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The most unsettling book I have ever read is "The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Attacks Against the United States," by Jeffrey Lewis. As the title suggests, it's an alternative history in which the diplomacy between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un goes terribly wrong. While Lewis criticizes Trump and Kim's style of governing, the story is not about a mad king destroying the world. Instead, it demonstrates how governments concerned with their own interests and survival can misread each other's signals and accidentally escalate beyond the point of no return.A new book, "Nuclear War: A Scenario" by Annie Jacobsen, promises to provide the same kind of realistic, unsettling scenario. Based on dozens of interviews with former officials, Jacobsen plots out minute by minute and second by second how a nuclear exchange would happen. She illuminates — at least as far as her sources are legally allowed to — the processes that govern American and Russian nuclear command and control. The reader learns what alarms would go off in which control rooms, what orders would have to be spoken to which officials, and which keys would have to be turned in which silos during an apocalypse. It is supposed to worry the readers.The book falls short of that goal. It treats nuclear war as an incomprehensible horror, rather than something human beings plan to do to each other for human reasons, and focuses on the most unlikely scenarios. For all the action-movie details about nuclear weapons being deployed, Jacobsen fails to explain how or why a nuclear war might start. In other words, she treats nuclear annihilation like an asteroid strike or a bear attack, something that is scary to picture but fundamentally impossible to predict or stop. So why should the reader worry about it in day-to-day life?"With time, after a nuclear war, all present-day knowledge will be gone. Including the knowledge that the enemy was not North Korea, Russia, America, China, Iran, or anyone else vilified as a nation or a group," Jacobsen concludes. "It was the nuclear weapons that were the enemy of us all. All along." Perhaps that's a call to abolish nuclear weapons. If so, Jacobsen doesn't provide any reason to believe that might happen.And by juxtaposing the murderous insanity of nuclear war with the sleek efficiency of the institutions designed to fight one, Jacobsen might have hoped to jar her readers. Instead, the book comes off as a demented combination of anti-war pamphlet and U.S. military recruitment ad. ("The function of NATO is to further democratic values and peacefully resolve disputes," comes right after a graphic description of everyone in Washington burning to death.) The only real coherent point it makes is how little time world leaders have to deliberate and react to a nuclear launch—which is certainly an important problem.But again, Jacobsen does not explain why they might be faced with such a problem. "Nuclear War" focuses on a "Bolt out of the Blue" scenario, the U.S. military's term for a complete surprise attack. Although that kind of attack might be "what everyone in DC fears the most," according to a former assistant secretary of defense who speaks to Jacobsen, it is the least likely fear to come true. As Jacobsen herself admits, an unprovoked nuclear first strike would be "national suicide" for any country that launches it. What kind of a madman would do that?Her answer is Kim, the North Korean ruler. "In this scenario, we don't know why the North Korean leader chose to launch a Bolt out of the Blue attack against America, but paranoia almost most certainly played a role," Jacobsen asserts. She throws out a theory about Kim feeling slighted by satellite photos of North Korea at night. To show how Kim fits the bill of a "nihilistic madman," the book cites examples of how oppressive the North Korean system is. Oppressive, however, doesn't mean suicidal. If Kim lives lavishly while his citizens starve, shouldn't he want to keep that arrangement going?Jacobsen misrepresents the purpose of the North Korean nuclear program by glossing over its history. The Clinton administration, she writes, tried to convince North Korea "to abandon the [nuclear] program in exchange for economic benefits. The result was nil." In reality, North Korea did agree to the deal, which broke down a decade later. Believing that North Korea was about to collapse, the Clinton administration implemented it only halfheartedly. North Korea, of course, shirked its own obligations in return, provoking the Bush administration to tear up the deal completely.The supervillain theory of geopolitics, in which America's enemies are plotting to destroy the world for fun, doesn't make sense. China, Russia, and North Korea all oppose the U.S.-led world order due to their specific national interests. For all of those countries, nuclear weapons are the ultimate life insurance policy. The real danger posed by North Korea lies in the Kim dynasty's rational fears; they know that they are quite vulnerable to both internal and external enemies, so their threat calculus likely leaves little room for error.The "2020 Commission Report," on the other hand, lays out the kind of crisis that might push things over the edge. After a North Korean radar crew mistakes a malfunctioning South Korean airliner for a hostile bomber, fighting breaks out on the peninsula. The Trump administration believes that, through threatening bluster, it can force North Korea to stand down and restore calm. Instead, the threats convince Kim that a regime change war has already begun, and that he must show strength to force the United States to back off. That scenario — a series of "normal" mistakes adding up to an extreme outcome — makes more sense to worry about than an unlikely bolt out of the blue.Strangely enough, Jacobsen also describes American policy as irrationally genocidal. She quotes John Rubel, a former U.S. defense official who sat through the secret unveiling of the Single Integrated Operational Plan, the 1960 plan for a "general nuclear war." Years later, a guilt-stricken Rubel compared himself and the generals in the planning room to the Nazis who plotted the Holocaust, according to Jacobsen. After all, the Single Integrated Operational Plan called for the murder of hundreds of millions of civilians, many of them random bystanders in third countries, not counting the Americans who would be obliterated in retaliation.Daniel Ellsberg, another defense planner from the 1960s, had a similar reaction when he read the death estimates. "This piece of paper should not exist," he remembered thinking in "The Doomsday Machine," his 2017 memoir. "It should never have existed. Not in America. Not anywhere, ever. It depicted evil beyond any human project ever. There should be nothing on earth, nothing real, that it referred to." Ellsberg, who died in 2023 and whose parents were Jewish, called it a scheme for "a hundred Holocausts.""The Doomsday Machine," however, goes beyond his immediate reaction to explain why such evil does exist in the world. In the 1930s and 1940s, military planners around the world had come to accept that "strategic bombing," the destruction of enemy cities from a distance, would be the best way to end wars quickly. When the atomic bomb was created, the U.S. military simply thought of it as a more efficient version of the firebombs it was already dropping on German and Japanese cities. For a couple decades after World War II, planners continued to believe in the possibility of a "damage-limiting" nuclear strike, of wiping out the enemy's weapons in order to save cities at home. After many close brushes with nuclear war, world leaders slowly developed the understanding that nuclear weapons were a completely different kind of weapon. And these close brushes, for the most part, were not random or irrational events. Incidents like the 1962 Cuban missile crisis were the result of politics, when one superpower pressed its advantage too hard and set off its rival's survival instinct. Even a 1983 false alarm in Moscow that Jacobsen mentions, the closest thing to a real-life bolt out of the blue scenario, came amid rising U.S.-Soviet military tensions in Europe.The knowledge that mass murder can be a product of normal human motivations is depressing. Yet it's also a relief. Nuclear war is not an inhuman force like an asteroid or a bear. It is a political problem with political solutions. There are many steps that world powers can take — even short of abolishing nuclear weapons — to reduce the risks, by communicating and respecting each other's existential fears. Ellsberg, for example, called on the United States and Russia to at least deactivate the weapons designed for a first strike and take forces off of hair-trigger alert.The enemy is not, as Jacobsen writes, any specific vilified nation. But it is not the nuclear weapons, inanimate objects sitting in silos, either. The problem is us. Nuclear weapons, like every other nasty implement of war, are a means to a human end.

Earlier this month, Democratic Texas congressman Henry Cuellar was indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice on charges of "bribery, unlawful foreign influence, and money laundering." The accusations revolve around a set of deals in which Cuellar allegedly accepted money from a state-owned Azerbaijani oil company and a Mexican bank in exchange for an agreement to push U.S. foreign policy in their favor.As concerning as this may be, it's not even the first such indictment against a sitting member of Congress this year. In March, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) received a superseding indictment which expands further upon earlier accusations that the former Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman took bribes to advocate on behalf of the Egyptian and Qatari governments. These cases make it clear that foreign bribery, in which representatives of one country pay money to manipulate the representatives of another, is still a serious problem in the United States. As the world's most powerful and interventionist nation, no other government has more influence over the rest of the world's affairs — influence which can be bought. The recent charges against Rep. Cuellar and Sen. Mendendez show how significant of a problem bribery and undue influence has been for the U.S. congress, while also drawing attention to the ongoing efforts to prevent this corruption from continuing.Bribes offered in exchange for political favors are nothing new in Congress. The first congressional bribery investigation on record took place in 1854, when a lobbyist attempted to bribe members of Congress into extending the patent for the Colt revolver handgun. The question of bribery across borders, however, did not receive much attention in Congress until fairly recently. Concerns about foreign bribery emerged most forcefully in the mid-1970s as a result of the Watergate investigation and the Church Committee, which investigated abuses by U.S. intelligence agencies. These investigations identified slush funds run by large companies that could be used for illegal political donations and undisclosed foreign payments, including several U.S.-based corporations with overseas operations. In the words of then-committee chairman Sen. Frank Church (D-Ida.), the Church Committee was "concerned with the foreign policy consequences of these payments by U.S.-based multinational corporations… It is no longer sufficient to simply sigh and say that is the way business is done. It is time to treat the issue for what it is: a serious foreign policy problem."There are two types of foreign bribery: attempts by foreign figures to bribe U.S. officials, and attempts by U.S. figures to bribe foreign officials. The Church Committee began by looking into the latter, focusing on political contributions that U.S.-based oil and defense companies had made abroad. What they found was shocking: oil companies were funding politicians in South Korea and Italy; Northrop was paying off a Saudi general; and Lockheed spent millions on bribes to foreign officials in Japan, the Netherlands, Indonesia, and more. Lockheed even sought to claim tax deductions for its bribes, a practice which was legal until 1975.These and other revelations caused major scandals abroad. Congress was rattled by the way that some countries reacted to the corruption, including the Peruvian government's expropriation of assets belonging to a corrupt U.S. oil company. Combined with the American public's disgust towards the corruption of the Watergate scandal, conditions were ripe for serious reform. In 1977, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) was signed into law, making it illegal for U.S. citizens to bribe foreign officials. Until this rule was turned into a treaty 20 years later, the U.S. was alone in the world in adopting this form of anti-corruption policy.For much of the U.S.'s history, political corruption was both common and partially normalized, explained away as a necessity to achieve political and business goals. When a corrupt middleman helping U.S. weapons companies make deals in Saudi Arabia explained his role to Pentagon officials in 1973, one official present described the activities as "an inexpensive economic aid program." It was the fallout from Watergate and the Church Committee that turned bribery into a proper taboo. This sharp cultural change caught some off guard: one key Lockheed executive who was ejected from the company due to the bribery scandal complained that "all of a sudden, there's a different set of standards… I looked at these payments as necessary to sell a product. I never felt I was doing anything wrong." The public's attention next turned to the flip side of foreign bribery: foreign representatives paying off U.S. officials. While the FCPA criminalized foreign bribery committed by U.S. citizens, it did not fully criminalize foreign bribery aimed at U.S. citizens. New investigations into bribes directed at members of the U.S. congress helped to demonstrate the scale of this issue.In the "Koreagate" scandal of the late 1970s, a well-connected South Korean businessman offered bribes to U.S. members of Congress in exchange for favorable treatment of the nation's dictatorship. Many lawmakers were implicated, and one was sent to jail. Congress launched investigations into alleged bribery campaigns by Iranian and South African officials in 1979 and 1980, respectively, but ultimately found "no evidence of intentional misconduct." Little did they know that something much larger was brewing beneath the surface.In 1980, NBC News revealed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had conducted a large-scale sting operation against corrupt politicians. "Abscam," short for "Arab scam," involved FBI agents posing as the agents of a wealthy Middle Eastern sheikh and offering bribes to seven members of Congress, all of whom were eventually convicted. This investigation, controversial for the use of tactics which many might consider entrapment, formed the basis of the 2013 comedy film "American Hustle."Abscam was the last major entry in this burst of investigations, but new scandals continued to emerge over the years. After congressman Jay Kim (R-Cal.) narrowly won his 1992 reelection campaign, it was revealed that more than a third of his campaign contributions were illegal, including money with its origins in South Korea and Taiwan. Five years later, Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla.) pressured Turkemenistan's ambassador to the U.S. on behalf of a Florida-based company seeking a natural gas deal with the country; the same company had previously paid for her trips overseas. She also was accused of accepting a car from a Malian businessman as a gift for her daughter.The next large scandal came in the form of congressman William J. Jefferson (D-La.), who was convicted of a litany of crimes in 2009. Jefferson accepted large bribes from U.S. companies in exchange for promoting their business interests across western Africa. He was finally caught after accepting a $100,000 cash bribe from a woman who instructed him to pass it on to the vice president of Nigeria. What he didn't know was that the woman was an FBI asset wearing a wire; the Bureau raided his Capitol Hill apartment days later.These issues have continued into the 2020s, even before the bombshell indictments of Rep. Cuellar and Sen. Menendez. In 2022, congressman Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.) was convicted of lying to the FBI about illegal campaign money which originated from a Nigerian billionaire. His conviction was later reversed on technical grounds, but new charges were filed against him earlier this month.Recent efforts have helped to strengthen U.S. laws against foreign bribery. President Biden signed the Foreign Extortion Prevention Act into law late last year, making it illegal for foreign officials to demand or accept bribes from U.S. citizens. This reform directly addresses the "demand side" of the bribery issue which the FCPA left untouched. In addition, the Securities and Exchange Commission has stepped up its enforcement of the FCPA ever since creating a "specialized unit" to enforce the law in 2010. However, there is more that can be done to strengthen the law. For example, Congress could repeal the 1988 amendment to the law which creates an exception for "facilitating or expediting payments."Other reforms can help in fighting corruption. Congressional ethics committees need to be strengthened in order to identify and address ethics violations more quickly. Stronger enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act could make it harder for middlemen acting as agents of foreign governments to hide in the shadows.Members of Congress must also have a zero tolerance policy for their colleagues who are caught engaging in foreign bribery. Senator Menendez has already faced calls for resignation from the majority of senators from his own party; although he gave up his leadership role on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he continues to cling to office. Rep. Cuellar, on the other hand, has faced little opposition from his Democratic colleagues so far.Finally, these scandals should lead Washington to reconsider U.S. foreign policy more generally. The United States frequently intervenes in the affairs of other nations, even in contexts where it makes little sense. Members of Congress can use this global reach to line their own pockets; simultaneously, this same power makes them prime targets for foreign interests who wish to manipulate the way that the United States interacts with the rest of the world. A foreign policy that turns away from coercive interventionism while still encouraging international cooperation would provide fewer opportunities for foreign bribery to occur in the first place.U.S. foreign policy should be dictated by the interests of the American people, not the personal financial interests of politicians, wealthy businessmen, and foreign governments. The cases of Rep. Cuellar and Sen. Menendez are only the most recent in a substantial history of such behavior. To fix U.S. foreign policy, we need to clean up Congress and put an end to foreign bribery.

Today marks a solemn anniversary in Brazil: 60 years ago, the Brazilian military seized power from the government of João Goulart, marking the start of over two decades of military rule. Brazil's 2014 Truth Commission report is the country's only formal investigation into this period of dictatorial rule. The commission's 2,000-page report revealed some grisly details of the dictatorship's human rights abuses, identified over 400 individuals killed by the military, and shed light on Brazil's role in destabilizing other Latin American countries.To assist with the Truth Commission, then-Vice President Joe Biden hand-delivered declassified State Department records to former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff — who herself had been imprisoned and tortured by the military regime. The records offered details about the dictatorship and Washington's enabling of abuses, including a cable from former Ambassador to Brazil William Rountree arguing that condemning the regime's human rights "excesses" would be "counterproductive." Biden's delivery of the declassified records was symbolic, since the U.S. had supported the coup. The U.S. solidified its support for the putschists the year prior, drew up plans for a U.S. invasion if deemed necessary, and sent a naval task force to Brazil to support the military plotters. In the end, direct U.S. involvement wasn't needed — Goulart fled to Uruguay by April 4. The coup was carried out by Brazil's generals, but Washington celebrated it as a victory for its interests nonetheless. On the one hand, U.S. support for the coup laid bare the hypocrisy of America's supposed commitment to sovereignty and democracy. Gone was the Kennedy administration's promise to reject a "Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war." The Cold War logic of siding with anti-communist dictators for the purpose of defeating the Soviet Union prevailed. Washington may have lost China, but it won Brazil — or so the thinking went. However, even the most cynical arguments for aligning with undemocratic regimes for a strategic purpose often failed to bear fruit, given that many of these regimes departed from U.S. policy on key issues. Many historians of the U.S.-Brazil relationship contend that during this period their ties at times more closely resembled rivals rather than close partners. Rubens Ricupero, a former diplomat and minister of finance of Brazil, writes that, "Little by little, doubts turn[ed] into disappointment, and this le[d] to gradual disengagement in relation to the regime they had helped to create."When it first took power, Brazil's military dictatorship closely followed Washington's lead. Goulart was out, as was his "Independent Foreign Policy," a non-alignment stance that emphasized self-determination, decolonization, and non-intervention, devised by the ousted president's predecessor, Janio Quadros. In line with Washington's desires, the dictatorship, which rotated through five different military general-presidents between 1964 and 1985, broke off relations with Cuba and even assisted the U.S. in its occupation of the Dominican Republic in 1965.Washington also saw Brazil as a key ideological partner in destabilizing leftist regimes across Latin America. As one Brazilian general put it, the United States wanted Brazil "to do the dirty work." And it did. Most prominently, the Brazilian regime played a critical role in the overthrow of the democratically-elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile,. even secretly bringing members of the Chilean military to Brazil to discuss the potential coup. Brazil under the generals also participated in Operation Condor, the secret cooperation of right-wing military dictatorships in much of Latin America to assassinate, or "disappear" perceived leftists and other dissidents during the 1970s.Over time, the Brazilian regime's alignment with the U.S. waned and tensions bubbled up. Dr. Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira writes in his book "Brazil-United States: An Emerging Rivalry," that "automatic alignment with State Department guidelines could no longer continue for long, as it no longer effectively corresponded to the national interests of a developing country that aspired to become a power." Despite the fact that the U.S. wanted the benefits of outsourcing its dirty work, it was not willing to accept the consequences that came with greater military autonomy for Brazil. Dr. Eduardo Svartman, a political science professor at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, told Responsible Statecraft that one early issue that emerged was over Brazil's request for F-5 fighter jets."In the eyes of American politicians, if the great threat in Latin America was communist insurgents, there was no point to sell or transfer modern supersonic fighter jets to Latin American countries when helicopters would do the job much better," Svartman said. The Brazilian government disagreed, believing it was important to have a modern military in order to project power in South America. The generals accordingly grew more reliant on Europe, buying several Mirage fighter aircrafts from France. They eventually pushed the F-5 sale through several years later, but it was an early lesson that the U.S. may not be their most reliable partner. Though the U.S. remained an important supplier of critical components for Brazil's burgeoning national arms industry, Brazil's supply of U.S.-made arms imports decreased from 92% to 14% of its total arsenal over the course of the dictatorship. The U.S. also grew frustrated with Brazil's move towards positions associated with the non-aligned movement. Though Brazil was never a full member of the movement, in the early 1970s, it supported the decolonization of the Lusophone countries in Africa, emphasized non-intervention, and recognized the MPLA in Angola. Elements of the Independent Brazilian Foreign Policy had returned. Perhaps the biggest source of tension between the U.S. and Brazil was over the development of a nuclear program. Brazil refused to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, arguing that nuclear technology was vital for its development. After the U.S. suspended the supply of enriched uranium for Brazil's research reactors, the regime turned to West Germany and negotiated a major nuclear agreement in 1975.In an internal report, the CIA claimed that Brazil's nuclear ambitions posed a "fundamental challenge" to U.S.-Brazil relations. Without informing the Brazilians, newly-elected Vice President Walter Mondale tried to lobby the German government to cancel the agreement. Washington also grew frustrated with the generals' authoritarianism and human rights abuses. The regime passed a series of "institutional acts" — the first of which came just days after the coup — that gave them sweeping powers, including suspending the rights of opposition leaders and power to declare a recess in Congress. Ricupero writes that "with each new attack on the legal order or violation of rights, the embassy in Rio de Janeiro was forced into dialectical contortions to calm the State Department's unrest." Pressure on rising authoritarianism and the nuclear issue came to a head during the Carter administration, which applied human rights as a criteria for military assistance more directly. After the Carter State Department criticized Brazil for its human rights abuses in 1977, the Brazilian government retaliated by suspending the Joint Military Commission between the U.S. and Brazil, its Naval Mission, and a long-standing bilateral military accord. According to Washington's then-ambassador to Brasilia, Robert Sayre, "U.S.-Brazil relations just went to pieces."Despite a brief rapprochement with the election of Ronald Reagan as president in 1980, Brazil became critical of Washington's revival of more interventionist policies under his administration. Washington's decision to side with Britain against neighboring Argentina during the Falklands/Malvinas War in 1982 confirmed Brazilian suspicions that the U.S. was not a reliable partner. For the first time ever, "the hypothesis of war with the United States became an object of study in the Armed Forces," writes Bandeira.Brazil also opposed the so-called Reagan Doctrine, which sought to overthrow leftist governments in Central America and southern Africa. The U.S. had become not just a distant partner but something altogether new: an emerging rival. Many of these disputes between the two countries remained well into the period of democratization that began in 1985. There is a lot that is still unknown about this chapter in Brazil's history, and the U.S.' relationship to the military regime. Peter Kornbluh, a senior analyst at the National Security Archive who also served as the liaison between the U.S. and Brazilian governments for the Truth Commission, estimates there are still thousands of records that remain classified, including many sensitive records from the CIA and the Department of Defense. "[T]he degree to which the United States is sitting on documentation about repression in Brazil is the degree to which the United States is not assisting Brazilian society in reminding itself about the horrors of what happened behind closed doors in secret detention centers," Kornbluh told Responsible Statecraft.To start, President Biden could honor a request from 16 Brazilian civil society organizations to declassify these records. The groups' appeal states that declassification would "provide valuable information about human rights violations committed during the Brazilian dictatorship and clarify the degree of the United States' involvement in or knowledge of these events. This act of transparency would also strengthen the foundations of the U.S.-America relationship, fostering trust and collaboration on important issues such as human rights, democracy, and regional stability." The Luiz Inácio "Lula" da SiIva government is unlikely to formally request these documents from Biden himself. In an effort to appease leaders of the Brazilian Armed Forces who still hold the 21-year dictatorship in high regard, Lula controversially canceled all formal demonstrations of the 60th anniversary. But even without an official commemoration, millions of Brazilians from Manaus in the Amazon to Florianopolis in the far south are organizing demonstrations to send a message of "dictatorship never again."

For the Arab Gulf kingdoms, the Horn of Africa is a strategic perimeter. They want to minimize political threats — some are hostile to Islamists, all want to suppress democracy movements. Anticipating a post-carbon and food insecure world, the Gulf States want to possess rich farmlands. Each has its own vision of African client states that will do their bidding. This is a recipe for proxy wars, state fragmentation and autocracy in northeast Africa.For the Horn of Africa, today's crises are existential. War, dictatorship and famine are causing state collapse. The African Union is compromised, its peace and security system unravelling. The United Nations is retreating from peacemaking, increasingly reduced to a bare-bones humanitarian provider.The dangers were illuminated by the surprise New Year's Day deal between Abiy Ahmed, prime minister of Ethiopia, and Muse Bihi, president of the self-declared Republic of Somaliland, a breakaway region of northwest Somalia. Ethiopia has been renowned for careful diplomacy, including championing the inviolability of existing boundaries. After fighting wars with Somalia in the 1960s and '70s, Ethiopia had learned to be circumspect and consultative in its dealings with Mogadishu.Last week, Ethiopia upended that tradition. It promised to recognize Somaliland as an independent sovereign state, in return for Somaliland leasing it a 12-mile stretch of land, including a seaport, that will allow Ethiopia to establish a naval base. This in turn unleashed strong words from Somalia — which had not been informed ahead of time. The AU called for Ethiopia to treat Somalia with respect. Fears of new conflicts were stirred. Unsaid in public is that the UAE is widely suspected to be the patron of the deal.For the United States, crises in the Horn of Africa are a sidebar to the ongoing Israel-Gaza war and the confrontation with Iran. Gunboat diplomacy in the Red Sea — the warships deployed under Operation Prosperity Guardian to protect shipping from attacks from the Houthis in Yemen — is the priority.The narrow strip of water carries 12 percent of world seaborne trade. For sailors, the Red Sea is "a sea on the way to somewhere else," its shores at best an inconvenience, at worst a security threat.There's a global consensus on keeping the shipping lanes open. If the Red Sea shuts down — as happened following the 1967 Arab-Israeli war— the knock-on effects on trade between Europe and Asia would be economically severe. The EU-run Operation Atalanta runs an anti-piracy flotilla involving warships from 13 European nations, (including the UK, which provided the flagship until Brexit), working with ships from Ukraine, India, Korea and Colombia.After a few years the flotilla commanders concluded that the solution to piracy lay onshore, in the form of diplomacy to resolve Somalia's conflicts and economic assistance to provide livelihoods to impoverished fishermen. That was a step in the right direction.Saudi Arabia chairs a Red Sea Forum that includes eight littoral states (all except Israel), to tackle piracy, smuggling and marine resources — not political issues.Six years ago, Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa who chairs the African Union High-Level Implementation Panel for the Horn of Africa, introduced the term "Red Sea Arena." The idea was to create a diplomatic forum that would include not just the littoral states, but all the other countries with vital interests in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden or with political and commercial links across the narrow strip of water.The former AU Commissioner for Peace and Security, Ramtane Lamamra explained: "The Red Sea has historically been a bridge rather than a divide, with the peoples on the two shores sharing culture, trade, and social relations." Egypt has millennia-old interests in the Nile Valley and both shores of the Red Sea. Ethiopia has a vital interest in access to the sea. The UAE, Qatar, Oman, and Turkey all have historic or current interests.Regional and global power struggles are played out in the Red Sea Arena. Seven nations including the U.S., China, Turkey and the UAE have naval bases there. Others, including Iran and Russia, have warships in the vicinity and are actively seeking bases. The port of Eilat in the Gulf of Aqaba is Israel's strategic back door, as the Houthi attacks on shipping have dramatically shown.The plan for a standing conference of Red Sea Arena states built on proposals contained in the World Peace Foundation report to the AU, "African Politics, African Peace" — for which Mbeki and veteran UN diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi co-authored the preface. The idea was that Middle Eastern states should sign on to the principles of the AU's peace and security architecture and establish joint mechanisms for cooperation.The AU failed to act on these proposals. Nor were they raised at the UN Security Council.Instead, Arabian Gulf states are increasingly assertive in the Horn, and they're bringing an aggressive form of transactional politics, including funding proxies to fight wars. The U.S. — whose security umbrella sheltered the Red Sea for decades — seems uninterested.Saudi Arabia has long seen the African shore of the Red Sea as part of its security perimeter. Qatar and Turkey sought influence in Sudan and Somalia, especially among the Islamists. Israel has discreetly sought a determining role in the region.But the key actor is the UAE. A small, rich state, it uses proxies to project power, and supports separatists in disregard of international norms. Abu Dhabi's clients include key players in Libya and Chad, and it is positioning itself as kingmaker in the Horn. The UAE supports and arms Ethiopia. It already controls many ports in the region — including, it is suspected, the proposed Ethiopian port and naval base in the land leased from Somaliland. But Abu Dhabi has yet to clarify its strategic goals for the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa.The UAE has long had a free pass in Washington. Only recently has the U.S. begun to criticize Abu Dhabi's adventurism in Sudan, calling out its arming of the murderous Rapid Support Forces there.The last decade has been a rollercoaster of hope and horror for the peoples of the Red Sea Arena. Popular uprisings in Yemen, Ethiopia and Sudan all descended into lethal brews of autocracy, war, atrocity, and famine, with local conflicts escalating into proxy wars. Guided by the short-term imperative of staying in power — and by the ambitions of cash-rich foreign sponsors — today's leaders are too often short-sighted and transactional.Under UN and AU guidance, a raft of peace agreements was crafted to serve as the threshold for democracy. Today a peace pact, such as the threadbare "Permanent Cessation of Hostilities" that ended Ethiopia's war in Tigray, may be no more than a truce. The principle of the primacy of politics — that served Africa's peace agenda well — has come to mean short-term transactionalism rather than a commitment to democracy, good governance, and inclusivity.A key African norm was "sovereignty as responsibility," developed by the Sudanese/South Sudanese lawyer and diplomat Francis Deng. Today we have its antithesis, decried as "neo-sovereigntism" by the Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe.Today's regression means that Eritrean President Isaias Afewerki is being rehabilitated. For 30 years, Isaias has ruled an iron fist, with no constitution let alone political parties or an open media, hoping that the tide of global liberalism would recede. He looks to be proven correct.Sudanese General Mohamed Hamdan Dagolo, known as "Hemedti," commander of the Rapid Support Forces, the insurgent paramilitaries notorious for their human rights abuses, is touring Africa in a Royal Jet airplane (an Emirati airline). He arrived in Addis Ababa last week where he met Prime Minister Abiy. Extending protocol to Emirati-backed disrupters is the new normal in the region.To the extent that it functions at all, the AU is becoming the face of illiberal multilateralism, veering away from its founding principles. The UN's practice of deferring to its regional partners leaves it eviscerated. The InterGovernmental Authority on Development — the eight-member northeast African bloc — is now deeply divided and approaching paralysis.With the Horn of Africa and Yemen slipping far down the priority list in Western foreign ministries, America and Europe are sending mid-ranking diplomats into the snake pit, woefully under-armed for the perils they encounter. Too easily intimidated by swaggering local despots, perhaps swayed by zombie "Pan Africanist" slogans that challenge their right to talk about human rights, they have left their countries irrelevant in the face of ruthless Gulf power-broking.Recent developments could not have been anticipated in detail. But American diplomats saw the broader challenge some years ago. In 2020, a bipartisan "senior study group" on the Red Sea convened by the United States Institute of Peace, prioritized a broad diplomatic strategy for the Red Sea Arena. The USIP report warned that conflicts in the region could threaten U.S. national security and proposed a high-level envoy with a broad mandate.The Biden administration quickly appointed a special envoy for the Horn of Africa, but the Africa Bureau at the State Department soon downgraded the position. The cost of this strategic neglect is becoming clear today.There's still a chance for a diplomatic forum that promotes collective security. Washington has lost its best opportunities to take a lead — any U.S. initiative today will arouse deep suspicions among others. Middle Eastern powers don't, as a rule, propose collective action, and the Gulf states are divided. The Europeans will follow, not lead.The onus of leadership then falls on Africa and on the United Nations. Acting together, they can create a consensus that brings on board America, Europe, China, and Russia in a forum framed by the agenda of a stable and cooperative Red Sea Arena.

The Iraqi army captain who assassinated King Faisal II and his family in 1958 claimed, "All I did was remember Palestine, and the trigger on the machine-gun just set itself off." Although Iraqi historians refute this assertion and maintain the officer was a delusional madman, in the days leading up to the massacre of the royal family, the Iraqi opposition had been emboldened by growing anti-Israel sentiment and a perception that the Iraqi monarchy leaned too heavily toward Western nations which enabled Israeli aggression toward Arab states. Six decades later, the Palestinian question still enrages the "Arab Street." The war in Gaza raises concerns of violent regional spillover and Iraq would not be not immune from the consequences. Unlike the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon, however, it is unlikely that armed conflict will come to Iraq as sympathy for the Palestinians will not trump war fatigue. Yet, there are reasons to fear the indirect costs of war. Chief among those concerns revolve around neighboring Iran being involved in a wider conflict, but no less significant could be the effects on the internal politics of Iraq, its economy, and its international relations. Much will depend on the skills of Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani to balance the pressure from his political opponents and the armed militias.Internal politicsAll politics are local, and in Iraq they are often armed. Unlike the dictatorships, dynasties, and monarchies surrounding it, Iraq remains a parliamentary democracy, generally responsive to public sentiment but also coercion from armed militias outside of government control.Iraq's recent history shows the best and worst of democracy, free speech, and the right to assemble. In October 2019, widespread street protests over corruption, unemployment, inadequate services, and poor living conditions brought down the government of Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi. The Tishreen ("October") protesters demanded the resignation of Abdul-Mahdi, commitments to reform, and early elections. While authorities responded with a relatively heavy hand, the government fell within two months. Abdul-Mahdi's replacement, Mustafa al Kadhimi, enjoyed a full term in office but the process of replacing him with the current prime minister, Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani came after Iraq went through the longest period without a formal government in its modern history. Among other factors, his appointment was fiercely opposed by the powerful rabble-rousing Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr when Sadr was unable to form a government. Sadr's party resigned en masse from Parliament but not before his followers stormed the Council of Representatives in July 2022 twice, and occupied the Presidential Palace the following month. The departure of the Sadrists from the palace led to a deadly firefight in the Green Zone which soon spread to Iraq's southern provinces. Against this backdrop of violence and turmoil, the Sudani government came to power in October 2022 fully understanding the need to remain sensitive to public opinion and well armed political opponents. The Sudani government also remains under pressure from militias, a delicate balancing act for a country beholden to the accomplishments of these groups in the fight against Daesh, or ISIS. These militias enjoy quasi-political influence on the Iraqi body politic and are closely tied to Iran. Sudani's political opponents have been closely watching for a misstep (common to all opposition parties worldwide), not least Sadr, who has already called on his supporters to join "peaceful" demonstrations in protest of Israel's war on Gaza. Rarely are Sadrist demonstrations peaceful as shown by the sit-ins in 2021 and the violent attacks into the protected Green Zone in 2022.Against this backdrop, Sudani maintains a careful reading of internal politics. While he may not be ousted by demonstrations like Abdul-Mahdi or fend off assassination attempts as did Khadimi, participating in internal politics remains a risky business in Iraq; so is international diplomacy.External relations While Prime Minister Sudani has demonstrated strong skills in managing Iraq's internal politics, external relations with Iran and the United States could provide the missteps his opponents seek. Despite strong condemnation of the attacks into Gaza, Iran-backed militias have significantly ramped up their drone and rocket attacks on U.S. military bases in Iraq and Syria.In response, a parade of U.S. officials from CIA Director William Burns to Secretary of State Antony Blinken (adorned in body armor) have visited Iraq since October 7 persuading, cajoling, and warning Sudani of the consequences of continued attacks on U.S. personnel. Sudani issued stern warnings that Iraqi territory should not be used as a proxy battlefield, and that continued attacks by these groups may provoke U.S. action against Iran even in the absence of proof that these attacks were "explicitly ordered" by Tehran. Arresting a small number of suspects in the attacks has, for the moment, kept the diplomatic situation somewhat calm. Sudani seems to have found a way to acquiesce to Washington's demands while placating Iran and the militias. Keen on maintaining positive relations with both Iran and the U.S., while remaining attentive and in tune to sentiments on the street, Sudani cannot risk being perceived as cowering to Western pressures at a time when public opinion is overwhelmingly in support of Gaza. But that balancing act will require continued statesmanship to uphold Iraq's sovereignty without being labeled by detractors as a puppet of any hegemon, whether Iran or the U.S. A tipping point, however, may be if the war in Gaza continues. The recent outcry against the December 25 airstrikes by the U.S. military in response to a rocket attack which seriously injured an American soldier is the most recent example. Not only did Sudani call the rocket attack an act of terrorism, but also condemned the American strike as a serious violation of Iraqi sovereignty and announced that "the Iraqi government is heading towards ending the presence of international coalition forces."Economic effectsWhile Iraq's economy has shown some signs of recovery in recent months — 25 percent of Iraqis reportedly live below the poverty line — unemployment is forecasted to reach 40 percent, and climate change has contributed to water scarcity. There is little appetite for yet another war in Iraq when average Iraqis are battling to get by.In the event the Gaza conflict expands, Iraqis could be affected by events such as the Houthi attacks in the Red Sea. Blocking maritime traffic through the Suez Canal and rerouting traffic around the Cape of Good Hope in Africa could affect the relatively modest inflation rate in Iraq at a time when the Iraqi dinar has also gone through a significant depreciation. While the economic situation in Iraq is far better than regional neighbors such as Iran, Turkey, and Egypt, expectations from consumers used to relatively stable prices are high and even a small amount of economic turbulence on top of anger at the situation in Gaza could challenge the Sudani government. As former Iraqi Energy Minister Luay Al Khateeb puts it, "If the Gaza war engulfs Iran, this will lead to major consequences on Iraq's political and economic stability. The ramifications will force Iran to prioritize its needs to meet local demand on power sector and gas supplies and cut natural gas electricity exports to Iraq."Iraq currently imports electricity and gas from Iran that total close to 40 percent of its power supply. "Iran's force majeure cuts will compromise Iraq's national grid to disable 50 percent of Iraq's service sectors and investment projects, affecting the country's revenue; [it will have a] negative impact on GDP and will most certainly ignite unprecedented populous protests against the government and the political system at large," says Al Khateeb. "For Iraq to avoid such a situation, a quick short term resolution will come at a major cost to compensate for the losses by importing expensive diesel and securing more financial allocation for power generation maintenance that will eventually increase the budget deficit beyond control."Iraq's former Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Dr Ali Allawi concurs."A war certainly would lead to Iranian cutbacks of gas supplied to Iraq," he says, adding, "It would also be used to pressure Iraq to drop its public neutrality between the U.S. and Iran. The Iraqi public is decidedly in favor of Palestine, and the Gaza war has made the Iranian connection less contentious than before."While international actors seek to contain the violence inside of Israel and Gaza, regional actors seem intent on expanding the war well beyond those borders. Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and Iran-backed militias seem hell-bent on spreading the flames. The United States blames Iran as the source of regional provocations and even if inaccurate, the U.S. has put its forces on war footing, sending aircraft carriers and increased intelligence and other combat capabilities into the region, ostensibly to deter and contain the conflict — moves that inadvertently increase the dangers.of that very conflagration either by mistake, miscalculation, or misstep. The recent American-led maritime mission, Operation Prosperity Guardian, will increase the number of international warships in the Red Sea and should a Houthi missile sink a commercial tanker or a U.S. warship, the responses and counter-responses may make the war in Gaza seem minor.The Middle East has not seen this level of instability in decades and Iraq is not immune from that instability. Even if, to date, it has not been directly affected by the Gaza war or a wider regional conflict, Iraq it is already feeling its indirect effects through increased tensions between the U.S. and Iran, large scale street protests in support of Palestine, Iranian -backed militias attacking U.S. personnel, domestic political opponents, and impacts on the Iraqi economy. While Prime Minister Sudani has deftly managed those challenges to date, it remains problematic whether he, or Iraq, can weather the storms blowing in from Gaza for much longer.

 Elizabeth Anderson is always an interesting author for me to read because as much as we are both concerned with the same issues, namely,  the politics of work, and the domination of the work ethic over our lives, we approach these issues from fundamentally different philosophical perspectives. Anderson is for the most part working on these issues from within the liberal tradition, construed broadly, while my approach is framed in large part by the traditions of Marxism and Marxist Spinozism. Determination is negation, as Marx cited Spinoza as saying, and it is through reading Anderson that I get a deeper sense of my own philosophical commitments and perspective.Anderson's latest book is, as the title and subtitle make clear, about the work ethic and how it has been reworked by neoliberalism. Her critique is in some sense an immanent one, demarcating a division between a progressive and conservative work ethic. In some sense this division draws a line of demarcation that can be traced back to such thinkers as John Locke. It is a question of asking who or what was being referred to when Locke argued that, "God gave the world to men in common…He gave it to the use of the industrious and rational (and labor was to be his title to it) not to the fancy or covetousness of the quarrelsome and contentious." Where the quarrelsome and contentious that Locke was arguing against the lower classes, the rabble, who begged rather than worked, or were they the landed gentry and aristocratic classes, that lived off of their inheritance rather than laboring? Anderson makes the claim that it is as much the latter than the form, that the central line of demarcation in Locke's writing is between idle and industrious and this line of demarcation cuts against the wealthy as much as the poor. As much as Locke can be understood as arguing for inequality and the accumulation of a few, it is only because those few are proven to be more industrious. Anderson rejects the interpretation put forward by C.B. Macpherson and others that Locke is developing the philosophical foundations for capitalism. For her the line "turfs my servant has cut" is less a symptom of an emergence of wage labor than a residue of the disappearing world of indentured servitude. Locke is positioned as a starting point of a division between the progressive and conservative work ethic, a disagreement "within economic liberalism," as Anderson puts it.  As she argues, "The progressive work ethic includes the virtues of industry, saving for investment, and prudential planning. As a secularized ideal, it aims to bring the rewards of following the work ethic from the next life into this one." In contrast to this the conservative work ethic focuses on work itself as a source of discipline primarily for the poor and working classes. The meaning of the work ethic does not end or begin with Locke. After Locke it continually vacillates between its progressive meaning, critical of the idle rich as much as the unemployed, and its conservative meaning, focused on the idleness of the poor. Caught between these two interpretations is the question of how unemployment is understood, is it structural, an effect of the capitalist division of labor, or is it an individual issue, a failure of resolve, dedication, and industriousness? As Anderson writes, "Poor law reforms at turn of the seventeenth century had been drafted partially in response to the discovery of a large class of poor who were neither the impotent deserving poor (unable to work) nor the able-bodied underserving poor (unwilling to work). This third class of poor--the "laboring poor" for whom Adam smith had great sympathy, and Burke such contempt--consisted of the involuntary under- and unemployed."In other words, namely Hegel's (cited above) the problem of capitalism is that of the rabble. By and large the response to the rabble, to those able to work but unable to find work, has been to double down on the "ideology of the conservative work ethic." Anderson defines ideology as follows, "By 'ideology' I refer in part to a set of explicit beliefs that rationalize some social or political ideal and its associated institutions and policies. I also refer to a system of representations, cognitive biases, attitudes, emotional and epistemic dispositions, and values embodied in the social practices associated with those ideologies."In the conservative work ethic it is work itself that becomes the central ideology. Work, wage labor, is ideological when it is in excess of its economic function. As Anderson writes, "British welfare reform and famine-relief policies in the nineteenth century reflected the key features of poverty policies informed by the conservative work ethic. They offer extremely stinting levels of relief, typically insufficient to enable recipients to escape poverty, and sometimes even to survive. They observe the principle of "less eligibility," insuring that recipients, even if blamelessly unable to work, are worse off than the lowest paid worker. They prefer to condition relief on the performance of wage labor, even if the recipient's activities would better promote social welfare directed to education, self-employment, or dependent care. Work requirements are often imposed without regard to their interference with recipient's ability to fulfill duties provide direct care for dependents."Following Anderson's understanding of ideology, it is possible to say that the conservative work ethic is attached to the idea of work as discipline and virtue, what Hegel understood as the ethical and formative dimension of work.  In some sense this ideological dimension is at tension with the economics of work, as workhouses and even modern work programs prove to be more costly than just giving people what they need to survive. It is not always in tension, however, and the overall emphasis on work as discipline and virtue has proven to be a beneficial tool of discipline and control--this is part of what Anderson means by neoliberalism. As with her earlier book on the corporation, one is left wondering where Marx fits into this divide between progressive and conservative work ethics. In some sense Anderson sees Marx as the most radical of the advocates of the progressive work ethics, "from each according to their abilities to each according to their needs" can be understood as a statement of a general imperative of productivity and industriousness. Marx went further than Mill and other advocates of the progressive work ethic in that he thought that a realization of this ideal would mean eliminating private property and markets. Anderson generally interprets Marx through the lens of Lenin and even Stalin rereading the young Marx discussion of labor as a human activity as a testament to productivity as an ideal.  Her exclusion of any other aspect of Marx, of an anti-work Marx gets the strangest dismissal. As Anderson writes,"This view draws inspiration from nascent attempts of revolutionary workers to spontaneously organize society, as in the Paris Commune of 1871, and the soviets (workers' councils) of Russia's February Revolution. However, these attempts were rapidly crushed wherever they appeared. For this reason I shall set it aside."It is a strange formulation, and if I wanted to follow through with the symptomatic reading of Locke linked to above (and expanded upon here), one could argue that she takes repression, a historical and political process,  to be a refutation, a philosophical argument. It is a confusion of defeat and failure, to draw on a distinction made by Michael Hardt in his latest book.  When it comes to all of the other positions considered, from Adam Smith to the Levellers and Diggers, Anderson considers their argument, how they understand work, its value, and its ethic. When it comes to Marx, or at least a strain of Marxism understood as a radical critique of work, another factor is introduced, how they were defeated. There arguments and positions are refuted not in theory but in the practice of history.  Of course one could argue that such a dismissal of the revolutionary tradition is almost required to be discussed in the circles of the New York Times, NPR, etc. Lest that seems too harsh I should add that I appreciate Anderson's attempt to revive the reputation of Eduard Bernstein, to at least be open on her commitment to Marx as part of liberal project of reform even if, at the moment she makes that choice, she sets aside the radical tradition of Marxism for the odd reason of its repression. More could be said about this, much more, but in closing I would like to say that she misses perhaps the most important aspect of Marx's critique of capitalism and his most important point about ideology. The true "highjacking" of the work ethic is the idea of capitalist productivity itself in that it identifies as productive, as valuable, primarily that which produces surplus value, and not that which is aimed or oriented towards human needs. What Anderson calls the "progressive work ethic" is predicated on the idea, often unstated, that work, wage labor, always fulfills some social need. Capitalism refutes this daily, not just in dismissing the important work of care, as Anderson acknowledges, but in elevating pernicious and harmful work to value creating activity. A work ethic presupposes a connection between work as an activity and some social good as a result, and that does not exist under capitalism. 

This book has been on my radar for a long time. It was published to some acclaim in 2005 and concerns a three game baseball series that occurred August 26th to 28th, 2003, involving the St. Louis Cardinals and the Chicago Cubs. In that era, these were two of the best teams in the National League. It's been on my shelf for a good while after I eventually acquired a used paperback copy complete with an Afterward published in December 2005 that includes the framing of the book as a counter-take to Michael Lewis's terrific Moneyball, which I read soon after it originally appeared. I finally decided to read this book when visiting St. Louis for the fourth of July weekend earlier this summer. The book tells some interesting stories and offers some revealing insights into the way Tony La Russa managed baseball games. Though the book focuses on a three game series, it also covers some of La Russa's personal baseball history dating back to his first job as a manager in the late 1970s, continuing through the 1980s with first the Chicago White Sox and then the Oakland A's. La Russa was hired by Sox owner Bill Veeck, who bought his first baseball team in 1941 and was the son of a man who was president of the Cubs in 1918! After this book was written, La Russa managed Cardinal teams that went on to win the 2006 and 2011 World Series. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2014. The book also features stories about several star players that continue to be relevant two decades later. Future Hall of Famer Albert Pujols was arguably the greatest hitter in baseball when this book was written and he retired just this past off-season, ending his career with a bit of a bounce-back season in St. Louis in 2022. Another prominent member of that 2022 Cardinals team, Adam Wainwright, is briefly mentioned in the book's Postscript because he was part of the return for a trade involving JD Drew, a talented Cardinal player of 2003. And Scott Rolen, who hit a key home run in one of the book's three games and made timely defensive plays as well, was just inducted into the Hall of Fame this summer. La Russa himself returned to managing the White Sox in 2021-2022, winning a division title in 2021, but not completing the season in 2022 because of health reasons (after mediocre results as well). The reader gets a good feel for how La Russa and his long-time pitching coach Dave Duncan prepared for games and thought about various tactics, strategies, and statistics. The events in the book occurred prior to the Statcast era, but many of the ideas La Russa and Duncan have about pitch sequence and selection are now readily testable by anyone with an internet connection given the trove of data Statcast publishes online. These are the best elements of the book. But there are some important weakness too:First, the book barely scratches the surface on the steroids scandal that greatly influenced baseball in this era. The game had already agreed to employ anonymous PED (performance enhancing drug) testing in 2002 and the results announced after the 2003 season revealed that 5 to 7% of samples were positive, triggering a new random testing policy. Bissinger knew all this when he published the book and yet devotes only a few pages to the issue. I attended SABR (Society for American Baseball Research) meetings in Boston in the first months of 2005 and this was the center of a tremendous amount of discussion. Bissinger's neglect of this topic is important for multiple reasons. To begin, he describes La Russa as an avid opponent of steroids who lamented their effects on the game and on young lives. Yet, we now know that La Russa's A's and Cardinals featured stars that were among the most notorious users -- sluggers Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire. Bissinger quotes La Russa as saying he could tell which players were using and that Canseco wasn't! While the identities of the users had not been revealed by baseball in 2003 and 2004, by December 2005, when the Afterword was written, Canseco's book had acknowledged that he had been a user. Moreover, Canseco named Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa (a Cubs star in 2003) as users too. In March of 2005 McGwire and Sosa, along with Rafael Palmeiro (later suspended for PEDs) and Curt Schilling testified before Congress about steroids. Second, rather than enter into the steroids controversy, which seems like it would have said something important about the "humanity" of baseball, ostensibly Bissinger's goal in writing the book, the author instead takes the opportunity to attack Moneyball. He attacks the statistical analytical perspective promoted in Moneyball early in the book but the theme becomes the centerpiece on p. 269. I believe Bissinger focuses on the trees rather than the forest, devoting great attention to criticizing (with very little context) the specific players selected by the Oakland A's in the 2002 amateur draft. It's always dangerous to discuss a draft in the first few years after it occurred, but Bissinger makes fun of the Nick Swisher and Joe Blanton initial two selections even though both turned out to be a pretty good players who spent a decade or more as major league regulars (or in Blanton's case as members of a major league rotation). Swisher made an All-Star team and both men played in a World Series. Many other selected players enjoyed decent careers and the draft was not a bust. This is now easily confirmed with a simple Google search. The real problem, however, is that Bissinger completely misses the point about Moneyball. He treats the book as if the Oakland A's use of various strategies and tactics to pinch pennies is inherent to the approach. That organization is notoriously cheap and Bissinger points out that money can buy winning players regardless of how smart the Harvard MBA GMs are. However, in this century, wealthy teams like the New  York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, and Los Angeles Dodgers have won numerous division titles, pennants, and championships by using the kind of advanced statistical analysis that Moneyball entails and that Bissinger explicitly hates. Yes, low budget teams like Tampa and Cleveland have also consistently succeeded (KC did as well in 2014-2015) by employing some of the same tactics, but the tactics themselves are not solely about saving money. Rather, they are about analyzing the game statistically to reveal previously unexploited advantages and inefficiencies. Third, Bissinger's critique of advanced statistics also seems pretty hypocritical given that he devotes so much attention to the kind of small-N data that Earl Weaver allegedly used to  employ in the 1970s. Apparently La Russa and Duncan kept track of whether a particular hitter was 5 for 19 against a certain pitcher (and whether pitchers mostly succeeded against certain opposition hitters), but we have known for a fairly long time (dating to the work of Bill James in the 1980s) that these kinds of small sample statistics are not very meaningful. In any case, Bissinger seems to love revealing these and other less important stats throughout the book.  He repeatedly mentions batting average, RBI, pitcher wins, and other traditional stats that are now widely recognized as less meaningful. Much of this was known in 2003, discussed prominently by Bill James and Michael Lewis and less notably by many hundreds of stats-drunk baseball nerds on the internet in the 1990s. Why convey so many stats that do not say very much about winning baseball games? This book isn't really an anti-statistical diatribe, it is a attack made with a head-in-the-sand approach. Bissinger simply refused to keep up with the field's use of more meaningful stats but relies upon older, less revealing, stats. Was this true of La Russa too?These are not the only shortcomings and contradictions of this book. On p. 217 of the paperback, Bissinger writes about how pitcher Brett Tomko is laid back and sleepy. On the very next page he mentions how lost Tomko is in high pressure situations, implying a high strung response. Can an observer ever really know a player's psyche and situational reactions? On pp. 270-71 Bissinger criticizes then-Baseballprospectus.com writer James Click's article evaluating and critiquing the use of the (sacrifice) bunt. Bissinger favorably quotes Hall of Famer Frank Robinson who objected in part because of his personal experience on the field as player and manager, something Click never had. I guess Click got the last laugh since he was the GM of the World Series winning Houston Astros in 2022 and the sacrifice bunt has practically disappeared from the modern game. In 2021-2022 while managing the White Sox, La Russa himself used the bunt less than half as often as he did when this book was written. 
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 Institut
d'Estudis Nord-americans  Blog 

Josep
M. Colomer: "The current political polarization of the United States originates
in its institutional system."

General newsPhotography: Alicia Colomer



By Marc Amat

On January 6, 2021, a mob of Donald
Trump supporters stormed the United States Capitol to get Vice President Mike
Pence and Congress to reject President-elect Joe Biden. This shocking event was
the result of a crescendo of political hostility that, for decades, had eroded
the institutional system of the United States. This is how prestigious
political scientist and economist Josep M. Colomer reads the situation in his
latest book La polarización política en Estados Unidos (Debate,
2023). In its pages, Colomer points out the institutional design of this North
American country – with the separation of powers between Congress and the
Presidency and only two parties – as being responsible for the constant
emergence of bitter political and territorial rivalries.

With a comprehensive tone and rhythmic
pace, Colomer weaves a lucid essay on how the deterioration of the
effectiveness of government can end up generating growing tensions in the
political scene. To do so, he draws on his long academic and professional
career. Currently, he is a professor of political science at Georgetown
University, in Washington D.C., and an associate researcher at the l'Institut
de Ciències Polítiques i Socials in Barcelona. How should we interpret the
assault on the Capitol? What symptoms of dysfunction exist in the U.S.
institutional system? What changes could be made to improve it? To analyze
these issues, this month we interview Josep M. Colomer.

On January 6, 2021, images of the assault on the United
States Capitol swept the world. How do you explain that occurrence?

It's been repeated many times in the
media that what we experienced was an unprecedented situation. However,
throughout history, the U.S. has faced several episodes of institutional
violence. If we look beyond the recent past, between 1830 and 1860 there was a
great escalation of tension and violence, even among the congressmen
themselves. With the abolition of slavery as a core issue, this dynamic led to
a bloody civil war, with 750,000 people dead, a figure that represented 2.5% of
the population of the United States at the time. Now, for almost three decades,
we've been experiencing another continuous increase in tension in American
domestic politics. This time it will not lead to a civil war, but it is
paralyzing politics. There are problems in approving budgets; in the recent
past there have been four impeachments, when there had only been one in the
19th century; it's extremely difficult to move forward with legislature…

Can we understand Donald Trump's rhetoric and the assault
on the Capitol as a culmination of this escalation?

It is a consequence. We have to look
for the beginning of the tensions in the mid-1990s. In 1994, the Republicans
won a majority in Congress after many years without it. From day one, they
acted to create a climate of political hostility against President Clinton.
They tried to overrule him, they dug up scandals… Today, this behavior still
continues: Republicans adopt a position of boycott towards institutions they do
not control.

And this causes the institutional system to falter.

It's not that the Republicans are
worse or more combative people: the problem lies in the country's own
institutional design, which creates incentives for this to happen. That's my
thesis.

So this is a problem with a long past. In fact, it originates
in the constitution itself.

In the 18th century, when the United
States approved its Magna Carta, they were undertaking an experiment: to
establish a republic in a large country. This did not exist anywhere, and in a
way, it could be said that the U.S. has had to pay for the novelty of this
undertaking. They drew up a constitution very much intended to defend
themselves against the British, French and Spanish armies, which still had
colonies at their borders. Therefore, foreign policy was the core element. With
the creation of the United States, the newly independent states that were part
of it wanted to have a firmer government. Throughout the centuries, foreign
policy has remained the axis of the American system. We saw this, for example,
during the Second World War or the Cold War. Now, with Russia and China there
is some nostalgia to relive times like the Cold War, though the present
situation is not comparable. When there is a clear and threatening enemy,
foreign policy takes over and the whole country pulls together to face the
threat. On the other hand, when the enemy is more abstract, a lot of internal
issues surface that have never been resolved.

Such as?

There are many of them. Obama's health
care program, which didn't quite work; issues related to education; border
control and the wave of immigrants who want to enter the country; the use of
firearms; abortion; legislation on transgender people; the constant racial
tensions… These are internal issues that have never been addressed. With the American
institutional system, resolving these conflicts through two institutions ruled
by two different parties blocking each other is very complicated. The parties
being unable to solve problems has led to the appearance of social movements
such as Me Too or Black Lives Matter, but also the Tea Party or the
anti-vaccine movement.



Has political polarization translated into growing social
polarization?

In some previous conflicts, such as
the years of the Cold War, the government tried to create a certain climate of
fear among the population. They were encouraged to build atomic shelters in
their homes, there were drills in schools… Most people, however, moved away
from the hysteria and led a normal life. In fact, in the 1950s, society
progressed a lot, with the massification of automobiles, the entry of television
and appliances into the household, Coca-Cola, Hollywood… Similarly, the current
polarization is much stronger politically than socially. In fact, the
polarization is inflammatory and a spectacle, but the vast majority of people
are not polarized. Only 2% of voters go to Donald Trump's rallies, for example.
He demonizes immigrants, but there is no news of civil conflict with
immigrants.

In your book, you often remind us that America is huge.

One of the things I least expected to
find in the country when I went to live there was the great territorial
fragmentation. This is not the United States of America: it is the Disunited
States of America. I can identify at least six different countries within its
borders, such as the East Coast, the Midwest, Texas, California, the South…
There are territories with great differences and certain sentiments towards
others, but they have built the nation based on sharing a flag, a currency and
a language.



Has the size of the country also conditioned the
effectiveness of the institutional system?

When they made the Constitution, the delegates were very
inspired by Montesquieu. In fact, the French thinker is the most cited author
in the deliberations of the Americans. The author could not speak English, but
he had visited England to analyze its political system and be able to describe
it in a chapter of the book The Spirit of the Laws (1748). In
the United States, they took this as a reference. The problem was that, in
reality, the British system that the intellectual described had been out of
date for over a century. The person who instructed him during the visit was a
monarchist who had been expelled years ago from the House of Lords for
conspiring to restore the absolute monarchy, had gone into exile in France and
spoke French. He explained Britain's medieval monarchy to Montesquieu,
Montesquieu reproduced it in his book and in Philadelphia, the delegates took
inspiration from it, replacing the king with an executive president with many
powers. The result was the creation of a republic in a huge country. It was
unprecedented. The model is still unique in the world, the Americans themselves
did not even implement it in other countries, such as Germany or Japan, after
the Second World War.

What measures do you think should be incorporated into the
system to combat the malfunction you describe?

I dedicate the last chapter of the
book to this. I make suggestions for institutional reforms, but I don't propose
a new constitution. I try to identify real examples that are already moving in
the right direction, such as the reform of the electoral system that already
works at the local and state levels in some states, with elections with a
second round. Cooperation should increase between Congress and the president.
Currently, there are already some department secretaries who periodically visit
Congress to report back. Cooperation between Washington and the states still
has much room for improvement. That role should be played by the Senate, but
it's too partisan. There is a way to go, and the Constitution would not need to
be changed much to move towards a more parliamentary system. But confrontational
partisanship makes institutional reforms very difficult.

Personal website: www.josepcolomer.com




La polarización política en Estados Unidos

Orígenes
y actualidad de un conflicto permanente

Josep
M. Colomer

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Josep M.
ColomerComing soon in English:CLICK - Taylor & Francis - Routledge

 

The paper aims to articulate an "encounter" between Autonomist Marxism (AM) and World-Ecology (WE), that is, between two theoretical paradigms increasingly discussed at the global level, but so far never analyzed in close connection to one another. AM is a current of unorthodox Marxism that is characterized, methodologically, by the partiality of the point of view, the constitutive unity of thought and conflict, the ambivalence of the working-class condition (labor force / abstract labor within capital, working class / living labor against capital), and the centrality of class composition. Politically, AM proposes two main innovations: the practice of refusal of work, and the so-called Copernican revolution, according to which class struggle comes first and capitalist organization follows suit (instituting, therefore, a causal and incremental link between workers' unrest and capitalist development).WE can be defined as a global conversation that develops the analysis of the world-system along distinctively environmental lines: capitalism, therefore, does not have an ecological regime, but rather is an ecological regime, i.e. a specific way of organizing nature. Beyond any residue of Cartesian dualism, the concept of world-ecology refers to an original mixture of social dynamics and natural elements that make up the capitalist mode of production in its historical development, and in its tendency to become a world-market. In this framework, the capitalist theory of value imposes space as flat and geometric, time as homogeneous and linear, and nature as external, infinite, and free.The aim of this paper is to show that, although the two perspectives relate to the question of the (ecological) crisis in a very different way, they can be effectively integrated if juxtaposed on a different level - that of the historico-political analysis of the question concerning the environment. Both approaches originally rework Marx's crisis theory, but they do not completely avoid the polarization that marked its evolution: development vs. catastrophe.AM tends to renew the tradition that sees the crisis as a moment of development and historicizes it through original interpretations of the cycle of struggles 1968-1973, claiming its defeat was "peculiar" as it imposed a change in the structure of capitalist valorization in the direction of an expansion of its accumulation base. The causes of this transition are to be found in the intersection between the financialization of the economy, the cognitization of labor and, above all, the becoming-productive of the sphere of social reproduction. On the other hand, WE elaborates the so-called "breakdown" theory in unprecedented fashion. The starting point is a convincing reconstruction of the historical succession of long waves of economic cycles through an articulation of underproduction (of ecological surplus) and overproduction (of commodities). Thus, WE provides an instrumental ecological counterpoint to the socio-centric reading of AM through the fundamental notion of negative value — the most innovative analytical element with regard to the neoliberal form of crisis theory. However, the general discursive strategy follows that of every breakdown theory ever since the "classical" debate within the Second International. Therefore, it is aimed at showing that, although the crises of the twentieth century were developmental (that is, they fostered the capitalist restructuring at a higher level), the crisis we live through nowadays presents itself as epochal in that its result is deemed to be an inevitable collapse.The convergence between the two paradigms —which is actually a rather demanding theoretical exchange, and as such require some deep rethinking for both positions— can take place through a re-reading of the historical process of politicization of ecology. Although it is customary to date it between the mid-seventies and the following decade —i.e. after the great cycle of Fordist conflicts— in recent years a different hypothesis is being tested: that such politicization occurred not only a decade earlier, but also, and above all, because of rather than despite the struggles of the workers' movement (in close connection with the rise cycle of revolutionary feminism). With particular regard to the Italian context, the struggles against noxiousness, which multiplied between the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s, and often in opposition to the confederal unions, were the first to fiercely criticize the so-called monetization of risk; that is,the idea that wage increases and/or organizational benefits could "compensate" for exposure to pollutants, even hazardous ones. Although this criticism would never become common sense of trade union action, such occurrence does not deny that it was first of all the strength of organized workers that blew up the compensatory mechanism and (im)posed the ecological question as politically unavoidable. Only at a later stage will the environmental movement emerge along with a new post-materialist sensitivity among the urbanized intermediate strata.Against this background, the paper proposes an analysis of neoliberal green economy —i.e. the capitalist attempt to internalize the ecological limit, turning it from obstacle to valorization, through an innovative strategy of accumulation— as simultaneously assuming the form of development (in accordance with AM hypothesis) and of anti-development (in accordance with WE hypothesis). From this plausible "convergence" could then emerge a political interpretation of the contemporary ecological crisis, capable of questioning the relationship between capitalism and nature by avoiding both catastrophism and the elective affinity between the logic of profit and the logic of environmental protection.In this unprecedented context, WE can grasp the second aspect through the concept of negative value, which correctly conveys the message that climate change, health-related emergencies, and the narrowing of waste borders make the ecological crisis an unprecedented everyday reality in the history of capitalism. In fact, negative value implies an internal contradiction of the dynamics of capital and, above all, an ontological challenge to the valorization project, therefore to capitalist civilization tout court.On the other hand, AM is in a privileged position to make sense of the shift from the rhetoric of limits to growth, which somehow alluded to environmental noxiousness as a crisis of capitalism, to a rhetoric of growth of limits, which identifies these latter as drivers of accumulation, as "filters" that turn the ecological constraint into a crisis for capitalism. Furthermore, AM can now show that commodities traded on environmental markets contain value as they are produced by hybrid units of labor (reproductive / informational) and nature (financialized). However, the developmental potential of such green economy must also be relativized. In fact, the process of enhancing the "free" activity of nature seems, at least until now, to be unable both to "repair" the environmental damage already done and to provide widespread social protections potentially able to compensate for the class polarization that invariably accompanies the multiplication of financial dividends. What neoliberal capitalism lacks is an inclusive mechanism capable of (partially) socializing financial profits either through a decarbonization of the economy, or through the formation of a new middle class (or both). ; Este artículo pretende articular un encuentro entre el operaísmo y la ecología-mundo, es decir, un encuentro entre dos paradigmas teóricos cada vez más objeto de debate a nivel global, pero que, hasta el momento, no han sido analizados en estrecha relación. El operaísmo es una corriente del marxismo heterodoxo caracterizada por centrarse en la ambivalencia de la condición de la clase obrera (fuerza de trabajo/trabajo abstracto dentro del capital, clase obrera/trabajo vivo contra el capital) y la noción de la composición de clases sociales. La ecología-mundo puede definirse como un diálogo internacional que desarrolla el análisis del sistema-mundo desde una perspectiva ambiental: el capitalismo, por lo tanto, no tiene un régimen ecológico, sino que es un régimen ecológico, es decir, constituye un modo especifico de organizar la naturaleza. El objetivo de este artículo es demostrar que, a pesar de que las dos perspectivas se relacionan con la cuestión de la crisis (ecológica) de forma muy distinta, ellas pueden integrarse eficazmente si son yuxtapuestas a otro nivel: el del análisis histórico-político de la cuestión medioambiental. En su origen, ambos planteamientos revisan la teoría de la crisis de Marx, pero no eluden la polarización que caracteriza su evolución: mientras que el operaísmo tiende a reafirmar la tradición que considera la crisis como un momento de desarrollo, la ecología-mundo desarrolla la teoría de la brecha metabólica de un modo bastante inaudito. La convergencia entre estos dos paradigmas —lo que, en realidad, constituye un exigente intercambio teórico y que, por lo tanto, requiere una intensa reflexión por parte de ambas posiciones— puede producirse a través de una relectura del proceso histórico de la politización de la ecología. Aunque se suele situarlo entre mediados de los años setenta y la siguiente década —tras el gran ciclo de conflictos fordistas—, en los últimos años se está comprobando una hipótesis distinta: esta politización no sólo ocurrió una década antes, pero también, y, sobre todo, sucedió debido a, y no a pesar de, las luchas del movimiento obrero (en estrecha relación con el surgimiento del feminismo revolucionario). En ese contexto, la economía verde neoliberal —es decir, el intento capitalista de internalizar el límite ecológico, transformándolo de un obstáculo a la valorización a una estrategia innovadora de acumulación— asume simultáneamente la forma de desarrollo (en línea con la hipótesis postulada por el operaísmo) y la de antidesarrollo (en línea con la hipótesis defendida por la ecología-mundo). De esta "convergencia" plausible podría emerger entonces una interpretación política de la crisis ecológica contemporánea capaz de cuestionar la relación entre el capitalismo y la naturaleza, al evitar tanto el catastrofismo como la afinidad electiva entre la lógica del beneficio y la lógica de la protección medioambiental.

From the 1970s onwards, the development programs promoted by key global actors have gone through significant transformations. The industrial-expansion projects of the post-colonial era have been replaced with a set of actions increasingly focused on agriculture and rural areas. At the same time, the neoliberal policies carried out since the 1980s have deeply affected the global dynamics related to food production and distribution, giving rise to the birth of a new food regime that is driven by new modalities of regulation and new extractive strategies based on global value chains and transnational corporations. Despite the increases in productivity and the decline in food prices linked to these processes, the world economy has not managed to recover the levels of growth prior to the crisis of the 1970s. On the contrary, the neoliberal reaction to this crisis has generated a growing disillusionment towards development, fuelled also by the awakening of greater sensitivity to the ecological issues raised by environmental movements from as early as the 1960s. This "legitimacy crisis" of development, in turn, has led multilateral organisations to redefine their strategic objectives and to develop a new language. Thus, concepts such as "sustainable development" and "food security" have become increasingly important, until assuming the crucial role they currently play within the United Nations 2030 Agenda. The article provides a critical reading of the recent trajectories of agrarian change and rural development, as well as of the food narratives produced by the actors of global governance, particularly focusing on the "sustainability discourse" which inspired the United Nations 2030 Agenda. The authors point out the importance of analysing the dominant discourse and policies surrounding food production and distribution in the light of capitalist restructuring arising from the recurrent accumulation crises. In doing so, they put into dialogue food regimes analysis with world-ecology theory. The departing assumption is that capitalism – as a system characterised by a specific combination of class relations, territorial power and nature – has relied on the expansion and deepening of the frontier of accumulation, needing to continuously identify new effective ways to combine the exploitation of labour with the free appropriation of the work of human and extra-human nature. In this sense, "cheap nature" – following Jason Moore's definition – represents at once a prerequisite of capitalist development and a historical product of evolving strategies of accumulation reproducing a metabolic rift between humans and nature. These strategies are always based on a specific international division of labour and determined by global economic and geopolitical dynamics. At the same time, they are also characterised by changing patterns of (semi)proletarisation, as well as by ways of organizing nature whose constant renewal is crucial for the reproduction of capitalism. What truly distinguishes the current global scenario from the past is the "end of cheap nature", i. e. the exhaustion of the frontiers and the value relationships that have historically allowed for a reduction in the cost of four fundamental elements: labor, food, energy and raw materials. Against this phenomenon, by looking at the recent trajectories of the accumulation strategies underlying food production and distribution, two main dynamics emerge: the first one is hinged on a reconfiguration of extractivism based on natural resources dispossession and land concentration processes, as well as on a cost-reduction strategy based on labour exploitation; the second one can be portrayed as the reflex of a new governmental approach to development according to which the formal reunification of the producers with some basic means of production is functional to their inclusion into the global value-chains ruled by the agri-business corporations. Leveraging the neoliberal rhetoric of self-entrepreneurship, this second dynamic put into practice a sort of "indirect proletarisation", in which the incitement of the individual creative and productive capabilities accompanies the implementation of new mechanisms of control based on the provision of credit and other inputs, as well as on the proliferation of standardisation procedures, practices of patenting of nature, and technological control. Under these premises, the authors read the food security discourse embedded in the UN 2030 Agenda as an attempt to elude the socioecological contradictions inherent in capitalism, which ends up providing a sort of ideological legitimacy to the aforementioned dynamics, thereby engendering new explosive contradictions. The article is divided into three sections. The first one retraces the transformations that the capitalist world-ecology has experienced from the 1970s onwards from a food regimes approach. The second section aims to deconstruct the discursive practices underlying the United Nations 2030 Agenda, as well as to bring to light the ambiguities and contradictions inherent in development policies inspired by the concepts of 'sustainable development' and 'food security'. In the last section, the authors use the world-ecology perspective to interpret ongoing agrarian change dynamics. In seeking to revitalise the neoliberal development model, the authors argue, the dominant food narratives use scarcity as a pretext to extend and intensify the logics of the market, turning it into a universal principle for the regulation of human and extra-human nature. Dominant food policies aim to elude the problems deriving from the exhaustion of the frontier logic underlying the historical evolution of capitalism through the creation of a new spatiality and a new way of organising nature. Yet, this operation exacerbates the tension between capital's inclination towards the commodification/monetisation of ever new areas outside the sphere of production and its need to keep relying on extended sources of unpaid work of human and extra-human nature. The lack of new effective solutions to this tension is, in turn, feeding a combination of contrasting tendencies. While it produces a deepening of the mechanisms of control and exploitation driven by global market logics, it also nourishes processes of de-globalisation, along with a set of phenomena which recall the dynamics described by Karl Polanyi's theory of the "double movement". At the same time, it has also constituted a fertile ground for the emergence of new conflicts, counter-narratives and anti-systemic movements for food sovereignty and agroecology. The authors come to the conclusion that the reorganisation of the food regime in XXI century world-ecology will be highly affected by the responses provided to the ongoing pandemic crisis, thus representing an important opportunity for each of the aforementioned tendencies to gain ground over the others. ; A partir de un análisis crítico de la Agenda 2030 para el Desarrollo Sostenible, este artículo se propone evidenciar los nexos que unen los discursos dominantes sobre alimentos y agricultura con las dinámicas socioecológicas que subyacen a las transformaciones y a la crisis del capitalismo contemporáneo. El supuesto inicial es que el capitalismo —en cuanto ecología-mundo— debe su supervivencia a la posibilidad de identificar continuamente nuevas y efectivas formas de combinar la explotación del trabajo asalariado con la apropiación gratuita de la naturaleza humana y extrahumana. Esto implica que la crisis en la que el capitalismo se halla hoy en día representa también la crisis de una forma específica de organizar la naturaleza. Más precisamente, es una crisis que tiene sus raíces en el "fin de la naturaleza barata", es decir en el agotamiento de las fronteras y de las relaciones de valor que han permitido reducir periódicamente el coste del trabajo, de los alimentos, de la energía y de las materias primas. Frente a este fenómeno, las reacciones adoptadas por los principales actores de la gobernanza global han propiciado una reconfiguración general de las estrategias de acumulación vinculadas a la producción y distribución de alimentos. Como muestra el artículo, uno de los principales pivotes en torno al cual actualmente giran estas estrategias es representado por las políticas que se inspiran en los conceptos de "desarrollo sostenible" y "seguridad alimentaria", tal y como están articulados en la Agenda 2030. Nuestra tesis es que detrás de estos mismos conceptos es posible detectar una racionalidad de gobierno que pretende eludir los problemas que surgen de las contradicciones socioecológicas inherentes al capitalismo mediante el establecimiento de nuevas relaciones de valor y nuevas maneras de organizar y producir la naturaleza. Esta operación, sin embargo, exacerba la tensión entre la inclinación del capital a la mercantilización y monetización de nuevas áreas situadas al margen de la esfera productiva y su necesidad de poder seguir contando con amplias fuentes de naturaleza gratuita y trabajo no remunerado. La imposibilidad de devolver el excedente ecológico a niveles que permitan iniciar una nueva fase de expansión, por un lado, da lugar a una intensificación de los procesos de explotación impulsados por la lógica de los mercados globales y, por otro lado, hace cada vez más evidente la crisis del modelo neoliberal de desarrollo, alimentando algunas contratendencias que con la emergencia pandémica parecen destinadas a alcanzar un nivel de madurez más elevado. La primera parte del artículo reconstruye las recientes transformaciones de la economía-mundo capitalista a través de las lentes proporcionadas por el análisis de los regímenes agroalimentarios. La segunda parte se propone deconstruir las prácticas discursivas subyacentes a la Agenda 2030 y poner de relieve las ambigüedades y contradicciones inherentes a las políticas de desarrollo inspiradas en los conceptos de "desarrollo sostenible" y "seguridad alimentaria". La última parte utiliza la perspectiva de la ecología-mundo para exponer con mayor profundidad las tesis del artículo.

The contribution aims to illustrate the evolution of national and European legislation on the subject of the protection of unaccompanied minors; the effectiveness of the Italian discipline and the French one in a comparative perspective as well as the European strategy are the core of the analysis. The adoption of the Italian Law 7 Aprile 2017 n. 47, so called Zampa Law, represents an important step towards the recognition of a complete protection of migrant child in the national background; the study on the enforcement of the reform will allow the evaluation of the Italian legal system's efficiency. On the other hand, I will analyze the remedies offered by the French system; in this context the regulation concerning children in civil code gets along with different legal source. Particular attention will be paid to the state of art in the European context looking for common rules or guidelines. 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The article examines the main problems and negative factors of the reform of financial control in Ukraine and identifies the directions for its improvement in the context of the development of the public finance management system. A synthesis of theoretical and practical developments regarding the development of internal control and internal audit in public sector bodies was carried out with the inclusion of European standards. Key words: state financial, public financial management system, audit, internal control, audit service. REFERENCES1. Uhoda, Spysok, Mizhnarodnyy dokument (2014) Uhoda pro asotsiatsiyu mizh Ukrayinoyu, z odniyeyi storony, ta Yevrosoyuzom, Yevropeysʹkym spivtovarystvom […] Ukrayina, Yevropeysʹkyy Soyuz, Yevratom […] [Association Agreement between Ukraine, on the one hand, and the European Union, the European Community [.] Ukraine, European Union, Euratom [.]]. Retrieved from http://zakon3.rada.gov.ua /laws/ show/ 984-011/page10.2. Verkhovna Rada Ukrayiny. (2018). Kontseptsiya realizatsiyi derzhavnoyi polityky u sferi reformuvannya systemy derzhavnoho finansovoho kontrolyu do 2020 roku [Concept of implementation of the state policy in the field of reforming the system of state financial control until 2020]. Retrieved from https://zakon.rada.gov.ua/laws/show/310-2018.3. Verkhovna Rada Ukrayiny. (2015). Pro rakhunkovu palatu v Ukrayini: Zakon Ukrayiny [About the Accounts Chamber in Ukraine: Law of Ukraine]. Retrieved from ntt //zakon0.rada.gov.ua/ laws/ show/576-19.4. Kabinet Ministriv Ukrayiny. (2017). Pro skhvalennya Stratehiyi reformuvannya systemy upravlinnya derzhavnymy finansamy na 2017-2020 roky [On Approving the Strategy for Reforming the Public Finances Management System for 2017-2020]. № 142-r. Retrieved from http: ntt //zakon3. rada.gov.ua/ laws/ show/142-20175. Zvit rakhunkovoyi palaty za 2017 rik. [Accounts Chamber Report for 2017]. Retrieved from http://www.ac. rada.gov.ua/ doccatalog/document/16755497/Zvit_RP_2017.6. 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Derzhavnyy finansovyy control [State financial control]. Kyiv: Tsentr uchbovoyi literatury.14. Derekon, V. M. (2015). Audyt u systemi derzhavnoho finansovoho kontrolyu: suchasnyy stan i napryamy vdoskonalennya [Audit in the system of state financial control: the current state and directions of improvement]. Naukovyy visnyk Natsionalnoyi akademiyi derzhavnoyi podatkovoyi sluzhby Ukrayiny (ekonomika, pravo), (4 (31)), 208 – 213.15. Dikan, L. V. Voronina, O.O., Holub, YU. O., Synyuhina, N. V. (2008). Derzhavnyy audit [State Audit]. / edition by L.V. Dikan. Kharkiv: KHNEU. ; В статье исследованы основные проблемы и негативные факторы реформирования финансового контроля в Украине и определены направления его усовершенствования в контексте развития системи управления государственными финансами. Осуществлено обобщение теоретических и практических разработок относительно развития внутреннего контроля и внутреннего аудита в органах государственного сектора с включением требований європейских стандартов. Ключевые слова: государственный финансовый, система управления государственными финансами, аудит, внутренний контроль, аудиторськая служба. Список использованной литературы1. Угода про асоціацію між Україною, з однієї сторони, та Євросоюзом, Європейським співтовариством […] Україна, Європейський Союз, Євратом […]; Угода, Список, Міжнародний документ від 27.06.2014. URL: http://zakon3.rada.gov.ua /laws/ show/ 984-011/pаgе10.2. Концепція реалізації державної політики у сфері реформування системи державного фінансового контролю до 2020 року від 10 травня 2018 р.№ 310-р. Офіційний веб-сайт Верховної Ради України. URL: https://zakon.rada.gov.ua/laws/show/310-2018.3. Про рахункову палату в Україні: Закон України від 02.07.2015р. №576-VIII. URL: ntt//zakon0. rada.gov.ua/ laws/ show/576-194. Про схвалення Стратегії реформування системи управління державними фінансами на 2017-2020 роки: Кабінет Міністрів України від 08.02.2017 № 142-р. URL: http: ntt //zakon3.rada.gov.ua/ laws/ show/142-2017.5. Звіт рахункової палати за 2017 рік. URL: http://www.ac. rada.gov.ua/doccatalog/document/16755497/Zvit_RP_2017.6. Модернізація механізмів фінансового контролю та аудиту як складових антикорупційної програми: Відділ антикорупційної політики / Національний інститут стратегічних досліджень червень 2018р. URL: http:// www.niss.gov.ua/ content/ articles/ files/ 1Melnyk 47871.pdf7. Звіти про результати діяльності Держаудитслужби та її територіальних органів за січень – грудень 2016 року, січень – грудень 2017року. URL: http: //www.dkrs.gov.ua/ kru/uk/ publish/article/132220;jsessionid=B2CBB2F82A87817.8. Публічний звіт про діяльність Державної аудиторської служби України за 2017р. URL: http://dkrs/kmu.gov.ua/ kru/doccatalog/ document?=1377729. Міністерство фінансів України лист від 15.01.2018р№33040-06-5/1193 Щодо стану планування діяльності з внутрішнього аудиту. URL: http://document.ua/shodo–stanu–planuvannja-dijalnosti-z-vnutrishnogo -auditu-doc3395110. де Конинг Р. П. Дж. Государственный внутренний финансовый к онтроль. / пер. с англ. Р. Рудницкой. Словения, 2007. 336 с.11. Модернізація державного сектора: підзвітність та контроль: Центр сприяння інституц. розвитку держ. служби при Голов. управлінні держ. служби України. Policy Brief. OECD. 2007. Серп. 8 c.12. Городянська Л. Державний фінансовий аудит та аудит ефективності в системі державного фінансового контролю. Бухгалтерський облік і аудит. 2015. №10. С. 35-44.13. Гуцаленко Л. В., Дерій В.А., Коцупатрий М.М. Державний фінансовий контроль: навч. посіб. Київ: Центр учбової літератури, 2014. 424 с.14. Дереконь В. М. Аудит у системі державного фінансового контролю : сучасний стан і напрями вдосконалення. Науковий вісник Національної академії державної податкової служби України (економіка, право). 2015. № 4 (31). С. 208 – 213.15. Дікань Л. В. Вороніна О.О., Голуб Ю. О., Синюгіна Н. В. Державний аудит: навч.-метод, посіб. для самост. вивч. дисципліни. /за заг. ред. Л.В. Дікань. Xарків: ХНЕУ, 2008. 164 с. ; В статті досліджено основні проблеми й ризики реформування системи державного фінансового контролю в Україні та визначено напрями його вдосконалення в контексті розвитку системи управління державними фінансами. Здійснено узагальнення теоретичних і практичних розробок щодо розвитку внутрішнього контролю та внутрішнього аудиту в органах державного сектору з урахуванням вимог європейських стандартів. Ключові слова: державний фінансовий контроль, система управління державними фінансами, аудит, внутрішній контроль, аудиторська служба. Список використаної літератури1. Угода про асоціацію між Україною, з однієї сторони, та Євросоюзом, Європейським співтовариством […] Україна, Європейський Союз, Євратом […]; Угода, Список, Міжнародний документ від 27.06.2014. URL: http://zakon3.rada.gov.ua /laws/ show/ 984-011/pаgе10.2. Концепція реалізації державної політики у сфері реформування системи державного фінансового контролю до 2020 року від 10 травня 2018 р.№ 310-р. Офіційний веб-сайт Верховної Ради України. URL: https://zakon.rada.gov.ua/laws/show/310-2018.3. Про рахункову палату в Україні: Закон України від 02.07.2015р. №576-VIII. URL: ntt//zakon0. rada.gov.ua/ laws/ show/576-194. Про схвалення Стратегії реформування системи управління державними фінансами на 2017-2020 роки: Кабінет Міністрів України від 08.02.2017 № 142-р. URL: http: ntt //zakon3.rada.gov.ua/ laws/ show/142-2017.5. Звіт рахункової палати за 2017 рік. URL: http://www.ac. rada.gov.ua/doccatalog/document/16755497/Zvit_RP_2017.6. Модернізація механізмів фінансового контролю та аудиту як складових антикорупційної програми: Відділ антикорупційної політики / Національний інститут стратегічних досліджень червень 2018р. URL: http:// www.niss.gov.ua/ content/ articles/ files/ 1Melnyk 47871.pdf7. Звіти про результати діяльності Держаудитслужби та її територіальних органів за січень – грудень 2016 року, січень – грудень 2017року. URL: http: //www.dkrs.gov.ua/ kru/uk/ publish/article/132220;jsessionid=B2CBB2F82A87817.8. Публічний звіт про діяльність Державної аудиторської служби України за 2017р. URL: http://dkrs/kmu.gov.ua/ kru/doccatalog/ document?=1377729. Міністерство фінансів України лист від 15.01.2018р№33040-06-5/1193 Щодо стану планування діяльності з внутрішнього аудиту. URL: http://document.ua/shodo–stanu–planuvannja-dijalnosti-z-vnutrishnogo -auditu-doc3395110. де Конинг Р. П. Дж. Государственный внутренний финансовый к онтроль. / пер. с англ. Р. Рудницкой. Словения, 2007. 336 с.11. Модернізація державного сектора: підзвітність та контроль: Центр сприяння інституц. розвитку держ. служби при Голов. управлінні держ. служби України. Policy Brief. OECD. 2007. Серп. 8 c.12. Городянська Л. Державний фінансовий аудит та аудит ефективності в системі державного фінансового контролю. Бухгалтерський облік і аудит. 2015. №10. С. 35-44.13. Гуцаленко Л. В., Дерій В.А., Коцупатрий М.М. Державний фінансовий контроль: навч. посіб. Київ: Центр учбової літератури, 2014. 424 с.14. Дереконь В. М. Аудит у системі державного фінансового контролю : сучасний стан і напрями вдосконалення. Науковий вісник Національної академії державної податкової служби України (економіка, право). 2015. № 4 (31). С. 208 – 213.15. Дікань Л. В. Вороніна О.О., Голуб Ю. О., Синюгіна Н. В. Державний аудит: навч.-метод, посіб. для самост. вивч. дисципліни. /за заг. ред. Л.В. Дікань. Xарків: ХНЕУ, 2008. 164 с.

ABSTRACT CHALIGAVA, Natia. E-Government Implementation in Public Administration of Georgia, MASTER Thesis, Ankara, 2018. The purpose of this research is the evaluation of e-Government process in Georgia and assessment of its contributions to public administration. Accordingly the first part of this thesis examines the subjects are as following: general structure of public administration in Georgia, historical development process of Georgia public administration system, the new legal order based on the admission of the Constitution, current political and administration structure. The second part of this study investigates conceptual dimensions of e-government implementation with a literature study on e-government model which is a unique part of information society. The third part of this study evaluates e-government implementations in the four countries which are the top ones according to the Electronic Government Development Index and the performance of e-government policies in Georgia public administration. In the last part of this thesis, by conducting a field study it was endeavored to evaluate current situation of e-government implementation process of e-government policies in Georgia public administration and to investigate the contributions this process makes to Georgia public administration. Regarding to the results of the field research it can be mentioned that e-government implementation make important contributions to Georgia public administration. Resting on the findings of both literature review and filed study, it was conducted that the general approach of Georgia towered the implementation of e-government can be evaluated successfully. Georgia government is determined to create an effective e-government with a healthy information infrastructure. In this framework, necessary public policies and regulations were formed for establishing this infrastructure. In conclusion it can be mentioned that Georgia government is enthusiastic and determined to transfer all public services to the electronic environment. ; TABLE OF CONTENTS ACCEPTANCE AND APPROVAL i DECLARATION ii YAYIMLAMA VE FİKRİ MÜLKİYET HAKLARI BEYANI iii ETİK BEYAN iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS v ABSTRACT vi ÖZET vii TABLE OF CONTENTS viii LIST OF TABLES xii INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER: I GENERAL STUCTURE OF GEORGIA'S PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION 4 1.1. HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF GEORGIAN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION 4 1.1.1. Kingdoms at the Territory of Ancient Georgia 4 1.1.2. The First Administrative Division of Kingdom Kartli 5 1.1.3. Feudal Governance in Georgia 6 1.2. GEORGIAN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION UNDER THE GOVERNANCE OF RUSSIAN EMPIRE 7 1.3. PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION OF INDEPENDENT REPUBLIC OF GEORGIA 9 1.3.1. The First Parliament of Independent Georgia Republic 10 1.3.2. The first Council of Ministers of Independent Georgia Republic 11 1.3.2.1. Georgian Language as an Official of Georgian Republic 11 1.3.3. Judicial System of Independent Georgia Republic 11 1.3.4. Administrative-Territorial Arrangement of Independent Georgia Republic 12 1.4. PUBLIC ADMINIATRATION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF GEORGIA 13 1.4.1. Civil Servant System of Soviet Socialist Republic of Georgia 15 1.4.1.1. Division of Working Class and Peasantry Class 16 1.4.1.2. Division of Soviet Civil Employees 17 1.5. PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION OF INDEPENDENT GEORGIA REPUBLIC (1991-2018) 18 1.5.1. Development of public Administration of Georgia Since 1991 19 1.5.1.1. The First Period- 1991-1997 20 1.5.1.2. Period from 1998 until 2003 21 1.5.1.3. The third Period from 2003- up to the Present Day 23 1.5.2. Implemented and Ongoing Reform of Georgia Public Administration 25 1.5.3. Constitution of Georgia 27 1.5.3.1. Amendment 2004, in Constitution of Georgia 29 1.5.3.2. Amendment 2009, within the Constitution of Georgia 29 1.5.3.3. Amendment 2017, within the Constitution of Georgia 30 1.5.4. Governance Structure of Georgia 31 1.5.4.1. The President of Georgia 32 1.5.4.2. The Parliament of Georgia 33 1.5.4.3. Judicial System of Georgia 35 1.5.4.4. Political Parties 37 1.6. THE GOVERNMETN OF GEORGIA 40 1.6.1. Abkhazian and Ajarian Autonomous Republics of Georgia 42 1.6.2. The Local Governance 44 1.6.2.1. The Law on Local Government and Self-Governance 45 1.6.3. Public Service of Georgia 46 1.6.3.1. State Service and Public Service 47 1.6.3.2. Legal Entities of Public Law (LEPL) 48 1.7. PUBLIC SERVANT 49 1.7.1. The State Servant 50 1.7.1.1. Classification of Officer's Positions 51 CHAPTER 2: E-GOVERNMENT- THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 53 2.1. HISTORY OF E-GOVERNMENT EMERGENCE IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION 53 2.2. E-GOVERNMENT DEFINITIONS 55 2.3. TYPES OF E-GOVERNMENT IMPLEMENTATION 58 2.3.1. Government to Citizen (G2C) 60 2.3.2. Government to Business (G2B) 61 2.3.3. Government to Government (G2G) 62 2.4. E-GOVERNMENT DEVELOPMENT MODELS 63 2.4.1. Gartner Group 4 Stage Development Model 63 2.4.2. Layne and Lee's 4 Stages Development Model 64 2.4.3. West's Four Stage Development Model 65 2.4.4. Hiller and Belanger's Five Stage Development Model 66 2.4.5. World Bank's Three Stage Development Model 67 2.4.6. UN's Five Stage Development Model 68 2.5. BENEFITS AND CHALLENGES OF E-GOVERNMENT 69 2.5.1. Increasing Transparency and Accountability and Strengthening Anti-corruption 71 2.5.2. E-government Helps Improve Efficiency in Government 72 2.5.3. Increasing Citizen Participation and Building Trust 73 2.5.4. Reduced Costs of Government Operations 74 2.5.5. Technical Challenges 75 2.5.6. Organisational Challenges 75 2.5.7. Financial Challenges 76 CHAPTER 3: EXAMPLES OF TOP FOUR COUNTRIES ACROSS THE WORLD IMPLEMENTING E-GOVERNMENT AND E-GOVERNMENT IN GEORGIA 78 3.1. E-GOVERNMENT IN DENMARK 79 3.2. E-GOVERNMEN IN AUSTRALIA 82 3.3. E-GOVERNMENT IN REPUBLIC OF KOREA 85 3.4. E-GOVERNMENT IN UNITED KINGDOM 90 3.5. E-GOVERNMENT IN GEORGIA 93 3.5.1. Development of Information and Communication Technologies in Georgia 94 3.5.2. E-Government Infrastructure in Georgia 95 3.5.3. E-Government Projects in Georgia 98 3.5.4. Open Government Partnership Georgia 100 3.5.5. Legislative Background of E-government 101 3.5.5.1. The Law of Georgia on Electronic Signature and Electronic Document 102 3.5.5.2. The Law of Georgia on the Establishment of Data Exchange Agency Legal Entity of Public Law 103 3.5.5.3. The Law of Georgia on Information Security 103 3.5.5.4. The Law of Georgia on Personal Data Protection 104 3.5.6. Organisational Management of E-Government 104 3.5.7. E-Government Services in Georgia 105 3.5.7.1. Electronic ID card 107 3.5.7.2. Digital Signature and Online Authentication 109 3.5.8. E-Government Projects 110 3.5.8.1. "Public Service Hall" (PSH) Project 110 3.5.8.1.1. "JUST drive" Project 113 3.5.8.1.2. "Voice of Customer" Project 113 3.5.8.2. "Citizens" Portal 113 3.5.8.3. "Community Centers" Project in Georgia 114 3.5.8.4. "Open Data" Portal 115 3.5.8.5. "E-Petition" Portal 117 3.5.8.6. "E-Procurement" Portal 118 3.5.8.7. "Revenue Services" Portal 119 3.5.8.8. E-Notary Project 121 3.5.8.9. E-Health (Currently under development) 123 3.5.9. Development Dynamics of Georgia within E-Government Implementation 124 CHAPTER 4: E-GOVERNMENT IMPLEMENTATION IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION OF GEORGIA: FIELD STUDY 128 4.1. THE PURPOSE OF RESEARCH 129 4.2. RESEARCH GROUP 130 4.2.1. Limitations of Study 132 4.3. RESEARCH METHOD 132 4.3.1. Data Collection Method 133 4.4. ANALYSIS 136 4.4.1. Assessment of Questionnaire 136 4.4.1.1. Results 137 4.4.1.1.1. Reliability Analysis 137 4.4.1.1.2. Review of the Findings 138 4.4.1.1.2.1. Reduction of Bureaucracy 138 4.4.1.1.2.2. Increase of Service Quality 139 4.4.1.1.2.3. 24/7 Service Nonstop Available Any Time and Usually Every Day 141 4.4.1.1.2.4. Simplified Access to the Information 142 4.4.1.1.2.5. Increased Efficiency in the Delivery of Public Service 142 4.4.1.1.2.6. Ensured Equality of Opportunity in Access to Public Service 143 4.4.1.1.2.7. Ensuring Transparency 144 4.4.1.1.2.8. More Convenient Communication among the Government Agencies 145 4.4.1.1.2.9. Decreased Bribery 146 4.4.1.1.2.10. Increase the Speed of Bureaucracy Procedures 147 4.4.2. Assessment of Interviews 148 4.4.2.1. Development Stages of E-government Implementation 149 4.4.2.2. Activities Accelerating the Implementation of E-Government Projects 150 4.4.2.3. The Benefit of E-Government Implementation 150 4.4.2.4. Changes would be liked to made into the current e-government projects 151 4.4.2.5. Obstacles in the E-Government Projects Implementation Process 152 4.4.2.6. E-Government Related Expectations of Institutions 153 CONCLUSION 155 REFERENCES 162 ; ÖZET CHALIGAVA, Natia. Gürcistan Kamu Yönetiminde E-Devlet Uygulamaları, Yüksek Lisans Tezi, Ankara, 2018. Bu çalışmanın amacı, Gürcistan'daki e-Devlet sürecinin değerlendirilmesi ve e-Devlet uygulamalarının Gürcistan kamu yönetiminde ne tür katkılar sağladığını tespit edilmesidir. Bu amaçla da tezin ilk bölümünde Gürcistan'ın kamu yönetiminin genel yapısı; Gürcistan kamu yönetimi sisteminin tarihsel gelişim süreci, Anayasa'nın kabulü ile temeli oluşturulan yeni yasal düzen, Gürcistan'da şu an mevcut olan siyasal ve yönetsel yapı ele alınmış: ikinci bölümünde bilgi toplumunun vazgeçilmez öğesi ve bir çok ülkenin de devlet politikası olan e-Devlet modeli üzerine literatür çalışması yapılarak e-Devlet uygulamalarının kavramsal boyutu incelenmiş ve üçümcü bölümdeyse e-Devlet uygulamalarında en başarılı dört ülke öğrnek incelenmiş ve Gürcistan'da mevcut olan e-Devlet uygulamaları sırayla değerlendirilmiş, e-devlet politikalarının Gürcistan kamu yönetiminde uygulanma süreci genel hatlarıyla irdelenmiştir. Son bölümdeyse, Gürcistan Kamu Yönetiminde E-Devlet Uygulamaları üzerine yürütülen bir alan araştırmasıyla e-Devlet politikalarının Gürcistan kamu yönetiminde uygulanma sürecinin güncel durumu değerlendirilmeye çalişilmiş ve bu sürecin Gürcistan kamu yönetimine ne tür katkılar sağladığı araştırılmıştır. Yürütülen alan araştırması sonucunda elde edilen bulgulardan hareketle, e-devlet uygulamalarının Gürcistan kamu yönetimine olumlu yönde katkılar sağladığı söylenebilir. Tez kapsamında yapılan literatür çalışmaları ve alan araştırması sayesinde genel olarak Gürcistan'ın e-Devlet uygulamalarına ilişkin genel tutumunun pozitif olarak değerlendirilebileceği, Gürcistan'ın etkin bir e-Devletin, sağlıklı bir bilişim altyapısı ile yaşam bulabileceği tespitini kaide aldığı ve sağlıklı bir bilişim altyapısının hazırlanması için gerekli kamu politikalarını oluşturuğu, gerekli düzenlemeleri gerçekleştirdiği, Gürcistan hükümetinin kamu kurum ve kuruluşların sunduğu tüm hizmetlerin elektronik ortama taşınması konusunda istekli ve istikrarlı olduğu sonucuna varılmıştır.

Introduction and objectives: The prevalence of type 2 diabetes is rising worldwide with a rapid increase in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). At the same time, prevalences of overweight and obesity are increasing dramatically in this region, particularly in urban areas. However, SSA is still dealing with infectious diseases such as malaria, HIV-infections and tuberculosis. This double burden poses a major public health challenge in this region, where financial and health resources are limited. Although obesity and the nutritional behavior are the main modifiable risk factors for type 2 diabetes, their relationship is only insufficiently investigated in SSA. Therefore, the first objective of this thesis was to evaluate the associations between various anthropometric measures and type 2 diabetes and to assess the appropriateness of specific cut-off points for the body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC) and waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) in an urban Ghanaian study population. The second object of this thesis was to describe the dietary behavior and to examine the associations between dietary patterns derived by an exploratory factor analysis and type 2 diabetes. The third aim was to identify a dietary pattern by using the reduced rank regression (RRR) approach and to evaluate the association between this pattern and type 2 diabetes in this study population. Data and Methods: Data from 1221 study participants (542 type 2 diabetes cases and 679 controls) of the Kumasi Diabetes and Hypertension (KDH) study was used. The KDH study is an unmatched case-control study, which was conducted at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) in Kumasi, Ghana between August 2007 and June 2008. All participants underwent an anthropometrical examination and the habitual dietary intake was assessed by one 24 hour dietary recall and a locally specific food frequency questionnaire (FFQ). Each participant provided a blood sample and type 2 diabetes was defined as having a fasting plasma glucose ≥ 7mmol/L and/or documented anti-diabetic medication. First, associations between various anthropometric measures and type 2 diabetes were evaluated by multivariate-adjusted logistic regression analysis. Additionally, the discriminative power and population-specific cut-off points for type 2 diabetes were identified by receiver operating characteristic curves. Finally, the optimal cut-off points for BMI, WC and WHR were assessed by the Youden-Index. Second, the dietary behavior of the study population was assessed by an FFQ. Dietary patterns were identified by using an exploratory factor analysis (including 33 food items) and their associations with type 2 diabetes were evaluated by multivariate-adjusted logistic regression analysis. Third, a dietary pattern was identified by using RRR with adiponectin, HDL-cholesterol and triglycerides as response variables and 35 food items as predictor variables and the association between the dietary pattern score and type 2 diabetes was assessed applying multivariate-adjusted logistic regression analysis. Results: First, measures of central obesity, but not of general obesity, were positively associated with type 2 diabetes in women and men. Specifically, BMI was not associated with type 2 diabetes, while WHR showed the strongest association in both sexes, independent of BMI. Furthermore, WHR showed the best discriminative ability for type 2 diabetes and a cut-off point of ≥ 0.88 in women and ≥ 0.90 in men were the optimal WHR cut-off points in this SSA population. The recommended cut-off points for BMI and WC had a poor predictive ability with a low sensitivity and specificity. Second, the dietary behavior was characterized by a high intake of carbohydrate- and fat- dense foods, such as plantain, banku, bread, rice, fish and palm oil. Two dietary patterns were identified by factor analysis: The "purchase" dietary pattern was characterized by a high consumption of sweets, rice, protein-rich foods (red meat, poultry, eggs and milk), fruits and vegetables and low consumption of plantain. This pattern was inversely associated with type 2 diabetes. The "traditional" dietary pattern was characterized by a high intake of plantain, green leafy vegetables, fish, fermented maize products, and palm oil and was associated with an increased odds of type 2 diabetes. Third, a dietary pattern was derived by RRR, which was characterized by a high consumption of plantain, garden egg and cassava and a low intake of juice, sweets, vegetable oil, rice, hot chocolate, soft drinks, eggs and red meat. This pattern was positively associated with serum triglyceride concentrations and negatively with HDL-cholesterol, but not with adiponectin. The odds for type 2 diabetes increased significantly with increasing pattern score. Conclusion: This study highlights the important role of central obesity for the risk of type 2 diabetes in an SSA population. Furthermore, the current recommended cut-off points for obesity measures are inappropriate to assess diabetes risk in this urban Ghanaian population. Further investigations are needed to evaluate the rationale of country- or region-specific cut-off points for anthropometric indices to identify individuals with type 2 diabetes in SSA. Findings of the second part show that two diverse dietary patterns are identified and strongly associated with type 2 diabetes in urban Ghana. Therefore, further investigations are warranted to clarify the determinants of adherences to dietary patterns and to verify these patterns in other West-African populations. Findings of the third part suggest that adherence to traditional food items and low preference for purchased foods relate to increased serum triglycerides and decreased HDL-cholesterol, both risk factors for type 2 diabetes, and as a consequence may increase the risk for type 2 diabetes. Finally, the reproducibility of the association between the RRR-derived dietary pattern and type 2 diabetes should be evaluated in independent populations. ; Hintergrund und Zielstellung: Die Typ-2-Diabetesprävalenz nimmt weltweit stetig zu, mit einem rapiden Anstieg besonders in sub-Sahara Afrika (SSA). Gleichzeitig steigt die Prävalenz an Übergewicht und Adipositas drastisch an, insbesondere in den städtischen Gebieten dieser Region. Zudem wird das Gesundheitssystem in SSA immer noch durch Infektionskrankheiten wie Malaria, HIV-Infektionen und Tuberkulose belastet. Diese Doppelbelastung stellt eine große gesundheitspolitische Herausforderung für diese Region dar, in der finanzielle und gesundheitliche Ressourcen begrenzt sind. Adipositas und das Ernährungsverhalten sind die wichtigsten modifizierbaren Risikofaktoren für Typ-2-Diabetes, jedoch ist ihre Beziehung bislang nur unzureichend in SSA untersucht. Daher war das erste Ziel dieser Arbeit, die Zusammenhänge zwischen verschiedenen anthropometrischen Maßen und dem Typ-2-Diabetes Risiko zu untersuchen, sowie die Übertragbarkeit der spezifischen Grenzwerte für den Body Mass Index (BMI), den Taillenumfang und dem Taille-Hüft-Verhältnis (WHR) in einer urbanen ghanaischen Studienpopulation zu beurteilen. Das zweite Ziel war das Ernährungsverhalten zu charakterisieren und die Zusammenhänge zwischen Ernährungsmustern, die mittels einer explorativen Faktorenanalyse identifiziert wurden, und dem Typ-2-Diabetes Risiko zu untersuchen. Das dritte Ziel war es ein Ernährungsmuster mittels reduzierter Rangregression (RRR) zu identifizieren und dessen Zusammenhang mit dem Typ-2-Diabetes Risiko in dieser Studienpopulation zu untersuchen. Datengrundlage und Methoden: Daten von 1221 Studienteilnehmern (542 Typ-2-Diabetes Fälle und 679 Kontrollen) der Kumasi Diabetes und Hypertonie (KDH) Studie wurden analysiert. Die KDH-Studie ist eine ungepaarte Fall-Kontroll-Studie, die am Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) in Kumasi, Ghana von August 2007 bis Juni 2008 durchgeführt wurde. Die anthropometrische Untersuchung wurde von geschultem Krankenhauspersonal am leicht bekleideten Studienteilnehmer durchgeführt. Das Ernährungsverhalten wurde mithilfe eines lokal spezifischen Verzehrshäufigkeits-fragebogens (FFQ) und eines 24 Stunden Ernährungsprotokolls ermittelt. Jedem Teilnehmer wurde eine Blutprobe entnommen. Typ-2-Diabetes wurde definiert als Nüchternblutzucker ≥ 7mmol/L und/oder bekannte Antidiabetika-Behandlung. Im ersten Teil dieser Dissertation wurden die Zusammenhänge zwischen verschiedenen anthropometrischen Maßen und dem Typ-2-Diabetes Risiko mittels multivariat-adjustierter logistischer Regressionsanalyse untersucht. Die Fläche unter der Receiver Operating Characteristic Kurve (ROC-AUC) wurde zum Vergleich der diskriminativen Fähigkeit der anthropometrischen Maße zur Identifizierung von Diabetikern genutzt, sowie zur Überprüfung von populationsspezifischen Grenzwerten. Schließlich wurden die optimalen Grenzwerte mithilfe des Youden-Index ermittelt. Im zweiten Teil dieser Dissertation wurde das Ernährungsverhalten der Studienpopulation mithilfe eines FFQs charakterisiert. Des Weiteren wurden Ernährungsmuster mittels einer explorativen Faktorenanalyse, basierend auf 33 Lebensmitteln des FFQs, identifiziert und die Assoziationen zwischen den Ernährungsmustern und dem Typ-2-Diabetes Risiko mittels multivariat-adjustierter logistischer Regressionsanalyse untersucht. Im dritten Teil dieser Dissertation wurde mittels RRR mit den Aufnahmemengen von 35 Lebensmitteln als Prädiktoren und den Serumkonzentrationen von Adiponektin, HDL-Cholesterin und Triglyzeriden als Response-Variablen ein Ernährungsmuster hergeleitet und die Assoziation mit dem Typ-2-Diabetes Risiko mithilfe der multivariat-adjustierten logistischen Regressionsanalyse untersucht. Ergebnisse: Die ersten Ergebnisse zeigten, dass Maße der zentralen Adipositas, aber nicht der generellen Adipositas, positiv mit dem Typ-2-Diabetes Risiko sowohl bei Frauen als auch bei Männern assoziiert waren. WHR war der stärkste Risikofaktor in beiden Geschlechtern, unabhängig vom BMI. Der Vergleich der ROC-AUCs zeigte, dass die WHR das beste anthropometrische Maß zur Identifizierung von Diabetikern sowohl in Männern als auch in Frauen war. Der optimale WHR-Grenzwert für Frauen lag bei ≥ 0.88 und bei Männern ≥ 0.90 in dieser afrikanischen Bevölkerung. Die empfohlenen Grenzwerte für BMI und Taillenumfang hingegen hatten eine schlechte Vorhersagekraft mit einer niedrigen Sensitivität und Spezifität. Das Ernährungsverhalten war durch eine hohe Aufnahme von kohlenhydrat- und fettreichen Lebensmitteln (Kochbanane, fermentierte Maisprodukte, Brot, Reis, Fisch und Palmöl) charakterisiert. Zwei Ernährungsmuster wurden mittels Faktorenanalyse identifiziert: Das "industriell geprägte" Ernährungsmuster war charakterisiert durch einen hohen Verzehr von Süßigkeiten, Reis, eiweißreichen Lebensmitteln (rotes Fleisch, Geflügel, Eier und Milch), Obst und Gemüse und niedrigen Verzehr von Kochbananen. Dieses Muster war invers mit dem Typ-2-Diabetes Risiko assoziiert. Das "traditionelle" Ernährungsmuster hingegen war gekennzeichnet durch einen hohen Verzehr von Kochbananen, grünem Blattgemüse, Fisch, fermentierten Maisprodukten und Palmöl. Es war mit einem erhöhten Risiko für Typ-2-Diabetes assoziiert. Mithilfe der RRR wurde ein Ernährungsmuster hergeleitet, das durch einen hohen Verzehr von Kochbananen, Aubergine und Maniok sowie einen geringen Verzehr an Saft, Süßigkeiten, Pflanzenöl, Reis, Softgetränken, Eier und rotem Fleisch charakterisiert war. Dieses Muster war mit erhöhten Serumkonzentrationen an Triglyzeriden und erniedrigten HDL-Cholesterin assoziiert, aber zeigte keinen Zusammenhang mit Adiponektin. Ein hoher Musterscore war mit einem erhöhten Risiko für Typ-2-Diabetes assoziiert. Schlussfolgerung: Diese Studie unterstreicht die wichtige Rolle der zentralen Adipositas für das Risiko von Typ-2-Diabetes in einer afrikanischen Bevölkerung. Darüber hinaus sind die derzeit empfohlenen Grenzwerte für Übergewicht und Adipositas ungeeignet, um das Diabetes-Risiko in dieser ghanaischen Population zu beurteilen. Weitere Untersuchungen sind notwendig, um Länder- oder Regions-spezifische Grenzwerte für anthropometrische Maße zu untersuchen, um Personen mit Typ-2-Diabetes in SSA zu identifizieren. Die Ergebnisse des zweiten Teils zeigen, dass zwei unterschiedliche Ernährungsmuster identifiziert wurden, die stark mit dem Typ-2-Diabetes Risiko assoziiert sind. Die Determinanten für die Einhaltung, sowie die Verifizierung dieser Muster sollten in anderen Westafrikanischen Populationen weiter untersucht werden. Die Ergebnisse des dritten Teils weisen darauf hin, dass der hohe Verzehr an "traditionellen" Lebensmitteln sowie der geringe Verzehr an "industriell geprägten" Lebensmitteln Serumkonzentration an Triglyzeriden erhöhen und HDL-Cholesterin senken könnten, beides Risikofaktoren für Typ-2-Diabetes, und dadurch zu einem erhöhten Risiko für Typ-2-Diabetes führen können. Die Reproduzierbarkeit des Zusammenhanges zwischen diesem Ernährungsmuster und dem Typ-2-Diabetes Risiko sollte in unabhängigen Studienpopulationen überprüft werden.

The Democratic Party (Demokrat Parti, DP) period between 1950 and 1960 is arguably the most controversial and least studied period of modern Turkish history. Scholarly study of the period has been significantly influenced by dichotomous views that remain quite dominant at the popular and political levels even today. The DP's takeover of power in 1950 is seen either as a counterrevolution as a result of which the most valuable achievements of the single-party period of 1923 to 1945, such as secularism, were reversed, or else as a popular uprising in which the authentic spokespeople of the will of the nation finally replaced the republican elites. Calling this dichotomy a "perception rupture," in this book, which is primarily a study of peasants, Sinan Yıldırmaz avoids this problem via meticulous analysis of the existing scholarship and data. His decision to extend the period under examination so as to cover the years from 1945 to 1960 is also a wise choice, as in this way he is able to stress not only the ruptures but also the continuities between the Republican People's Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, CHP) and the DP. The postwar years in Turkey were a period in which peasants became more visible, ultimately emerging as important social and political actors. Yıldırmaz follows this increasing prominence of peasants through four areas that correspond to the core chapters of the book: sociological studies of the countryside; urban areas in relation to peasant migration; politics; and literature. While the increasing visibility and empowerment of peasants in postwar Turkey has long been recognized, Yıldırmaz revises several of the prevalent arguments on this subject. Indeed, there has been a protracted debate about the very definition of peasantry, with several approaches—Marxist, Weberian, and moral economy—offering different criteria. Yıldırmaz chooses not to enter into the discussion about who the peasant is, instead adopting a minimalist definition of peasantry that simply includes within the term all village dwellers (p. 40). Although this choice can certainly be criticized on analytical grounds, it does provide the author with considerable flexibility to cover a wide range of people, localities, and practices in connection with rural cultivators. In Chapter 1, Yıldırmaz traces back to the late nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire the different schools of sociology that competed in the field of rural sociology, showing that, from the 1940s on, the two main rivals in this field were the LePlay-Prince Sabahaddin school on the one hand, and American sociology on the other. The author argues that, despite their differences, the two schools later converged into a single perspective that was developmentalist in nature. This perspective sought a "real" picture of the peasantry, presented underdevelopment as the greatest problem facing this group, and offered "scientific" solutions aimed at promoting rural development (pp. 49–50). Yıldırmaz attributes the convergence of these different sociological approaches to the peasant question to the influence of the modernization theory on Turkish rural sociology, and for this reason the chapter also includes a rather lengthy discussion of the modernization perspective. In Chapter 2, Yıldırmaz moves on to the complex economic and spatial relations between the rural and the urban in Turkey. It is here that the author is most critical of the existing literature and the book is at its most revisionist. By 1960, around half of the inhabitants of large cities in Turkey lived in the shantytowns known as gecekondu, and so not surprisingly gecekondus, as well as the rural-to-urban migration that was the main cause for their proliferation, have become one of the most widely discussed issues in sociology and urban studies relating to Turkey. Most studies on rural migration have determined that the main factor driving peasants to cities was mechanization and the detrimental effects it had on, especially, landless peasants and sharecroppers. Yıldırmaz, however, challenges this model by means of a careful reexamination of the literature as well as the data. His claim is that the main source of migration was actually smallholders, and he shows that rural-to-urban migration did not actually intensify in Çukurova and southeastern Anatolia, areas where sharecropping was dominant (p. 86). Moreover, mechanization also led to other outcomes, such as the cultivation of new land by landless peasants. In this chapter, the author has much to say about urban studies, criticizing the bulk of the urban studies literature of the period and subsequent decades for its lack of sensitivity to the complexities of rural life and for opting for simplistic explanations, such as linking migration directly and exclusively with mechanization in order to account for migration to cities. The book's treatment of the involvement of peasants in politics in Chapter 3 is equally rich and thorough, if somewhat less critical of the existing scholarship. That the onset of the multiparty parliamentary system in Turkey following World War II led to the empowerment of the peasants in representative democracy is well known, but Yıldırmaz undertakes an especially thorough investigation of the repercussions of this phenomenon. As he points out (p. 133), while voting was the most important form of action linking peasants to politics, it was by no means the only one: from coffeehouses to popular journals targeting peasants, the countryside was in fact highly politicized, in some cases even leading to the partisan politicization of village headman elections (p. 138). In one such case, the February 1947 headman elections in Arslanköy, near the city of Mersin, turned so violent as to become a nationwide issue. Analyzing this particular incident in detail, the author convincingly argues that this seemingly minor event in fact reveals peasants' changing perception of freedom and their expectations of reciprocity, as well as attesting to how the rule of law became a tool in the hands of politicians, especially those in the DP. With the multiparty elections, and given the sheer fact that the majority of the population lived in the countryside, peasants became indispensable to the political system after 1945, and as the Arslanköy case revealed, the peasants themselves were actually aware of this. As examined in Chapter 4, the birth of a new literary genre called "village literature" also made peasants more "real" and visible in the tumultuous period between 1945 and 1960 (p. 203). One of the most common themes in the politics of this era, one that was shared by both the DP and the CHP, was anti-communism, and exactly how a literary movement with strong egalitarian overtones and an overtly critical view of existing class relations in the countryside was able to thrive in such an atmosphere begs an explanation. In this chapter, Yıldırmaz points out two factors behind this: first, the initially sympathetic attitude of the DP (p. 211), and second, the emergence of a generation of writers originally from villages and often educated in village institutes (köy enstitüleri) (p. 216). The book has a couple of shortcomings. One of these is related to style and seems to be a result of the difficulties involved in converting a dissertation into a monograph: parts of the book, for example, are far from being succinct, and there are some unnecessarily lengthy quotations from secondary sources, as well as certain repetitions. The other problem concerns the author's treatment of the single-party period. In marked contrast with his nuanced analysis of the 1945–1960 period, in treating the first decades of the republic the author relies on the conventional literature, and in so doing seems to reproduce some of its problems. One can see this, for instance, in references to the "populist-peasantist" discourse of the single-party government, or when the village coffeehouses of the single-party period are contrasted with those of the period of DP rule. While the author's attempt to establish continuity by tackling coffeehouses as political spaces par excellence from Ottoman times all the way through to the DP period is commendable, the book nevertheless presents a rather implausible picture of full state control over village life during the single-party era in order to better underline the differences between DP rule and earlier CHP governments. In general, there is an emerging scholarly literature on the period of single-party rule that questions the conventional picture of the CHP government as an all-powerful and internally fully coherent apparatus that was largely detached from the masses. 1 Yıldırmaz hardly engages with this new understanding of that period, and as a result the book is less nuanced and less "creative" when dealing with the republic prior to the year 1945. Of course, the book is concerned with the postwar years, and so the problem with the approach to the single-party period does not constitute a major weakness. Setting the task of revisiting the question of the peasantry during the crucial period of 1945–1960, the book is successful in handling the different social, cultural, and political issues that involved the Turkish peasantry during this period. The author does not assume familiarity on the part of readers, and so he patiently summarizes debates even about topics that are not directly part of the book's core subject matter. This choice makes the book particularly accessible to those who are not familiar with Turkish political history, the peasantry, or some of the theoretical debates these topics entail. Focusing on four areas where peasants became unmistakably more visible and influential in the postwar years—namely, sociological studies, urban areas, politics, and literature—and taking a bold and revisionist approach to most of the conventional assumptions about this era, Yıldırmaz's book represents a major contribution to the study of the Turkish peasantry, which until recently constituted a majority of the population, as well as of Turkish politics, in which rural dwellers came to play a crucial role after World War II.