow man, now that he does not need him to protect his flank or cover his advance. He will be a frustrated and lonely man, who, in his attempted rationalization to maximize his will and vitality, will frantically look around every corner to become the carpenter of all carpenters, betraying every man who gets in his path. Nietzsche might retort that one should not care for the carpenter, for all carpenters are weak men who failed to rise to a higher station. But if one is to build a society, does one not need the carpenter? Would it not be better to be his friend so that he may more willingly and caringly craft one’s furniture? Perhaps Nietzsche thinks that forcing the carpenter to build a chair would be better to maximize the will than to engage in normal transaction or to politely ask him. Society needs carpenters; a ship needs sailors. Neither will run well if every request is made out of threat or a difference in power. Sure power may be unequally distributed among men, and men will surely wield that power to their advantage, but every interaction need not be a Melian Dialogue . No unification of society, no mending of wounds, could ever take place in such a one-dimensional existence. Even if, for but a fleeting moment, conservative and liberal may be united by the fires of war, such a state is only temporary. While the ancient fires may rise again, they may just as quickly die. For all Napoleon was, how many more revolutions and fragile republics followed? There was no remnant of antiquity to build upon. Instead, it was democratic man who, upon the rubble of Europe, raised his new throne. In his time, Tocqueville correctly surmised that democracy would be here to stay: “I think that in the long run, government by democracy shall increase the real strength of society.” While “slave” in its morality, democracy is dominant in its presence. Its practitioners are no longer just the carpenters or even the priests; they are the captains, the generals, the senators themselves. While European antiquity lay unaware, the strength and size of America, of democratic power, grew. “Something that passed unnoticed a century ago now strikes the attention of all.” Now, antiquity not only lacks the popular momentum to overcome the democratic age, but it lacks the strength. If there is to be a man who rekindles the flame of the West, he will not be a conqueror who slays democratic man. He will be a democratic man himself. And What for God? Purposely absent from the mind of Marx’s vanguard and Nietzsche’s superman is the Kingdom of God. Nietzsche and Marx are the archetypes of, as John Courtney Murray would categorize them, “the postmodern atheist”. The post-moderns not only leave God out of their government, philosophy, and science as the moderns do; they actively strike Him out, act against Him, and demonstrate how He cannot exist. The postmodern is offended that a God could exist and (in Marx’s case) allow for so much scarcity, so much evil, or (in Nietzsche’s case) deprive man of his freedom, the will, that makes man human. God, if he exists, is either a tormenter, imprisoner, or both. Nietzsche further declares that the morality man claims to have derived from God, the morality of the Christian and the Jew is the greatest perversion of the natural order: strength and weakness. Good and evil, concepts of vengeful weaklings, invert the true “morality” by which man once lived and should live again. Of Marx’s and Nietzsche’s cases, Nietzsche’s is the stronger. When one eliminates God from the worldly equation, one must also eliminate the morality that came with Him. Marx may claim scarcity is the great evil, but this concept of evil only comes through sympathy for the suffering of others. What is the evil of inequality or greed or a dominant bourgeois class if there is no concern for fellow man? From where does the humanist goodness, ascribed by Marx to the elimination of suffering, originate? Without an order, ordained above and outside by divine authority, there can be no objective good. No worldly cosmodicy is sufficient to prove an objective good. If one’s ultimate goal is “good” for the nation, one cannot look to Nietzsche for a cure; the concept of good is, in fact, part of the disease. But if one looks to Marx, one cannot find a source of good. Therein, the postmoderns are fruitless. And democratic man seems to agree. The true moral plague is that democratic man is not looking for goodness but instead assumes it. The modern atheist does not kill God but walks away from Him. In His absence, he does not search for truth or morality but merely replicates the idea of good that was passed down to him. He imitates, but his imitations, as they are not rooted in the source, are imperfect: bastardized (Murray and Nietzsche agree). He might even hold some personal religious sentiment but will not act on religious conviction. He does not mix the personal with the external world. He will work, govern, and wage war but will never do so in the name of God. He lives as if God does not exist. This … breed says in effect that, since he cannot know what God is, he will refuse to affirm that God is. But this stupidity, one may well think, surpasses that of the idolater. It is not merely an implicit refusal of God; it is an explicit denial of intelligence. The essence of God does indeed lie beyond the scope of intelligence, but his existence does not. It is this modern man—the man who does not deny God but shoves him aside—that has become commonplace. This modern man feels neither the warm light of heaven nor the scorching hellfire below. He wanders in a cold fog, blind, deaf and dumb. He lingers in the cave only seeing shadows of the truth. Because he does not see the source of the light, he assumes there is no source and does not search for it. It is this modern man who must be re-enchanted. Disciple So how is our captain to deal with the moderns, with the Dr. Maturins that now sail aboard every ship? What is he to do with those who synthesize values of democracy and the equality of man but do not acknowledge the creator who created them equally? Thankfully, the modern agnostic, despite his lack of reason in comparison to the Nietzschean, has not yet thrown off his moral yoke. In some ways, he still feels a connection to the world beyond the material. There are yet some embers left to kindle. There are yet men left to kindle them. There is hardly any human action, however private it may be, which does not result from some very general conception men have of God, of His relations with the human race, of the nature of their souls, and the duties to their fellows. Nothing can prevent such ideas from being the common spring from which all else originates. If man is to truly be re-enchanted—to be inspired and given lasting direction—he must look to that only thing which is transcendent, that is not merely of time and matter. If there is ever again to be unity amongst men, there must be unity with their creator. There must be disciples to show us the way. When man has been enchanted, even democratic man, it has been with and through religious spirit, fostered by disciples and prophets. These men once walked among us. These were the men in between God and humanity, Heaven and Earth, men who heard His voice and acted on His will. They were Moses and Abraham and David and Paul and Peter. God even revealed Himself to man in mortal form, in and through man’s pain and flesh. And yet, despite all of these, man’s faith remains weak. The disciples' task is never finished. He may never stop, for if he does, man is quick to forget and quick to lose his way. He will lose himself in the desert, and never find the promised land, his true home, his self. The disciple must be an ever-present and ever-constant reminder of God. The captain, disciple in his most righteous form, has some divine spark, some glint in his eye, some Promethean fire in his bosom that animates bravery and fortitude. The captain calls his men to voyage into the unknown, across the far side of the world. He calls his men to fight for a home that long disappeared behind a horizon last seen thousands of miles ago. He brings together those born across the empire, those who share little, and those who resent much. The duty the captain must call his men to cannot be incentivized with the stuff of the earth. He can promise them no amount of riches or glory among men to keep them steadfast. There is something the captain must awaken in his men that moves their spirits, their souls, guiding them toward something not here attainable. Only manna sent down from upon high can quell a spiritual hunger. And so the Captain must be like Moses, the interlocutor between man and God—newly the interlocular between conservative and liberal. He does not make the manna nor the law in the heavens, but he does transmit them. He walks down from Sinai to deliver to those below. He understands the plight of his crew, the doctor, and the common man, but he does not let them build golden calves. He has ambition but he does not raise towers of Babble; he does not push onward without cause. Where have these disciples gone? Where is Moses to be seen? Who upholds the commandments given from on high? Might it not be the lack of disciples but man who is the problem? Have there been one too many golden calves built in town squares, one too many towers of Babylon raised to the mockery of Heaven? Are there enough ears today willing to hear a sermon, enough lips willing to say a prayer? I contend there are. While the world may not be presently enchanted, there have been moments, glimpses, of enchantment. There was Reagan who stood in the way of the communist threat with his quick wit but mild manner. There was Dr. King who appealed to the heavens, preached to the masses, and marched hand in hand with the persecuted. There was Churchill who looked the devil right in the eye and spat back at him. There was Lincoln who looked over a battlefield and made a promise those men would not die in vain. There was Washington who led his soldiers, served his time, and ceded his throne. It was these disciples that reminded man of himself, of his nature, of his longings. They called upon God, evoked a higher duty, and bound men to each other. They knew that “[r]eligion [...] imposes on each man [...] obligations toward mankind, to be performed in common [...] and so draws him away from thinking about himself.” Like a captain, those disciples, who were fit to suffer, suffered in common with their men when they could have stood afar. Dr. King marched with his men, was imprisoned for them, and died for them. Reagan too took a bullet for his nation, although he fortunately survived. Lincoln, in his service and his stress, aged himself twenty years in the span of four and was assassinated shortly thereafter, giving the last full measure of his devotion. Washington lost battles for months on end in the bitter cold until he found success in a Christmas night attack. Oh, the joy nations will feel when leaders acquire such courage again when they call upon the heavens as they did not so long ago. Oh, they will know that feeling that gathered hundreds of thousands on the National Mall, that mustered the men who crossed the Delaware, that had black and white Union soldiers singing “Glory, Glory, Hallelujah” as they marched surely to their deaths at Fort Wagner. Only then can man come home to himself. Conclusion Who is our captain to be? What direction would we have him take our ship? Must he not be both a man of the people and a man of the elite, a democratic man who still has a touch, a memory in him, of that antiquity, that nobility, that honor of old? Still, he is not the vanguard of the proletariat, for the vanguard is a mutineer hellbent on revolution, not a captain. Neither is he the conqueror, for the captain must govern his ship beyond the rush of battle. He must lead his crew through those many times at sea which are dull and mundane. He must care for his men beyond their use in warfare. He must be selfless because that is what God calls him to be in times of struggle, a disciple who looks upward before he looks onward. But if those fires are ever to rise again, if the trumpet must once again cry its song of battle, the captain must be ready. He must again be simply a man of his trade, a good seaman and a good officer. He must dexterously maneuver his ship, out-sail, and outsmart his opponents. And when he must call for cannon fire, he must know what to cry to his men. He must have their best, not just for him, but for their God, their nation, and their fellow man. JACK - Want to see a guillotine in Piccadilly? CREW- No! JACK- Do you want to call Napoleon your king? CREW- No! JACK- Want your children to sing The Marseillaise? CREW- No! JACK- Mr. Mowett, Mr. Pullings, starboard battery! References Burke, Edmund, et al. Select Works of Edmund Burke: A New Imprint of the Payne Edition. Liberty Fund, 1999. Marx, Karl, et al. The Marx-Engels Reader. Norton, 1978. Murray, John Courtney. “The Problem of God Yesterday and Today.” Georgetown University Library, 1963, library.georgetown.edu/woodstock/murray/1964c. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. On the Genealogy of Morals. Translated by Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, Vintage Books, 1989. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Major Political Writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Two Discourses and the Social Contract. Translated by John T. Scott, The University of Chicago Press, 2014. Tocqueville, Alexis De, et al. Democracy in America. Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006. Weir, Peter, and John Collee. Master and Commander: Far Side of the World. Twentieth Century Fox, Aug. 2001.

*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.

Transparency and Compliance The Strength of EU Lobbying Regulations Abigail Borges Brown University Author Miles Campbell Audrey McDermott Sydney Munro Editors Fall 2018 This essay discusses the outright robustness of the European Union's lobbying regulations in comparison to the regulations in the EU countries, concluding that it is on par with or surpasses regulatory strength in the states. The interactions between politicians and lobbyists present a challenge to governments’ transparency and accountability, and affect supranational entities like the European Union. Before evaluating a lobby’s influence, it is necessary to understand what exactly defines these groups and how they interact with governments. ‘Lobbyists’, which will be used synonymously with ‘interest groups’, are defined as those seeking to influence the outputs of a given policy-making process. Lobbyists attempt to support their interests by affecting policy outputs through methods like maintenance of a status quo or the implementation of a new policy. In response to lobbyist manipulation, recent policy trends have been in favor of controlling lobbying by creating level playing fields for interest groups to operate. Such policy trends include an expansion of the European Union’s lobbying rules over time. In 1996, the European Parliament introduced provisions for simple yearly passes for lobbyists seeking access to the Parliament building. The European Commission implemented its own rules that likewise lacked teeth in 2008 by instituting a voluntary lobbyist register.[1] The bodies’ recent replacement regulation, the Joint Transparency Register (JTR), has prompted a re-evaluation of the EU’s robustness in terms of lobbying controls, especially when considering the precedents set by national governments. Scholars in the field take robustness to mean “the capacity of the regulation to increase transparency and accountability,” which reflects the rules’ level of usage and reliability.[2] Though there is certainly room to strengthen its provision of regulations regarding lobbyists, the EU is holistically and comparatively more robustly regulatory than EU member nations in managing interest groups. This lead is earned both by having regulations in the first place and by these rules’ ability to equal or surpass the robustness of lobbying regulations in the EU’s member states. First, a brief overview of the implications of the JTR for the EU and its lobbyists is necessary to more clearly understand how the regulations imposed by the JTR compare with the regulations enacted its constituent states. The JTR’s stated goal was to increase transparency, replacing regulatory structures in the Parliament and Commission for a joint registration for all lobbyists.[3] Transparency and accountability are the two main goals associated with lobbying regulation. These standards aim to let voters know who influences whom and allow them to see the degree to which a given politician or lobbyist is responsible for a policy. The EU’s definition of a lobbyist expanded “to include law firms, NGOs, think tanks - indeed any organization or self-employed individual engaged in influencing EU policy making and implementation.”[4] This expansion ensures that no agents seeking to affect policy can find a loophole or excuse to avoid the option of registering for the JTR. The most crucial detail about the JTR in this sense is its voluntary nature: since it allows the option for groups not to register, one can question the extent to which such a transparency register can be effective. Still, the JTR did strengthen disclosure provisions and data accessibility with measures such as necessitating yearly reports on personal and organization information and financial details at the time of register (though notably not in regular reports thereafter). All of this information was then made available to the public online. Finally, registration required compliance with a code of conduct that includes pledges against dishonesty, incentives for disclosure, and mechanisms to handle breaches of the code.[5] Scholars Chari and Crepaz maintain that interest groups have largely complied with the JTR system, suggesting that many of the goals the JTR had in its launch have proven successful.[6] In several ways, the regulations imposed by the JTR are on par with other European countries. In terms of the Centre for Public Integrity’s index of lobbying regulation robustness, the JTR’s regulations fall directly in the middle of the EU nations’ regulation ratings, with a score of 31. Slovenia, Hungary, Lithuania, and Austria received higher scores, and Poland, the UK, France, and Germany received lower.[7] This measure indicates that the JTR is indeed more robust than some, but falls short of others, with almost a twenty-point difference between it and the most regulated European lobby (Slovenia at 49). Notably, the JTR proposes more stringent regulations than the major constituent EU states, suggesting that the EU does more to control the actions of its lobbyists than the national entities that wield much of the power within it. This is especially true for Italy, who has no interest group regulation at all. Additionally, if judging instead by specific provisions of the JTR, the EU’s system again proves to be average in many dimensions. All states mentioned above in the CPI index have a register for lobbyists of some kind, which defines the substance of the JTR. Additionally, provisions like its code of conduct and voluntary nature are mirrored in countries like France and the UK.[8] Like the public lists of lobbyists found in Poland and Germany, the individuals and groups registered under JTR are openly accessible on the internet.[9] These measures all help establish the rules of the game and increase transparency and accountability in the overall process of lobbying. These aims are desirable because they give actors more information and require justification of one’s actions to the public. Thus, the EU and its JTR prove to be just as strong in a range of provisions as the other member states regulating interest groups. As much as the EU is on par with member nations that regulate lobbying, it is distinctly advanced among the other countries in Europe that do not have rules at all. Of the about fifty European nations, including the EU, only nine have enacted laws to regulate lobbying to speak of.[10] Thus, in its implementation of any regulations at all, the EU proves to be ahead of the curve. Some may argue that many of the states lacking lobbying rules do not need them because they do not have the same scope of lobbyists present as those systems with laws; this may be true, but not relevant to the question at hand evaluating outright robustness. Additionally, there have been many calls for increased regulation throughout Europe in general, to achieve the stated aims of increased transparency and accountability. Transparency International, a group centered on fighting corruption, released a 2015 report evaluating lobbying in Europe, its effectiveness, and its future. It concluded that the EU Commission’s rules are among one of only two of the nineteen European entities that score above 50% on its measures of transparency, integrity, and equality of access.[11] The authors also note that only seven of the entities feature any lobbyist-specific regulations, a fact which in the report it finds problematic and wishes to see changed.[12] Hence, the EU already surpasses many nations in its rule robustness simply by having regulations, regardless of what the regulations entail. Still, it becomes clear upon scrutiny that the details of the JTR’s regulation also prove more stringent than those of its European counterparts. This finding is true especially regarding the disclosure of financial information, the level of compliance, and the scope of lobbyists to which the rules apply. The JTR requires an initial submission of information concerning an organization’s spending and activity, and each type of lobbyist must disclose varying levels of financial information at this stage.[13] Though it does not require yearly spending reports, this documenting of finances is equivalent with, or stronger than, all other governments with registers. For comparison, Germany requests no information at all, nor does Poland.[14] Lithuania requires yearly spending and salary reports, which appears more robust than the EU, but compliance with its register is thought to be very low; 2004 estimates place the number of lobbyists registered at about one in seven of those who operate within the state.[15] Austria, too, requests yearly reports, but, similarly, this regulation does not effectively apply to many lobbyists.[16] By these terms, then, the manner in which the JTR requests financial information makes it stronger in interest group transparency, who cannot in theory spend considerable sums of money without at least some documentation. Money often captures influence in government, so it follows that financial disclosures are also significant in terms of accountability at the EU level. The JTR provides an effective medium for this disclosure, unlike most of its peers. Also related to this discussion are issues of compliance levels, for disclosures of any type do not matter if no one complies. In their recent comparative study of the JTR, Crepaz, and Chari found that based on the registration and spending disclosures of the largest corporations seeking to influence the EU, it can be concluded that firms are taking the JTR more seriously, with all examined firms registering and giving seemingly more accurate spending disclosures.[17] Comparatively, this is quite remarkable, as many other registration systems see low levels of compliance. Chari, Hogan, and Murphy find that in Lithuania, Hungary (whose 2003 regulations have been removed), and Poland, regulations are often ignored or maneuvered around, often because the term ‘lobbyist’ retains negative connotations.[18] The 2013 Venice Report on the Role of Lobbying puts forward a similar argument about Germany, explaining that “not being on the register is no real barrier to being in contact with Parliamentary committees or members of the Bundestag.”[19] With ability and ease to get around lobbying regulations, then, the regulations prove somewhat ineffective in Germany as well. Yet, as Crepaz and Chari point out, the JTR has in fact seen increased registration by EU interest groups since its adoption.[20] Low effectiveness in complying with registration could also be related to the scope of lobbyists to which the legislation applies, which in the EU is all activity, but in most other nations is narrowly defined. This scope and compliance indicates success on the part of the JTR in terms of transparency over the aforementioned countries, as it comes closer to the ideal of providing the most information about influence in political systems. Finally, the EU does feature less regulation for lobbyists in some dimensions of transparency and accountability that at first glance makes it seem like the JTR is not very robust, yet in practice this observation proves untrue. The first such category which the JTR lacks is a set of provisions regarding the so-called ‘revolving door’, preventing civil servants from immediately working as lobbyists and vice versa. The JTR fails to prevent such capacity for corruption. However, of the four European nations studied by Chari, Hogan, and Murphy, only Lithuania has these rules.[21] Further, Transparency International explains that most of the countries it studied have some sort of “cooling-off period” for officials, but Slovenia was the only one to implement the period for legislators. And yet, it also reports that none of these countries had “effective monitoring and enforcement of the revolving door provisions,” calling into question the effectiveness of the laws even where they exist.[22] Furthermore, Crepaz and Chari recognize that the EU Commission, top officials, and the EP all have internal revolving door regulations.[23] Therefore, even if the JTR itself does not provide cooling-off periods, the issue is effectively dealt with in other ways, which is not the case for the EU countries that on paper seem more regulated. Despite appearances, then, the EU still emerges with more robust and effective regulations than most, if not all, of its EU counterparts. For its strengths and advances, however, the JTR does have several other comparative drawbacks that leave room for improvement in relation to other European state entities. Primarily, it could make its law mandatory, as Austria and Slovenia have sought to do, to improve relative robustness. Transparency International analyzed the effective impact of Slovenia’s mandatory register and found that it operates on a “wholly inadequate scope covering only a small proportion of lobbyists,” because it defines interest groups so narrowly.[24] An analysis of the Austrian system found similar results.[25] In this way, the EU regulations are still arguably as strong as Slovenia’s and Austria’s laws, because they apply to a much broader scope of lobbyists and are complied with, as evidenced earlier by Chari and Crepaz. This engenders more compliance with and operation within the register in the EU. Aside from implementing a mandatory register, another way the JTR is comparatively less robust involves its sanctions and enforcements, of which it has few. Slovenia, Lithuania, and Austria score higher on the CPI index much for this reason.[26] For example, Slovenia has a Commission for the Prevention of Corruption (CPC) that provides oversight on many types of lobbyists, such as professional, in-house, and lobbyists from private sector interest organizations.[27] Though the JTR has a Secretariat intended to watch activity, its only effective power is naming and shaming, which Crepaz and Chari find especially problematic given the voluntary nature of the register.[28] As always, though, one must keep in mind that although the JTR is less regulated in oversight, its high compliance and the often low enrolment in other countries problematizes deeming the JTR less robust due to its less strict enforcement and sanction rules. Still, in these areas there is room for improvement of the JTR in comparison to other EU nations. Ultimately, on most dimensions the JTR proves generally stronger than, if not at least as strong as, its counterpart laws in EU member nations. In providing a voluntary register, public internet accessibility, and a code of conduct, the EU regulations are in line with the rules of its peers. In fact, in even having a register at all, EU lobbying laws are more robust than the lobbying regulations found in the majority of EU nations. When one examines precedents of financial disclosures, levels of compliance, scope of application, and even revolving door rules, the JTR is arguably strongest among its counterparts in effectively handling them. One must note that the voluntary nature of the JTR and its enforcement mechanisms could be improved considering the rules of countries scoring higher than the EU on the CPI index, even if these rules are not effectively followed. Overall, regardless of the diverse characteristics of distinct regimes, lobbying regulation systems seek to achieve the ideals of transparency and accountability. Considering the totality of the strengths mentioned above, by increasing public access to the entities and insight into their inner workings, the JTR moves the EU much closer to these goals than other regulating systems have proven to accomplish. Still, even if the EU is more regulated, it is not precluded from needing to further strengthen its provisions. A mandatory system of registration, for example, would ensure maximum transparency and accountability through behavioral regulation, as argued by Direnc Kanol.[29] In the realms of financial disclosures and sanctions, too, the JTR could seek improvement by strengthening its policies, further augmenting transparency and accountability. However, the aim of this study was to evaluate comparative, rather than outright, robustness, and by this measure the EU and its lobbying regulations prove decidedly strong. Endnotes [1] Michele Crepaz and Raj Chari, “The EU’s Initiatives to Regulate Lobbyists: Good or Bad Administration?,” Cuadernos Europeos de Deusto 82, no. 5 (2014): 77, accessed December 7, 2016, https://www.tcd.ie/Political_Science/assets/pdfs/eu_lobbyist_regulation_crepaz_ chari_2014.pdf. [2] Crepaz and Chari, “The EU’s Initiatives,” 81-82. [3] European Commission, Commission and European Parliament launch Joint Transparency Register to shed light on all those seeking to influence European policy, 2011, accessed December 7, 2016, http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-11-773_en.htm?locale=en . [4] European Commission, Commission and European launch Joint Transparency Register. [5] European Commission, Commission and European launch Joint Transparency Register. [6] Crepaz and Chari, “The EU’s Initiatives,” 89. [7] Crepaz and Chari, “The EU’s Initiatives,” 82. [8] Assemblée Nationale, "Interest Representatives in the National Assembly," Assemblée Nationale, accessed December 7, 2016, http://www2.assemblee-nationale.fr/14/representant-d-interets/repre_interet and UKLR, "About the Register," UK Lobbying Register, accessed December 7, 2016, http://www.lobbying-register.uk/about-.html. [9] Deutscher Bundestag, "Public List of Associations Registered with the Bundestag," Deutscher Bundestag, November 24, 2016, accessed December 10, 2016, http://www.bundestag.de/parlament/lobbyliste/ and OECD, Lobbyists, Governments and the Public Trust, Volume 2: Promoting Integrity through Self-Regulation (OECD Publishing, 2012), 62, accessed December 7, 2016, http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264084940-en . [10] Crepaz and Chari, “The EU’s Initiatives,” 82. [11] Suzanne Mulcahy, Lobbying in Europe: Hidden Influence, Privileged Access (Berlin: Transparency International, 2015), 8, accessed December 7, 2016, http://www.transparencyinternational.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Lobbying_web.pdf . [12] Mulcahy, Lobbying in Europe, 8. [13] Crepaz and Chari, “The EU’s Initiatives,” 79. [14] Raj Chari, John Hogan and Gary Murphy, Regulating Lobbying: A Global Comparison (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2010), 61, 173. [15] Chari, Hogan, and Murphy, Regulating Lobbying, 75-76. [16] Peter Köppl and Julia Wippersberg, “The State of Public Affairs in Austria,” Journal of Public Affairs 14, no. 1 (2014): 35-36, accessed December 9, 2016, http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/pa.1503 . [17] Crepaz and Chari, “The EU’s Initiatives,” 88-89. [18] Chari, Hogan, and Murphy, Regulating Lobbying, 76, 80, 84. [19] Venice Commission, Report on the Role of Extra-Institutional Actors in the Democratic System (Strasbourg: Venice Commission, 2013), 16, accessed December 8, 2016, http://www.venice . coe.int/webforms/documents/default.aspx?pdffile=CDL-AD(2013)011-e. [20] Crepaz and Chari, “The EU’s Initiatives,” 90. [21] Chari, Hogan, and Murphy, Regulating Lobbying, 168, 177. [22] Mulcahy, Lobbying in Europe, 9. [23] Crepaz and Chari, “The EU’s Initiatives,” 80. [24] Transparency International Slovenia, Lifting the Lid on Lobbying - Call for Transparent and Ethical Lobbying (Ljubljana: Transparency International Slovenia, 2014), 35, accessed December 1, 2016, http://www.transparencyinternational.eu/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/TI_SLO_LLL_report_ANG_web.pdf . [25] Köppl and Wippersberg, “The State of Public Affairs in Austria,” 36. [26] Crepaz and Chari, “The EU’s Initiatives,” 90. [27] Transparency International Slovenia, Lifting the Lid, 14. [28] Crepaz and Chari, “The EU’s Initiatives,” 80. [29] Direnc Kanol, “Should the European Union Enact a Mandatory Lobby Register?,” Journal of Contemporary European Research 8, no. 4 (2012): 524, accessed December 8, 2016, http://www.jcer.net/index.php/jcer/article/view/460/371 . Works Cited Assemblée Nationale. "Interest Representatives in the National Assembly." Assemblée Nationale. Accessed December 7, 2016. http://www2.assemblee-nationale.fr/14/representant-d-interets/repre_interet. Chari, Raj, John Hogan and Gary Murphy. Regulating Lobbying: A Global Comparison. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2010. Crepaz, Michele and Raj Chari. “The EU’s Initiatives to Regulate Lobbyists: Good or Bad Administration?” Cuadernos Europeos de Deusto 82, no. 5 (2014): 71-97. Accessed December 7, 2016. https://www.tcd.ie/Political_Science/assets/pdfs/eu_lobbyist_ regulation_crepaz_ chari_2014.pdf . Deutscher Bundestag. "Public List of Associations Registered with the Bundestag," Deutscher Bundestag, November 24, 2016, accessed December 8, 2016. http://www.bundestag.de/parlament/lobbyliste/ European Commission. Commission and European Parliament launch Joint Transparency Register to shed light on all those seeking to influence European policy, 2011. Accessed December 7, 2016. http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-11-773_en.htm?locale=en . Kanol, Direnc. “Should the European Commission Enact a Mandatory Lobby Register?” Journal of Contemporary European Research 8, no. 4 (2012): 519-529. Accessed December 8, 2014. http://www.jcer.net/index.php/jcer/article/view/460/371. Köppl, Peter and Julia Wippersberg. “The State of Public Affairs in Austria.” Journal of Public Affairs 14, no. 1 (2014): 31-43. Accessed December 9, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/pa.1503 . Mulcahy, Suzanne. Lobbying in Europe: Hidden Influence, Privileged Access. Berlin: Transparency International, 2015. Accessed December 7, 2016. http://www.transparencyinternational.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Lobbying_web.pdf OECD. Lobbyists, Governments and the Public Trust, Volume 2: Promoting Integrity through Self-Regulation. OECD Publishing, 2012. Accessed December 7, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264084940-en . Transparency International Slovenia. Lifting the Lid on Lobbying - Call for Transparent and Ethical Lobbying. Ljubljana: Transparency International Slovenia, 2014. Accessed December 8, 2016. http://www.transparencyinternational.eu/wp-content/uploads/2014/ 12/TI_SLO_LLL_report_ANG_web.pdf. UKLR. "About the Register." UK Lobbying Register. Accessed December 10, 2016. http://www.lobbying-register.uk/about-.html. Venice Commission. Report on the Role of Extra-Institutional Actors in the Democratic System. Strasbourg: Venice Commission, 2013. Accessed December 8, 2016. http://www.venice . coe.int/webforms/documents/default.aspx?pdffile=CDL-AD(2013)011-e.

Alexa Stanger Happening on “Polished Society”: Towards a Theory of Progress and Corruption in the writings of Adam Ferguson and David Hume Alexa Stanger As two of the most important philosophical thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment, David Hume and Adam Ferguson wrote formative texts in the philosophical discourse of modernity. Witnessing the emergence of commercial society and constitutional governments, both thinkers saw the classical republican model of politics, with its teleological bent and emphasis on cultivating the proper function of humans, as obsolete in the context of the commercial world. Neither civic virtue nor a pursuit of the proper function of humanity could explain the emergence of modern society—nor could they explain how commercial society might progress (1). In a sharp contrast to ancient philosophy, Hume and Ferguson realized the importance of locating their philosophy within a historical context. Even if the chief role of history is to serve as a record of the virtues or practices that have historically proved to be beneficial, Hume and Ferguson’s application of history provides a new prism through which people’s judgement might be filtered, introducing the space for a theory of progress. Indeed, the notion of humanity’s ability to progress, if not a belief in the inevitability of progress itself, is integral to both writers and to Enlightenment thought: “polished society,” where the full flourishing of the arts and sciences might be realised, was the logical progression of human society from its “rude” origins (2). The newfound importance ascribed to wealth, manners, and freedom meant that the ancient formulations of moral and civic virtue, such as those found in Plato’s writings, had to be re-evaluated in the context of the modern state. Nevertheless, Ferguson retains some notion of Classical teleology in his republicanism, a point where he diverges from Hume, in what Fania Oz-Salzberger describes as a “theory of commercial modernity with classical-republican linch- pins” (3). Where Hume has endless praise for the merits of modern society, Ferguson holds significant reservations. Hume’s vision of progress contains both a moral and a material character whereas Ferguson fears a deep tension between these two forces. Often neglected in Hume’s shadow, Ferguson is cast as the pessimistic commentator on bourgeois society, “a bemused, perplexed and rather worried observer of the kind of Civil Society which he sees emerging” (4). He sees the dark underside of commercial society that, whilst demonstrating how society has progressed from its primitive predecessors, might also plant the seeds of its corruption. In reading these two philosophers alongside one another, we might come to a better understanding of how the same philosophical current creates room for a theory of progress, a shining optimism in the path that industrialisation laid before human society, whilst retaining a sober skepticism of what might lie beneath the polish. An inquiry into Hume’s concept of human nature provides the basis for under- standing how polished society might arise and how this society might subsequently progress. His methodology thus deftly engages a set of timeless observations, namely those pertaining to human nature, within the context of humankind’s historical development. Today, “polished society” might be understood as a narrow, elitist notion of the values society should nurture, though in the Scottish Enlightenment this term referred to qualities of “polish” as an indispensable quality of civilized life and the foundation for progress in all aspects of society, not limited to politics but extending into art, religion, even the built environment. Hume famously declared that “reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions,” arguing that in spurring an agent to act, the feelings the action provokes surpass any rational analysis of outcomes (5). However, Hume arguably overstates his point: reason is not entirely removed from the equation when people assess whether or not to act. In fact, there is a significant level of rational exercise at work in the self-reflective process where people evaluate the sentiments attached to a certain action—an exercise introduced in Hume’s philosophy by his concept of justice. It is “the sense of virtue [...] deriv’d from reason, ” that facilitates a self-reflective process that corrects people’s natural near-sightedness (where the “strongest attention is confin’d to [oneself]”) in the interests of longer-term societal preservation (6). Hume thus strikes a necessary balance between rationality and sentiment in informing how a people have tempered their passion-directed actions as a result of living in society (7). More pertinent to an understanding of progress in Hume’s philosophy is his notion of humankind as fundamentally self-interested yet partially benevolent. Hume dismisses the Hobbesian state of nature as pure fiction. As Hume conceives the individual as being primarily directed by sentiment, the notion of human character as fundamentally sympathetic arises. The Humean individual is depicted as standing at the hub of a network of social relationships, and it is through assessment of how one’s action might not only be received by the individual themselves, but also by those around them that leads to moral sympathy in Hume’s formulation. This sympathetic construction of human nature gives rise to another concept in Hume’s philosophy: the “partial benevolence” of humanity (8). Hume sees self-interest, albeit attuned to how this self-interest might complement the broader interests of society, as the chief director of human action: “this avidity alone, of acquiring goods and possessions for ourselves and our nearest friends, is insatiable, perpetual, universal, and directly destructive of society” (9). Although he indicates here how this self-interest might initially appear destructive and all-consuming, the consideration of the interests of “nearest friends” expands self-interest beyond the purely selfish. Unselfish self-interest is possible; though self-interest begins with an individual’s attention on their personal needs, awareness of the interests of close friends tempers this selfishness. The balancing of myopic focus on the self with the interests of an individual’s associates foreshadows the idea of partial benevolence, where a concern for the interests of one’s associates pulls at humankind’s naturally sympathetic imagination and shapes how closely one chooses to follow their self-interest. Partial benevolence becomes a check for this insatiability, channelling it into a useful form that motivates individuals to engage in an active life in order to satisfy their appetites. As people find a middle ground between self-interest and its blind pursuit, they make space for progress in the realm of polished society, be that commerce or the arts, whilst also solidifying the “bands of affection” that are necessary to the preservation of society. Consequently, these self-interested bands of affection might actually serve the public interest in the long-term through ensuring that an individual remains in society but also set the wheels of progress in motion. Similar to Hume, Ferguson also recognizes self-interest as a fundamental characteristic of human nature and emphasises the associational aspect of polished society, whereby humans inevitably interact and largely cooperate with one an- other in order to live. It is the “motive of interest” that “animate[s] the pursuits, or direct[s] the measures, of ordinary men” (10). Indeed, it is this associational tendency of humanity that Ferguson fears commercial society, overrun with the vicious effects of capitalism, will ultimately undermine. However, this notion of association—that a human is influenced by the relations he draws between himself and their fellow person—is extended to include not only interpersonal relations but also intergenerational and even intergovernmental ones: “man proceed[s] from one form of government to another, by easy transitions [...] the seeds of every form are lodged in human nature” (11). It is perfectly natural that one form of human society should build upon its predecessors’ society, conveying a linear progression of history in Ferguson’s political thought. The tendency of governments and human associations to build upon one another is a product of what Ferguson characterises as the tendency of “nations [to] stumble upon establishments” (12). He claims that it is not in human nature to “foresee” but rather to “know by experience” precisely what form of government might arise (13). Ferguson argues that humans learn from history what actions are most conducive to a stable society, enabling them to dispense with the errors of the past and thus embark on the gradual advancement of society: one generation builds on another. In this way, the inevitability of progress, even if this does not bar the possibility of regress, is ingrained in Ferguson’s philosophy through his view of history as a linear process. In fact, one might argue that what Ferguson sees as the failure of primitive societies is a prerequisite for his philosophy on the emergence of polished society. In his Essay on the History of Civil Society, Ferguson writes “Nations, which in later periods of their history became eminent for civil wisdom and justice, had, perhaps, in a former age, paroxysms of lawless disorder [...] The very policy by which they arrived at their degree of national felicity, was devised as a remedy for outrageous abuse” (14). Ferguson shows that in such national development, there was an intentional attempt on the part of their lawmakers to restructure their society in view of redressing past failings and avoiding their repetition. It is through understanding past mistakes, inquiring into why nations have failed, that humans might work toward progress. It is worth not- ing that Ferguson does not see history as a grand narrative documenting humans as passive, but sees history as directly driven by human action: “the attainment of one end is but the beginning of a new pursuit” (15). History is thus in part driven by humans’ insatiable self-interest, which requires them to be endlessly engaged in the workings of society, giving them an investment in their society that will be conducive to its progression. The social nature of human character, the fact that one is born into society and actively creates and participates in society’s custom, helps us understand the role of custom in Hume’s philosophy, which can then be applied to a theory of progress. Hume makes clear the importance of custom in explaining why certain values have been retained in human association and how these values shape our moral judgement: “each century has its peculiar mode in conducting business; and men, guided more by custom than by reason, follow, without inquiry, the manners which are prevalent in their own time” (16). The crucial role of custom in shaping human action becomes intuitive when connected to Hume’s concept of the natural sociability of humankind and his construction of human society. Furthermore, Hume’s understanding of custom helps resolve a potential logical break in his philosophy regarding the space for progress. If Hume’s philosophy emphasises the importance of sentiment, with all its changeability in directing human action and morality, one might question how progression can arise, when this notion implies a degree of consistency and gradual change. It is the role of sentiment in conjunction with history that turns these inconsistent actions of human nature into a pattern of action that we name custom. This custom, in turn, directs future human action while remaining a product of what was originally deemed moral by human sentiment: “habit soon consolidates what other principles of human nature had imperfectly founded,” and in this way history acts as a stabilising force (17). Although both Hume and Ferguson historicize human nature, they do not go so far as Hegel’s dialectic, where human nature itself is altered by human action in the unfolding of history and the synthesis of conflicting human interactions (18). In fact, Hume holds a rather conservative view of the influence of history on human action, stating that history’s “chief use is only to discover the constant and universal principles of human nature” (19). This statement is potentially misleading if the “constancy” of human nature is misinterpreted as the predictability of human action: history does not serve only to erode difference and show the universal properties of human nature but also shows how these properties arose by accident but were retained as a result of their demonstrated usefulness in practice. In this conception of a human nature informed by historical events, Alix Cohen observes a malleable element of human judgement that overlays the selfish quality of Hume’s formulation of human nature, which is “influenced by society and political structures” (20). In fact, Hume emphasises the inconstancy of human nature: “‘tis difficult for the mind, when actuated by any passion, to confine itself to that passion alone, without any change or variation. Human nature is too inconstant to admit of any such regularity. Changeableness is essential to it” (21). It is precisely this inconstancy in human nature, unable to predict the workings of the imagination, that allows for history to enter onto the scene. By replacing reason with sentiment as the primary motivator for human action, Hume renders humankind susceptible to the influence of convention in directing one’s actions, because people realise that their actions have consequences and can predict how their actions might be received. This is not to say that a person becomes subject to, nor even the “slave of” passions, but rather that in critical self-reflection of how to direct their actions, the person is profoundly influenced by the passions that might arise from society’s regard for their actions (22). This is the necessary effect of Hume’s formulation of society as a network of relations and exposes a dynamism in human nature conducive to progress. Having demonstrated how both Ferguson and Hume conceive of humans as naturally social, influenced in their actions by custom and the “lessons of history,” one might now consider where a theory of progress fits into their philosophies. It has been established that both thinkers regarded modern, commercial society as the most artistically and technologically advanced form of society, where the arts and sciences flourish as never before (23). Furthermore, in preserving the beneficial consequences of human action as custom, the role of history makes room for the idea that commercial society tends toward building on such historical principles for overall betterment. Hume’s notion of justice as the safeguarding of property rights connects political stability with commercial activity: commercial activity, along with humankind’s naturally self-interested disposition, compels people to establish as well as to adhere to the rules of justice so that they might enjoy the fruits of a collective labour. In this way, the progress of political society goes hand in hand with the progress of economic thought: “polished society,” therefore, manifests both civic and commercial advancement. Furthermore, Hume posits leading an active life as almost part of human nature, suggesting that economic progress is the logical corollary of his formulation of humanity; he claims that it is not only the love of the fruit of labour but also the occupation itself that produces pleasure on pursuing activity as opposed to idleness (24). It is this dual satisfaction that such labour produces, including a sentimental element elevated above a purely material interest, that demonstrates how human nature might guide societal progress. Work invigorates the mind such that humankind has a selfish interest in seeing industry and the arts flourish; a person’s natural predisposition towards activity and commitment to their work thereby necessarily entails an aggregate progress. In considering the general progress of society, the notion of moral progress (or at least the evolution of tastes) also plays a constitutive role. In commercial society, Hume argues that “the possessor has also a secondary satisfaction in riches arising from the love and esteem he acquires by them” (25). The love of this secondary satisfaction gives rise to the potentially destructive human greed in commercial society that Ferguson so feared, but it nonetheless provides an impetus for humans to engage in commercial activity, such as trade and manufacturing. These secondary satisfactions deriving from said “love and esteem” (sentiments connected to a judgement of character and reputation) demonstrate how morality might also play a role in an assessment of economic progress. This sympathetic character of man- kind gives rise to these feelings of love and esteem, which are innately associated with the acquisition of wealth and status. In this way, it might be expected that the progression of morals, or at least an evolution of tastes, accompanies or even acts as a precondition for economic progress. However, an evolution of tastes does not necessarily constitute an evolution of morality in itself and Hume is noticeably conservative in his discussion of humankind’s capacity to attain “improvement of judgement.” He states that people “cannot change their natures [...] all they can do is to change their situation,” thus implying that moral advancement is not a consequence of societal progress, at least in the form of industrialisation or greater commercialisation (26). For better or worse, in his construction of moral sentiment as a reflexive phenomenon, Hume sees the cultivation of moral sentiment as secondary to the progress of economics, arts and even politics. Conditioned by custom and the perceptions that an individual holds of his fellow people, moral sentiment cannot actively determine progress but rather is shaped by it. Indeed, it is at this juncture that Ferguson comes into most direct conflict with Hume’s philosophy, as he resoundingly argues that moral progress is not a necessary consequence of societal progress. In fact, he argues that even in polished society, human nature is fundamentally unchanged, although such change would guard against its corruptive tendencies, such as greed: “there have been very few examples of states, who have, by arts or policy, improved the original dispositions of human nature, or endeavoured, by wise and effectual precautions, to prevent its corruption” (27). He verbosely writes of the destructive effects of commercial society, exposing people to the pursuit of wealth within the new commercial machinery of modernity without regard to their actions’ broader societal impacts. The “continued subdivision of the mechanical arts” in the progress of commerce heralds the emergence of an atomised society, where “the sources of wealth are laid open” and humankind, “ignorant of all human affairs [...] may contribute to the preservation and enlargement of their commonwealth, without making its interest an object of their regard or attention” (28). This introduces the notion that commercial society is the crucible where progress gains momentum but also paradoxically creates the corruptive forces that cause its decline: “The mighty engine which we suppose to have formed society, only tends to set its members at variance, or to continue their intercourse after the bands of affection are broken” (29). Ferguson argues that it is only humanity’s natural interest in self-preservation that, with re- flection and foresight, might lead humanity to temper their pursuit of gain so as to mitigate the total destruction of society. It is when these interests stray too far from national interest that society is rendered vulnerable, a risk that Ferguson sees as heightened in commercial society. However, where this interest takes the form of “enlightened interest,” humankind’s superior nature is capable of moderating this raw self-interest to orient it towards achieving something more elevated, namely the “ambition or the desire of something higher than is possessed at present” (30). Introducing an almost normative element to the object of natural self-interest, Ferguson’s philosophy draws closer to his classical predecessors and opens up a space for progress. Ferguson seems to believe that ambition, which might be thought of as the commercial variant of Aristotle’s drive for the proper function of humans, drives progress in society. However, there is undoubtedly a dark side to this ambition, which must be modulated. In order to protect society from unfettered ambition, Ferguson draws further on a quasi-teleological argument. Ferguson locates the seeds of corruption in humankind’s tendency to value material gain—either for the gain itself or the notions of esteem associated with the possession of great wealth—above other virtues more aligned with the public interest. The danger of polished society is this redefinition of virtue along commercial lines: the transferral of “the idea of perfection from the character to the equipage,” such that a pursuit of “virtue” leads to the desire to dominate one’s fellow citizen, subjugating the public interest to the private (31). Although this change in the concept of virtue is deeply troubling for Ferguson, he nevertheless admits that the drive towards this new “perfection of equipage” is a powerful incentive for people to engage in politics, stating that “the desires of preferment and profit in the breast of the citizen, are the motives from which he is excited to enter on public affairs” (32). This introduces a contra- diction in Ferguson’s work. His solution for retrieving bourgeois society from a cycle of progress and decline is to encourage “active political citizenry” among the populace, preventing the spirit of “servility,” which ironically accompanies the rise of industry, from also allowing the rise of tyranny (33). This argument for active political engagement has clear Aristotelian undertones, which become even more explicit in Ferguson’s solution for commercial corruption. In his view, the hope for bourgeois society lies in active political participation, ideally by the individual who might orient their actions to the public interest. In doing so, Ferguson believes the individual might “educate” the lower classes through leading by example and demonstrating how civic virtue might be combined with power and wealth. Such a politician is necessary for preventing public life from being perceived as “a scene for the gratification of mere vanity, avarice, and ambition” instead “furnishing the best opportunity for a just and a happy engagement of the mind and the heart” (34). However, if people enter politics out of purely ambitious motives (themselves the products of polished society’s new idea of perfection) can this ideal politician exist in reality? It is not ambition itself that causes problems, but how the object of this ambition might conflict with the responsibilities of public office. Ferguson makes some attempt to resolve this tension in proposing a cyclical progress of society, though this is also potentially at odds with his linear notion of history, writing that “when human nature appears in the utmost state of corruption, it has actually begun to reform” (35). Although Hume does not fear the corruption and decline of commercial society as Ferguson does, Hume’s theory of justice indicates a conservative view of the extent to which society might progress, particularly in the realm of political innovation. Where Ferguson casts conflict as a means through which political society might develop, stating that “the virtues of men have shone most during their struggles,” Hume strongly guards against rebellion except in the most desperate case (36). In order to prevent a habit of disobedience from arising, Hume argues that rebellion should only be “the last refuge [...] when the public is in the highest danger from violence and tyranny” (37). Since resistance may only be countenanced in the most dire situations, Hume appears to discourage political innovation, at least where it risks rebellion. Recalling how political progress and economic progress appear to go hand in hand in his philosophy, one might wonder whether he foresees a limit on societal progress. In the interests of preserving stability, Hume even discourages political innovation on the part of the wise individual: to “try experiments merely upon the credit of supposed argument and philosophy, can never be the part of a wise magistrate, who will bear a reverence to what carries the marks of age”—he will cater towards societal consensus (38). In this way, individual action is circumscribed, revealing a disconnect between progress at the individual and societal levels, even questioning the ability of the “wise” individual to drive societal progress. One might wonder what the benefits of moral improvement are if the finest person must cater to the most vulgar elements of society. Hume’s philosophy certainly allows for such moral progress but perhaps only to a point, which he regards as the commercialised bourgeois society that he found himself living in and has endless praise for (39). It is almost impossible to separate human nature, morality, and the role of his- tory from Hume’s and Ferguson’s theories of progress. Humankind’s historical context and indeed the level of refinement of the society that humans live in determines the customs that will shape their moral judgement. Being fundamentally self-interested and motivated by sentiment, it follows that people’s actions are directly influenced by the level of civilization manifest in their surroundings. One might worry that basing the promise of societal progress on the power of humankind’s sympathetic nature to direct their actions towards a public interest is inherently unstable, given the inconstancy of their passions. However, it is possible that an attempt to correct this inconstancy would be fruitless considering how societal progress changes what humanity considers virtuous or part of the pub- lic interest. In fact, Oz-Salzberger writes that “wealth, in the modern European state, could no longer be opposed to virtue; ‘virtue’ itself was being transformed into a civil rather than civic, moral framework” (40). It is this transformation of the notion of virtue, produced by commercial society, that Ferguson fears will lead to corruption, both on a moral and societal level. What is perhaps most innovative to the theory of progress that evolves in both Ferguson’s and Hume’s writings is the role of history. In their philosophies, history does not provide a blueprint for how society must progress nor is it deterministic in how the interactions of human societies might grease the wheels of history towards a more polished, liberated end. Rather, history is useful as a sociological instrument for demonstrating how beneficial practices that humans have “stumbled upon” come to be a part of their nature, without fundamentally changing their character. History does not determine morality nor human identity as such but rather provides an extra layer for understanding how human judgement has evolved and why certain customs have gained such power. In fact, history might safeguard societal progress against decline through preserving political wisdom that has been derived from history, encouraging society to learn from humanity’s past successes and errors. As both authors were writing in response to such historical moments as the English Civil War, it would be almost illogical to dismiss history’s role in informing their ideas of progress and corruption, especially when so much of what they wrote was being informed by the lessons of these historical moments—practical manifestations of how people’s actions might be shaped by history. Endnotes 1 See Christopher J. Berry’s The Idea of Commercial Society in the Scottish Enlightenment for a more in-depth analysis of how Scottish Enlightenment thinkers understood “commercial society”, a society that is neither polity nor clan but contains governments and institutions systematic in their division of labor. 2 John Varty’s essay elaborates on how Ferguson, Hume and other thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment formulated this idea of society’s progression from ‘primitive’ or ‘rude’ society’ to ‘civilized’ or ‘polished’ society. See John Varty, “Civic or Commercial? Adam Ferguson’s Concept of Civil Society,” Democratization 4, no. 1 (Spring 1997). 3 Fania Oz-Salzberger, “The Political Theory of the Scottish Enlightenment,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Scottish Enlightenment, edited by Alexander Broadie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003),168. 4 Ernest Gellner, Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and Its Rivals , (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1995), 62. 5 David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature . Ed. L.A. Selby-Biggs, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 415. 6 Hume, Treatise , 496 and 488. 7 David Miller describes this balance between the purely rational and the purely sentimental in the formulation of moral judgements in Hume’s philosophy as ‘mitigated scepticism’ (David Miller, Philosophy and Ideology in Hume’s Political Thought , (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), 41.). 8 David Miller, Philosophy and Ideology , 107. 9 Hume, Treatise , 491-2. 10 Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society , (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 132. 11 Ferguson, Essay , 120. 12 Ibid, 119. 13 Ibid, 120. 14 Ibid, 230. 15 Ferguson, Essay , 205. 16 From Hume’s History of England , cited in Miller, Philosophy and Ideology, p. 103. 17 David Hume, “Of the Origin of Government,” Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, edited by E. F. Miller, (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1985), 39. 18 Hume states that ‘all plans of government, which suppose great reformation in the manners of mankind, are plainly imaginary,’ (“Idea of A Perfect Commonwealth”, Essays, p. 514). By contrast, Hegel sees human nature as contextual and integrally social. For Hegel, the human mind is “a living unity or system of processes”, and, most importantly, is “world-historical”. Stating that “man is what he does”, Hegel argues that human nature is inherently linked to human action. For more reading on Hegel’s dialectic and his understanding of human nature, see Chrisopher J. Berry, Hume, Hegel and Human Nature (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 1982). in particular 129-146. 19 From Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding , cited in Miller, Philosophy and Ideology, 102. 20 Alix Cohen, “The Notion of Moral Progress in Hume’s Philosophy: Does Hume Have a Theory of Moral Progress?”, Hume Studies, 26, no. 1 (April 2000), 110. 21 Hume, Treatise , 283. 22 Ibid, 415. 23 Miller, Philosophy and Ideology , 124. 24 Hume discusses this in “Of Refinement in the Arts,” Essays. 25 Hume, Treatise . 26 Hume, Treatise , 537. 27 Ferguson, Essay , 195. 28 Ibid, 173. The division of labour, rather than being a form of justice in its Classical formulation, allows for the pursuit of self-interest that does not necessarily contribute to the overall harmony of society. Thus, although such specialisation might enable a general progress in mechanical and commercial arts as each individual devotes. themselves, albeit out of self-interested motives, towards advancing their field of expertise, it also leads to the weakening of an individual’s allegiance to the wellbeing of his society as a whole. This effect is also bolstered by man’s natural tendency to subjugate long-term consequences in the view of short-term gain. 29 Ferguson cited in John Varty, “Civic or Commercial? Adam Ferguson’s Concept of Civil Society,” Democratization 4, no. 1 (Spring 1997), 35. 30 From Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals , cited in Lisa Hill, “Adam Ferguson and the Paradox of Progress and Decline,” History of Political Thought, vol. 18, no. 4 (Winter 1997), 679. 31 Ferguson, Essay , 239. 32 Ibid, 245. Indeed, Ferguson argues that ignoring this fact is a corruption in itself: ‘the pretended moderation assumed by the higher orders of men, has a fatal effect in the state.’ (Essay, 245). 33 Hill, “Adam Ferguson and the Paradox of Progress and Decline,” 681. 34 Ferguson, Essay , 244. 35 Ibid, 278-9. 36 Ibid, 196. 37 Hume, “Of Passive Obedience,” Essays, 490. 38 Hume, “Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth,” Essays, 512. 39 Hume indicates what this necessary balance might look like: ‘Some innovations must necessarily have place in every human institution; and it is happy where the enlightened genius of the age give these a direction to the side of reason, liberty, and justice: but violent innovations no individual is entitled to make. (“Of the Original Contract,” Essays, 477). 40 Oz-Salzberger, “The Political Theory of the Scottish Enlightenment,” 169. Bibliography Berry, Christopher J. “Sociality and Socialisation.” In The Cambridge Companion to the Scottish Enlightenment , edited by Alexander Broadie, 243-57. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Hume, Hegel and Human Nature. Dordrecht: Springer, Netherlands, 1982. The Idea of Commercial Society in the Scottish Enlightenment. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014. Cohen, Alix. “The Notion of Moral Progress in Hume’s Philosophy: Does Hume Have a Theory of Moral Progress?”, Hume Studies 26, no. 1 (April, 2000) 109-128. Ferguson, Adam. An Essay on the History of Civil Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Gellner, Ernest. Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and Its Rivals. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1995. Hill, Lisa. “Adam Ferguson and the Paradox of Progress and Decline,” History of Political Thought , 18, no. 4 (Winter 1997) 677-706. Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature . Ed. L.A. Selby-Biggs. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978. Hume, David. Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, edited by E. F. Miller. Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1985. Kalyvas, Andreas and Katznelson, Ira. “Adam Ferguson Returns: Liberalism through a Glass Darkly,” Political Theory 26, no. 2 (April 1998) 173-197. Miller, David. Philosophy and Ideology in Hume’s Political Thought . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984. Oz-Salzberger, Fania. “The Political Theory of the Scottish Enlightenment.” In The Cambridge Companion to the Scottish Enlightenment, edited by Alexander Broadie, 157-77. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pittock, Murray G. H. “Historiography.” In The Cambridge Companion to the Scottish Enlightenment , edited by Alexander Broadie, 258-79. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Varty, John. “Civic or Commercial? Adam Ferguson’s Concept of Civil Society,” Democratization , 4, no. 1 (Spring 1997) 29-48. Previous Next

Editorial board Foreword Volume I Issue II Introducing the second issue of JPPE Technological disruption has been a fact of the post-industrial world, producing the growth in productivity and efficiency that led to nearly unfathomable increases in opulence, standards of living, and wealth. It may, as a consequence, seem perplexing why so many of today’s leaders seem concerned about something so seemingly vastly beneficial as technological innovation. And yet, few economic shifts produce more anxiety than those involving the introduction of labor saving technology into the economy. This was true in the 19th century Britain, when the Luddites stood in such abject fear of the permanent redundancy of their labor that they took to murdering machine innovators and destroying designs. It was also true in the early 20th century, as agricultural innovations and new industrial designs dramatically reshaped the US economy. And it’s true again today, as artificial intelligence and digital technology make a wide array of occupations largely or entirely automatable. This has potentially profound implications for the world. As globalization, outsourcing, and the presence of winner- take all markets exacerbate income inequality in many countries, labor automation stands to make possibly significant numbers of jobs redundant, increasing returns to capital, and hastening the growth in inequality as productivity increases faster than wages. It’s the presence of these alarming trends that has driven us to dedicate the second issue of the Journal of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics to the topic of technology and, specifically, technological disruption. We have done this by facilitating submissions from Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and Brookings Institution President John Allen, both of whom have emerged as contemporary leaders on the front line to develop a politics that confronts some of the more perverse effects of technological innovation. As questions surrounding the effects of labor automation continue to garner more attention, the most popular solutions tend to take on at least one of two forms: education or social security. Ms. Sturgeon and Mr. Allen’s suggestions are therefore an apt encapsulation of the nature of the debate about how best to address technological displacement; the former discusses social security and the latter, education. Mr. Allen argues for a revaluation of modern education and training programs for workers and youths. He proposes that America’s continued dominance requires a strong investment in education programs that emphasize, for example, artificial intelligence, big data analytics, and super-computing. Meanwhile Ms. Sturgeon provides a strong case for considering a universal basic income as a possible approach to curtail the effects of labor automation on inequality. She highlights Scotland’s experiments with such a proposal and underscores the need for bold leadership to develop a new approach to social security befitting of a modern and more technological advanced era. Although this semester’s issue of JPPE is centered on the question of technological disruption, it also features essays from undergraduates on a wide range of topics. One piece discusses the relationship between private companies and US cybersecurity policy. Another considers whether secession is a viable solution to the Georgian-South Ossetian conflict. And, in Moral Manipulation, a student considers the ethics of corporate advertising campaigns through a Kantian paradigm. The Brown University Journal of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics is deeply proud of both the feature articles and student essays published in this issue. As students— from Providence to Beijing— begin to grapple with a rapidly changing economy and socio-political climate, the number of novel challenges the rising generation faces is great. And in the Journal you are now reading, students and world leaders around the world provide a great number of equally novel solutions.

How Political Instability Unravels Religious Commitment in the Face of Uncertainty: Navigating Uncertainty in Political Instability and Religiosity in Post-Arab Spring Egypt and Tunisia Abanti Ahmed Abstract This paper explores the dynamic relationship between political instability and religiosity in Egypt and Tunisia, with a focus on the period from 2012 to 2018. The central research question examines how individuals navigate uncertainty and address political challenges, influencing the role of religion in their lives. The argument posits that tangible solutions to political challenges diminish religious commitment, while a lack of such solutions fosters an increased reliance on religion. Drawing on a detailed analysis of events, protests, and economic conditions, the paper reveals that the perception of uncertainty can be controlled and the pursuit of tangible solutions demotes religion to a secondary role in individuals' lives. When addressing citizens' concerns during economic challenges, political repression, and societal grievances, policymakers should consider creating platforms for discussion, promoting religious tolerance, and offering practical avenues for positive change, which can be achieved through religious accommodation laws, interfaith dialogue initiatives, and religious endowments. These initiatives ease society’s broader challenge in engaging in open dialogue about the complex human response to political instability that encourages a reevaluation of how uncertainty is navigated. Introduction The periods after pivotal moments in American history, such as the September 11 attacks and the Great Depression, were marked by sharp, brief increases in church attendance as communities sought solace during troubling times. Religious communities are often the first place that people who feel like they have lost control seek refuge. Is this short-lived surge because they have found alternative solutions or because religion slowly loses its allure in the face of prolonged turmoil? Perhaps online communities provide a platform that empowers apostates to be open and therefore increases their visibility. Alternatively, escalating religious persecution and intolerance might contribute to a decline in religiosity, as individuals distance themselves from beliefs facing opposition. Yet, the root causes behind these shifts remain unclear. In this paper, I will explore the conditions under which political instability decreases religiosity. In the currents of geopolitical turmoil, economic upheaval, and rocky political transitions, one might expect religiosity to be a steadfast anchor, providing relief in uncertain times. Yet, as the Arab Spring swept across the landscapes of Egypt and Tunisia, leaving behind a trail of political transformations, the unexpected occurred: religiosity rather than standing resilient, underwent stark fluctuations. The Arab Spring marked a significant period of upheaval and change across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, characterized by widespread protests, demands for political reform, and calls for greater social justice. While Tunisia is often recognized as the birthplace of the Arab Spring, the movement’s mass protests and uprisings transcended national boundaries, influencing countries like Syria, Libya, Yemen, Egypt, and Bahrain, each with its unique socio-political context and grievances. In Egypt, if the period from 2012-2018 was marked by political turmoil, while the period from 2018-2021 focused on economic reforms and stability, then why did religiosity decrease during turmoil but increase during more stable times? In Tunisia, the opposite occurred; religiosity increased during periods of relatively more political instability from ongoing democratic transitions between 2018-2021 than between 2012-2018. In these two cases, fluctuations in religiosity trends were very similar over the same periods of time despite having divergent political outcomes. This is not to postulate that the essence of religion is solely a response to political instability or repression, nor does it assert that religion solely arises from a particular type of uncertainty. Rather, it underscores that within the realm of political instability, a condition that inherently diminishes religious commitment is a type of uncertainty that invites competitive resolutions that take precedence over religious avenues. Despite fluctuations in non-religiosity within a specific sub-group of the Egyptian population over the past decade, it has not exceeded 25%. Consequently, religion consistently maintains a primary role in the lives of the majority within this subset, highlighting its enduring significance and resilience amidst societal changes. My central thesis posits that when individuals are confronted with tangible solutions to alleviate the challenges that they attribute to their political instability, this set of solutions will take precedence over religious commitment. Religious commitment increases when individuals do not have access to these solutions and feel disillusioned by the future. Their perception of the future is important here, and I will discuss in these cases how these perceptions emerge and are sustained during political instability. Consequently, religion assumes a secondary role in individuals’ lives as it is outcompeted by alternative solutions that best alleviate their uncertainties. One secondary argument entails that overall trends of secularization, driven by societal shifts toward modernization, play a central role in diminishing religiosity. As societies modernize and prioritize democratic values, religious influence tends to decline. This argument suggests that broader secularization, marked by the declining significance of religion in public and private spheres, has an impact on individual piety. An alternative argument delves into the role of political Islam during periods of political instability. It suggests that individuals may attribute their political and economic grievances to religious frameworks, especially when political actors weaponize religion for political gains. This attribution may lead to a decline in religious commitment as people scrutinize religion's involvement in political decisions and its consequential impact on their daily lives. This paper will be structured as follows: First, I will discern the type of political instability I will examine. I will explore the types of uncertainties that come with political instability, and how uncertainty is tied to religious commitment. Then, I will showcase what happens to the role of religion when individuals perceive particular types of uncertainty to be present. Finally, I will introduce my cases of Egypt and Tunisia following the Arab Spring and explore how my proposed conditions of political instability are present in both despite their divergent transitions and outcomes. Theory Political instability exhibits diverse characteristics in terms of duration and intensity, ranging from brief upheavals to prolonged disruptions. My focus extends beyond a general assessment of political instability, emphasizing instances of uncertainty directly impacting citizens' daily lives and their perception of the world around them. This perception has cascading effects on how the role of religion is viewed, so I seek to analyze the relationship between individuals' perception of uncertainty with their resulting course of action and religious commitment. Religion, despite being an ancient phenomenon, can also be a psychological response to uncertainty and turbulent times. Religiosity is measured by attitudes toward religious practices, frequency of worship, and overall belief in God. When religion is tied to self-identity, changes within the political sphere are least impactful on individuals’ religiosity. In Lebanon, for example, individuals tend to identify with their religious and ethnic identities before an overarching national identity. In countries where people prioritize nationalism, ethnic divisions, and plurality of religion, the secondary nature of religion in everyday life makes it more susceptible to change in response to changes in the political sphere such as regime change, citizen repression, economic hardship, and military and police brutality. For instance, in Turkey, there are reports of decreased religiosity among youth and even self-reported accounts of hijabi women who wear the hijab in the public eye, but have said to have already “left Islam.” The Republic of Turkey—whose founding father, Ataturk, had revolutionized Turkey as a “modern” state, adopted a Latin alphabet in place of Ottoman Turkish, and removed religion in state affairs—has consequently experienced decades of secularization. Now, with President Erodgan, Turkish society reaches a crossroads with religion and secularization; as Erdogan increases the role of Islam in politics, such as reducing interest rates because “Islam demands it” while inflation increases. As a result, Turkish citizens attribute their economic challenges to religion. While religion may not be the direct cause of these difficulties, the deliberate political weaponization of Islam can contribute to this perception among the population. I postulate that there are two types of uncertainty: controlled uncertainty and random uncertainty. Under controlled uncertainty, individuals have an optimistic outlook that they have the power and agency to pursue tangible courses of action to relieve their uncertainties. In contrast, under random uncertainty, individuals have the pessimistic outlook that their uncertainties are beyond their control. This perception is coupled with a sense of disillusionment regarding the future. In Israel, for example, women responded to random uncertainty by participating in palm recitation to better cope with the uncertain conditions of the Second Intifada and the threat of terror. They inhibited both an absence of control over their uncertain circumstances and disillusionment with the future, which increased their reliance on rituals as a coping mechanism. Trauma is particularly powerful in identity formation, as it brings out what attributes and experiences individuals have in common. While existing research suggests that instability can heighten individuals' religious commitment by reminding them of their shared religious beliefs, this study aims to delve deeper by considering not just the presence of instability, but also its nature and activity. The activity of instability (e.g. living in a constant state of poverty vs. experiencing escalating instability) determines the type of uncertainty individuals perceive of their circumstances. When faced with controlled uncertainty, where the level of instability remains relatively stable, individuals may rely more on their religious beliefs as a source of solace and guidance. However, in situations of escalating instability, where uncertainty intensifies over time, individuals may be more inclined to explore alternative solutions beyond religion to address immediate challenges brought about by political instability. "The consequential secondary role of religion is supported by the notion of secular competition—when economic opportunities or social norms conflict with religious obligations—that individuals face when considering alternative solutions. For instance, during the Great Depression, as conditions worsened, many Americans cataloged the failures of capitalism and voluntarism, emphasizing citizens’ basic responsibilities to one another. Even conservative religious leaders began to join social workers and hungry Americans in calling for more vigorous federal intervention as they faced the suffering before them and their own inability to alleviate it. Their efforts took off in the summer of 1932, when tens of thousands of out-of-work World War I veterans and their families marched to Washington, DC to demand early payment of promised service bonuses. Yet as the federal government extended its place in Americans’ daily lives, leaders of some religious institutions feared for their own status. This historical example illustrates how under conditions of political instability, individuals may perceive a sense of control over their uncertain situation and may prioritize tangible courses of action over religious commitment due to the perceived favorability of the outcomes they desire." To determine, then, the conditions under which political instability decreases religiosity, I argue that when individuals face controlled uncertainty, their reliance on religion becomes secondary as alternative solutions with the potential for immediate favorable outcomes take precedence, but random uncertainty results in the increase in religiosity that many might predict. The cases of Tunisia and Egypt offer valuable insights into the dynamics between political instability, tangible actions, and the evolving role of religion under political instability. Case of Tunisia: Controlled Uncertainty In the case of Tunisia, the Arab Spring catalyzed in December 17, 2010 when Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old street vendor in the impoverished city of Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia, self-immolated. This came after market inspectors confiscated some of Bouazizi’s wares, claiming that he lacked the necessary permit. Bouazizi’s suicide was the result of desperation rather than symbolizing a political cause, though it was publicly interpreted as an act of protest. Several reward systems were activated after Bouazizi's suicide. Bouazizi was considered as a "hero for Tunisians and the Arab world as a whole" by Tunisian film directors, assumed a martyr by the Progressive Democratic Party (PDP) of Tunisia, and named TIME magazine’s person of the year in 2011. The publicized suicide of Bouazizi made many people in similar situations believe that suicide was an appropriate action for them as well. Bouazizi was a university graduate distraught with the inability to financially support his mother and siblings, reflecting the vast majority of Tunisians experiencing soaring rates of unemployment. In 2009, the overall unemployment rate in Tunisia was 13.3%, but 30% among Tunisia's youth, who made up almost a third of the total population. The Tunisian government decreased expenditures from 45% to 29% from the 1970s to the 1990s, lowering the quality of public goods and services. Hence, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, president of Tunisia from 1987 to 2011, along with his family and other elites, created and strengthened the inner circle of cronyism—political elites appropriating economic resources and creating privileges by preventing outsiders. Controlling half the country’s wealth, the enterprises they owned produced 3% of total output and employed only 1% of the labor force. In addition, Ben Ali never allowed genuine political opposition to emerge and elections were manipulated: In 1989, he supposedly garnered 99.3% of the vote; in 1994, 99.9% and five years later, 99.4%. Political opponents — in particular Islamists— were persecuted, tortured or forced into exile. Tunisia's press was censored. According to the theory of suicide proposed by French sociologist Emile Durkheim, Bouazizi's self-immolation would be best categorized as anomic suicide. This type of suicide occurs when individuals experience a chronic state of societal disorganization, where traditional sources of regulation, such as religion and government, fail to provide moral constraints in the face of an unregulated capitalist economy. Anomic suicide is often associated with a sense of disillusionment about the future, leading individuals to see self-infliction as a way out. It's important to note that self-immolation directly contravenes Islamic law, as the Quran prohibits harm to oneself. Therefore, Bouazizi’s act can be viewed as a poignant illustration of the prioritization of social circumstances over religious beliefs. Despite the religious prohibition, Bouazizi saw self-immolation as a desperate means to escape his dire socio-economic situation. This conflict between religious doctrine and the perceived urgency of his socio-economic plight highlights how individuals may prioritize immediate material concerns over religious commitments. After years of severe economic hardship, during which most Tunisians were struggling to survive while President Ben Ali’s family, friends, and allies were getting richer, Bouazizi’s self-immolation marked the tipping point. Tunisians began to protest. Tensions heightened on December 22nd when another young man from Sidi Bouzid climbed up an electricity pylon and electrocuted himself on the cables, saying he was fed up with being unemployed. The new wave of strikes first erupted on December 17th in Sidi Bouzid, and came after the labor unions announced that they would organize peaceful marches to urge the government to improve its performance in development and employment. A few days later, a teenager was killed when police in Sidi Bouzid opened fire on protesters. An interior ministry spokesperson said police had been forced to "shoot in self-defense" from protesters who were setting police cars and buildings ablaze. The Tunisian government had been trying to manage the crisis politically before using force and the Tunisian development minister traveled to Sidi Bouzid to announce a new $10m employment program. The Tunisian government’s concessions—often met with skepticism on its sincerity and implementation—were a response to the resilience and violence of the crisis, showing Tunisians that the government was reacting to their demands rather than solely resorting to violence. This instilled hope in Tunisians regarding the positive trajectory of their protests. Despite protests, the rich were getting richer, the poor were not only getting poorer, but also had no job prospects, no ability to express themselves, and no way of criticizing government policy. The protests that erupted in Sidi Bouzid were spontaneous, yet they were marked by a level of organization and sophistication that appeared grounded in the sheer determination of those who participated in them. Tunisians faced a more costly and risky path due to being the first country to protest, unlike Egyptians who benefited from the momentum generated in Tunisia. The cost of cronyism and corruption to Tunisia is much higher because it also hinders job creation and investment and contributes to social exclusion. The presence of cronyism exacerbates the costs of protest by increasing repression, legal and financial consequences, social stigmatization, and psychological toll for protesters. The fear of retaliation from security forces was high, and protesting carried significant risks, including arrest, torture, and disappearance. For Tunisians, the standard method of expressing dissent has been informally within the party framework, but the masses participate in riots and demonstrations. The first president of Tunisia, Habib Bourguiba (1957-1987), carefully appointed members of the political elite and removed them from office in such a way as to prevent anyone from building up a political base to keep factions to a minimum. The Tunisian economy was heavily centralized around the ruling elite and suffered from widespread corruption and cronyism. Economic grievances were a major driver of the Tunisian uprising, and many protesters were motivated by frustrations with unemployment, poverty, and lack of economic opportunities. The economic challenges faced by Tunisians may have increased the perceived costs of protesting, as individuals risked losing their livelihoods or facing economic hardships as a result of participating in protests. In Tunisia, the uprising was driven by a broad-based coalition of activists, students, workers, and ordinary citizens who came together to demand change. Solidarity among protesters helped to mitigate some of the risks associated with protesting by providing emotional support, practical assistance, and collective action. From this, it is clear that Tunisians perceived their uncertainties as resolvable through risky actions, therefore partaking in actions that would immediately relieve their grievances rather than remaining disillusioned with their future, which ultimately decreased their religiosity during this period. On January 13, 2011, Ben Ali appeared on national television and made broad concessions to the opposition, promising not to seek reelection as president when his term would end in 2014. He expressed regret over the deaths of protesters and vowed to order police to stop using live fire except in self-defense. Addressing some of the protesters’ grievances, he said he would reduce food prices and loosen restrictions on Internet use. Ben Ali’s concessions did not satisfy the protesters, who continued to clash with security forces, resulting in several deaths. The next day, a state of emergency was declared, and Tunisian state media reported that the government had been dissolved, Ben Ali fled Tunisia, and that legislative elections would be held in the next six months. Ben Ali’s reign from 1987-2011 had ended and Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi, appointed by Ben Ali in 1999, assumed power. The aftermath of Ben Ali's departure marked a significant moment for Tunisia, as protests persisted despite the regime change. Protesters had gathered in the area to demand that the interim government step down and the current parliament be disbanded. Demonstrators were also asking for suspension of the current constitution and the election of an assembly that can write a new one, as well as organize the transition to democracy. There were daily protests that members of Ben Ali's Democratic Constitutional Rally (RCD) party were in the new government and thousands of largely peaceful anti-RCD protests emerged.36 After persistent clashes between protesters and armed forces, Ghannouchi announced his resignation particularly following the death of three people in the country's capital, Tunis: “I am resigning today because I am not willing to be a person that takes decisions that could cause casualties," he told reporters Sunday. He also questioned "why a lot of people considered their main target to keep attacking the government, although a lot of its members agreed to join in this critical time." Ghannouchi’s resignation can be seen as a tangible outcome of the protesters' efforts. It signifies that their voices were heard and that their actions had a direct impact on the political landscape. Ghannouchi's acknowledgment of the need to avoid decisions that could cause casualties reflects a recognition of the legitimacy of the protesters' grievances and a commitment to avoiding further violence. Bouazizi's actions were instrumental in differentiating between controlled uncertainty and random uncertainty, providing Tunisians with a tangible catalyst that transformed disillusionment into proactive engagement with the future. Role of Religion Becomes Secondary As people sought to find concrete control over uncertain circumstances amid political instability, their dedication to religious beliefs weakened. Involvement in organized protests, the confrontation of severe repression, and the navigation of severe economic hardships became the focal points of their attention, demoting religious commitment to a secondary position. In 2012, the Pew Research Center surveyed Tunisians and found that though democratic principles were high priorities, as were the economy and security. 92% said that improving the economy ranked as the most important priority while 79% said that it was very important to maintain law and order. Also, people found democratic freedoms more important than religious divisions. This shows that Tunisians found these economic and democratic principles to take precedence over other grievances they faced. In this time period, a perceived resolution for these priority issues was through civil resistance, demonstrations, general strikes, and self-immolations, that were leading to visible outcomes and relieving uncertainty in a way that religion was not. Outside the party system, Tunisians became politically active, especially Tunisian women, who protested the draft constitution, the economy, and the ruling coalition. Within this political context of newly found political liberalizations, similar to Egypt, various religious groups started coming out of the underground in order to take advantage of the political openings. As these political openings were prioritized, trust in religious leaders went down from 38% to 35% between 2012 and 2018 and those who say they are not religious increased from 18% in 2012 to 30% in 2018. Tunisian Muslims that attend mosques at least some of the time decreased from 52% in 2012 to 30% in 2018. Tunisia’s troubled economy was the biggest challenge in 2017. The national unity government took some measures to stimulate growth, but it struggled to implement key reforms. High unemployment, a rising inflation rate, and tax increases plagued Tunisians. In January 2018, protests erupted in more than a dozen cities over price hikes. This further emphasizes the continued prioritization of addressing economic challenges by the Tunisian people. Secularization In Tunisia, the decades of Ben Ali’s secular regime had excluded religion from the public sphere. Its cascading effects have led Tunisia to have notably lower religiosity than other Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries with the proportion of people who said they were not religious increasing from 15% in 2013 to over 30% in 2018. The ousting of Ben Ali created political opportunities for Islamists, yet the secularizing impact of his two-decade-long regime remains a compelling explanation for the decline in religiosity between 2012-2018. Following the dissolution and drafting of a new constitution in October 2011, Tunisia no longer enforced secularism through repression. Surveillance, restriction, and harassment of Islamist activists that were previously practiced by the government ceased during the year. The new draft gave rise to Islamists to fight for power. In the months that followed the 2010-2011 revolution, several hundred imams were replaced, often by violent Islamists who accused the imams of having collaborated with the former Ben Ali regime. By October 2011, the Ministry of Religious Affairs announced that it had lost control of about 400 mosques.6 The “uncontrolled” classification means that a mosque’s imams were operating without the official authorization of the Ministry of Religious Affairs. In Tunisia’s new political landscape, the content of prayer services was also no longer controlled by government authorities, a step many Tunisians approved of and viewed as part of the new liberties acquired through the revolution. In 2014, secular parties edged out Islamists at the polls. In the October parliamentary elections, Nidaa Tounes, a secularist political party, won 85 seats compared to 69 for Ennahda, an Islamist political party. Veteran politician Mohamed Beji Caid Essebsi, the head of Nidaa Tounes and a former prime minister, was elected president in December. But turnout was lowest among the young, who ignited the Arab uprisings; among cities, the turnout was lowest in Sidi Bouzid, the birthplace of the uprisings that spread across the Middle East and North Africa. In 2016, Nidaa Tounes, the ruling secular party in Parliament, splintered. Ennahda founder Rachid Ghannouchi declared the Islamist party was abandoning political Islam. Amidst competition between Islamist and secular parties, when asked whether Turkey or Saudi Arabia is a better model for the role of religion in Tunisia’s government, 78% of Tunisians prefer the more secular Turkey, seeing it as a model for religion and politics. While the trends toward secularization during this period seemingly impact individual piety levels, the dominant controlled uncertainty factor holds greater significance, given that secularization has not been exclusive to this period and has prevailed since the era of Ben Ali. Despite the freedom of Islamist parties to enter political life, the government’s loss of control over regulating mosques, and new liberties granted toward religious freedom, levels of non-religiosity still prevailed. Political Islam In contrast to secularization efforts during Tunisia’s political transition, the country simultaneously experienced concerted efforts from Islamists to increase the role of religion in politics. During this period, the presence of political Islam coupled with economic and political insecurities might have led individuals to deviate from religious commitments as they witnessed greedy power grabs from both Islamists and secular parties who employed religion as a political instrument. From January to October 2011, an interim government moved toward reform, recognizing new political parties and disbanding Ben Ali’s party. On October 23, Ennahda, a moderate Islamist party, won the national elections and formed a coalition government with two secular parties. Ennahda first emerged as an Islamist movement in response to repression at the hands of a secularist, authoritarian regime that denied citizens religious freedom and the rights of free expression and association. In 2014, the new constitution incorporated mentions of Islam as the religion and culture of the Tunisian people while also establishing a state role for protecting freedom of religious worship and expression. Ennahda, formerly an Islamist movement, transitioned into a party of "Muslim democrats," distancing itself from the label of "Islamism" due to negative associations with radical extremism. This shift reflects a strategic response to counter the misinterpretation and abuse of Islam by radical groups like ISIS, positioning Ennahda as a moderate political force advocating for democratic principles. Ennahda’s re-labelling as “Muslim democrats” reflects frustration with outsiders not understanding its supposedly true democratic nature which may have resulted in individuals associating their challenges with these religious changes in governance and frustration with religion being politicized. Today, Tunisians are less concerned about the role of religion than about building a governance system that is democratic and inclusive and that meets their aspirations for a better life. However, the interplay between political Islam and religiosity is tied to perceptions of uncertainty. The prevalent economic hardships—regardless of the presence of political Islam—left Tunisians uncertain about the future. In 2011, 78% of Tunisians expressed optimism that the economy would improve to some extent within the following 2-3 years. However, by 2018, this hope had significantly dwindled, with only 33% of Tunisians maintaining confidence in a better economic outlook over the same timeframe. Case of Egypt Egypt stands as a prominent example of a country profoundly affected by the events in Tunisia. The success of the Tunisian Revolution in ousting President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali provided a template for dissent, inspiring Egyptians to rise up against the longstanding rule of President Hosni Mubarak. The images and narratives of Tunisian protesters challenging authoritarianism and demanding change resonated with Egyptians, fueling their own aspirations for political reform and social justice. In Egypt, decades of corruption, police brutality, media censorship, unemployment, and inflation led labor and youth activists, feminists, and individual members of the Muslim Brotherhood to protest. From the occupation of downtown Cairo’s Tahrir Square, to labor strikes, acts of civil disobedience, clashes with armed forces, and others, violence between protestors and the police resulted in hundreds of deaths and thousands of injuries. The wave of organized protests gained momentum following the oustings of Presidents Hosni Mubarak and Mohamed Morsi in 2011 and 2013, respectively. These pivotal events demonstrated to Egyptians that mass mobilization could be an effective means of addressing the longstanding issues they had endured. Despite Mubarak's lengthy rule from 1981 until his departure in 2011, previous protests had proven ineffective in leading to his resignation. However, the timely catalyst provided by Tunisia's Revolution ignited a sense of urgency among Egyptians, inspiring them to seize upon the pan-Arabist phenomenon sweeping the region. This newfound determination empowered Egyptians to confront their decades-long grievances head-on. Egyptians, seeking an immediate end to enduring abuse and corruption, embraced large, organized protests despite harsh governmental crackdown and threats of death. Their perception of the uncertainty faced during this period appeared to be remedied by protests and political changes, thereby diminishing the role of religion to a secondary position. The Egyptian case took advantage of the momentum that the Tunisian revolution brought, making it unique to examine the intricate relationship between their resistance and the decline in religious commitment, challenging the notion that religious avenues are the primary recourse during times of political instability. Controlled Uncertainty Egypt has been an authoritarian government since 1952 with periodic revolts and unrest. The causes of the 2011 protests against Mubarak also existed in 1952, when the Free Officers, who led the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, ousted King Farouk. Issues such as inherited power, corruption, under-development, unemployment, and unfair distribution of wealth have persisted as constants in Egyptian life since 1952. Successive Egyptian regimes have systematically used repression to ensure order. The authoritarian barter “bread and security for freedom” has been widely disseminated along with the notion that the country was not yet ready for democracy. Egypt has long grappled with a systemic pattern of human rights abuses and repression embedded in its governance, prompting citizens to attribute their crises directly to the government. While these challenges have persisted since 1952, worsening economic conditions, government corruption, and Mubarak’s rule, coupled with the influence of the Arab Spring ignited by the events in Tunisia, led Egyptians to unite in similar protests in 2011. The momentum from Tunisia became a catalyst, empowering Egyptians to engage in hands-on initiatives challenging Mubarak’s authoritarian government. President Hosni Mubarak's regime was also repressive, but opposition groups had more space for political activism compared to Tunisia, which lacked a traditional history of political dissent. Mubarak’s regime escalated violence against protesters significantly as protests enlarged with the anticipation of Mubarak’s resignation. Pro-Mubarak demonstrators targeted journalists, and, in what became known as the “Battle of the Camel," plainclothes policemen rode into Tahrir Square on camels and horses to attack unarmed protesters. The issuing of laws restricting public assembly allowed security officials to ban protests up to their discretion and were consequently allowed to use indiscriminate force on defying protestors. Egyptians mobilized protests in diverse ways and when they were repressed through laws restricting public assembly or with increasingly violent police responses, organized protests grew larger and more inflamed. Messages were picked out in stones and plastic tea cups, graffiti, newspapers and leaflets, and al-Jazeera's TV cameras which broadcast hours of live footage from the square everyday. When one channel of communication was blocked, people tried another. Mubarak had grown fearful of the protestors’ relentlessness—first pledging to form a new government, then promising not to seek another term in the next elections, and later becoming increasingly defiant about not stepping down—all the while asking protesters to return to normal. Eventually, Mubarak was forced to step down and the Supreme Council of Egyptian Armed Forces (SCAF) assumed leadership of the country on February 11, 2011. Protests still endured; during March and April 2011, SCAF granted a number of concessions to protesters’ demands in an effort to clear the streets of continued demonstrations. Human Rights Abuses Mubarak’s regime initially responded to the protests with brute force and tear gas, beating and arresting protesters. The regime responded to later increases in protest mobilization by shutting down internet service and mobile phone text messages, replacing regular police forces with the military, and imposing a curfew. This exemplifies a cycle of human rights abuses that not only heightened violent responses but also fueled additional protests, as Egyptians became increasingly outraged. Egyptians faced constant repression and abuse for decades under Mubarak’s rule, and used religious commitment as a coping mechanism before Tunisia catalyzed the Arab Spring, bringing newfound hope that Egyptians could better their circumstances. Since 2013, the military and security-led regime has reinstated its control over society and citizens with an iron fist, curtailing freedom of information and banning freedom of expression. Peaceful political participation and civil society activism, which were the pillars of the January uprising, have been de facto outlawed by the adoption of an arsenal of undemocratically spirited and restrictive laws. Protesting was costly and these laws banning public assembly made it much more risky for Egyptians to participate in protests, but the momentum of the revolution had assured individuals that there would be large turnouts, therefore bolstering their confidence in protesting as a means to confront the military and security-led regime. Egyptians, fueled by the momentum of their revolution and triggered by the ousting of Mubarak and Morsi, found empowerment in protesting. The logical nature of their efforts heightened hope for the future, as each overthrow or victory seemed to validate their path to stability. The move against Morsi deepened the political schism. Millions of Egyptians had taken to the streets against Morsi, but large numbers also protested the ousting of Morsi. A crackdown by security forces killed hundreds and Egypt declared a state of emergency. The emergency measures allowed security forces to detain people indefinitely for virtually any reason. They also granted broad powers to restrict public gatherings and media freedom. Gallup classifies respondents as thriving, struggling, or suffering, according to how they rate their current and future lives on a ladder scale numbered from 0 to 10 based on the Cantril Self-Anchoring Striving Scale. Egyptians gave their lives some of the worst ratings they ever have in the weeks leading up to former President Mohamed Morsi's removal from office. The 34% of Egyptians who rated their lives poorly enough to be considered suffering in June was up from 23% in January. Fewer than one in 10 rated their lives positively enough to be considered thriving. Role of Religion Becomes Secondary Fridays frequently became “days of rage” in Egypt and elsewhere because of the convenience of organizing would-be protesters during Friday prayers. Likewise, mosques themselves are often said to have served as organizational hubs for protest. Mosques functioned as a locus of anti-government agitation and logistical centers of preparation for demonstrations. While it may seem that protest activities at mosques contributed to an apparent increase in mosque attendance, thus suggesting elevated overall religious commitment, these places of worship primarily assumed roles as organizational centers during the peak of the protests, prioritizing logistics over prayer and religious services. Although, of course, mosques and Friday services were still attended for customary reasons, the dual functionality of the mosque introduced secular competition as highlighted earlier in the Theory section. Individuals are confronted with the dilemma of choosing between prayer and protest. Protest is a costly behavior that becomes progressively less risky as the number of participants increases. Hence, overall Mosque participation during the height of mass protests between the overthrow of Mubarak in 2011 to the beginning of El-Sisi’s presidency in 2014, declined. Prior to the Arab Spring, strength in religious beliefs were at high levels: the belief that things would be better if there were more people with strong religious beliefs decreased from 89.8% in 2005 to 83.4% in 2013. Additionally, the percentage of individuals with the belief that religious faith is an important quality in children decreased from 47.1% in 2005 to 27.7% in 2013. Muslims who say they attend the mosque at least some of the time decreased from around 85% in 2012-2014 to 75% in 2018-2019. Secularization In Egypt, as the regime experienced waves of regime changes and upheavals, the period between 2012-2016 witnessed efforts toward constitutional reform emphasizing the protection of civil liberties, the separation of powers, and the establishment of a democratic system of government. While Islam remained the state religion, the constitution also guaranteed freedom of religion and prohibited discrimination based on religion. The constitutional assembly was almost entirely composed of Islamists (Muslim Brothers, Salafis, and independent Islamists). Dozens of articles addressed individual rights and liberties of Egyptian citizens, which was more than the number of articles mentioning Islam. By enshrining these goals in the constitution, the government was held accountable, making failure to fulfill its constitutional obligations not just an act of inefficiency but anti-constitutional. Examples include Article 61, which demands to eradicate illiteracy within ten years; Article 66, which requires the state to provide opportunities for sports and physical exercise; and Article 184, which instructs the state to assimilate living standards across the country. While Islamist groups participated in the drafting of the constitution, the outcome reflected a broader commitment to democratic principles and social reforms driven by the demands of the people. In 2013, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi ousted Morsi and campaigned for the presidency on an anti-Islamist platform. He deemed the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, imposing restrictions on their operations and political activities. Liberals called the Brotherhood’s vision for Egypt “totally contradictory with the Egyptian national character,” which they argued respected pluralism of religion and the separation of religion and politics. The banning of the Muslim Brotherhood has likely contributed to the loss of faith in Islamist parties. El-Sisi also claimed that ‘the religious discourse in the Islamic World has lost the values of humanity in Islam’ and rejected the idea of an Islamic state. When he won the presidency in 2014, many moderate Muslims supported El-Sisi because he had taken a clear stand against Islamist radicalism and expressed a genuine desire to support a peaceful understanding of Islam. And in 2018, when El-Sisi ran again, he was re-elected with 97 percent of the vote, although the turnout was low and he faced virtually no competition. The crackdown against human rights defenders and independent rights organizations have made effective monitoring of the elections extremely difficult, especially with the number of organizations that were granted permission to monitor the elections being 44 percent fewer than in the last presidential election in 2014. This has resulted in elections facing criticism for not meeting the standards of a free and fair democratic process. This can also suggest that through negative partisanship, or the phenomenon of individuals forming their political opinions based on their opposition to certain individuals or parties, people viewed El-Sisi as either the best among limited options or endorsed his secularization efforts. Political Islam When governments weaponize a religion that the majority of their populations affiliate with, it is reasonable to link political Islam and individual piety to assert that piety levels and overall religiosity may decrease. This is a competitive argument because perceptions of Islam are directly shaped by how their governments implement Islamic laws, often at the expense of neglecting the needs of the people. Individuals are increasingly witnessing religion being wielded as a political tool. On one hand, they are promised welfare services in the name of Islam, while on the other hand, their repression is justified through the manipulation of Islamic texts. While El-Sisi initially presented himself as anti-Islamist, appearing on stage with the Coptic Pope, the Sheikh of Al-Azhar (the country's most esteemed institution of Islamic learning), and Galal al-Murra, a prominent Salafist, following the overthrow of President Mohamed Morsi, he privately holds conservative Islamic views. In A 2006 paper that Sisi wrote for the U.S. Army War College, he argued that democracy in the Middle East could only be of an Islamic nature, and that Islam provides the intellectual framework for his political beliefs. In addition, in 2011, when crowds protested against the military for imposing “virginity tests” on female protesters, Sisi declared that it was his responsibility to “decide if [protesters] were honorable.” However, the fluctuating influences of political Islam in Egypt between 2012-2018 indicate that it is not a strong enough condition on its own for political instability to decrease religiosity. Even the most liberal Egyptian party in 2012, the Free Egyptians Party, publicly defended a constitutional clause making the principles of Sharia the source of legislation. Even when the dominant strategy of the incumbent government was to combat political Islam—as has been the case since July 2013—the formal discourse of President El-Sisi included frequent mentions of the Qur'an and Hadith.33 The Muslim Brotherhood witnessed a consistent rise in support from July 2011 to February 2012 at 63%, followed by a sharp decline in April 2012 to 42%. Prior to the Brotherhood’s rise to power, many believed that its political inclusion would lead to its democratization and moderation. Throughout the eighteen days of demonstrations in January and February 2011 that toppled Mubarak, Brotherhood leaders were aware that the protests were not dominated by Islamist ideas but rather oriented toward the broad goals of freedom and social justice. As a result, Brotherhood leaders were deliberate in their strategies to appeal to voters by not expressing their Islamist views too overtly. This deception was caught on by Egyptians. Nevertheless, between 2011 and 2013, the old state chose to cooperate with Islamists, including the Brotherhood, to neutralize the revolutionary mood in the country. After coming to power, the Brotherhood quickly lost support among the main recipients of its social welfare network: the poor. The Brotherhood’s relationship with the poor was entirely clientelist and was concerned exclusively with creating an electoral base as opposed to developing a more substantive ideological or political relationship. It preferred to reproduce poverty as long as it translated into welfare recipients and, by extension, loyal voters. However, the strength of the argument that the presence of political Islam decreases religiosity diminishes when considering the current scenario, where political Islam exerts even more influence, and yet, religiosity has increased. This discrepancy suggests that the dynamics between political Islam and religiosity are subject to evolving perceptions of uncertainty. During the height of the revolution, Egyptians may have perceived their uncertainties about the future differently, driven by a sense of optimism and the belief in activism. In contrast, the present disillusionment with uncertainties about the future may be contributing to an enhanced role of religion in their lives. The increased religiosity could be a response to the perceived inadequacy of political solutions to address current challenges, prompting individuals to turn to religion as a source of guidance in times of persistent uncertainty. Conclusion I have posited that the conditions of political instability that decrease religiosity are controlled uncertainty and the secondary role of religion. When individuals are presented with concrete solutions to address challenges they attribute to their political circumstances, these solutions will assume greater significance than religious commitment. And when individuals lack access to these tangible solutions and experience disillusionment about the future, religious commitment tends to increase. The pivotal factor in this dynamic is individuals' perception of the future, and this analysis delved into how these perceptions manifested and endured during periods of political instability. Consequently, the outcome is a demotion of religion to a secondary role in individuals' lives, outcompeted by favorable solutions that emerge from the uncertainties they face. It's noteworthy that Egypt has faced challenges since the Mubarak regime, raising concerns about the possibility of a new Arab Spring. Despite the ongoing deterioration of human rights conditions, the intensity that characterized the Arab Spring has diminished. Reflecting on the revolution has yielded diverse opinions, with some viewing it as a success while others perceiving it as a failure. Although repression in Egypt may arguably be more severe today, the period between 2011 and 2016 marked a distinct phase. The ongoing debates surrounding the success or failure of the initial Arab Spring make it seem improbable for a similar movement to occur. Despite the immediate changes following the revolution, both Egypt and Tunisia continue to grapple with longstanding grievances. Tunisia, in particular, is confronted with economic challenges, with approximately 6,000 Tunisians joining ISIS, marking the highest per capita rate globally. Tunisians became disillusioned with post-revolution politics, especially well-educated youths, who experienced unemployment at extremely high rates. Despite the gradual political progress seen over the past seven years, economic rewards have yet to emerge, spurring some to radicalize. Some remaining questions that emerge are: Do individuals revert to heightened religious commitment after resolving political instability, or does the influence of tangible solutions have a lasting impact on their religious commitment? 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*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.

Cannabis Latent Effects of Cannabis Legalization: Racial Disproportionality and Disparity in Washington State Drug Convictions, 2000-2015 Kaid Ray-Tipton University of Washington Author Danai Benopoulou Matthew Dowling Bastien Ibri Shreya Raghunandan Editors Spring 2018 Understanding if racial disparities in drug convictions decreased post the implementation of cannabis legalization in Washington state. Introduction There has been a great amount of research analyzing racial disparities in drug arrests (Beckett, Nyrop, Pfingst and Bowen, 2005; Kutateladze, Andiloro, Johnson and Spohn, 2014). Findings show that black people have disproportionate arrest rates compared to Whites. In fact, “Blacks are 3.73 times more likely than Whites to be arrested for marijuana possession” (ACLU, 2013). These statistics are surprising given that Blacks and Whites use cannabis at a comparable rate (ACLU, 2013). Hispanic communities are also impacted. Racial disparities in drug crimes in this group are harder to measure quantitatively because some agencies group Hispanic or Latinos with Whites. This causes the White conviction rate to increase, thus deflating the racial disparity present. In New York City where Latino arrest rates are available, “Latinos are arrested at 2.5 times the rates of Whites for marijuana possession” (ACLU, 2013). Richard Nixon’s declaration for the “War on Drugs” that began in the 1970’s has had many negative latent effects on communities of color and has contributed greatly to racial disproportionality in mass incarceration (Sharp, 1994). For example, “arrest for marijuana possession… accounted for nearly 80 percent of the growth in drug arrest in the 1990s” (Alexander, 2010). Images within media have reinforced the link between people of color and their involvement with drugs (Bullock, Wyche and Williams, 2001). These socially constructed depictions have influenced prejudices and stereotypes which in turn create implicit biases. These biases have been shown to have profound effects on police enforcement tactics and decision making (Levinson, 2007). Currently, police across the nation have the discretion to stop and search people under “reasonable suspicion” that an individual may be in possession of illegal drugs (Yankah, 2011). These so called “Terry” stops allow police officers to use the notion of reasonable suspicion to stop and frisk individuals (Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 1968). Such inquiries frequently rely on police officers’ own intuition - an intuition often affected by the aforementioned implicit biases. Scholars have suggested that this policing is not evenly distributed among neighborhoods and across socioeconomic statuses. To be more specific, racially and ethnically diverse areas may be subject to over-policing while predominantly white neighborhoods may be more likely to be under-policed (Beckett, Nyrop and Pfingst, 2006). Therefore, more police enforcement in communities of color leads to more stops and searches among people of color. These outdoor drug busts may lead to a disproportionate increase in convictions for Blacks and Hispanics. Blacks are disproportionately convicted for cannabis related offenses, which disrupts many areas of life including family, employment opportunities, housing, and well-being (Massey, 2007). It is important to note that even stops and searches that yield no results for the police may lead to continued harassment and embarrassment for members of the community due to the “War or Drugs”. Recently, cannabis has been highly debated as a substance that could be legalized for medical and/or recreational purposes (Coulkins, Kilmer, Kleiman, MacCoun, Midgette, Oglesby, Paucula and Reuter, 2015). The federal government has yet to lift the national prohibition of cannabis but many states have begun to revise their laws regarding it. There are currently 23 states and the U.S. territories of Guam and Puerto Rico that have passed laws to legalize medical cannabis. There are only nine states and the District of Columbia that have legalized recreational use as well; these states include Alaska, California, Colorado, Oregon, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, Vermont, and Washington (Guttmannova, Lee, Kilmer, Fleming, Rhew, Kosterman and Larimer, 2016). Cannabis being decriminalized in these states may have profuse positive outcomes for people of color. Policing would be reduced for cannabis use and possession within these states. Blacks and Hispanics in these areas may be subject to fewer convictions by police because of the nature of the fledgling laws. In this paper, I will analyze latent outcomes of the legalization of cannabis. More specifically, I will examine racial disproportionality in drug conviction pre and post the legalization of cannabis for recreational use in King County and Washington State. I expect to find reductions in racial disproportionality in drug convictions post cannabis legalization at the county and state level. Background History of Cannabis in the United States and Its Links to Race/Ethnicity Scholars suggest that cannabis was first brought to the United States in the beginning of the 1600s. The Jamestown settlers primarily used this plant in hemp production and cultivation until around 1850 (Anderson, Hansen and Rees, 2013). The uses for hemp ranged from clothing and oil to edible nuts. Subsequently following the end of hemp cultivation was the use of hemp for medicinal purposes. The use of herbal medicine did not last very long. As the alcohol prohibition gained support in the 1850s, so did the movement to outlaw cannabis. The first prohibition of recreational cannabis use was passed in 1913 by California. By 1936, the rest of the 47 states decided to do the same (Anderson, Hansen and I. Rees, 2013). In the years to come, these policies led to immense consequences for the consumer, including the label of felon with a stigma that restricted occupational attainment, and included hefty incarceration time and large monetary sanctions. For instance, possessing one joint (cannabis cigarette) in Arizona could lead to up to 10 years in prison with a fine of $50,000 (Inciardi, 1981). Policies and laws such as these became monolithic because “those who have actively promoted these laws, the moral entrepreneurs of drug legislation, have relied on racial slurs and allusions to bolster their arguments for criminal controls” (Provine, 2007). In 1970, cannabis was classified as a Schedule I substance along with heroin and LSD. For a substance to be listed as a Schedule I drug, it must not be accepted for medical use, have a high potential for abuse, and be considered a dangerous drug that can cause psychological and physical dependence (United States Drug Enforcement Administration, 2015). As time moved on, groups began to consider cannabis for medicinal purposes. The Food and Drug Administration began to allow cannabis for medical use in 1978. The number of medical cannabis patients flourished and California eventually passed the Compassionate Use Act in 1996 to allow for personal use of the plant (N. Yankah, 2011). Two years after, Washington State passed Initiative 692 titled Washington State Medical Use of Marijuana Act (Washington State Medical Association). This allowed for the growing, possession, sale, and use of cannabis for medical patients. It is worth noting that this initial stance against cannabis did not necessarily happen out of fear of the potential negative effects of the drug, such as addictive, psychological, and physiological damage. Instead, the prohibition on cannabis developed as a result of anti-minority feeling (Bonnie and Whitebread, 1970). Inciardi (1981) conducted a social constructionist analysis of newspapers about cannabis published in the late 1800s and early 1900s and showed that headlines negatively linked cannabis with communities of color. For example, the New York Times published an article in 1972 titled “Mexican Family Go Insane”. This particular article detailed how a widow and her four children accidentally ate cannabis as part of their vegetables for dinner. In the neighbor’s account, they described hearing “crazed laughter” and rushed to the house to see the entire family “insane”. The doctors said that there would be no hope for the mother and children and that they would be insane for the rest of their lives. These early depictions linking race and drugs have lasting effects on media consumers. For example, results from a study done in 1995 asked respondents to imagine what a typical drug user looks like. Analysis indicates that 95% of the respondents thought of an African American person (Burston, Jones and Robertson-Saunders, 1995). The acceptability of illegal substance tended to rely on the social position of the consumers (H. Skolnick and Dombrink, 1978). The perceived deviance of cannabis intensified once linked with racial/ethnic minorities. Whites were seen as upper class and angelic. People of color were paired with a lower social class, at times considered non-human in the early 1900s. This helps explain the overstated deviance of cannabis. The deviance also increased when the effects were dramatized and exaggerated. In 1936, the American Journal of Nursing said that a cannabis user may “suddenly turn with murderous violence upon whomever is nearest to him. He will turn amuck with knife, axe, gun, or anything else that is close at hand, and will kill or maim without any reason" (Musto, 1991). Articles such as these from professionals are an example of the control around cannabis use and how it was perceived by the general public. Cannabis Laws in King County and Washington State and Implications for 2012 As Seattle is the most populated city in King County and thus Washington State, I will give emphasis to their policies and the city will have the most influence per this discussion. In 2003, Seattle, Washington voters passed the Marijuana Law Enforcement or “Initiative 75”. This initiative required all cannabis offenses for adult personal use to be the lowest priority for the Seattle Police Department (SPD) (Atherly and Baird, 2014). This change in the Seattle municipal code was a huge step towards decriminalization of cannabis in Washington State (Seattle, Washington Municipal code 12A.20.060). Subsequently, on November 6th 2012, Washington Initiative 502 was approved by a majority vote (Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board, 2015). The cannabis reform had many different components that took over a year to be fully established. The passing of I 502 legalized the recreational use of cannabis for individuals 21 and older. A 21 year old may possess up to one ounce of usable cannabis, seven grams of cannabis concentrates/extracts, 16 ounces of cannabis infused in a solid form, up to 72 ounces of cannabis infused in liquid form, and also paraphernalia related to cannabis. Only cannabis producers, processors, and retailers with a license are permitted to distribute cannabis. Seattle’s massive drug market has been analyzed and researched during these years to learn if there are disparities among race and ethnicities in drug convictions. Katherine Beckett demonstrates that Seattle is unique in many ways. During the 2000s, Seattle was estimated to have the fourth largest drug market in the country. The predominantly white city has a white population of about 70% and 8% black population. Despite the low proportion of Blacks, during a 28-month investigation in Seattle, black people represented 51.1% of drug violation arrests (Beckett, Nyrop, Pfingst and Bowen, 2005). Beckett et. al (2005) attribute most of these arrests to the focus on crack cocaine by the SPD. This may be due to the fact that crack cocaine has been represented through media as a “Black” drug (Kutateladze, Andiloro, Johnson and Spohn, 2014). Another reason for the high number of arrests is explained by the location of the drug market. Beckett et. al suggest that the SPD tends to focus on racially diverse outdoor drug markets, such as Downtown Seattle, compared to indoor and/or outdoor White drug markets, such as a neighborhood named Capitol Hill (Beckett, Nyrop and Pfingst, 2006). Previous research on Seattle’s drug market indicates that Blacks and Hispanics do not necessarily use or sell at higher rates than Whites, and yet, the SPD tends to focus on people of color. These results of racial disparity are consistent with other states as well. New York data shows that there are not just disproportionate percentages in possession/delivery arrests, but that Blacks and Hispanics are also more likely than Whites to be arrested for smoking cannabis in public and cannabis misdemeanor sales. They are also likely to spend more time in jail or prison for these cannabis offenses (Golub, D. Johnson and Dunlap, 2007). Thus, it is clear that people of color—primarily Blacks and Hispanics—are being convicted disproportionately for drugs. Given that cannabis is legal in the state of Washington, I want to first investigate if the legalization has had a significant impact on the number of drug convictions for people of color. Second, I will examine how much of an impact a prior conviction has on one’s probability of being convicted of a drug offense for each race and ethnicity. This is done by first illustrating drug conviction rates and then examining drug convictions on the condition that the offender has a prior conviction. I also compare the results from King County to Washington as a whole. Lastly, I have computed multivariate logistic regressions to analyze the likelihood of being convicted of a drug offense in Washington State and King County. There have been reports that show cannabis-related arrests and convictions have decreased 81% between 2011 and 2014 (Drug Policy Alliance, 2015). There may be racial/ethnic differences, which I will attempt to contextualize. Subsequently, I will examine the association between the 2012 legalization of cannabis in Washington State and drug conviction rates between different racial/ethnic groups. Methods In the following analysis, I focus on racial/ethnic disproportionality and disparity in drug convictions in Washington State. Unfortunately, the data does not allow me to break out cannabis-related convictions from other types of drug convictions. I use the term disproportionate in convictions to refer to the overrepresentation of certain groups of defendants compared to their representation in the general population. I use the term disparity in convictions to refer to the portion of overrepresentation in convictions of one subgroup that can be explained by differences in the institutional processing of that specific racial/ethnic group as compared to other racial/ethnic groups. That is, racially motivated differences in processing and treatment explains disproportionate overrepresentation of certain groups in drug convictions. Data I examined all convictions within the state of Washington from January of 2000 to June of 2015 using data from the Database and Sentencing of Washington State Caseload Forecast Council Sentencing Data (Washington State Caseload Forecast Council, 2000-2015). My data includes 409,455 convictions of which 36,521 were drug convictions. Variables The dependent variable for analysis is drug conviction (1) or non-drug conviction (0). The primary independent variable of interest is the race/ethnicity of the convicted defendant. The racial/ethnic categories used are White (reference group), Black, Asian, Native American, and Hispanic. The control variables included in the analysis are year of conviction, 2000 (reference year) to 2015, sex (0=Female, 1=Male), county of conviction (King County is reference county), and whether the defendant had any prior convictions (0=no prior offense, 1=prior offense). Each of the control variables will be needed to test the robustness of the influence that the dependent variable has on the independent variable. The year of conviction is relevant because there are many fluctuations over the years in drug convictions. In 2012, Washington State legalized recreational cannabis usage for individuals over 21 years old. There are also gender differences in risk of arrest and convictions (Rodriguez, Curry and Lee, 2006). The counties of Washington State contain differing police practices and demographics. We predict that if a defendant had prior convictions, that might increase the likelihood of a subsequent conviction. These individuals may be targeted as the “usual suspects” (Kutateladze, Andiloro, Johnson and Spohn, 2014). Analytical Approach I compute several bivariate and multivariate logistic regression models. Model A includes all Washington State conviction cases, and Model B includes only convictions in King County, the largest county in this state. The full-state logistic bivariate regression is: The logistic multivariate regression for Washington will be computed as: The King County logistic bivariate regression is formulated as: The King County formula logistic regression is computed as follows: To test for significance of the data, I have conducted a two-tailed 95% confidence interval. When p-values are below a α level of .05, this will indicate that we reject the null hypothesis. The HO is as follows, there is no difference by race or ethnicity in the number of drug convictions when compared to whites (β=0). The HA can be understood as the number of drug convictions is different for each race or ethnicity when compared to whites (β≠0). Findings I will present the findings under three categories. I first examine the racial and ethnic disproportionality in drug conviction. I then discuss the relationship between prior drug convictions and new drug convictions. Finally, I discuss the racial and ethnic disparity in drug conviction. Table 1 presents the summarized statistics for the racial, ethnic, and gender characteristics of convicted defendants in Washington State and King County, averaged between the years 2000 and 2015. Comparing pie charts 1 and 2, and 3 and 4 above demonstrate clear disproportionate numbers when comparing Whites and Blacks in Washington, King County in particular. As the pie charts show, in the state of Washington, Whites comprise 80.7% of the population and 65.49% of drug convictions. Blacks make up a small percentage of the Washington population (4.1%), but an astonishing 5th of the drug convictions (20.08%) - clearly disproportionate. On the other hand, all the other races, i.e. Native Americans, Hispanics, and Asians all have drug convictions relative to or less than their population size in the state. Table 1: Variables and Summary Statistics for Washington State and King County Drug Convictions, 2000 - 2 Note: The median, mean and standard deviation are each the median value across all years (Washington State Caseload Forecast Council) Racial and Ethnic Disproportionality in Drug Convictions Figure 1 is a line graph showing the number of drug convictions by race and year in the whole state. In terms of aggregate numbers, Whites have a larger number of convictions than non-Whites. For most years, Whites remain above 1,300 drug convictions and display 464 convictions halfway through 2015. Native Americans and Asians are convicted at similar rates in Washington State, staying below 75 drug convictions every year. Native Americans hold 9 drug convictions and Asians have 20 for 2015. Hispanic drug convictions have been on a steady decline since 2000. 2015 shows that Hispanics have 69 drug convictions. Blacks peak with 758 drug convictions in 2000, slowly decrease over time hovering around the 500 line until 2010, and then are convicted of a drug offense 87 times in 2015. When first looking at Figure 1, there does not seem to be a significant disparity in drug convictions for Blacks. However, examination of the proportions of convictions suggest racial disproportionality in conviction rates. I will do this by analyzing the proportions of drug convictions regardless if there has been any prior conviction in Figure 2. Throughout all sixteen years, Whites in Washington are convicted well under their 2014 population size. In 2012, the year of legalization, and beyond, Blacks experience their all-time lows in conviction rates for drugs. However, despite their smallest percentage at 13% of the drug conviction rate in 2014 and 2015, it is still about double their population size of 6.7%. On the other hand, Asians, Native Americans, and Hispanics are convicted of a drug offense relative or under their population size. The story changes dramatically when we analyze King County. Figure 3 represents drug convictions in King County. Although Blacks only make up 6.7% of the population in King County, they still have up to about half of the drug convictions for most years. This shows immense disproportionality in conviction rates. On the other hand, other ethnic and racial groups are convicted at rates under or comparable to their population. Relationship Between Prior Drug Convictions and a New Drug Conviction Looking at the Washington drug convictions show that an individual with prior convictions has significantly higher chances of future conviction. Figure 5 illustrates that every year excluding 2015, Blacks with a prior conviction comprise 50% or more of drug convictions. Again, Blacks are 6.7% of the population in King County. Yet among drug convictions annually, Blacks with a prior conviction comprise up to 65% of those convicted of subsequent drug crimes. This data indicates that Blacks are being re-convicted at much higher rates if they have a prior offense than are Whites, who comprise a majority (70%) of the population. Figure 5 shows that the two lowest fractions for Blacks are in years after legalization. The data set shows an increase in 2013 (60%) but then lows in 2014 (50%) and 2015 (45%). Figures 4 and 5 suggest that convictions may have been influenced by the passing of Initiative 75 in King County. Both graphs show that in 2002, there were high proportions of Black people who were convicted of drug-related offenses, and the percentage decreases by a few percentage points in 2003. This could be the result of the de-emphasis of cannabis arrests in King County. This percentage drastically reduced after the passing of I-75, from 29% to 13% in Washington, and from 62% to 45% in King County. Racial and Ethnic Disparity in Drug Conviction Figures 6 and 7 present the odds ratios computed from the multivariate logistic regression. The model compares each racial and ethnic groups probability of being convicted of a drug offense in King County or Washington to Whites’ probability of being convicted. For example, a value of 1.00 means that a person of that race has the same probability of a White individual being convicted. This would mean that in the year 2000, the odds ratio of 2.68 means that Hispanics in Washington State had a 168% higher probability of being convicted of a drug offense than Whites. The Washington and King County multivariate logistic regressions are surprisingly different. Figure 6 presents findings for the likelihood of a drug conviction in Washington State. It shows that Hispanics hover above the odds ratio of 1.50 for every year except for 2006. These numbers show that Hispanics are consistently convicted at higher rates than Whites. Blacks also have higher conviction rates in Washington State. Post cannabis legalization, the likelihood of conviction for a drug offense has decreased for Blacks, bringing the rate to almost that of Whites. In recent years, Blacks’ likelihood of conviction has decreased to about 56% of their White counterparts’ likelihood of being convicted. Asians are convicted around the same rate as Whites, never showing disparity. Figure 7 presents findings for the likelihood of a drug conviction in King County. Asians are convicted at the lowest rates next to Native Americans. For the first ten of the sixteen years of data, Hispanic individuals have over 200% higher likelihood than their White counterparts of being convicted of drug offenses. In 2007, however, the higher likelihood was 673%. Similarly, for most years, Black individuals are 100% more likely to be convicted of a drug offense. However, comparable to the other racial and ethnic categories, post 2012 we see a decrease in the rates of disparity. The logistic regression shows that the probability of getting a drug conviction in King County if you are Black still ranges between 70% and 108% higher likelihood than Whites. Washington State data shows otherwise. Three of the lowest probability ratings come in 2012 and beyond. This data could potentially mean that legalization is having a continuing positive effect on Black communities in Washington. Fewer individuals may be subject to harassment and patrolling because of the nature of the new laws. I have also the statistical significance for each race indicator variable using the multivariate logistic regressions. I have conducted a two-tailed hypothesis test with a 95% confidence interval. Figure 8 shows the distribution of how many years each coefficient on race/ethnicity were statistically significant in Washington and King County. In Washington State, the race indicator for Blacks is statistically significant for 13 years out of 16. This means that the p-value of the observations is below the e α level of .05. Thus, one would not expect these observations to occur by chance more than 1 in 20 times. We fail to reject the null hypothesis for the years 2012, 2014 and 2015. It is noteworthy that these are all years during or post the legalization of cannabis. For every year in King County, the coefficient on a Black race indicator variable is statistically significant. In Washington, the race indicator variable for Hispanics is statistically significant every year. On the other hand, in King County, the race indicator variable is statistically significant for only five years. The variables associated with Asians and Native Americans have a lower frequency of statistical significance. For Native Americans, eleven out of the sixteen years in Washington State are statistically significant. Disparities seem to vanish for Blacks at the state level in 2012 and during the post-legalization period. Hispanics experience this same alleviation of inequality in King County post-legalization. The data shows that Asians are convicted of drug offenses significantly less than Whites. Conclusion The United States is currently facing a problem of mass incarceration. Jails and prisons are disproportionately populated with people of color. Prior research has shown that Blacks and Hispanics are convicted at higher rates for drug offenses. Some scholars have attributed this to the negative media portrayals of these communities. These biases may have been internalized by police departments and have created unequal enforcement regarding drugs. For example, crack cocaine is seen as more deviant and penalized much heavier than cocaine. The difference is that crack cocaine is associated with poor urban Blacks (Beckett, Nyrop, Pfingst and Bowen, 2005). In this paper, I conduct a longitudinal study of drug convictions in Washington State and King County. My findings suggest that drug convictions in Washington and King County have decreased over time. Further research should be conducted to understand if this decrease in drug convictions may be attributed to a decrease in cannabis convictions specifically. A major limitation of my data is that all drug convictions are grouped together. Different drugs are not penalized the same way by criminal justice systems. Racial and ethnic groups may also be convicted at different rates depending on the substance. Overall, the data shows that in Washington and especially in King County, there is a great deal of racial and ethnic disproportionality in drug conviction rates, and racial disparity in drug convictions. Whites have an extremely low probability of being convicted than Blacks and Hispanics. Figure 4 and 5 shows that there is a significant impact of having a prior conviction on the probability of being convicted for a drug offense. In King County every year, Blacks have the highest proportion of drug convictions with the condition of having a prior conviction. This supports prior research in New York City that indicates the likelihood of a conviction increases substantially with the number of prior arrests (Golub, D. Johnson and Dunlap, 2007). Further investigation is necessary to explore why Blacks with a prior offense are being convicted at such higher rates within King County than Whites. 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