vimothy
yurp
Graft Paper: The economics of assassination might surprise you as much as they did Harvard's Ben Olken - Michael Moynihan, The American
The Political Economy of Democracy
- Thread starter vimothy
- Start date
Mr BoShambles
jambiguous
Surely this ain't the right question to be posing Vim. Instead: how do states (or indeed the disaggregated parts of states i.e. its various departments, offices, agents etc) interact with non-states actors and bit-part quasi-state institutions? Analysing the DRC conflict (for example) through a state-centric lens would obscure much more than it could reveal about the actualities on the ground IMO.
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vimothy
yurp
Well, yeah -- I think that's what I was suggesting. This is a theoretical question of interest perhaps, but isn't it being solved on the ground all the time anyway?
Puts me in mind of the performativity of finance theory. What do you think of performativity in terms of IR -- do IR models influence the world, thus making the world more, or even less, like the models?
Interesting thread, I'll take you up on the invite to jump in.
I'd regard performativity in IR as far less significant a factor than in finance; significantly more of a descriptive approach, and less 'coal-face' involvement.
(baseless speculation alert)
High-performing economics wonks move parallel into business with some ease, IR scholars are more likely to remain academic, which limits the reflexive component, or slows the loop significantly. There are of course clear contras to this, from Machiavelli to Kissinger, or the highly performative quoted Bush aide speaking derisively of the 'reality-based community', my experience of IR is that is far less of an 'applied' discipline than economics, which has a more strong 'just do it' ethos, and hence performativity is significantly less of a factor.
I'd also strongly agree much is lost by state-centrism, and find the assumption of a necessary teleology along which others are 'retarded' problematic, and analytically unhelpful. I found the Williams quote 'that just because official governments do not control these areas it does not necessarily mean that they are completely lacking other structures of governance' to nail it. Structures and institutions are always present (Insitutionalism often seems to verge on tautology tbh) with greater or lesser degrees of legitimacy, force oligopoly, etc; privileging the Westphalian model either descriptively or normatively, and assuming or expecting developments to adhere to it, becomes problematic in that the original context of Westphalian development, and the functionality-in-context of war-making a la Tilly is no longer appropriate or effective behaviour for actors.
The argument can be made that at a micro level non-states possess a significant competitive advantage over state actors, and can more efficiently exact protection rents and provide protection; from Mexico (narco & kidnapping) to Blackwater, violence has followed the trend of 'deregulation'. Add the lowering of entry costs for internal competitors for legitimacy/force oligopoly etc, and the capacity of non-states in a global market to leverage the advantages of the global economy, or disrupt market-state activities (MEND in Nigeria, fr'instance), or enlist the population in violence (Hamas among many others).
How these trends will function in the event of greater internal delegitimation of market-states in the event of serious economic decline, with consequent retrenchment of service provision, finds no easy answers in a statist approach which conceives 'failed states' as an aberrant pathology.
I'd regard performativity in IR as far less significant a factor than in finance; significantly more of a descriptive approach, and less 'coal-face' involvement.
(baseless speculation alert)
High-performing economics wonks move parallel into business with some ease, IR scholars are more likely to remain academic, which limits the reflexive component, or slows the loop significantly. There are of course clear contras to this, from Machiavelli to Kissinger, or the highly performative quoted Bush aide speaking derisively of the 'reality-based community', my experience of IR is that is far less of an 'applied' discipline than economics, which has a more strong 'just do it' ethos, and hence performativity is significantly less of a factor.
I'd also strongly agree much is lost by state-centrism, and find the assumption of a necessary teleology along which others are 'retarded' problematic, and analytically unhelpful. I found the Williams quote 'that just because official governments do not control these areas it does not necessarily mean that they are completely lacking other structures of governance' to nail it. Structures and institutions are always present (Insitutionalism often seems to verge on tautology tbh) with greater or lesser degrees of legitimacy, force oligopoly, etc; privileging the Westphalian model either descriptively or normatively, and assuming or expecting developments to adhere to it, becomes problematic in that the original context of Westphalian development, and the functionality-in-context of war-making a la Tilly is no longer appropriate or effective behaviour for actors.
The argument can be made that at a micro level non-states possess a significant competitive advantage over state actors, and can more efficiently exact protection rents and provide protection; from Mexico (narco & kidnapping) to Blackwater, violence has followed the trend of 'deregulation'. Add the lowering of entry costs for internal competitors for legitimacy/force oligopoly etc, and the capacity of non-states in a global market to leverage the advantages of the global economy, or disrupt market-state activities (MEND in Nigeria, fr'instance), or enlist the population in violence (Hamas among many others).
How these trends will function in the event of greater internal delegitimation of market-states in the event of serious economic decline, with consequent retrenchment of service provision, finds no easy answers in a statist approach which conceives 'failed states' as an aberrant pathology.
vimothy
yurp
Great post, Kama.
One thing (I'm really busy): looking at Obama's cabinet -- and I understand there are some exceptions -- it seems that in the US being a lawyer stands you in better stead for a government role than anything else (be it an advanced degree in IR, public policy, etc).
EDIT: One other thing: finance (what I was talking about) and economics (what I think you're talking about) are not quite the same thing. I think that people move from academic finance roles to business roles a lot more than from academic economics roles. Also, the field of finance is much smaller and younger.
One thing (I'm really busy): looking at Obama's cabinet -- and I understand there are some exceptions -- it seems that in the US being a lawyer stands you in better stead for a government role than anything else (be it an advanced degree in IR, public policy, etc).
EDIT: One other thing: finance (what I was talking about) and economics (what I think you're talking about) are not quite the same thing. I think that people move from academic finance roles to business roles a lot more than from academic economics roles. Also, the field of finance is much smaller and younger.
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Mr BoShambles
jambiguous
Totally OTM Kama.
I'm guessing (apologies if incorrectly) that you're in the States and have studied IR at some level? Just wondering what your thoughts are on the state of the discipline over there? Is realism/neo-realism still the overwhelmingly dominant paradigm (perhaps increasingly fused with liberal institutionalism)? How much space is afforded to other more critical approaches, i.e. historical sociology, historical materialism, post-structuralism etc?
I'm guessing (apologies if incorrectly) that you're in the States and have studied IR at some level? Just wondering what your thoughts are on the state of the discipline over there? Is realism/neo-realism still the overwhelmingly dominant paradigm (perhaps increasingly fused with liberal institutionalism)? How much space is afforded to other more critical approaches, i.e. historical sociology, historical materialism, post-structuralism etc?
Nope, I'm Irish, no need to apologise. Most of my IR came from Nalini Persram when she was in Trinity College Dublin, so I can't tell you much you don't know on US trends. My impression remains that Realist-derived and Institutionalism is as far as it tends to go pedagogically anyway, with the more critical, post-positivist, etc as a rump, and in the more 'liberal' colleges. I'm not really up-to-date in the area, so I don't know more than you, methinks.
Apols if conflated finance/economics; performativity; in finance my assumption is it's demonstrably higher, academic economics less so, but still greater than in IR. The feedback loops seem shorter, so performativity is faster. That the first two are/have been far more involved in drafting the rules by which their studied terrain is consitituted than IR scholars would seem a fairly safe bet to me.
On Obama and lawyers, a certain factor imo is which career paths have a 'comparative advantage' in going into politics to begin with; in Ireland, its lawyers, publicans, and accountants, all of whom the transaction costs are lower for a run at office; exit and re-entry without dooming them on their career path, security over precarity. I'm unsure how well this generalises internationally, but its my initial factor-assumption.
I'm highly interested in how Tilly reconfigures currently, with micro-level competitors; I'm kinda fanboi for John Robbs analyses on competition for violence/protection on that basis. He in turn is quite taken with Bobbitts framework for state violence/law/legitimacy, which I'm still working through.
Apols if conflated finance/economics; performativity; in finance my assumption is it's demonstrably higher, academic economics less so, but still greater than in IR. The feedback loops seem shorter, so performativity is faster. That the first two are/have been far more involved in drafting the rules by which their studied terrain is consitituted than IR scholars would seem a fairly safe bet to me.
On Obama and lawyers, a certain factor imo is which career paths have a 'comparative advantage' in going into politics to begin with; in Ireland, its lawyers, publicans, and accountants, all of whom the transaction costs are lower for a run at office; exit and re-entry without dooming them on their career path, security over precarity. I'm unsure how well this generalises internationally, but its my initial factor-assumption.
I'm highly interested in how Tilly reconfigures currently, with micro-level competitors; I'm kinda fanboi for John Robbs analyses on competition for violence/protection on that basis. He in turn is quite taken with Bobbitts framework for state violence/law/legitimacy, which I'm still working through.
vimothy
yurp
Think the performativity issue in finance is very acute, much more so than in economics, for reasons I don't have time to go into right now (just think of, say, the relationship between option pricing theory and arbitrage -- Scholes-Black indentifies 'discrepancies', which I then arbitrage until they disappear -- making the market more similar to that predicted by the model initially. I'm not sure if there's anything comparative WRT economics. But probably there is and I'm just too braindead to think of it). And IMO you're totally right about financial economists/economists having more of a policy role than IR scholars.
Mr BoShambles
jambiguous
Mr BoShambles
jambiguous
In general i reckon this true but clearly there is some overlap between IR academics and think-tank bodies which formulate policy recommendations.
And, to paraphrase Robert Cox a famous critical IR theorist, 'every theory is written for some one for some purpose'. Theory informs practice and vice-versa in all social fields. Statist type approaches to IR do reflect the world to some degree but also legitimate discourses based on this worldview while precluding others from gaining attention/popularity.
Brave New War is godly stuff, (where else would you get analysis of Russia-Ukraine where someone outlines how Ukraine could feasibly drop Russia?) and seems to have aged well with recent developments. Most of it is on his blog in some form, but the book is ace. Looking forward to the new one...
Shield of Achilles I've read through, but I want to study it properly; it seemed unparalleled by anything else I've come across, in span and coherence. Terror and Consent I've yet to gank a copy, but am initially prejudiced. The opposition of terror and consent doesn't satisfy me; 'terrorism' is (to me) homologous to state violence, done by a non-state competitor (back to Westphalian state-desire), and terroristic violence often has a significant degree of consent from population, indeed fails in its absence. Hamas, fr'instance, has significant consent; the IRA had consent in Ireland for many years. And so on. The whole 'choice' versus 'force' seems horribly crude. The Cox maxim seems all too plain here; intellectual justification for 'hate our freedoms' and terrorist-as-Other.
Again, I'm pre-judging, mainly on what read him saying about it, much of it because I tend to find 'terror' devoid of substantive meaning, and dependent on the state-privilege of 'legitimacy', so analytically problematic. Legitimacy in a legalistic sense versus popular or specific legitimacies, exclusion or an attempt at 'regulatory monopoly' of legitimation by statist structures for whom competition is anathematic. If terror has consent, its much messier. Still, want to read it, critiquing a book ain't read is a bit too cheeky-chutzpah...is there more scenario-work, as in the end of SoA? Thumbs-up, on the whole?
Edit:
Scholes-Black I don't grok fully, but it reminded me of a cousin talking about cheating chartists due to their self-confirming tendencies when she worked in the City, as a more crude form of self-producing expectations; prophecy and forecasting share an element of active involvement in their own validation, and herd-based conformity impulses have been noted and exploited by actors for financial gain ('shaking the tree' in the early days of brokers), or at the more militarist end of agitation propaganda or indeed marketing.
On performativity in economics at a policy level, conceptions of market operations become instantiated through institutional practice, discourse as reiterative and self-reproducing performance; or on a more ideological or mythic level aid in the creation of the object of study; homo oeconomicus not born but made, homo faber reproducing his creators. The argued relationship or conflation between ontological and methodological individualism in economics emergent from Paecon-style critiques, or the pedagogy of 'pop-economics' as an indoctrinatory value-system, vide economists and the irrationality of charity. Granfalloon conformism and conformity enforcement by peers, even if the peer group is theoretical presupposition more than grounded reality: the crucial element in decision-making and norm-creation of how we assume others behave.
Contra, it's easy to get carried away with a 'hard' reflexive; harder to unpick the descriptive from the more normative and instantiating theory in the 'Mangle'. Economists make markets (now) undeniably, but perhaps we should say that economists make markets, but not in situations of their own choosing?
Shield of Achilles I've read through, but I want to study it properly; it seemed unparalleled by anything else I've come across, in span and coherence. Terror and Consent I've yet to gank a copy, but am initially prejudiced. The opposition of terror and consent doesn't satisfy me; 'terrorism' is (to me) homologous to state violence, done by a non-state competitor (back to Westphalian state-desire), and terroristic violence often has a significant degree of consent from population, indeed fails in its absence. Hamas, fr'instance, has significant consent; the IRA had consent in Ireland for many years. And so on. The whole 'choice' versus 'force' seems horribly crude. The Cox maxim seems all too plain here; intellectual justification for 'hate our freedoms' and terrorist-as-Other.
Again, I'm pre-judging, mainly on what read him saying about it, much of it because I tend to find 'terror' devoid of substantive meaning, and dependent on the state-privilege of 'legitimacy', so analytically problematic. Legitimacy in a legalistic sense versus popular or specific legitimacies, exclusion or an attempt at 'regulatory monopoly' of legitimation by statist structures for whom competition is anathematic. If terror has consent, its much messier. Still, want to read it, critiquing a book ain't read is a bit too cheeky-chutzpah...is there more scenario-work, as in the end of SoA? Thumbs-up, on the whole?
Edit:
Scholes-Black I don't grok fully, but it reminded me of a cousin talking about cheating chartists due to their self-confirming tendencies when she worked in the City, as a more crude form of self-producing expectations; prophecy and forecasting share an element of active involvement in their own validation, and herd-based conformity impulses have been noted and exploited by actors for financial gain ('shaking the tree' in the early days of brokers), or at the more militarist end of agitation propaganda or indeed marketing.
On performativity in economics at a policy level, conceptions of market operations become instantiated through institutional practice, discourse as reiterative and self-reproducing performance; or on a more ideological or mythic level aid in the creation of the object of study; homo oeconomicus not born but made, homo faber reproducing his creators. The argued relationship or conflation between ontological and methodological individualism in economics emergent from Paecon-style critiques, or the pedagogy of 'pop-economics' as an indoctrinatory value-system, vide economists and the irrationality of charity. Granfalloon conformism and conformity enforcement by peers, even if the peer group is theoretical presupposition more than grounded reality: the crucial element in decision-making and norm-creation of how we assume others behave.
Contra, it's easy to get carried away with a 'hard' reflexive; harder to unpick the descriptive from the more normative and instantiating theory in the 'Mangle'. Economists make markets (now) undeniably, but perhaps we should say that economists make markets, but not in situations of their own choosing?
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vimothy
yurp
Whoa there! I suggest reading it first -- or at least watch one of the interviews he did in support (the Conversations with History int was good, or Uncommon Knowledge). I don't think you need to agree to any normative judgements (whether they're there in the work or not) to see the benefits of Bobbit's analytical system, which traces the interplay of terrorism and state rule in the (post-Westphalian) age of globalisation. Of course, states can sponsor terror just as effectively as paramilitary groups, or terror can be the result of natural disasters, and lead to an equivalent loss of consent. The point, as I see it with my limited understanding, is that post the nation, what binds the citizen to the state? The threat of terrorism (ably charted by Robb, even if I might take issue with a lot of what he says -- Ukraine vs Russia, e.g.) will always exceed the immediate effect, because the purpose is precisely the threat. And if the threat of terror can shut down our institutional frameworks, then we need a way of combating/coping with terror that preserves consent, because sacrificing democracy and the rule of law to defeat terrorism would be a rather pyrrhic victory.
One could easily look at Hezbollah or HAMAS using the same framework (though their situations are less than typical). Israeli military operations against either are certainly undertaken with the aim of reducing the legitimacy of both groups in much the same way that conventional 21st century terrorism aims to reduce the legitimacy of the attacked state. As it cannot protect its citizenry, it is not clear to what extent its citizenry benefit from its rule. Of course, as Kalyvas points out, it's not always clear how much power nominally constituent groups have over the paramilitaries that claim to represent them. Hell, it's not always clear how much power nominally constituent groups have over the democratic governments that claim to represent them. But one would think that consent (and thus withdrawal of consent) more of an issue in those cases in which it is an institutionally determining factor in the survival of the government or group. To use your NI example, I don't think the IRA ever held any votes to decide on strategy or whether or not they had a mandate for action, and thus collective punishment of Catholics in NI was never going to be partiularly effective, even if it did succeed in turning them against the IRA. In any case, it seems to me that the more open your society, the more you expose yourself both to the possibility of John Robb style terrorism and the probability that its costs will be large -- they're two sides of the same coin, perhaps -- and therefore the terror and consent conundrum is one of the central problems of managing globalisation.
One could easily look at Hezbollah or HAMAS using the same framework (though their situations are less than typical). Israeli military operations against either are certainly undertaken with the aim of reducing the legitimacy of both groups in much the same way that conventional 21st century terrorism aims to reduce the legitimacy of the attacked state. As it cannot protect its citizenry, it is not clear to what extent its citizenry benefit from its rule. Of course, as Kalyvas points out, it's not always clear how much power nominally constituent groups have over the paramilitaries that claim to represent them. Hell, it's not always clear how much power nominally constituent groups have over the democratic governments that claim to represent them. But one would think that consent (and thus withdrawal of consent) more of an issue in those cases in which it is an institutionally determining factor in the survival of the government or group. To use your NI example, I don't think the IRA ever held any votes to decide on strategy or whether or not they had a mandate for action, and thus collective punishment of Catholics in NI was never going to be partiularly effective, even if it did succeed in turning them against the IRA. In any case, it seems to me that the more open your society, the more you expose yourself both to the possibility of John Robb style terrorism and the probability that its costs will be large -- they're two sides of the same coin, perhaps -- and therefore the terror and consent conundrum is one of the central problems of managing globalisation.
Apologies for the quite-possibly-unsubstantiated diatribe, perhaps I am over-reaching and tilting windmills; if I'm blatantly under-informed, mea culpa, and I'll pursue no further.
I have watched the ForaTv interview, and as said found the States of Consent versus States of Terror typology problematic; terror by state actors is not generally understood as terror, at least within a statist framework. While in one sense this queers it (terrorist states), it does so by the ascription of terror-quality to other states, consent to our own, separating the consent-based sheep from the terrorist goats. Such splitting seems to me to hide more than it reveals, and reifies positive identities out of the (descriptively neutral) tactics of consent and coercion. Found this explicit in his approach to the 'ticking bomb' example; it is and should be illegal (torture as a form of terror, infringing on choice by fear and violence)...but we should do it anyway, no jury will convict (state of exception from the legal for the terroristic necessity). Equally, a 'terrorist' may say, yes I'm aware it's illegal and wrong, my hands will be dirty, yet it's necessary by reason of a rationalised anticipatory, and my peers consent vindicates me of the lesser wrong.
(Perhaps I’m wilfully misunderstanding again, but the impression I took was of these are relatively discrete characteristics of different types or ‘families’ of states, as suggested by the title, and Bobbitt’s interview; within the typology I'd be quite amenable to the framework if 'states' are understood similar to 'state of mind', as configurations through which we pass or move through, mentally occupied positions. Again, I really shouldn't be judging books by their covers, but I do enjoy it as an exercise)
Again, I’m perhaps being both ignorant and unfair, but the scheme seems to map closely to GWOT-speak of the Bush-era standard; terrorist states who ‘hate our (consent-based) freedoms’, whose self-augmenting aim and ends is the production of terror; Terror is Terror is Terror, in a referentially-circular relation of equivalence, rather than strategies used by actors to achieve multiple ends; state capture, state parasitism, economic advantage, cultural change, and so forth, as in Robb. Whereas in supposed contrast ‘we’ champion a conception of ‘choice’ of which the stated examples were voting and going shopping, somehow standing (weakly) for the Good. It seems an overly simple map for a highly complex terrain; perhaps a standpoint-element of nationality also comes into it, I can remember when 'we' were the terrorists seeking terror for the sake of terror, an admitted bias for me in discussing 'terror talk'.
Good question, and one I’d hoped Bobbitt would answer, since he posed it. I don’t consider the market-state provision of ‘choice’ a sufficient bond; nation-states provided and partook in a greater sense of mythic-membership for social cohesion and legitimation, in comparison to which the market-state ‘offer’ comes off poorly. On the level of values, identity, and loyalty, even while under ‘attack’, ‘choice’ or ‘freedom’ as an individualised market actor in conditions of precarity is hardly a rallying call, and further its legitimacy is necessarily more dependent on relatively stable and successful global market operation; problematized by the possibility of market-state failure, eg the Russian petro-market state with supply disruption as in Robb’s Ukraine scenario, or demand destruction by importers.
In the absence of this bond, what trajectories/scenarios do you think dominant? Ethno-state regression to Heimat where the affinity exists, as in the Russian or Chinese case, primary loyalties as predicted by Robb, or institutional adaptation of the American-aegis globalization project, as I understand Bobbitt?
Edit:
re the Israeli operations as attempts to degrade legitimacy with respect to Hamas, this potentially contains it's opposite effect; similar to the effect of civilian terror bombing in WW2, terrorist tactics can increase internal solidarity, projective displacement of blame onto the attacker, and hence legitimacy or consent. Perhaps it's my disavowed psychoanalytic background, but I infer a similar dynamic in the 'management of globalization' through the discourses of 'Terror' as exogenous shock; projection of 'Terror', introjection of consent.
I have watched the ForaTv interview, and as said found the States of Consent versus States of Terror typology problematic; terror by state actors is not generally understood as terror, at least within a statist framework. While in one sense this queers it (terrorist states), it does so by the ascription of terror-quality to other states, consent to our own, separating the consent-based sheep from the terrorist goats. Such splitting seems to me to hide more than it reveals, and reifies positive identities out of the (descriptively neutral) tactics of consent and coercion. Found this explicit in his approach to the 'ticking bomb' example; it is and should be illegal (torture as a form of terror, infringing on choice by fear and violence)...but we should do it anyway, no jury will convict (state of exception from the legal for the terroristic necessity). Equally, a 'terrorist' may say, yes I'm aware it's illegal and wrong, my hands will be dirty, yet it's necessary by reason of a rationalised anticipatory, and my peers consent vindicates me of the lesser wrong.
(Perhaps I’m wilfully misunderstanding again, but the impression I took was of these are relatively discrete characteristics of different types or ‘families’ of states, as suggested by the title, and Bobbitt’s interview; within the typology I'd be quite amenable to the framework if 'states' are understood similar to 'state of mind', as configurations through which we pass or move through, mentally occupied positions. Again, I really shouldn't be judging books by their covers, but I do enjoy it as an exercise)
Again, I’m perhaps being both ignorant and unfair, but the scheme seems to map closely to GWOT-speak of the Bush-era standard; terrorist states who ‘hate our (consent-based) freedoms’, whose self-augmenting aim and ends is the production of terror; Terror is Terror is Terror, in a referentially-circular relation of equivalence, rather than strategies used by actors to achieve multiple ends; state capture, state parasitism, economic advantage, cultural change, and so forth, as in Robb. Whereas in supposed contrast ‘we’ champion a conception of ‘choice’ of which the stated examples were voting and going shopping, somehow standing (weakly) for the Good. It seems an overly simple map for a highly complex terrain; perhaps a standpoint-element of nationality also comes into it, I can remember when 'we' were the terrorists seeking terror for the sake of terror, an admitted bias for me in discussing 'terror talk'.
Good question, and one I’d hoped Bobbitt would answer, since he posed it. I don’t consider the market-state provision of ‘choice’ a sufficient bond; nation-states provided and partook in a greater sense of mythic-membership for social cohesion and legitimation, in comparison to which the market-state ‘offer’ comes off poorly. On the level of values, identity, and loyalty, even while under ‘attack’, ‘choice’ or ‘freedom’ as an individualised market actor in conditions of precarity is hardly a rallying call, and further its legitimacy is necessarily more dependent on relatively stable and successful global market operation; problematized by the possibility of market-state failure, eg the Russian petro-market state with supply disruption as in Robb’s Ukraine scenario, or demand destruction by importers.
In the absence of this bond, what trajectories/scenarios do you think dominant? Ethno-state regression to Heimat where the affinity exists, as in the Russian or Chinese case, primary loyalties as predicted by Robb, or institutional adaptation of the American-aegis globalization project, as I understand Bobbitt?
Edit:
re the Israeli operations as attempts to degrade legitimacy with respect to Hamas, this potentially contains it's opposite effect; similar to the effect of civilian terror bombing in WW2, terrorist tactics can increase internal solidarity, projective displacement of blame onto the attacker, and hence legitimacy or consent. Perhaps it's my disavowed psychoanalytic background, but I infer a similar dynamic in the 'management of globalization' through the discourses of 'Terror' as exogenous shock; projection of 'Terror', introjection of consent.
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vimothy
yurp
BTW -- slightly off topic now, but Bill Easterly has started a blog: http://blogs.nyu.edu/fas/dri/aidwatch/
scottdisco
rip this joint please
nice one!
i've been meaning to pick up his The Elusive Quest for Growth ever since i saw Alex de Waal cite him (i'm no economist, as you know), and also a cousin of mine who writes mostly about the arms trade is reading his The White Man's Burden as study for her next book
vimothy
yurp
Paul Collier has a new book out: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/books/review/Roth-t.html?ref=books