A puff for one of my other collaborative projects: Imprints. The latest issue is now out and contains much of interest. The online content this time is an interview with Michael Walzer which ranges over many issues: the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the morality of humanitarian intervention, Israel and Palestine, anti-Semitism, memories of Rawls and Nozick, the permissibility of torture, blocked exchanges and commodification, the narcissism of Ralph Nader, and much more. Read the whole thing – it is both enlightening and provocative.
From the category archives:
Political Science
Tyler Cowen has a “couple”:http://volokh.com/2003_07_20_volokh_archive.html#105888482984762773 of “posts”:http://volokh.com/2003_07_20_volokh_archive.html#105896942112479124 suggesting that there is a serious libertarian argument against initiatives like the US government ‘do-not-call’ list for telemarketers. His argument is that government shouldn’t be in the business of restraining peoples’ spontaneity.
(warning: lengthy argument follows)
“Friedrich Blowhard”:http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/000909.html#000909 has discovered public choice economics a la Buchanan and Tullock, and decided that he quite likes it.
bq. What a gas to see a group of smart people take many of my private musings of the past decade and set them out with more clarity than I ever gave them. I actually read a webpage outlining some of the notions of public choice while literally laughing out loud to see that I wasn’t the only lunatic in the insane asylum.
Friedrich is especially impressed with public choice’s description of how government tends to get captured by special interest groups, who gorge themselves at the expense of the public purse. He also suggests that public choice provides some interesting alternatives to the current political system.
I was daydreaming earlier today about a moment in my adolescence. It is 1974 and I’m with my French exchange partner playing a pinball machine in a cafe on the banks of the Dordogne. The radio is on, and the news comes that President Giscard has just sacked his Prime Minister, Jacques Chirac.
Fast forward to 2003 (29 years later) and Giscard is presiding over the European constitutional convention and Chirac is President of the Republic. Chirac had first entered the cabinet in 1968. Not that it is just the right. Michel Rocard, whose party, the PSU, had some prominence in 1968 cropped up in the news the other day. And Mitterrand (b. 1916) held his first ministerial post in 1947 and finished up being President from 1981 to 1995 before popping his clogs the following year.
Look at the British political class and the picture is completely different. There’s no-one left from 1974, let alone 1968. A few politicians have a good run: Major Healey, Quintin Hogg – but it is nothing compared to the dominance of the French political scene by a few dinosaurs. In fact I can’t think of any democracy with where politicians last as long as in France. A few in the US, perhaps (Thurmond, Mayor Daley) but not ones who ever formed the core of a national administration. Explanations? Counterexamples?