Economic Freedom and the Advantages of Backwardness

According to econometric studies, economic freedom and its improvement increase growth rates. But their effects are dominated by the effects of the level of economic development and human capital. Do these findings imply that defenders of capitalism and economic freedom exaggerate their case? Not at all.Consider the level of economic development that determines the potential advantages of backwardness. Economists usually discuss the reasons for the existence of these potential advantages: less developed economies can borrow technologies, business models, and marketing procedures from more advanced economies; and imitation may be easier and faster than innovation on which the leading economies have to rely.Plausibly, these advantages are greater at moderate levels of backwardness where the level of human capital formation permits the exploitation of the opportunities of backwardness. Or, less developed economies have more scope for reallocating labor from less productive work in agriculture to more productive work in industry or services. Or, it is probably easier to find profitable investments in developing countries -- say, in transport infrastructure -- than in highly developed economies where many of the obvious investments have already been made. I do not want to join the debate about the relative merit of these arguments. Nor do I want to add arguments from other social sciences according to which the process of economic development implies value changes that feed back to undermine prospects for later economic growth

Democracy and Capitalism

Autor zastupa tezu o normativnoj prednosti samoodređenja pred suodlučivanjem, kapitalizma pred demokracijom. Međutim, argumente za tvrdnju da je kapitalizam značajniji od demokracije ne pruža samo normativna nego i deskriptivna teorija. Valjanost postavke da je kapitalizam nužna pretpostavka za postojanje i funkcioniranje demokracije autor potkrepljuje navođenjem tri mehanizma. Odnos demokracije i kapitalizma obilježen je i time što demokracija ugrožava najprije kapitalizam, a najzad i samu sebe.The author maintains that self-determination has a normative advantage over participation in decision-making, capitalism over democracy. Not only normative, but also descriptive theory offers arguments showing that capitalism is more significant than democracy. The correctness of his thesis that capitalism is a necessary precondition for the existence and functioning of democracy is underpinned by the author\u27s account of three mechanisms. The relationship between democracy and capitalism is also marked by the fact that democracy first threatens capitalism and the itself as well

Asien und der Westen, Aufstieg und Niedergang

"Der Aufstieg Ostasiens und der Niedergang des Westens lassen sich in drei Thesen zusammenfassen: 1. Der Westen ist groß geworden, weil er eher als die asiatischen Hochkulturen mehr Menschen, die nicht der herrschenden Klasse (eher im Sinne von Mosca oder Dahrendorf als von Marx zu verstehen) angehören, private Eigentumsrechte zugestanden und damit auch individuelle Entscheidungsfreiheit und Innovationsmöglichkeiten überlassen hat. 2. Der Westen wird wieder klein, weil er zunehmend individuelle, beispielsweise unternehmerische, Entscheidungen durch politische Entscheidungen unter dem Einfluß von Verteilungskoalitionen ersetzt, weil der Wohlfahrtsstaat notwendigerweise das Sozialkapital von Gesellschaften reduziert, indem er die Menschen von der Verantwortung für die Folgen ihres Handelns entlastet. In Asien dagegen treibt die bei Weber erwähnte Hungerpeitsche die Menschen noch an. 3. Letzten Endes ist der Westen immer noch in einer Akzeptanzkrise des Kapitalismus, die sich 1848 im Kommunistischen Manifest besonders folgenreich artikulierte, die aber auch noch andauert, weil die Leistungsfähigkeit der unsichtbaren Hand des Marktes systematisch unterschätzt und die der potentiell alles erdrückenden Hand des Staates systematisch überschätzt wird. Die Volksrepublik China führt seit 1979 die Substanz des Kapitalismus, wenn auch nicht das dazugehörige Etikett, ein und wächst und wächst. Im Westen reicht der sozialdemokratische Konsens, im Kern das Postulat des Primats der Politik über die Privatwirtschaft, bis weit in sog. konservative Parteien hinein. Der Ausgang des Wettlaufs zwischen dem schleichenden Kapitalismus Ostasiens - Japan und China sind heute liberaler als vor 10 oder 15 Jahren, wenn auch noch lange nicht so liberal wie der Westen - und dem schleichenden Sozialismus des Westens wird unser Schicksal bestimmen." (Autorenreferat

Confrontational Behavior and Escalation to War 1816-1980: A Research Plan

The understanding of international war, like many complex social events, may be - and has been - ap proached from a range of theoretical perspectives and via a variety of research strategies. Outside of the work of Bloch (1898), Sorokin (1936), Richardson (1941), and Wright (1942), however, there was little re search of a scientific nature until the mid-1960s. And while these past fifteen years have certainly not given us a compelling theory of international war, they have seen a steady growth in cumulative knowledge regar ding the correlates of war. These results, despite the expected mix of inconsistencies and anomalies, provide us with some sense of the factors that are most consistently associated with war over the last century and a half, along with some tentative insights into the rising and declining potency of these factors.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/68556/2/10.1177_002234338201900104.pd

Is a Federal European Constitution for an Enlarged European Union Necessary? Some Preliminary Suggestions Using Public Choice Analysis

In order to guarantee a further successful functioning of the enlarged European Union a Federal European Constitution is proposed. Six basic elements of a future European federal constitution are developed: the European commission should be turned into an European government and the European legislation should consist of a two chamber system with full responsibility over all federal items. Three further key elements are the subsidiarity principle, federalism and the secession right, which are best suited to limiting the domain of the central European authority to which certain tasks are given, such as defense, foreign and environmental policy. Another important feature is direct democracy, which provides the possibility for European voters to participate actively in the political decision making, to break political and interest group cartels, and to prevent an unwanted shifting of responsibilities from EU member states to the European federal level

Future Hegemonic Rivalry Between China and the West?

Currently there is a unipolar distribution of power. The United States reigns supreme. Russia's economic power will remain insufficient to underwrite a renewed attempt to establish global leadership. While the European Community still commands sufficient resources for exercising global leadership, it lacks the political foundation for unitary action. Moreover, the European addiction to the welfare state undermines European competitiveness. Japan is too much of a "trading state" and unlikely to become a first-rate military power, before she is overtaken by China in economic size. So, count Russia, Europe and Japan out as conceivable challengers to United States hegemony. China is the only plausible candidate. Its economic growth rate is nothing less than spectacular. Moreover, the Chinese government seems capable of extracting the necessary resources for waging a hegemonic rivalry from a society that is likely to remain quite poor for at least another generation. There are a number of conceivable scenarios for the emerging American-Chinese relationship. The future will depend on the relative speed of the American decline and the rise of China as well as on the openness of the global economy. The more open the global economy, the better the prospects for rising per capita incomes in China become, the better the prospects for some mellowing or even democratization of the Chinese regime. Only if the West sticks together under American leadership and if creeping capitalism in China leads to creeping democratization later, is hegemonic rivalry likely to remain benign and peaceful