Owen abroad

Archive for August, 2005

John Bolton, the recently appointed US ambassador to the United Nations, has been criticized for the amendments that he has proposed to the draft communique for the forthcoming UN Summit. I’ve spent an interesting couple of hours reading through Mr Bolton’s proposed changes, which can be read in full here (large PDF file). They provide an interesting insight into Mr Bolton’s approach; and they are not all bad.

Many of the changes are just tightening of the language, adjusting some of the UN-speak into plainer English; reducing repetition and superfluous words (such as deleting "hereby"). I welcome a simpler text, though I do not think that it is worth disrupting international consensus to achieve this.

Another group of changes are aimed at eliminating favourable references to existing multilateral agreements. Some of these changes remove mention of agreements that the US does not support (such as the Kyoto Protocol and the International Criminal Court). More worryingly, other changes would remove references to agreements which the US has ratified. For example, the amendments would remove the references to the commitments by nuclear nations in the Non Proliferation Treaty (which the US has ratified) to take steps towards nuclear disarmament; and would take out the reference to the Convention on Biological Diversity. It is not clear whether this reflects a desire on the part of the US to step aside from these international commitments: if so, they should defend their new position openly, rather than try to back out of agreements by stealth. 

The proposed changes relating to international poverty are the most interesting.  The amendments would remove nearly all the references to the Millennium Development Goals.  Until now, the official US position has been that it accepts the first seven UN goals, as set out in the Millennium Declaration of the General Assembly, but does not consider itself bound by the quantitative MDG targets that were subsequently defined as a way to measure progress towards the agreement in the Millennium Declaration; the US has also consistently opposed the eighth Millennium Development Goal (which is the one about developing a partnership for global development).   

Many of the proposed US amendments have the effect of removing a bold attempt by the UN system to put itself in the role of coordinating international development policy, instead of the World Bank and IMF.  For example, the amendments would remove this:

We further reaffirm the need for the United nations to play a more decisive and central role in international development policy and in ensuring coherence, coordination and implementation of the development goals and actions agreed by the international community …

On this, I think Mr Bolton’s amendments are right. I recognize that there is a case to be made for the UN to play a more central role in promoting development: it is possible to argue that the UN has more legitimacy (because countries are represented on a more equal basis); and some people feel that the World Bank and IMF promote a particular ideological view of economic policy, where the UN bodies would accept a more diverse range of opinion about the best way to achieve poverty reduction.  But whatever the theoretical merits, the UN system is too dysfunctional to take on responsibility for coordinating development policy; and the World Bank actually does rather a good job at the moment. I also agree with the basic tenets of the so called Washington Consensus; and I don’t believe it is in developing countries’ interests to weaken our resolve to base poverty reduction on a common set of broad policy goals which include macroeconomic stability, free and open markets, political accountability and investment in the health and skills of people.  Effective international development policy is too important to allow people to play politics with it; until the UN system is reformed and shows itself capable of taking on this role, the US is right not to endorse a shift of power and responsibility to the UN.  (The appointment of Kemal Dervis as the Administrator of UNDP is a good first step towards the UN becoming more effective.)

But while I agree with blocking language which attempts to shift power from the World Bank to the UN, the other changes to the draft conclusions on development seem to me to be much more sinister. 

Recall that in 2000, world leaders (including the President of the United States) signed up to a Millennium Declaration which said:

We will spare no effort to free our fellow men, women and children from the abject and dehumanizing conditions of extreme poverty, to which more than a billion of them are currently subjected. We are committed to making the right to development a reality for everyone and to freeing the entire human race from want.

The process of drafting by committee has done much to obscure the really important issue of the September UN summit: are we willing to accept, now in 2005, that we are not going to meet the lofty objectives we set for ourseves in the Millennium Declaration? Or are we going to do something about our failure to act, which will require more resources and greater efforts on the part of rich countries?  This conference could have been the moment at which the world is shamed by its failure to act to meet the objectives it set for itself, and galvanized into action.  If we do not do so now, it will be impossible to meet the 2015 objectives. By removing references to the Millennium Development Goals, and the likelihood that they will not be met, the US approach would ensure that we do not face up to what is arguably the world’s most important challenge. 

(See more on this at Talking Points Memo and at Liberals Against Terrorism, which has a defense of John Bolton by Nadezhda.)

It is currently fashionable to say that poor countries are caught in a poverty trap; and that a big push involving aid and investment would lift them onto a virtuous circle of faster growth and rising prosperity.

So said Jeff Sachs in his report to the UN Secretary General on meeting the Millennium Development Goals, and so said Tony Blair’s Africa Commission in the build up to the G8 summit at Gleneagles.

It is an attractive argument: it suggests that if we can organise sufficient resource for a large increase in aid, we can shift the poorest countries out of poverty once and for all.  This was the original argument for the introduction of foreign aid in the 1950s, and some version of this story has come in and out of fashion periodically in the last fifty years.

There is just one problem: it does not seem to be true.  As my colleague William Easterly has shown in a new working paper, we do not see evidence in the growth data for countries being caught in a poverty trap from which some escape:

• the countries that start off poor do not appear to have significantly lower growth rates subsequently, and growth rates in poor countries are not close to zero
• there are few examples of a country achieving "take off" in which there is a marked acceleration of growth (Japan being the notable exception, and perhaps some of the other Asian tigers).

It does not follow from these results that aid is not effective in supporting growth and reducing poverty. There is good evidence that aid does lead to growth and poverty reduction (see my collection of articles here). But it does weaken the argument for "one big heave" of the kind envisaged by Gordon Brown’s proposed International Finance Facility, and supported by the Commission for Africa.

Jeff Sachs has done a tremendous job in drawing the world’s attention to the need to do more to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.  He is right that more aid would make a positive contribution to reducing poverty.  But it is unrealistic to expect that a even a large injection of aid is going to lead to a step change in the rate of economic development of poor countries.  As another of my colleagues, Michael Clemens, showed last year, it takes a hundred years to raise school enrolment rates, not just fifteen years as envisaged by the Millennium Development Goals. 

This is a call for realisim, not pessimism. It is a call for more action: the sooner we get on with it, the better.  But we should be realistic about the speed with which we can expect to see change, and we should not set ourselves targets and expectations that we have no hope of meeting.

I was playing Transformer by Lou Reed the other day.  Grethe walked in, and demanded to know, in that forthright Scandinavian way, why I was listening to this man who cannot sing.  After a moment’s thought, I replied that there are many great songs by bands or artists who can’t, you know, sing. At least, not very well. 

Thinking about it some more, this seems to be particularly true of some of the greatest musicians of the 1960s and 1970s. Here is my top five list of great singers who can’t actually sing:

1. Bob Dylan
2. Lou Reed
3. Paul Simon
4. Van Morrison
5. Mark Knopfler

Other nominations gratefully received.

I met a man from Mississippi the other day. We sat next to each other over dinner at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. When he heard my British accent, he thanked me for our support for the United States military in Iraq.  He said that America had rescued freedom and democracy in Europe in two world wars, and was pleased that Britain was, in return, standing now with America.

It is quite a common perception in America that it stood up for democracy and freedom in Europe.  Just this week, President George W. Bush compared the war in Iraq with the two World Wars

We defeated fascism; we defeated communism; and we will defeat the hateful ideology of the terrorists who attacked America. Each of these struggles for freedom required great sacrifice. From the beaches of Normandy to the snows of Korea, courageous Americans gave their lives so others could live in freedom.

I am not making a point about Republicans: a decade ago Bill Clinton said:

Our people fought two world wars so that freedom could triumph over tyranny.

I am an economist, not a historian, so doubtless somebody will put me right if I have got this wrong, but that isn't how I understand America's involvement in either of the World Wars.  The way I heard it, America was a determined isolationist in the run up to both wars:

• Britain went to war on August 4th 1914 in response to an unprovoked invasion of Belgium.  The US entered the war on April 6th 1917, nearly three years later, following aggression against American shipping by German submarines (and about two years after the sinking of the Lusitania on May 7th, 1915).  
• Britain went to war again on September 3rd 1939 when Poland was invaded. Canada, Australia, New Zealand & South Africa all immediately joined Britain by declaring war on Hitler in 1939, and the United States did not. It wasn't until more than two years later, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 6th 1941, that the United States entered the war. Hitler declared war on the United States, not the other way round. Though some brave and principled Americans chose to join the Canadian armed forces to help fight the Nazis, the US Government  remained officially neutral until it was attacked, and most Americans opposed joining the war until the attack on Pearl Harbor.

What's more, as the third volume of Robert Skidelsky's magisterial biography of J. M. Keynes describes, Britain paid a heavy price for US support. The United States demanded that in return for Lend Lease, which Britain desperately needed to sustain its war effort, Britain pledge itself to abandon any aspirations of post-war empire, dismantle the system of imperial preference and shrink the sterling area to prevent it from competing with the dollar.  Skidelsky describes the way that Washington managed the flow of Lend-Lease supplies which had the effect, and perhaps the intention, of leaving Britain dependent on US help after the war on whatever terms America chose to impose.  And the terms they imposed were not generous.  Did you know that, even today, Britain is still re-paying America for its World War II debt?  The British Treasury still has to write cheques to the US Treasury, year after year, to pay back the costs of fighting the Nazis. (Britain will make its final payment in December 2006.)  Not exactly the behaviour of a close friend and ally, fighting shoulder to shoulder for democracy and freedom.

Of course, I realise that without the help of America, Britain would almost certainly not have won either war; and I pay tribute to the brave American men and women who fought in those wars.  I certainly don't mean to belittle their sacrifice. (And we should also remember that without the superhuman efforts of the Russians, America might not have won the second world war either.)

The way I see it, Britain stood up for democracy and freedom, reflexively and immediately. The United States, by contrast, was dragged kicking and screaming out of isolationism.  When the US join the second world war, several years later, it exploited the opportunity to pursue its global objectives, including making sure that Britain's economic and military power would be sharply reduced, to strengthen America's position as a global power.

Now I don't hold this against America, or Americans, today. All water under the bridge as far as I'm concerned.  I understand the reasons for America's isolationism then, and, as I say, I'm glad they joined the war on our side eventually.  Better late than never and all that. I'd rather they hadn't screwed us on Lend Lease, but let's let bygones be bygones, eh?  But if Americans are going to boast about their involvement as an example of America's commitment to liberty and democracy, then they must expect to be reminded of the inconvenient facts.

I didn't say anything to the man from Mississipi about any of this, as I didn't (and don't) want to be rude to my hosts here in America. I didn't want to have a fight with a big man at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

Maybe I've got this all wrong – I'm an economist not a historian. In which case, please put me right. 

Update: have a look at Neil Hall's interesting comment on this post which describes how the United States profited from the second world war. 

No good ever comes of trying to change someone’s mind about abortion.  So I should know better than to react to Andrew’s argument against abortion at The Sharpener, which has already generated a lot of discussion over there (noticeably, among a bunch of mainly men rather than women). But my first degree was in Philosophy, so I can’t resist an argument about ethics. Especially when I think the discussion would be helped by a little more clarity and precision.

As is often the case with people who are against abortion, Andrew gently glides between two different arguments for attributing rights to a foetus:

• One argument is that the foetus already has characteristics that give it moral status.
• A separate argument is that the foetus has potential to become something that has moral status. 

If you believe that the foetus has a moral status, then there is the further question of how to balance the interests of the foetus with the interests of the mother.  But if you don’t believe that the foetus has a moral status then this issue does not arise.

So let’s look at the two arguments for giving moral status to a foetus.  (Like Andrew, I am not going to address those who are against abortion for religious reasons. If you have an invisible friend who has told you that a foetus has rights, then none of what follows is going to convince you.)

What characteristics does the foetus have that would give it moral status because of what it is?  An analogy with our treatment of other species is instructive: it seems that we generally grant moral status in proportion to an animal’s consciousness.  Most humans do not eat higher primates, because monkeys seem to be not only conscious, but self-aware and capable of entering into quite complex relationships.  We routinely kill and eat animals that feel pain, however, such as cows and pigs, though we generally frown upon deliberately causing pain. And nearly everyone thinks there is no moral harm in stepping on an ant, because it is regarded as having a very low level of consciousness and little ability to feel pain.   So we seem to think that there is some positive correlation between moral status and consciousness or self-awareness. But if that is our basis for granting moral status, the foetus would not come very far up the scale. It seems that a foetus does not feel any pain until at least 26 weeks at the earliest  (a recent paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association says that  that brain nerve connections are unlikely to develop enough by 29 weeks to feel pain).  Even when it does begin to feel pain, on this yardstick for judging moral worth it is only reaching the equivalent status of perhaps a fish or a bird – and a foetus at an advanced stage of development would not have the level of self-awareness of a cow or a dog. 

So perhaps there is something else about what a foetus is that might be the basis of a moral status, even though it has a low level of consciousness and limited ability to feel pain?  Some people take the view that it has status because it consists of human DNA.  But so do sperm, and we don’t generally think that sperm has moral status, so it can’t be that.

We are tempted at this point to say that a foetus is more important than a cow or a sperm because of what it may become – namely a human being.  But that is an argument based on the future potential of a foetus, not because of what it already is; and we will come to that separately.  It seems very hard to say that a foetus should have significant moral status because of what it already is.

So what about the second argument, that a foetus has moral status because of what it will become? For Andrew, this seems to be the clincher:

The potential for life, which I identified earlier, is paramount. … To deny the potential for life is, at least in my own opinion, morally equivalent to murder. 

But what does this really mean? Taken literally, this is an argument not only against abortion but also against contraception and against chastity or sexual abstinence.   If we say that every potential future life has the value of a living person, then we are bound to say that no egg should go unfertilized, and no opportunity for conception should go unconsummated.  Are families who choose to limit the number of children they have – even if by abstinence – guilty of pre-meditated acts of murder against potential future human beings?  We clearly have no general obligation to ensure that all potential future human beings come into existence, and so there is no general moral status for "a potential human being".

It does not appear that, considered separately, there is a convincing case for granting moral status to a foetus on the grounds of what it is; nor is there a case for granting moral status to all potential future human beings. Is there, perhaps, some hybrid case, based on a mixture of the two?   Those who oppose abortion often seem to be saying that something that occurs at conception as a result of which we should begin to pay attention to the potential future human life that it embodies.  But what is it about the fusing of two zygotes that gives the combination of them a morally valuable possible future that they did not have when they were separate?  It is true that conception marks a moment when the range of possible future outcomes narrows, as conception settles the issues of which genes will be combined. But there remains a very wide range of possible outcomes.  And why does "potential future human life" only have moral status once there is a more narrow range of possible outcomes about what that person would be like?

It is interesting to read Andrew’s original post in the light of this.  The first of his three arguments (which he calls "the science") slides back and forth between the argument about potential and the argument about what the foetus already is.   My view is that when you prise these two thoughts apart and examine them separately, neither stands up to examination; and there is no satisfactory explanation of how the two approaches might interact to make a combination of the two more persuasive than either argument on its own.

Because I do not think that a foetus has significant moral worth, I do not think that there is anything to weigh up against the rights of the woman.  So on my view of the status of the foetus, Andrew’s second point falls away entirely.  However, if you did not agree with the reasoning above, and you were still persuaded that a foetus has the same moral status as a fully grown, conscious human being, it would still not follow that there should be restrictions on abortion.  There is no general duty to sacrifice your own rights to control your body to save the life of another person.  For example, I do not believe that people should be compelled against their will to give away a kidney or undergo a bone marrow transplant to save the life of another person.  (It might be nice if they chose to do so; but most of us would not want to make it illegal to refuse.)  For similar reasons I do not believe that a woman should be forced to incubate another human being if she chooses not to; even if that means the death of the other person. (I realise that this argument also depends on the fact that I don’t think there is a moral distinction between action and inaction – but that is a topic for another day.)  So even if I believed that a foetus had moral status – which I don’t – I would still favour allowing women to choose whe
ther or not to end the pregnancy.

This is a topic on which there is scope for a range of possible opinions.  Andrew does not want to hear arguments of the form "if you take that argument to the extreme, you’d be condoning x".   But I do think it is important to try to articulate the principles that seem to guide our judgements, and then to ask whether those principles make sense, including by considering whether we would want them applied more generally.  If the principles on which we believe we are basing our judgements also lead us to conclusions that we find unacceptable, then that is surely a good reason to question the principles themselves.

The argument against abortion is, in my view, a good argument of how intelligent and well-meaning people can reach the wrong conclusions on the basis of imprecise reasoning.  The argument against abortion seems to depend on a combination of two separate arguments which sound superficially attractive when intertwined, but which does not seem convincing when the pieces of the argument are disassembled and examined in turn.

When I was 11 at boarding school, one of the boys in my dormitory (a lad by the name of Adam Wolf) had a cassette of Beatles Love Songs, a compilation double album released by Capitol Records in 1977. We listened to those cassettes all day every day.  Nothing reminds me more of my time in boarding school.

I bought the record myself when I was a bit older. But Beatles Love Songs was long out of print by the time CDs began to replace vinyl, and Capitol has never released the compilation on CD.  I sold all my vinyl records (which I had not played for many years) when I left for the United States. This is one of the albums I most regret saying goodbye to.

Now that all my records are stored on my hard disk, however, I have been able to recreate the album simply by making a playlist of the tracks from the original albums.  Though it was nearly thirty years ago, I actually remember the track order (though you can just make out the names of the tracks from the above picture of the cover).  For the record, here are the songs, and the original albums you will find them on.

Side one: Yesterday (Help!), I’ll Follow the Sun (Beatles for Sale), I Need You (Help!), Girl (Rubber Soul) , In My Life (Rubber Soul), Words of Love (Beatles for Sale), Here, There, and Everywhere (Revolver)

Side two: Something (Abbey Road), And I Love Her (Hard Day’s Night), If I Fell (Hard Day’s Night), I’ll Be Back (Hard Day’s Night), Tell Me What You See (Help!), Yes It Is (Past Masters Vol 1).

Side three: Michelle (Rubber Soul), It’s Only Love (Help!), You’re Gonna Lose That Girl (Help!), Every Little Thing (Beatles for Sale), For No One (Revolver), She’s Leaving Home (Sgt Pepper),

Side four: Long And Winding Road (Let It Be), This Boy (Past Masters Vol 1), Norwegian Wood (Rubber Soul), You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away (Help!), I Will (White Album), P.S. I Love You (Please Please Me)

I’m listening to the album I’ve created right now. It sure takes me back.  This would have been possible, but time-consuming, in the days before digital music – I could have made a tape of the relevant tracks. Now it is a doddle.

If you are interested in development economics, you should be reading The Private Sector Development Blog (PSD Blog), which gathers together news, resources and ideas about the role of private enterprise in fighting poverty.

The site’s objective is:

• To provide intelligent comment on private sector development issues in the news.
• To highlight new Web sites, articles and books that development practitioners might find useful.
• To provide a link between the detailed resources on the World Bank Group’s Rapid Response Web site, and the ever changing world of the blogosphere.

The PSD Blog is already proving itself an invaluable resource, with lots of interesting information and links. It is maintained by the World Bank Group’s Rapid Response knowledge service, which specializes in policy advice on business environment reform and privatization policy in developing countries.The blog has two impressive authors:

Tim Harford is an economist at the International Finance Corporation (IFC). Before joining the IFC, he was the first Peter Martin Fellow at the Financial Times, where he was a leader writer in 2003. His book of popular economics, The Undercover Economist will be published in late 2005. He is also the author, with Michael Klein, of The Market for Aid, published in June 2005. Rather implausibly, he writes a problem-page column for the Financial Times called Dear Economist.

Pablo Halkyard is a private sector development associate in the joint World Bank-IFC Private Sector Development Vice-Presidency. Prior to joining the World Bank, he worked at an international strategy consultancy specializing on project risk analysis. Born in Brazil, he was raised in the Himalayas, grew up in Washington, studied in Lima, has a British passport, though claims to be Chilean. Unlike Tim, he is still working on his first book. 

Professor Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek draws attention to the facts to dispel the myth that developing countries are poor because they are over-populated.  An excellent contribution to the reality based debate.

Professor Boudreaux might have added that population growth tends to slow down when economic prosperity increases, not the other way round.  Those who are concerned about over-population of the planet should be arguing for measures to improve economic growth in developing countries, not worrying about birth control.

Take a look at the article in The Business by Alex Singleton of the Globalization Institute, denouncing EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson for the agreement to limit textile imports from China.

A sample:

The EU’s stance is perverse and immoral and will hit the weakest and poorest hardest, both in Europe and in China; it shows that Brussels’ supposed commitment to economic development and solving world poverty is utterly worthless. 

Perhaps the language is a little strong, but the analysis is spot on. 

Tim Worstall wants us to believe that the EU makes worse decisions on trade policy because the decision-makers are too far from the people:

it’s a fairly basic theory of mine about how the world works that the further away from the people any bureaucracy is the worse it does. Some twit trying to impose silly rules via the parish council quickly gets reminded, in the most personal and upfront manner, of quite how silly those rules are. Local councils are similarly amenable to personal pressure….derision down the pub for example. As bureaucracies become further and further away, regional, national, continental (and in the uber example, global,) there is less and less of this correction.

I am generally in favour of the principle of subsidiarity (which is that decisions should be made at the lowest possible level) but I don’t think that the problem with trade policy decisions is that they are made by people who are insufficiently politically accountable.

The political economy of trade policy is that trade restrictions (such as tariffs and quotas) are of large and transparent value to a small number of producers, who are typically well organised and vocal. There are many more losers – namely, the consumers who pay the costs of protectionism – but though the loss is large in total, the cost to each consumer is small, and disguised in the form of higher prices.

Politicians who represent farming constituencies are generally vigorous supporters of agricultural subsidies and protectionist quotas on agicultural imports. Politicians in industrial constituencies usually advocate tariffs on imports that compete with their voters’ factories. Politicians that represent the consumers who lose out from these measures tend to give much less priority to trade issues, as their voters are relatively apathetic.

So the political force for protection is stronger than the force for liberalisation, and governments continue to implement trade barriers, even though it would be in the interest of their citizens overall to remove the tariffs and quotas.

The "democratic deficit" in this case is not that the decision-makers are too far from the people; it is that there is an asymmetry between the political pressure from the beneficiaries of trade restrictions and the political pressure from the losers.   

Paradoxically, this may be a case where taking the decisions further from the political representatives of those most directly affected would be beneficial.  There is a parallel with the case for creating an independent central bank (which I guess Tim would be in favour of) – there may be benefits from consciously putting these decisions in the hands of people who are somewhat removed from the political fray and who can be given incentives to pursue the broader public good, rather than having to respond to the more immediate and vocal complaints of the losers. Tim may want to believe that politicians who are more directly accountable to their voters would take better decisions; on this issue, I fear the opposite is true.

Even if Tim were right and there was reason to think we would get better trade policy decisions at lower levels of government, it is impractical.  All but the most extreme Eurosceptics support the EU single market.  And that in turn requires that there are no tariffs and quotas between European countries, and a common external tariff.  To devolve trade policy decisions back to national governments would add a significant burden on Europe’s businesses.

In a companion post, I summarise the recent round of blogging about House of Lords Reform, and highlight some common themes on which there seems to be quite a bit of consensus.  In this post, I offer my own, slightly unusual suggestion for House of Lords reform, which I think would be one way to achieve many of those objectives.

Broadly speaking, we seem to be in favour of an elected second chamber, but want it to have a different composition from the House of Commons. We want a second chamber that is less subject to political patronage and which is outside the reach of political party control, so that it can exercise independent judgement. We want, if possible, to include people with expertise and experience, rather than those with a career in politics.

The proposal 

A Senate elected by non-geographic constituences:

• 400 Senators elected by vocational groups (eg shopworkers, civil servants, farmers, small businesses, stockbrokers, artists)
• 150 Senators elected by the country’s largest membership organizations (eg Trades Unions, Churches, Mosques, UK Athletics, Automobile Association, RSPB, Oxfam, Football Supporters’ Club)
• 50 Senators elected by designated professional, industry and representative groups (eg CBI, Royal Society, British Medical Association, Royal Geographic Society)

The election rules:

• One third of the Senate to be elected every two years for a six year term
• No Senator may serve for more than two terms.
• Each voter can vote in one election for a vocational seat, and in up to three other constituencies.  Voters must be a member of a membership organisation to vote in that organization’s constituency
• Vocational seats allocated in proportion to the number of people employed in that sector of the economy. (Approx 100,000 voters per seat.)
• Vocational seats would be allocated for self employed, unemployed, disabled and retired people
• Election by Single Transferable Vote in each constituency (eg 5 seats for election by civil service)
• Ballots simultaneously by post, internet and in the workplace.
• Political parties (as designated by the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act) may not organize, campaign, raise funds for or otherwise endorse candidates for the Senate
• A Senator may not stand for the House of Commons within ten years of leaving the Senate
• An MP may not stand for the Senate within ten years of leaving the House of Commons
• Senators may not hold paid or unpaid government posts.

Rationale

Geographic constituencies are effective ways to organise people into groups with shared interests – for example, in the provision of roads, sewerage, schools and hospitals in a local areas.  Many people living in a constituency will share some economic interests – for example, many of the people of Chatham have an economic interest in the well-being of the naval shipbuilding industry. 

But where we live is a one-dimensional measure of our interests.  For example, I have many interests in common with my fellow civil servants that I do not necessarily share with other residents of Southwark.  We are likely to share a particular interest in funding and organisation of public services, of the independence of the civil service.  Pensioners are likely to share interests in the value of the state pension, the effects of inflation and interest rates on savings, the provision of nursing care, and the provision of public transport.   These communities of interest are not well represented by geographical constituencies, because they are shared by a geographically dispersed group of people.

A non-geographically elected Senate could meet many of the goals for an second chamber.  It would provide a mechanism for expert scrutiny. Vocational constituencies would be likely to elect Senators with a good understanding of that sector of the economy; and the organisational representatives would be likely to be experts in their field.  There would be little danger of an second chamber that mirrored the composition of the House of Commons, and so pointlessly rubber stamped all proposals. The rules preventing MPs from becoming Senators, and vice versa, and forbidding Senators from becoming members of the Government, would reduce the scope for political patronage.  Senators would have democratic legitimacy while being acknowledged leaders in their field.

Precedent

The closest precedent is Seanad Éireann, the Senate of Ireland.  Seanad Éireann consists of sixty members:

• Eleven appointed by the Prime Minister
• Six elected by the graduates of two Irish universities.
• Forty-three elected from five special panels of nominees by an electorate consisting of MPs, senators and local councillors. Each of the five panels consists, in theory, of individuals possessing special knowledge of, or experience in, one of five specific fields: Education, the arts, the Irish language and Irish culture and literature; agriculture and the fisheries; Labour (organised or otherwise); Industry and commerce (including engineering and architecture); Public administration and social services (including the voluntary sector).

The main difference with the UK Senate would be that the Senators would be directly elected, rather than elected by panels of wise people; and there would be no appointees.

Bishop Hill has kindly drawn my attention to the system of functional constituencies in Hong Kong, which operated on these lines (and came in for some criticism from Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor). The problems encountered there can be avoided. 

What this proposal does not do is follow the precedent of the United States or South Africa of using a second chamber to increase the relative representation of smaller states (or provinces, in the case of South Africa) compared to the more proportional allocation of seats in the lower house.  This is in part because the non-English nations of the United Kingdom (Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland) are already more than proportionately represented in the lower house (as are rural areas), so it is not necessary to balance the lower house with a stronger voice in the second chamber. It is also because this proposal consciously seeks to move away from representation on the basis of geographic location.

Conclusion

There appears to be a broad consensus that the current position of a largely appointed House of Lords should not be the end of the process. However, progress towards an elected House of Lords has been paralysed by the lack of agreement on a particular solution – even though almost everybody agrees that almost any of the other options is preferable to what we have now. Until we can form a consensus about the shape of the second chamber, we are likely to be stuck with what we have got.  But there do seem to be some broad principles on which we can all agree which might guide us towards a solution that would have broad appeal. Though it not familiar, I believe that this proposal actually meets many of the goals that have been articulated for a reformed second chamber.

This is the first of two contributions to the debate reforming the UK House of Lords. This post summarises the issues raised by various blogs who wrote about this in a coordinated effort on 10th August. A companion piece makes a novel proposal for reform.  It summarises the blogs, and draws out some common themes. There seems to be a greater degree of consensus about the characteristics we want from a reformed second chamber than there is on how best to achieve it.

What the bloggers said

Phil at Actually Existing gives a historical perspective to the current position. Simon Holledge at Skakagrall gives a Scottish context, saying that Lords Reform is an essential stage in a series of constitutional reforms that may eventually bring real democracy to every part of the British Isles. Mary Reid and Matt Bowles say that 94 years is long enough to wait for reform.  Jim Bliss – an irishman – is amused by the absurdly anachronistic system of governance still being employed by his former colonial oppressors

Will Howells asks why we need a second chamber at all, but that if there is one agrees with Tim Holyoake and Sara that it should be elected by some sort of proportional representation. Keith Wilson and (with some reservations) Chris Applegate support the Second Chamber of Parliament Bill. 

Sandra Gidley (an MP) can’t understand why this is taking so long. Richard Allan (who used to be an MP) is perplexed that anyone would choose appointment rather than election. Talk Politics calls for a plebescite so that the people can choose how they wish to be governed. Kerron Cross, Malcolm Clark, Stephen Linlithgow and Stephen Glenn all argue that Lords Reform would be a fitting tribute to Robin Cook, who died on August 6th, 2005.

Many of the posts complain about patronage and cronyism.  Carolyn Roberts asks why Andrew Lloyd-Webber has a seat in parliament.  Justin of Chicken Yoghurt argues against jobs for life. Paul Davies and The Woodland Path agree. 

Brian Barder (my Dad) argues that the second chamber should reflect the increasingly federal nature of the UK political system, and refers to his contributions to the Selection Committee on Lords Reform.

Only a few bloggers argued against an elected second chamber (though this is a biased sample, as this mass blogging was part of an Elect the Lords campaign.)  Nosemonkey  advocates reform of the Lords argues against direct election.  He says that the job of the second chamber is to scrutinize legislation, that the public would not tend to elect the most expert people, and that a joint committee of both houses should make appointments. Tim Hicks replies that democracy is better than the alternatives.  Tim Worstall vents his contempt for politicians of all sorts and wants something random instead. John Band at the Sharpener and Jamie at Blood and Treasure argue for a lottery to choose the membership of the second chamber. Nick Barlow thinks a third of the second chamber should be elected every General Election.  Oliver Pell thinks that there is a choice between a democratic House of Lords and an effective revising chamber. Talk Politics calls for elections with a small number of appointees who would be politically independent. Stuart Parr at Wonko’s World thinks that elections are a way for party managers to increase control and argues for a hereditary chamber because it would be more random.

Cavalorn thinks that elections give an illusory sense of power, though The Disillusioned Kid, also from an anarchist perspective, supports anything which increases popular participation.

James Graham says it is important for reformers to work together, and if necessary compromise, to ensure that the coalition for reform remains united.

There were not many new ideas.  Bishop Hill thinks it is a problem that all the parliamentarians are in London, and suggests a virtual parliament instead. Tim Worstall proposes a hereditary seco
nd chamber in which the person raised to the peerage does not get to sit in the house: only his or her offspring.  I proposed a second chamber elected by non-geographical interests, such as vocational groups – about which more in my companion piece setting out a proposal for reform.

The New Politics Network also has more brief a round-up of blogs on House of Lords reform.

Themes

Reading these blogs and the comments on them, there were a number of common threads, though none of these was universal.

1. The commentators were almost all in favour of having a a second chamber that acts as a check on the House of Commons. Only a few contributors entertained the possibility of a unicameral (ie one chamber) system.  Most thought the second chamber should provide an alternative point of view, perhaps with the benefit of more expertise and experience than the lower house. Some thought it should be able to stand up to protect the rights of minorities against populism.
2. Almost all the contributors felt that the second chamber should not simply mirror the House of Commons in its composition. In particular, there was  a strong feeling that the second house should not be subject to the same party disciplines of the lower house. Proposals to ensure that it has a different, more independent composition, using a different electoral system, and/or changing the timing so that the second is not elected on the same timescales as the House of Commons.  The desire to ensure that the second chamber was independent of the party discplines of the lower house was also a key argument for the minority of contributors who favoured either a hereditary system or a lottery.
3. Many of the blogs argued that an elected second chamber could be used to broaden electoral representation. This might be achieved with some form of more proportional representation such as Alternative Vote or Single Transferable Votes.  Some thought that the second chamber should reflect the federal nature of the United Kingdom (rather as the United States and South Africa both use their second chambers to give equal representation to each state or province). This might be thought to balance the perceived iniquities of the first-past-the-post system used to to elect the House of Commons.
4. There was noticeably strong distaste for the patronage implied by a system of appointments to the second chamber, with a number of individual appointments mentioned as examples of cronyism or corruption. Appointments were also thought to to be problematic because they lead to a chamber that is both unrepresentative and insufficiently politically independent of the House of Commons.  An advantage of appointments, however, is that they enable the second chamber to include people of real expertise and experience.
5. Some, but not all, the contributors argued that the second chamber should be elected to provide it with democratic legitimacy. While some worried that an elected house might be subject either to populism (celebrities rather than experts) or simply another venue for the operation of political parties, so providing no independent check on the House of Commons, most contributors thought that legislators should have a democratic mandate.

International context

The Elect the Lords campaign has an interesting international comparison:

• 65 countries in total have a two-chamber parliament.

• Of the 46 countries that wholly or mostly elect their second chambers, 29 are established democracies.

• By contrast, of the 19 countries that wholly or mostly appoint their second chambers, just 5 are established democracies.

• Of the 46 countries that mostly or wholly elect their second chambers, 28 hold direct elections (in the case of established democracies, 19 out of 29 hold direct elections).

• The UK is the only established democracy to appoint its members for life terms of office. The tiny African Kingdom of Lesotho is the only country in the world with a comparable second chamber to the House of Lords.

Conclusion

The current position is very hard to defend – and none of the bloggers attempted to do so.  There is a surprisingly broad consensus on the characteristics we want from a reformed second chamber. Yet there is less agreement about how best to achieve those goals. Because we do not agree on what the new system should be, we seem to be stuck with a system that nobody likes. 

You may also be interested in a companion piece about my proposal for an elected second chamber based on vocational constituencies, which I believe is one way to meet many of the goals for a reformed House of Lords identified by this discussion.

Here’s an interesting email, from someone I know a little (he is a graduate student here at Berkeley) who has commented on my blog in the past with some fairly anodyne political views:

I am going on the academic job market this year and some people have told me that it is unwise to have your name on the web with political comments linked to it, right or left. I have changed my blog to just have my intials, [...], so I can keep writing, but I am wondering if you could do the same [on comments].

This gives rise to two thoughts in my mind.

First, I am not very comfortable about re-writing the past in this way. For a start it is futile, as search engines keep archives, and you can get back-copies of this website (going way back) at www.archive.org. But even (perhaps especially) if it were not pointless, it feels like trying to censor history.

Second, can it really be the case that employers are less likely to employ someone who has expressed balanced and reasonable political opinions? Frankly, I don’t think I’d want to work for an employer that was expecting someone who does not have opinions about the world we live in, and is not willing to express them.

Anyway, I changed his comments. But I don’t think it will do any good.

There have been calls for Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, to resign over his remarks at a press conference following the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell Tube station on 22 July. Blair said

The information I have available if that this shooting is directly linked to the ongoing and expanding anti-terrorist operation. Any death is deeply regrettable. I understand the man was challenged and refused to obey. 

While we should all try to avoid compounding the error by jumping to any more conclusions before all the facts are known, it does seem likely that Ian Blair’s comments at the press conference were not correct. This has lead to a number of calls for his resignation.  For example, according to ITN: 

Asad Rehman, from the Justice4Jean campaign, said that if Sir Ian was found to have misled Mr de Menezes’s family, his position would be "no longer tenable"  … Ex-Cabinet minister Frank Dobson tonight said that Sir Ian’s position was "very difficult" because he was partly responsible for people being misled.

Now I do not think that Sir Ian Blair’s remarks, if they do turn out to be wrong, are sufficient reason for him to resign.  I guess his remarks were based on information that he had been given by his staff – it is very unlikely that he would have said this if he had known it wasn’t true.  But more importantly, while it now seems likely that they were misleading, the remarks did not do anyone much harm (except for some damage to the reputation of a dead man.)

However, it may yet turn out that there are at least two reason why Sir Ian should resign.

• First, if it turns out that the design and execution (if you will pardon the pun) of the ‘shoot to kill’ policy was flawed, then Sir Ian Blair should be held accountable for the consequences. It does seem odd that there was little public discussion of the introduction of this policy, and it may have been implemented without sufficient precautions. We don’t yet know enough about the detail of this policy or how it was communicated to the officers expected to implement it to be sure that there was a failure of leadership, but that certainly seems possible.
• Second, there are some stories that Sir Ian Blair may have sought to prevent an enquiry into the circumstances of the shooting of Mr Menezes. If this turns out to be true, then this would indeed be a resigning matter, consistent with my dictum that it is always the cover-up that does you.

Update 21 August: You should take a look at my Dad’s longer and more considered comments on this.  I agree with him, though he is perhaps willing to give the police more of the benefit of the doubt than me.

I commend to you this very funny article in the satirical magazine, The Onion: 

KANSAS CITY, KS—As the debate over the teaching of evolution in public schools continues, a new controversy over the science curriculum arose Monday in this embattled Midwestern state. Scientists from the Evangelical Center For Faith-Based Reasoning are now asserting that the long-held "theory of gravity" is flawed, and they have responded to it with a new theory of Intelligent Falling.

"Things fall not because they are acted upon by some gravitational force, but because a higher intelligence, ‘God’ if you will, is pushing them down," said Gabriel Burdett, who holds degrees in education, applied Scripture, and physics from Oral Roberts University.

Burdett added: "Gravity—which is taught to our children as a law—is founded on great gaps in understanding. The laws predict the mutual force between all bodies of mass, but they cannot explain that force. Isaac Newton himself said, ‘I suspect that my theories may all depend upon a force for which philosophers have searched all of nature in vain.’ Of course, he is alluding to a higher power."

Hat tip: Brad De Long

You may be interested in the transcript of an online discussion with Washington Post journalist Craig Timberg. You will recall that it was his article that set off a debate in the blogosphere about the role of markets in the famine.  He comes across as a very sincere and decent journalist, doing his best to bring this crisis to the world’s attention.

Thanks to the Private Sector Development blog at the World Bank for publicising this discussion. 

TalkPolitics takes a well-aimed shot at the new arrangements for establishing and operating public enquiries in the UK. Apparently, a cosy deal between Government and Opposition saw the passage of a bill, without a vote, of the Inquiries Act 2005, which

changed the process by which public and other governmental inquiries are convened, conducted and, ultimately, reported on, not a single one of which serves the public interest. It does this by taking away from the independent chair of such an enquiry and from Parliament itself, a whole series of rights which have been in place since the 1920′s, rights which the government has now, through its ministers, reserved solely and exclusive to itself.

One of New Labour’s weaknesses, in my opinion, is that they are insufficiently interested in establishing and sustaining institutions that nurture and protect the rights and values that they espouse, preferring wherever possible to grant themselves discretion to act as they choose. This is a myopia that we will come to regret in time.

Some of us will be celebrating Denmark’s 4-1 victory over the English football team (apprently England’s worst defeat since it was trounced by Wales in May 1980). As evidence of a worrying growth of Danish nationalism in this household, here is a picture of Grethe running the San Francisco marathon in her Denmark t-shirt.

We visited the Grand Canyon on the weekend of 6 & 7 August.  We hiked down the South Kaibab trail to Phantom Ranch, where we stayed the night, and then hiked up Bright Angel trail in the morning.

Phantom Ranch is very highly recommended.  On the banks of a stream feeding into the Colorado River, it is a small camp of chalets and dormitories, with a dining hall and bar. Everything is brought down to the ranch by mule, but it is very comfortable, with air conditioning in the chalets and cold beer in the fridge. We had a very good vegetarian supper in the evening, and a hearty breakfast at dawn.

There are lots of warning signs at the rim discouraging people from trying to do too much, including a moving story of Margaret Bradley, a 3:05 marathon runner who died in the Canyon from dehydration. We took this seriously, and hiked rather than ran, stayed out of the midday heat, and drank lots of water.

You can see our photos here. 

According to SFGate.com, the city of San Francisco is putting out to tender a proposal for city-wide WiFi.