Pakistan and Missiles

Here, the NY Times reports that Pakistan is modifying US missiles (which they receive through military aid) to strike at land based targets (and this presumably means India).

I'm no knee-jerk opponent of military assistance--there are certainly times that providing weapons to our allies makes sense (for example, when they are fighting the Taliban, as is the Pakistani army), but I do wonder why we should be surprised that the Pakistani military is preparing for a war with India. Isn't it what they've always done? We don't want to see a war between India and Pakistan--generally, war between two nuclear powers is probably bad--but there are really legitimate reasons, if you are a Pakistani general, to see India as a potential threat.

Although it seems clear to us that the Pakistani army should forget about fighting India and concentrate on fighting the Taliban, a parallel to this sort of weapons experimentation has been taking place within our own military establishment, with the debate over the construction of new F-22 fighter jets. Opponents of the move say that these jets aren't great for fighting our current foes--Islamic extremists--but supporters of the jets say that they're needed in case of a war with somebody else (China? Russia?)

Engaging in a little bit of Lasswellian policy analysis here, my own policy prescription for Pakistan would be a greater focus on economic policy-making. I see stable democracy as an outcome of economic growth (we can debate the reasons for this relationship, but the relationship seems reasonably clear) and therefore, we should be focusing on promoting economic growth.

Because democracies only rarely fight one another, I would argue that we should be attempting to prevent war between India and Pakistan by encouraging democracy, and maybe the best way to do that is through the promotion of economic growth.

As an aside, I should add that I'm not convinced that Pakistan is a democracy. Although there have been elections, they are not free and competitive in a true sense--democracy in Pakistan today resembles democracy in the United States around 1820, when most ethnic minorities, the poor, and women had little say in political outcomes. Pakistan's democracy is a political competition between wealthy political factions, not a competition between candidates who truly represent the masses.

Naím on the resource curse.

This is good stuff. This notion--that resources can be a curse on poor nations--is a classic and important idea in the political economy of development.

Kristof on health care

here.

Oh the (forestry) horror.

here.

Hopefully, I'm not the only one who laughs at this stuff.

Mankiw, Krugman, and IQ

So, first off, I think the whole notion of "Intelligence Quotient" is pretty much nonsense and has been pretty well debunked in educational research. Apparently, Mankiw hasn't gotten the memo, however.

As predicted by me, Paul Krugman responds--he doesn't buy Mankiw's argument either.

Update: they pretty much bash open Mankiw over at the Monkey Cage, too.

More on Health Care Reform

Bechdolt (congrats on being the first commenter in the class, by the way) suggests that the polling results I referred to in the last post may be consistent, and suggests two ways the problems these polling results imply might be remedied. If I understand, the ideas are, essentially (a) make the health care reform proposals clearer to the US population to prevent mis-information, and (b) present a new plan that everyone agrees with.

Folks, speaking of mis-information, if I misrepresent your ideas here, please correct me in the comments--I'll do my best, but I might not get it right every time.

I want to push back on this comment a bit. I don't disagree that mis-information plays a large role in the health care debate, but I wonder if it's possible to have accurate and up-to-date information on the ongoing health care reform process out there, given that (a) nothing has been passed yet, and the bills in congress are in flux, and will be until a final bill is approved by both houses, (b) multiple proposals are being floated, and (c) nobody has an incentive to accurately describe the likely results of any legislative proposal.

Essentially, with respect to the third option, people who are in favor of a health care reform have an incentive to make it look better than it really is, and people who are against it have an incentive to make it look worse. This is a lot easier to do, given that we can't really anticipate with precision the exact results of any given reform. So it's easy to put forth a best-case or worst-case scenario and describe it as The Truth.

So who's going to put out accurate information about what the best-case outcome should be?

Polling 'n stuff

Apparently, my blog is starting to get somewhat more traffic, according to Google Analytics, probably due to its use in my class (PSCI 2101). Therefore, it's probably time to post something new that is (maybe) relevant to the policy analysis class.

I would like to point you all to the following link, which connects you up to public opinion polling feeds from pollster.com. This is a great source of polling information on just about everything in US politics. You can check out the web page, or you can sign on to the rss feeds and get all the polling data (from just about everyone reputable in the country) delivered to your rss aggregator.

One interesting thing of note here is just how wacky public opinion polling results have been over the last couple of months in the area of health care reform. Among other interesting things, public opinion in favor of changing the current system is pretty strong, but public opinion against many of the alternatives is also very high. Maybe this is the result of all the mis-information going around. Or maybe not.

Mostly, the point is that recent public opinion polls don't seem (to me or to many analysts) to be wholly consistent. Or are they?

Network Analysis?

A couple of weeks ago in the IPE reading group, we read this article on network analysis (this is, in fact, the only meeting of said group that I have attended). The group was divided as to whether (a) this stuff is totally useless and is only good for making pretty pictures, (b) this stuff is useful, if you have many research assistants doing the grunt work for you, or (c) this stuff is useful and realistically can be implemented (I think I may have been the only guy who voted for option c).

Anyways, the Monkey Cage has a posting up that speaks to this debate, though I'm not sure which one of these points of view it tends towards. Check it out here.

Actually, some of us already knew...

this.

Alejandro Toledo

Toledo, former president of Peru and the first indigenous president in Latin America, was interviewed by La Republica of Peru, published today, here. He denies having made an alliance with other center-right parties (he's something of a conservative) as discussed by Lourdes Flores, former darling of the US and candidate in the 2006 presidential elections, but he doesn't rule out an alliance with them.

He also says he doesn't know if he's running.

As discussed in my last post, perhaps this is good, because it will allow moderate voters to coordinate behind a single candidate. On the other hand, maybe it's bad, because Toledo was, if nothing else, a very effective administrator under whom the Peruvian economy grew substantially and the government was relatively well managed. I would also, personally, support a Toledo candidacy.

Though he personally seems a little arrogant and is a very unappealing personality, which may ultimately be his political downfall. The other downside to Toledo is that he's one of these dudes that has gone out and created his own political party, which is never cool, in my opinion.

Peruvian Presidential Elections

While it is true that the presidential elections in Peru are a long way off, candidates have begun to declare their candidacy. While many things frustrate me about the Peruvian electoral system at the local level, the national system is actually pretty good--a simple first-past-the-post system (that is, winner-takes-all, like we have in the states), but with a runoff (a second round election) between the two highest vote-getters a couple of months after the first round of voting. This allows voters to coordinate in the second round, and though it has some flaws (I would actually prefer an STV system, I think), my complaints with the system are pretty minor.

The biggest weaknesses in Peruvian elections actually seem to be internal to political parties (basically, Peruvian political parties are weak and have little grass-roots, community-level organization, though that may be changing). But that's an issue for another time.

The Peruvian Times notes the following public opinion data regarding the race:

According to the Lima-based polling firm Ipsos & Apoyo, 20 percent of respondents are expected to vote for Keiko Fujimori in the next ballot, down two points since January. Luis Castañeda Lossio – currently the mayor of Lima – came in a close second, with 18 percent, followed by Ollanta Humala, with 14 percent. The poll was based on a July 15-17 survey of 1,000 Peruvians, and has a margin of error of 3 percent.

This is worrying, really. Keiko Fujimori doesn't have much of a platform--a vote for her is essentially a vote for her father, as she promises to pardon him if she wins. It also is a vote for traditional clientelist politics, as most supporters of Fujimori, based on personal conversations, are individuals who remember the spending blitzes of Alberto Fujimori's various campaigns, both as president and as dictator, which resulted in high levels of spending in rural areas.

It doesn't help that Alan Garcia, the current president, pretty much ignores rural Peru.

Of this list, I would personally be happiest to see a race between Fujimori and/or Ollanta Humala and Castañeda Lossio, the mayor of Lima. Castañeda's political star is tied to Lima, where he has developed a reputation for relatively effective and clean management. His connection to Lima, however, is a real shame, because an election between either of these two pairings would probably become a race based around traditional Peruvian urban/rural split (or Lima/rest of Peru). He is, however, an evangelical Christian. This means that he might be successful in garnering some rural support based on his religion, and it is probably more likely to help him with evangelicals than hurt him with Catholics.

Ollanta Humala is another case who deserves a full blog posting. Perhaps I'll leave that for next time, lest this blog posting get too long.

Thomas simply doesn't cut it...

...in the special operations team that is our supreme court.

Tío Hugo and the New Threat

I'm glad to know that Uncle Hugo's government has moved away from demonizing the United States to attacking the far more pernicious bourgeios menace that is golf.

Chinese statistical poetry

Zane and I were just talking about this--turns out it is actually happening in the real world:

Awesome

A couple of weeks ago, I posted homage to Michael Jackson by a ranchero band, if you liked it, you should check this out, via "the Latin Americanist."