European Politics

It seems “nearly certain”:http://www.repubblica.it/2005/l/sezioni/cronaca/sofri5/mastella-grazia/mastella-grazia.html that the Italian government is going to pardon Adriano Sofri. This has been a continuing sore on the Italian legal system – to all appearances, Sofri was stitched up for a murder he didn’t commit. It’s a slightly involved story (Carlo Ginzburg’s book, “The Judge and the Historians”:http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/radical_history_review/v080/80.1reid.html, gives a good account). Sofri was one of the founders of _Lotta Continua_, an autonomist Marxist group which bitterly denounced an Italian policeman, Luigi Calabresi, as a symbol of all that was rotten and corrupt in the Italian state (an anarchist railway worker, Pino Pinelli, had mysteriously taken it upon himself to jump to his death from Calabresi’s office window while under interrogation – the subject of Dario Fo’s play _The Accidental Death of an Anarchist_). Some years after Calabresi himself was murdered, presumably by leftists, a former _Lotta Continua_ supporter came to the police and claimed that Sofri and others had ordered the killing. Despite the weakness of this evidence (the witness appears to have been highly unreliable), Sofri and two others were convicted of murder. This has been a _cause celebre_ for the Italian left ever since. There’s no real evidence that Sofri was guilty of anything more than overheated and rather unpleasant rhetoric, for which he has since apologized – it’s good to see that this miscarriage of justice is about to be righted.

“Ian Buruma in the NYT”:http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/19/opinion/19buruma.html seems to me to get the Ayaan Hirsi Ali issue about right:

bq. Rita Verdonk was only a particularly extreme and unimaginative exponent of this new [anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant] mood. One of her wildly impractical suggestions, mostly shot down in Parliament, was that only Dutch should be spoken in the streets. It was she who sent back vulnerable refugees to places like Syria and Congo. It was under her watch that asylum seekers were put in prison cells after a fire had consumed their temporary shelter and killed 11 at the Amsterdam airport. She was the one who decided to send a family back to Iraq because they had finessed their stories, even though human rights experts had warned that they would be in great danger. This was part of her vaunted “straight back.”

bq. So when Ayaan Hirsi Ali told her own story of fibbing in a television documentary last week, Ms. Verdonk felt that she had no choice. If she didn’t investigate this case, and act tough, the law would not be applied equally. This was inflexible, and given Ms. Hirsi Ali’s value as a courageous activist who had already suffered a great deal, harsh. But it had nothing to do with her views on Islam.

bq. In this context, Ms. Hirsi Ali’s earlier remarks about the “terror” of “political correctness” have an unfortunate ring. It would have been better if she had taken this opportunity to speak up for the people who face the same problem that she did, of trying to move to a free European country, because their lives are stunted at home for social, political or economic reasons. By all means let us support Ayaan Hirsi Ali now, but spare a thought also for the nameless people sent back to terrible places in the name of a hard line to which she herself has contributed.

Via “Butterflies and Wheels”:http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/notesarchive.php?id=1377 .

For your weekend listening pleasure, some Hungarian political campaign music. I had meant to blog about this a few weeks ago during the elections (it’s just one of about a dozen posts I haven’t managed to get around to recently), but it’s not as though it’s any less relevant now.

The song was written explicitly for the Hungarian Socialist Party‘s campaign in the recent parliamentary elections. I like it – it’s reminiscent of Hungarian pop/covertly political songs from the 1970s. I didn’t like it the first time I listened to it, but got pretty hooked the second time. I wonder if it’s at all of interest if you do not understand the language and/or are not familiar with the style. (No need to get into how unique the style is, maybe it’s not, but it still reminds me of lots of Hungarian songs from a while ago, songs that don’t tend to make it to the Billboard charts despite being quite good.)

The most commonly recurring words are “igen”, which means “yes” and “Magyarország”, which means “Hungary”. The bottom of the page suggests that the song was also made available as a ring tone for cell phones, which seems like an interesting idea.

So what are other exampes of political campaigns creating their own songs? I can think of campaigns adopting songs for their purposes and playing them at victory time, but those songs weren’t written for the campaigns explicitly. Bonus points if you can link to the examples.

(see “here”:http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2006/05/french_universi.html for Tabarrok’s original; see “here”:https://crookedtimber.org/2004/03/25/juan-non-volokh-with-minor-editorial-changes/ for No. 1 in this series)

The US has one of the most deplored health insurance systems in the world and one of the most “admired”:http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2006/01/paul_krugman_on_1.html veterans’ health care systems. Could the difference have something to do with the fact that America’s health insurance firms operate in a competitive market with lots of private suppliers while veterans’ health care is dominated by monopolistic, government provided hospitals?

What would our health system look like if it operated like the Veterans’ Administration?

Look to France for the answer. “Healthcare in France”:”:http://ezraklein.typepad.com/blog/2005/04/health_care_fra.html is “mainly under state control … The state plans out hospitals, the allocation of specialized equipment, etc.” However, as Kevin Drum “notes”:http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_04/006148.php, this

bq. works pretty well. French healthcare is excellent, waiting lists are short, the supply of doctors is high, overall costs are reasonable, and patient satisfaction levels are excellent. It couldn’t be transplanted whole into the United States, of course — doctors are paid considerably more here, for one thing — but it’s a pretty good model for what we could accomplish.

I’m sure lots of CT readers are on the edge of their seat about today’s Hungarian elections so here are the results. The left held on to its position (actually, strengthened it a bit) by winning the majority of seats in parliament after the second round of votes today.

This graph is helpful not only to visualize the distribution of seats resulting from this year’s elections, but also to compare the outcomes of the last five elections. It’s the first time since the political changes of the late 80s that the governing coalition maintained its position. As a bit of explanation, red stands for the socialist part, orange for the conservatives, blue for the liberal party (which refers to left-of-center in Hungary) and green is another party on the right. Interestingly, they were so disgusted by FIDESZ (the orange party) that they were not willing to go into a coalition with them no matter what.

Fun anecdote: Two weeks ago during the first round of voting, my parents ran into Prime Minister Gyurcsány while they were all on their way to the voting booths. They like him lots so this was a pleasant encounter.

Fun video: Here is the Prime Minister replacing Hugh Grant’s dancing moves in a clip from the Love Actually movie.

Gyurcsány maintained a blog throughout the campaign.

Alex Voorhoeve (LSE) writes to tell me of a proposed law in the Netherlands which would establish a special legal status for young Dutch citizens of Caribbean descent, allowing them to be deported from the Netherlands back to their territory of origin for minor crimes. The people in question are Dutch citizens of as good a legal title as anyone else, but this appears to single them out on the basis of ethnic or racial criteria for treatment that would not be meted out to others. The details are in “this pdf”:http://www.nrc.nl/redactie/binnenland/BobWit.pdf , by a judge on the Caribbean Court of Justice (and formerly a judge in The Netherlands).

“Matthew Yglesias”:http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2006/04/index.html#009794 and “Mark Kleiman”:http://www.samefacts.com/archives/_/2006/04/citizen_kane_loses_the_italian_elections.php both express the hope that the narrow leftwing victory in Italy’s general elections will lead to a dismantling of Berlusconi’s near-monopoly over Italian broadcast media. This is probably true in the sense that the state owned channels won’t be under Berlusconi’s direct control any more, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up too high. The last time that the left was in power they seemed more interested in internecine squabbles over how the spoils should be divided than in the root-and-branch reform of Italian broadcasting regulation that is certainly necessary. I’d like to hope that things will be different this time around, but I certainly don’t expect it. On the other hand, I’m a little more optimistic about Laura Rozen’s “suggestion”:http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/003993.html that more might emerge about the role of Italian intelligence in the Niger forgeries scandal. One of the few things likely to unite the various parties in the Union, which range from Prodi-style former Christian Democrats to Fausto Bertinotti’s Stalinoids is dislike of the George W. Bush administration – a real inquiry might seem just the ticket for uniting the left parties and embarrassing the right.

So it looks as though the Italian right has done “rather better”:http://news.ft.com/cms/s/ca24d172-c8aa-11da-b642-0000779e2340.html than the pundits (myself included) were predicting. Funnily enough, the exit polls, which predicted a substantial victory for the left, “were badly off-target”:http://www.repubblica.it/2006/04/sezioni/politica/elezioni-2006-7/altalena-dati/altalena-dati.html. With 60,794 out of 60,828 polling districts declaring, the left seems to have won the Camera by a margin of 25,000-40,000 votes, and is likely to win the Senate by a hair, once the votes from expatriates come in (see “here”:http://www.repubblica.it/speciale/2006/elezioni/senato/index.html for a nice flash animation of where those expatriate votes are going). The right is “calling for a recount”:http://www.repubblica.it/2006/04/sezioni/politica/elezioni-2006-7/unione-dichiara-vittoria/unione-dichiara-vittoria.html, but probably more because it wants to destabilize the left than because it thinks it’s likely to change the results. Under Italy’s new electoral system, even a knife-edge victory in the Camera should provide the left with a working majority, but it’s unlikely to get much done, because the Senate is just as powerful, and the coalition’s room for manoeuvre there is likely to be narrow indeed.

As all the pundits are lamenting, this means stalemate in the short run. Neither side is likely to give in – each thinks it has won. The left think that they’ve pulled off a victory, albeit one that’s far closer than they had hoped for, under circumstances where the broadcast media and the electoral rules were blatantly rigged against them. The right think that they’ve managed to stem the red tide, and deserve to hold onto power – they’ll be prolonging the agony as long as they can. Neither will concede easily.

We’re also likely to see increased pressures towards fragmentation in each coalition. Neither group of parties was precisely happy before the election. Prodi’s neck was already being measured for the chopping block, just as in the 1990’s when he was kicked upstairs to the EU Presidency thanks to the machinations of d’Alema and Cossiga. I suspect that he’s soon going to succumb to the siren call of academe (rector of some university perhaps) or of private sector opportunities. Rifondazione Comunista, a grim lot even as semi-reformed Stalinists go, are going to start getting restive, and the various opportunistic chancers among the left parties are likely to start feeling their oats. But Berlusconi isn’t much more secure than Prodi is – the Northern League has been getting increasingly truculent and may well calculate that under new circumstances it’s better off outside pissing in. On the one hand, Berlusconi can claim that he clawed back the result to a draw through the virulent ramping up of rhetoric in the last couple of weeks. On the other, he’s becoming increasingly radioactive. Even Confindustria – as right wing and self-interested a claque of capitalists as you’re likely to find – has made it clear that he’s a liability and an embarrassment.

Predictions as to what’s likely to happen over the next few months? My best guesses, in decreasing order of probability would be (1) A shaky left coalition that will hold out for a few months to a year. (2) failure to create a stable government, leading to new elections followed by a short lived right wing government under Berlusconi (I suspect that the left has taken its best shot in this round), which then collapses in on itself, creating a new crisis (3) new elections, but with no clear result, leading to stalemate and a caretaker government of technocrats appointed by the president, (4) breakdown of the opposing coalitions, and a return to the opera buffa of strange bedfellows coalition governments that were typical of Italy up to the early 1990s, with Berlusconi’s party Forza Italia likely being excluded. But really, your guess is probably as good as mine at this stage – it’s all up in the air.

Update: revisions made following discovery of new info on _La Repubblica_ after first draft was posted.

The website “Sign and Sight”:http://www.signandsight.com/ (an English-language version of “Perlentaucher”:http://www.perlentaucher.de/ ) is a year old, and I’ve only just noticed it. There’s lots of excellent stuff there, including “a piece by Friedrich Christian Delius on the state of Italy”:http://www.signandsight.com/features/697.html , which tells us, inter alia, that the World Bank ranked the Italian legal system 135th/136 (just ahead of Guatemala!) for effectiveness:

bq. The main reason is that the limitation period for crimes continues to run after a trial has opened, and even after a verdict has been passed, right up until the final day of the final instance. Consequently lawyers try to prolong legal proceedings as long as possible. In 2004 alone 210,000 cases fell under the statute of limitations. The perfect scenario for well-off defendants to get away scot-free. Berlusconi himself has profited this way several times.

bq. A well-governed state might have an interest in changing this state of affairs, for example by introducing the usual procedure of suspending the statute of limitations when a trial begins. The governing majority has indeed gathered the energy to make changes, but in an unexpectedly creative way. The limitation periods have now been considerably shortened, from fifteen to seven and a half years, specifically for economic crimes and corruption. There will be no more sentences for the top ten thousand criminals, Mafiosi, corrupt politicians.

There’s much much more.

Via David Glenn, this “wonderful chart”:http://hoverbike.blogspot.com/2006/03/partisani.html showing the political affiliations of Italian football team support groups. Lazio’s supporters, not surprisingly, vary from the right to the extreme right. A friend’s sister briefly dated a Lazio supporter; it sounds to have been an interesting experience. The links between soccer and politics are especially strong in Italy; Berlusconi’s “Forza Italia” is the only political party I know of that takes its name from a football chant.

Changing the subject a bit, it looks as though Berlusconi is going to go down in flames when Italians head to the polls next month. He’s had no success in lowering the opposition’s “5% lead”:http://www.repubblica.it/speciale/2006/elezioni_sondaggi/index.html in the polls, and the stench of desperation from him and his supporters reeks so strongly as to be nearly tangible. Public attacks on “Confindustria”:https://registration.ft.com/registration/barrier?referer=http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=Berlusconi+confindustria&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&start=10&location=http%3A//news.ft.com/cms/s/7e792606-b833-11da-bfc5-0000779e2340.html, the most important Italian business organization (and usually a reliable water-carrier for the right), claims that the left is organizing riots to create a “situation of democratic emergency”:http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2006-03-22T180212Z_01_L22597576_RTRUKOC_0_UK-ITALY-BERLUSCONI.xml&archived=False, and most bizarre of all, a public plea for pity from the press.

bq. I’m carrying all the paperwork for the cabinet meeting, which is very hefty as you can see. I stayed up and worked on this until five this morning, as I have done throughout these five years. I say this with little hope of it being reported … I’m sorry if I’ve been long-winded, but I am at peace with my conscience … Let’s hope that some good soul in the media world, out of pity, will write news of this.

What the Italians would call a ‘brutta figura’ (bad show). It sounds as if Berlusconi himself believes that he’s lost the election.

Update – Thanks to Scott McLemeee for the photo below – the Brigate Autonome Livornesi are clearly fans of Uncle Joe.

!http://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~farrell/stalin.jpg!

As Jim Henley has noted, there’s a lot of ressentiment on the right these days. And “not only”:http://news.ft.com/cms/s/5824c998-b0a3-11da-a142-0000779e2340.html in the US.

bq. Two years after the Madrid train bombings, Spain’s main political parties cannot agree on who was responsible for the nation’s deadliest terrorist attack. … The Popular party, which lost power in a general election three days after the train bombings, accuses the Socialist government, the police and the judiciary of taking part in a massive conspiracy to cover up alleged links between Islamic radicals and Eta, the violent Basque separatist group. … The Popular party’s conspiracy theory has been taken up by rightwing talk- show hosts, some of whom have even accused unamed Socialists of financing the terrorist attacks to oust the Popular party from power. …

bq. After a two-year investigation spanning nine countries, Juan del Olmo, an investigating magistrate, says he will lay formal charges against dozens of suspects within the next three weeks. … The Popular party refuses to endorse Mr del Olmo’s conclusions, perhaps because José María Aznar, the former prime minister, retains a powerful influence over his party. Mr Aznar blamed Eta for the Madrid train bombings and continued to insist on a Basque connection long after evidence began to point to Islamist extremists.

Reading this, and drawing the obvious comparison with Cheney’s “bogus claims”:http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/06/18/cheney.iraq.al.qaeda/ about the Saddam-Al Qaeda connection, and Wolfowitz’s “fantasies”:http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0312.bergen.html, about who ordered the original World Trade Center bombing makes it seem pretty strange to me that the meme of lefties as conspiracy theorists has stuck. Not that there aren’t some strange conspiracy theories out there on the left – but they’re weak beer in comparison to some of the deeply weird shit that our Right Wing Overlords in the US administration, and our former and would-be future Overlords in Madrid, take as gospel truth.

You know when you look at a word, and suddenly it appears to be spelt wrongly? ‘Vendor’ is a classic. Somehow you’ve stepped outside the frame, and the obvious no longer appears right.

I just cast my eyes over a press release from an Irish political party that shall remain nameless, and realised, ‘either this is a poor translation from the Manchurian or I have been abroad for way too long…”
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The whole business with the Danish cartoons has now reached new levels of insanity with Christians and their churches being attacked in Nigeria and Pakistan. That the Danish newspaper had the right to publish its deplorable cartoons ought not to be in question. But it does not help the case for freedom of speech if Muslims can truthfully say that there is a double standard and that the sensibilities of Christians are regarded as a valid legal reason for restraining freedom of expression whereas theirs are not. Mark Kermode had “a piece in the Observer a week or so ago”:http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1707715,00.html concerning the film “Visions of Ecstasy”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098604/ which the British Board of Film Classification refused to grant a certificate to on the grounds that a successful prosecution under Britain’s blasphemy laws was likely to succeed. The film maker took his case to the European Court of Human Rights, claiming that that the refusal to grant classification was a breach of his rights under Article 10 of the Convention. He lost. In line with a previous judgement, the Court

bq. accepted that respect for the religious feelings of believers can move a State legitimately to restrict the publication of provocative portrayals of objects of religious veneration.

It is therefore simply not true to say that in Europe freedom of expression trumps the sensibilities of believers. What is true is that some believers, of some denominations, get legal protection from being offended, and others don’t. Not a satisfactory situation.

The full judgement of the ECHR (complete with concurring and dissenting opinions) is “here”:http://www.worldlii.org/eu/cases/ECHR/1996/60.html .

Yesterday’s “Economist”:http://www.economist.com/World/europe/displayStory.cfm?story_id=5526708 and “Financial Times”:http://news.ft.com/cms/s/704faaf2-9f59-11da-ba48-0000779e2340.html have uncannily similar stories about the reasons for Berlusconi’s political success.
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