Archive for month: February, 2016

Creating the Euro was a mistake, but it cannot be undone without serious consequences for the Euro and its member states

By Claire Witherington-Perkins

Introduction and Background

The Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) consists of a single currency, the euro, and the Eurosystem, made up by the ECB and national central banks of euro member states. The euro, introduced in 1999 in 12 states that “abandoned their national currencies in favour of a European alternative” had been in development since 1992 . It now covers 19 EU member states, and for the first time since the Roman Empire, much of Europe has one currency. Member states control their national budgets and structural policies while staying within deficit and debt limits the EMU imposes.

The European Central Bank (ECB), the central bank for the euro, controls monetary policy. Its primary goal is price stability but is also responsible for defining and implementing euro area monetary policy, foreign exchange operations portfolio management, and smooth payment systems in addition to other tasks. Despite the many benefits of the euro, the European Monetary Union (EMU) was a mistake because the negatives, such as asymmetric shocks, outweigh its positive effects, like greater economic integration. However, dismantling the euro would create substantial economic setbacks and is not a viable option, meaning the euro will remain regardless of its problems.

Benefits of a Single Currency

The euro, despite its controversy, has played an important role in the development of the EU’s economic integration. Its introduction lowered barriers to trade, which increased competitiveness of and trade between euro zone businesses. Business contracts are no longer subject to exchange rate uncertainty, increasing certainty and investment while lowering business’ capital costs . The euro has not only stimulated trade, but also the free movement of capital, goods, and people.

The euro has also strengthened the EU’s single market. The introduction of the euro increased transparency and allowed simpler comparison of cross-border prices. With transparent prices, it is easier to see whether the EU single market has achieved price convergence, indicating the level of market integration. euro zone states will cooperate more closely with one another to create a stable currency and economy, thus making the euro a “tangible sign of a European identity.” Additionally, countries around the world are using the euro for reserves, and some are even pegging their currencies to the euro, demonstrating the importance of the euro and the EU as a global economic power. Since the introduction of the euro, there has been a “stronger presence for the EU in the global economy,” and the euro is “considered a viable alternative global reserve currency and competitor to the US dollar” (564).

The euro was a major political accomplishment of EU member states, and politicians and citizens believed that the euro “would lead to peace and prosperity.” The recent economic crisis proved that the euro, in fact, heightens asymmetric shocks due to the lack of cyclical correlation. Overall, “the euro is an integral part of the economic, social and political structures of today’s European Union,” but was ultimately a result of political desire for more European integration rather than an economic motivation.

Negative Effects of a Single Currency

The euro created a loss of economic sovereignty and individual monetary policy, making it difficult to respond to national economic problems. The ECB sets monetary policy even if it helps some countries while hurting others in order to act based on “what is good for the whole euro zone, rather than any individual economy.” Individual exchange rates can no longer respond to national economic booms and busts, but rather, the euro exchange rate responds to the euro zone as a whole. euro zone countries can neither devalue their currencies nor use interest rate policy in order to achieve their national objectives. Additionally, the euro weakened “the market signals that would otherwise warn a country that its fiscal deficits were becoming excessive.” Although countries willingly gave up their right to control monetary policy, the euro has had an overall negative effect on the economy of many, if not most, euro zone countries.

For instance, Greece is suffering at the expense of the euro. Although Greece began failing before the financial crisis, European authorities failed to intervene at the first sign of trouble. The introduction of the euro lowered interest rates in Greece, who previously had high interest rates, which increased borrowing, leading to more problems. A “Grexit” might end up improving the euro credibility because it would remove a member who “should never have been allowed to join in the first place.” The ECB was not supposed to bail out countries, so Greece had to choose either to leave the euro or achieve an unsanctioned bailout. Without borrowing from other euro zone countries, Greece would have failed to pay its national debt or other payment obligations such as salaries or pensions.

The EU and EMU economic governance has been unsuccessful. Despite the fact that the euro helped capital movement within the EMU, it led to the funding of bubbles like the property bubble in Ireland and many euro zone countries still have other barriers such as intense administrative regulations, immovable labor markets, and high business expenses. If individual states have negative economic indicators, they can cause an overall euro depreciation. Finally, the euro was supposed to increase price transparency and bring about a single price, which it has not yet done.

Optimum Currency Area

An optimum currency area is “a phrase used in economic theory to define the geographical area in which the conditions are most favourable for sharing a single currency.” A single currency implies imposing a single monetary policy, meaning countries must be similar in order for all to benefit.  One monetary policy is only appropriate if countries have similar economies and similar economic cultures. In order to have similar economic cycles, member states must have similar shocks, institutions, and policies in addition to economic integration. If a currency union does not have synchronized business cycles, “the common monetary policy does not satisfy the needs of all and may even contribute to cyclical divergence,” which the euro zone has been experiencing.

The convergence criteria in the Maastricht Treaty of 1992 addressed exchange rate, inflation, and interest rate stability as well as debt and deficit limits in the attempt to create an optimum currency area; however these convergence criteria should have also considered economic structures, cycles, and political culture. This condition of similarity in the optimum currency area theory implies that “countries suffering from asymmetric shocks should not yet join the euro zone,” which the convergence criteria did not address, thus leading to problems.

There are two main groups in the euro zone with opposite business cycles: the north, or core, and the south, or periphery. The core wants the periphery to take on economic reforms and has allowed the ECB to provide relief to struggling countries in the periphery. Although reforms in the periphery could help the euro, the main challenge is whether those countries will do what is necessary and whether a compromise between the core and periphery is possible. Despite convergence criteria, some periphery countries joined the euro with high debt and deficits. The main problem with the euro that signals that it might not work is that “European economies are too different” and “going in two opposite directions.”

For example, in 2001, the euro zone’s main economies, France and Germany, slowed with increased unemployment while Ireland and Spain experienced a boom. These groups needed opposite solutions; however, the ECB lowered interest rates to help France and Germany prosper, which made Ireland and Spain suffer, contributing to a crisis in the periphery. Similarly, after the economic crisis, France and Germany are booming but Ireland, Greece, and Spain are in a recession, so the “core needs higher interest rates whereas the periphery needs lower interest rates.” Thus, the ECB has a choice to make between inflation in the core or unemployment in the periphery, but since the core has more power within the EU and the euro zone, generally, monetary policy benefits the core and hurts the periphery.

Adjustment mechanisms such as labor movement, price and wage flexibility, and “interregional fiscal transfer payments” that work in the United States when only certain areas are under duress are less likely in the euro zone due to linguistic and cultural barriers, limited labor market reform, and the political impossibility of core countries paying to support periphery countries. Without these mechanisms available to the euro zone as they are to the United States, the euro-area will struggle with asymmetric shocks and divergent cycles among many other difficulties. The euro will not work while the core and periphery have opposite economic conditions with no possible adjustment mechanisms and will further fiscal problems in the periphery because the euro is “a one-size-fits-all policy for fundamentally different economies.” Despite economic changes, “the fundamental problems of forcing disparate countries to live with a single monetary policy and a single rate” persist.

Analysis and Conclusion

As a whole, the euro has been an unsuccessful monetary union for many reasons, most importantly because of the lack of an optimum currency area and the divide between core and periphery economies. Despite the trade and job creation and greater European integration, the euro was mainly a politically motivated rather than an economic decision. However, despite the mistake of this monetary union, the euro is irreversible and will survive because of Germany’s economic influence, risk-averse voters, and potential further ECB powers.

One potential solution to the divergent economic problem is for the outliers to leave. Leaving the euro could be disastrous for both the euro and those countries that leave and thus is not a viable option. If the struggling countries formed a new currency union separate from the core countries’ currency union, there would be greater economic harmonization and more similar business cycles since the periphery and core separately would be closer to creating optimum currency areas. This solution would mean that the separate central banks would be able to help all countries in its optimum currency area by setting one monetary policy. Since the core and periphery states are on opposite boom-and-bust cycles, the ECB is unable to set monetary policy without hurting one set of countries. However, the periphery countries will not want to leave the euro because they desire to be part of a strong currency. If the periphery countries had their own currency, it would be weak even though the monetary policy would be better suited to those states’ economic situations. Additionally, the unplanned change of currency could lead to a market panic or loss of investor confidence, which could spark bank runs leading into another financial crisis. Thus, the breakup of the euro is not a viable future option.

The EU must do something to improve the euro situation, though. The EU plans to “improve the economic governance framework” of the EMU by improving and reinforcing the EMU. By the end of June 2017, the EU will complete the financial union, enhance democratic accountability, and increase competitiveness and convergence of structures. By 2025, the EU plans to increase convergence through legal means and to have established a treasury for the EMU. There is no correct solution to the euro problem, and it is clear that the monetary union was a mistake. The euro will not break up because it would create instability and potential crises. The EU’s plan going forward will not solve all of the euro’s problems nor will it make up for the economic mistake it made by introducing the euro, but it might bring the euro closer to what politicians tried to start. The mistake of introducing the euro is now an important part of the global economy and cannot easily be broken up without economic backlash, so it is important that EU institutions attempt to fix what they can to increase harmony in the EMU.

Claire Witherington-Perkins is a student in SIS and CAS class of 2017. She can be contacted at cw5893a@student.american.edu.

All views expressed are solely those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the World Mind or of Clocks and Clouds.

In the 21st century violence is still used to punish youth in America, with terrible consequences

By Jeremy Clement

Corporal punishment was the preferred method to keep America’s students in line for much of American history. Paddling, spanking, and other forms of violent punishment have slowly been replaced by other techniques such as positive reinforcement. However, today corporal punishment still exists in many American schools, with disastrous consequences for youths, families, and the United States as a whole. These consequences range from mental and physical harm to children, a tarnished international image, harm to families, and a discriminatory punishment system.

Where Does Corporal Punishment in American Schools Stand Today?

Corporal punishment has existed for many centuries. It was used in the Middle Ages to punish school children and until 1948 was used in Britain to punish minor criminal offenders. Some infamous examples of corporal punishment include the flogging of Christ and the use of flogging by the British navy during the 18th century.

The good news is that corporal punishment is on the decline. During the 2006-2007 school year 223,190 students received corporal punishment in comparison to approximately 1.5 million students in 1976. However, nineteen states (shaded red in Figure 1 below) still allow corporal punishment.

Why Should The U.S. Ban Corporal Punishment?

Aside from the more obvious arguments against corporal punishment, such as the negative effects on children’s ability to learn and so on, the administration of corporal punishment has discriminatory factors associated with it. Table 1 below outlines some striking statistics. Overall, African Americans disproportionately receive twice the amount of corporal punishments that their percentage of school population would suggest. It is hard to convince young African American students to behave in school when they are unfairly administered corporal punishment by their discipliners.

Table 1: Corporal punishment minority statistics

Demographic	% of School Population	% of Corporal Punishment Victims
Disabled	14%	19%
African-Americans	17.1%	35.6%
Texas Disabled Statistics	10.7%	18.4%

Disabled students also bear an unfair burden. One study showed that in Tennessee disabled students are twice as likely to be paddled as their peers. This is especially true for students on the autism spectrum, since their disability interferes with their ability to follow what would otherwise be considered appropriate social behavioral norms.

Aside from the discriminatory nature of corporal punishment, the negative effects on children are severe and sometimes irreversible. A study by the Brookings Institution revealed that students who are subject to corporal punishment at a young age are more likely to abuse drugs or alcohol. These students are also more likely to imitate such abuse later in life through domestic violence or emotionally abusive relationships with their children. The study claims that these students “may learn to associate violence with power or getting one’s own way.” Children who are punished physically—regularly or severely—are more likely to develop mental health issues later in life.

Corporal punishment can be physically devastating for children as well. According to Time magazine, “[t]he Society for Adolescent Medicine has documented […] severe muscle injury, extensive blood-clotting (hematomas), whiplash damage and hemorrhaging” in cases of corporal punishment. These gruesome injuries have sometimes caused parents to give up jobs to homeschool their children, thereby negatively affecting students’ family lives. Not to mention that these injuries unnecessarily contribute to skyrocketing healthcare costs when they require medical attention.

The effects that corporal punishment has on students boil down to one simple fact: in the United States of America—one of the most developed and democratic states in the world—one of the only groups of citizens who can be beaten legally are school children. This, of course, exhibits a terrible confusion of our priorities.

The last reason for banning corporal punishment is the simple fact of embarrassment. Over 70 nations worldwide have laws that explicitly prohibit corporal punishment in schools. The United Nations has criticized countries that still allow corporal punishment saying that “there is no doubt that corporal punishment is a violation of children’s rights under the Convention on the Rights of the Child because it is constitutive of violence that causes . . . suffering.” That the U.S. has not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child is further proof of its negligent policy towards children. Therefore, the U.S. should A) ratify the Convention, and B) respect its basic obligations towards its citizens under the age of 18.

If Corporal Punishment Were to Be Banned, How Would We Do It?

A simple answer would be for schools to just stop doing it. No law requires schools to paddle or hit children. However, with that route being perhaps too far away, legal action seems necessary.

States without specific regulations prohibiting corporal punishment could amend their laws to define it and outlaw it. These states should take a similar route as Iowa and New Jersey, for instance, both of which ban the practice in both public and private schools. As Figure 1 showed, the states in which corporal punishment still lingers are typically more conservative states. This is not a coincidence, Republicans in general tend to view the practice more favorably. So all else being equal, passing laws in these states will be theoretically more difficult than passing laws in more left-leaning states that do not already ban it.

The federal government could use its spending power to incentivize schools or state governments to ban the practice. A program similar to Race to the Top or to a statute such as Title IX where schools will lose funding if they do not abide by prohibitions on corporal punishment could be effective. Alternatively, and to the benefit of those in the disabled community, Congress could introduce an amendment to the Americans with Disabilities Act that specifically protects disabled students from corporal punishment in schools. If a lawsuit arose that claimed that corporal punishment constituted child abuse, and was thus unconstitutional, the Supreme Court could overturn its 1977 ruling that allowed corporal punishment via the “Trop” standard which allows for evolving standards of decency in America society or another similar mechanism.

Regardless of which legal or social path is taken to end corporal punishment in American schools, it needs to be done quickly. Hundreds of thousands of students are affected every year and this practice is clearly detrimental to society.

Jeremy Clement is a student in the School of International Service class of 2019. He can be contacted at jc5160b@student.american.edu.

All views expressed are solely those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the World Mind or of Clocks and Clouds.

Poetic Thinking about Human Rights NGOs and Their Critics

By William Kakenmaster

I feel as if I’d drummed into my brain

the wealth of human knowledge all in vain.

I finally stand back, only to find

no new-born power rising in my mind.

Not one hair’s breadth is added to my height,

nor am I any nearer to the Infinite.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust

International relations (IR) is typically considered a social science, but it can learn a lot from thinking poetically. Here, I strive to adopt a lesson from poetry in order to explain some of the actions and criticisms of transnational human rights non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

According to German folklore, the philosopher-scientist Faust exasperatedly sells his soul to the devil as his attempts to discover the universe’s truths fail to reveal any deeper meaning in his scholasticism. The deal gives Faust limitless knowledge and worldly pleasures. In early versions of the legend, Faust delves into a life of sin with the devil as his servant only to discover that, at the end of their agreement, he has been irrevocably corrupted, and is dragged to hell. The legend is meant to metaphorize those who sacrifice their principles for their ambitions.

IR, along with other social sciences, asks why questions that determine causal mechanisms and how questions focused on constitutive explanations, to borrow from Alexander Wendt’s phrasing in Social Theory of International Politics. In that sense, I ask how the moral authority for human rights activism is constructed by NGOs and how their theoretical critics reinterpret such supposed moral authority. I argue that such organizations are best understood through a Faustian perspective. NGOs balance concerns over adhering to their principles or their ambitions when it comes to human rights; and their critics recognize this. Criticisms of NGOs suggest that the human rights bar has been set too high, causing NGOs to be seen as irrelevant on the one hand, or as hypocrites on the other. The tragedy is therefore that human rights NGOs have painted themselves into a corner, in terms of their authority. By lambasting states’ conduct in the human rights arena, any cooperation NGOs have with states seemingly sacrifices their principles for their ambitions. Until the world’s human rights NGOs devise a strategy by which to convincingly propagate their ideals without acceding to the pressures of governmental cooperation, they will be fighting a two-front war.

Ambitions and Principles

Central to an understanding of their authority is the balance that NGOs give to their commitment to independent human rights monitoring and governmental interactions. NGOs’ take their independent, impartial reporting—as exemplified by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch—to be their primary source of authority when it comes to human rights activism. Both organizations cite these as their core principles in their governing documents. While the principles which govern the most successful NGOs seem somewhat clear, balancing those with their ambitions to expand their member-base and bind more governments to human rights conduct is less so.

In 2011, former Hillary Clinton aide—Suzanne Nossel—was appointed Executive Director of Amnesty International with a commitment to internationalism and a belief in the US’ ability to reassert Liberal principles in IR. Nossel also defended preventive war as a way to enforce human rights obligations in other countries, which contradicts international legal obligations to secure UN Security Council authorization. Eventually, Nossel resigned from Amnesty International. Nossel notably demonstrates the ways in which human rights principles stand in opposition to NGOs’ ambitions: in order to promote and enforce liberal values of human rights, Amnesty International drew on government experience and military might.

One might further point to the increasingly professionalized trend of human rights activists and NGOs that strives to establish a firmly defined set of “shared values” as evidence that human rights discourses constitute principles and ambitions as opposing interests. Along with the movement’s professionalization and the codification of a shared value set comes an exclusion of contending interpretations and theories of human rights. In other words, to realize the movement’s growing professional ambitions, NGOs invariably narrow the scope of what human rights are, thereby sacrificing at least some activists’ principles. (The reader should be clear that by no means do I wish to philosophize on human rights in this article, but rather merely seek to identify and contextualize the contradictory interests of NGOs to either professionalize and uniformly propagate human rights standards, or endorse alternative sources of human rights justification.) By accepting, for instance, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as the world’s principal source of human rights, Amnesty International’s statute limits debate over the extent to which economic and social rights equally constitute basic human dignity. In cases like Nossel’s and the professionalization of human rights, principles that underpin NGOs’ authority—independence, impartiality, and broadly defined human rights standards—diverge from ambitions related to enforcing human rights through force, interacting freely with governments, and creating a shared understanding of human rights.

But, how does the above discussion of NGOs’ ambitions and principles relate to Faust, and, more importantly, why should anyone care? Recall the once-idealistic Faust who, with his commitment to intellectualism, makes no headway and—increasingly disillusioned—forms a pact with the devil, thus abandoning his convictions. Indeed, this is Goethe’s lesson. In the prologue, the reader learns of God’s challenge to the devil: “Try to seduce his soul from its true source […] and if things do not go quite as you planned, / admit, with shame, among those souls that you would devour / are some that can’t be moved, even by you, / from the good they dimly, stubbornly pursue.” Faust’s entire role is predicated on his eventual decision between his principles and the temptations of ambition. NGOs similarly constitute their interests in maintaining their principles or fulfilling their ambitions, to the extent that they cannot realize both. We should care about this divide because it helps explain how, in the way that human rights discourses have been constructed, critics target NGOs from more conservative Realist perspectives, as well as more left-leaning Marxist, and Constructivist perspectives. It is worth noting that I deliberately exclude Liberalism from this analysis due to its general acceptance of NGOs—Liberals tend not to criticize NGOs, and I seek to explain NGOs critics. Therefore, I focus on Realism, Constructivism, and Marxism. However, and in spite of Liberalism’s NGO optimism, when a significant portion of the world’s population seems in favor of human rights, but several IR theorists doubt their main proponents’ normative value, IR has a significant question to answer.

Realist Critics

Human rights NGOs endure staunch criticism from Realist theorists who argue in terms of state-systems, material capabilities, balance of power, and security dilemmas. According to a 2002 interview with John Mearsheimer at the University of California, Berkeley, “there is not much place for human rights and values in the Realist story.” At least three theoretical assumptions clarify why human rights NGOs have little place for Realists. First, Realists claim that states’ material capabilities make them the principally legitimate actors in IR as opposed to NGOs’ supposed moral authority on human rights. Second, Realism holds that states pursue their interests defined in terms of power as opposed to things like human rights. Third, according to Realists, the absence of a supranational, centralized authority makes enforcing human rights untenable, and thus, their place in IR practically irrelevant.

The arguments against Realism are well-known, but few seek to explicate Realism’s relationship to NGOs. In Faust, the main character is unsatisfied with his studious life and its lack of insight into any improvement for humankind. As Goethe puts it, Faust’s “laborious studies only show that / Nothing is the most we ever know.” Moreover, Faust laments his scholarship’s inability to find “a way to improve or convert Mankind.” Faust’s commitment to learning is hence undone by the realization that it does not reveal any deep or practical insights. Discipline and studying claim a higher standard of conduct for Faust, but end up betrayed as the main character doubts their substantive ability to fulfill his life’s ambitions.

Realists take a similar stance on human rights. In The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, Mearsheimer writes on the American public’s general “proclivity for moralizing” politics and IR. In opposition to baseless political moralizing, Realists like Mearsheimer “tend not to distinguish between good and bad states” because all states pursue power in the international system. We can extrapolate the implications for NGOs from Mearsheimer’s argument with a quick parallel to Faust. In the German legend, the principles of scholarship and studiousness lacked substance like the Realist claim that distinctions between good and bad states (e.g., those states committed to human rights and those that are not) lack substance for IR theorizing. Realism tells us that states attempt to accumulate power and material capabilities and that they likely will not pursue human rights principles unless they advance a state’s power ambitions. Hence, for Realists, believers in human rights—and certainly human rights NGOs—delude themselves into believing that human rights reveal theoretical or practical wisdom for IR.

Faust sets too high of expectations for an erudite life’s ability to glean some quotient of meaning in the world, then doggedly abandons his principles because of their inability to lend insight into the universe. For Realism, NGOs similarly set their hopes too high for human rights. States, as the main actors in IR, pursue power over morals, making NGOs irrelevant and clearly unauthoritative.

Marxist and Constructivist Critics

NGOs also face criticism from Marxists who claim that their interaction with government policymakers betrays the anti-establishment principles NGOs were founded on, and Constructivists who argue that NGOs are a biased project to promote the Western, Liberal monopoly on human rights.

In his 2012 article, “The Contradictions of Human Rights Organizations,” Samuel Farber argues that NGOs provide legitimacy and support for governmental and intergovernmental agencies that they seek to hold accountable to contemporary human rights norms. According to Farber, “the world of NGOs and their supporting foundations is not self-contained,” because their implicitly liberal bias “blinds them to the political and socioeconomic context of the countries they report on.” Rather than tearing down the system as they may have originally sought to do, say Marxists like Farber, NGOs have betrayed their anti-establishment principles.

Noted scholars Makau Mutua and Stephen Hopgood offer two unrelated by similarly constructed arguments. In Human Rights: A Political and Cultural Critique, Mutua suggests that there are explicit, direct links between human rights norms and Western, Liberal principles. The abstract and seemingly apolitical nature of NGOs’ “universal” truths hides the deeply political reality of the human rights power struggle. In a similar but slightly unrelated vein, Hopgood’s Keepers of the Flame: Understanding Amnesty International unpacks the internal structure of Amnesty’s moral authority on human rights and their method for consolidating that authority. Hopgood ultimately finds that Amnesty International mirrors a religious organization’s belief in an objective moral authority for human rights and its ethos devoted to voluntarism, individualism, practicality, self-discipline, self-effacement, and moral import.

Essentially, the way that the human rights movement developed has betrayed its purpose for all of these critics. For Farber, NGOs were designed to be anti-establishment, yet now rely too heavily on governmental support. For Mutua, NGOs succumb to overly narrow Western conceptualizations of human rights, thus reconstructing a discursive power struggle that privileges the Liberal democratic system. For Hopgood, Amnesty International represents one example of an organization that has drifted from its roots towards a mission-oriented quasi-religious global operation.

Each argument presupposes a certain principled standard towards which NGOs strive. For Marxists, NGOs lost sight of their original, anti-establishment purpose, much in the same way that Faust sold his soul, therefore “exploiting everything [he] thought of worth” (Goethe’s words). For Constructivists, NGOs’ privileging of Western human rights is Faustian in the sense that human rights ideals, like the ideals of scholarship and enlightenment, constitute an overly-narrow and unfulfilling human rights theory. No wonder NGOs betrayed their principles for their ambitions as “[n]ot one hair’s breadth is added to [their] height.” Faust’s scholarly principles, like claims to universal human rights, do not imply any intrinsic higher moral authority, only the primacy of Western, Liberal norms.

Conclusions: Fighting Two Fronts

IR scholars ought to look beyond more traditional forms of knowledge in the discipline. As Professor Patrick Jackson asks: must international studies be a science? There is an immensely diverse and varied way of interpreting the world around us, whether scientific, poetic, or otherwise. Lessons taken from the poetry of German folklore, for example, shed light on the interactions between human rights NGOs and their contemporary theoretical critics across the political spectrum.

I began with the premise that IR can learn from poetic knowledge like Goethe’s. From this premise, I advanced a Faustian perspective of human rights NGOs and their critics which holds three principles. First, NGOs construct both their principles (e.g., western, liberal human rights) and ambitions (e.g., independence of state actors which they endeavor to hold accountable) that stand in opposition to one another. Second, NGOs’ independence and impartiality justifies their authority for human rights monitoring and advocacy. Third, by adopting a stringent standard of states’ compliance to narrowly-defined human rights, NGOs make it difficult to pursue their ambitions without sacrificing at least some of the movement’s principles, thus inviting Realist, Marxist, and Constructivist critiques.

Faust crammed his head full of knowledge in vain. Woefully unsatisfied by his scholastic principles, he sacrificed them for ambition and pleasure. Human rights NGOs and their critics demonstrate the same lesson. By adhering to a strict narrative of human rights and claiming a monopoly on independent monitoring, NGOs set themselves up to be cast as either ineffective idealists bent on moralizing the international system, or as hypocrites betraying the principles they set out to realize. As of right now, human rights NGOs face a two front war from both conservative Realists and left-leaning Marxists and Constructivists. Unless they can rectify the disparities between realizing their principles and ambitions, the world’s NGOs will continue to fight such a two front war.

While critics wage war against NGOs, however, we ought to remain wary of the assumption that human rights principles are mutually exclusive of organizational ambitions. To some it would seem that NGOs’ assertive—or downright aggressive—strategies for naming and shaming countries in the global South that violate human rights advances neither their ambitions nor their principles. For few will continue to support an NGO so harshly critical of so many international actors. And furthermore, few would contend that asserting human rights by force—as in Nossel’s advocacy for preventive war—genuinely constitute a principled stance on human rights. NGOs’ critics must recognize that support for human rights is on the rise across national, racial, ethnic, religious, and other lines; they do have a place in the story of IR, and they are not simply monopolized by anti-establishment politics or a sinister Western, Liberal order. NGOs, however, must recognize that human rights have the power to stand on their own. We do not need to professionalize the human rights movement. We do not need a single standard of human rights. We do not need violent enforcement of human rights. We do not need to sacrifice our principles for our ambitions.

William Kakenmaster is a student in the School of International Service class of 2017. He can be contacted at wk6344a@student.american.edu.

All views expressed are solely those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the World Mind or of Clocks and Clouds.

Defending environmental health while maintaining economic growth

By Deborah Carey

While air cannot be seen, it can certainly be felt. A breeze on a hot day or the crisp smell of a new season can be felt through the air; but for the residents of Mufulira, Zambia, the air surrounding Mopani Copper Mine offers a different sensation: one citizen described it as “being cut up from the inside by razor blades.” Mopani began in 1933, and was privatized with the rest of Zambia’s Consolidated Copper Mines (ZCCM) in 2000. Mopani Copper Mine employs over 15,000 people, making it the largest private employer in Zambia. The mine has stimulated the economy, but has also resulted in negative externalities that have forced the local community to face the age-old development dilemma of economic growth versus environmental health. This is the story of how the resilient community of Mufulira has advocated its rights within the structure of a foreign-owned enterprise, and how it is now trapped within that power structure.

On paper, Mopani Copper Mine is co-owned by Mopani Copper Mines PLC and Glencore International AG. However, according to Anne-Sophie Simpere of NGO Counter Balance, Mopani Copper Mines PLC is 73.1% owned by Glencore International. Glencore is a Swiss multi-national corporation (MNC) and self-reports that it controls 50 percent of the world’s copper. Mopani is the largest of Glencore’s two copper mines in Zambia, boasting the largest smelter plant in Africa.

However neighbors consider this mine “the neighbor from hell” because of the toxic pollutants it releases, most notably sulfur dioxide.  Sulfur dioxide causes the lower airways of its inhalants’ lungs to become inflamed, leading to serious respiratory problems for the civilians and workers around these mines that breathe in the chemical. As explained by Elisha Ncube, Clement Banda, and Jhonnah Mundike from Copperbelt University, sulfur dioxide is a subtractive chemical—once it is in the air, there is no technology to remove it.  Glencore boasts that it has reduced sulfur dioxide emissions in Mufulira since it bought the mine, but as of 2013 they still released 70 times the amount advised by the World Health Organization in one year.  The lasting impact has been rampant levels of heart and lung disease, as reported by the surrounding community. Unfortunately, a lack of case documentation allows Glencore to avoid legal responsibility.

As the Lusaka Times reports, the Mufulira community resisted the privatization of the Mopani Copper Mine from the beginning. Community leaders appealed to their district commissioner as well as to higher government agencies such as the Zambia Environmental Agency to prevent Glencore’s involvement. Numerous national institutions work together to prevent environmental hazards in Zambia, including the Zambia Environmental Management Authority, Zambian Ministry of the Environment, Environmental Council of Zambia, and the Ministry of Mines and Minerals Development. National laws have also been passed to protect the air, including a series of regulatory acts in 1997. However since its privatization, national institutions have not pressured Glencore to follow through with protecting Zambia’s air quality.  In fact, rather than following WHO advised levels of sulfur dioxide, Glencore blames the SO2 emissions on the previous state management of the mine, stating “For 70 years, the plant has spewed out SO2 and over the course of the last 14 years [under Glencore ownership] sulphur capture has gone from 50 per cent to 97 per cent.”

Ethically, it was Glencore’s responsibility from initial ownership to invest in an efficient system that would reduce sulfur dioxide emissions as they permanently depleted Zambia’s natural resources. Instead, Glencore took advantage of weak Zambian institutions, knowing full well—according to the AfriTEST Network- that the Environmental Council of Zambia did not have the resources necessary to check contamination. Glencore refutes this argument, as they proudly spend millions of dollars per year on their seven clinics and five public health centers that are available to the citizens of Mufulira. However, in most cases the citizens of Mufulira cannot afford this healthcare, and end up living with the respiratory issues that are projected on them.

Regardless of who should have regulated the mine to avoid human harm, the lack of enforcement, along with Zambia’s investor-friendly Mines and Minerals Act of 1995 made it profitable for Glencore to avoid basic environmental standards. As these emissions have continued, citizens of Mufulira have organized themselves to protect their “commons” of clean, healthy air.

Numerous anti-mining campaigns were started, many with the help of foreigners. The Centre for Trade Policy and Development, a European NGO, spearheaded the “Pay Up, Clean Up, or Get Out!” initiative. As in the documentary Good Copper, Bad Copper, the residents of Mulufira, who had already been discussing the ways they could have their voices heard, partnered with this organization to file suit against Glencore. The lawsuit was paired with over 70 testimonies of citizens who experienced severe health issues from the mine. The settlement called for compensation for those harmed, as well as a shut-down of any harmful emissions systems, and an “environmental audit.”

Glencore temporarily lost this battle in 2012 when Zambia’s Environmental Agency heeded the complaints from nearby residents and “ordered the immediate closure” of the Mufulira branch until they implemented required safety measures. But because of this shutdown, many Mufuliran residents lost their jobs, most of them local people with few transferrable skills and no guarantee of rehire.

Glencore reopened Mopani Copper Mine with very few impactful changes made to their emissions issue, and the laid-off workers were not rehired. This controversy instigated by the community raised their hopes and awareness of a deep, shared issue, but the outcome only produced weak laws and laid off, low-income workers. Was this worth the minor improvements that were made to satisfy Zambia’s Environmental Agency? Maybe so, but this juxtaposition of sustainability and economic growth is precisely what is so challenging to navigate in development studies. Months of advocacy and deliberation ended in a short-term fix for a long-term problem.

There have been less large-scale complaints from the citizens of Mufulira since 2012, but sulfur dioxide emissions are still present and problematic. In 2014 the district commissioner Beatrice Mithi of Mufulira died on New Years Eve while she was giving a sermon and inhaled toxic sulfur dioxide. This event added to the tensions between the community and Glencore, which claimed that Mrs. Mithi’s death could not be directly linked to the Mopani mine.

Glencore’s tax avoidance adds a new dimension to this narrative, especially when multiple campaign groups filed a complaint against them with the OECD in 2011. In 2009, a leaked document revealed that Glencore has been avoiding taxes to the Zambian government for a $50 million project in 2005 through tax evasions. Glencore denied the claims, and the lending European Investment Bank (EIB) initiated an investigation in 2011.  This investigation lasted three years before the EIB stated in 2014 they had no “contractual relation” with Mopani/Glencore since Glencore repaid their loan early. The bank proceeded to mysteriously freeze all new loans to Glencore, handing the responsibility of finding the lost tax money to the Zambian government.  A leaked audit of Mopani reports that the Zambian government loses £76 million in Glencore’s tax avoidance every year—money they could be using to strengthen their own environmental protection institutions.

Local demands for better air quality resurfaced again in 2014, when seven people were hospitalized due to sulfur emissions.  After breaking up the riot officials admitted they had found a “leak in the damper valve,” but there was “no records of hospitalization.” However the anger that resurfaced from this event was quickly overshadowed by a new challenge.

According to Bloomberg Business, this past September the Mopani Copper Mine announced that it will be closing for 18 months to “refurbish assets and lower production costs.” This $950 million project comes as a reaction to falling global metal prices, and the downward spiral of Glencore’s stock. As a result, at least 3,800 employees will be laid off, without the promise of rehire.

For me this case study is deeply personal. After just one month living in a town near this mine, I returned to the United States with asthma. A round of steroids and fresh Florida air cured my temporary condition, but the citizens living around Mufulira and other such production plants do not enjoy such luxuries. Like so many other marginalized communities, the citizens of Mufulira have had to wrestle with the question: is everyday livelihood more important than the long-term health of a community? If not, how can workers demand for Glencore to improve its environmental standards at major layoffs in sight?

Last month the Paris Agreement of 2015 included 200 countries that set challenging goals to reduce harmful emissions. While these globally standardized objectives are promising for future generations, communities like Mufulira offer a human narrative behind the bullet pointed desired outcomes, and beg for heightened accountability among the private sector—here, and now.

Deborah Carey is a student in the School of International Service class of 2017. She can be contacted at dc1227a@student.american.edu.

All views expressed are solely those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the World Mind or of Clocks and Clouds.

Assessing the merits of trophy hunting and the positive value model of conservation

By Samuel Woods

In January 2014, The Dallas Safari Club auctioned off a special hunting permit that would allow the holder to hunt a Black Rhinoceros in Namibia for $350,000. The species is endangered with only around 5,000 left in the world and the winner of that auction, Corey Knowlton, received death threats and widespread public condemnation for his pursuit of the endangered animal. Just over five months later, despite the strong criticism of his activity, Knowlton legally hunted and killed an endangered Black Rhinoceros. The hunt was deemed by the book, the trophy was brought back to the States, and the world continued as if nothing happened.

However, regardless of the legality of the practice, the whole ordeal begs the question: what is going on here? Why was Knowlton allowed to kill any endangered animal, with or without a permit?

The answer, according to Mr. Knowlton, is that by creating a market for these endangered species–where hunters like him can demonstrate their willingness to pay for the endangered animal–an economic incentive is born for locals to keep these animals alive. This creates a counter balance to the economic incentive of poachers to hunt and harvest the animal without regard the long-term survival of the species. Legal and controlled hunting of endangered species for sport, or trophy hunting, offers a “realistic” tool for conservation, one that uses the power of individual self-interest to realize a conservation goal, rather than relying on a population’s altruistic qualities. This favorable position towards trophy hunting is shared by such organizations as The National Wildlife Federation, American Forests, and the Wildlife Management Institute.

And, according to general economic theory, he’s correct. In the status quo, endangered animals such as African lions, rhinoceroses, or elephants have a neutral, or sometimes even negative, value to local villages and farmers. At best these animals are of no real use to locals, and at worst they are obstacles in everyday life, as elephants compete for the same food as cattle and goats, lions represent a threat to livestock, and rhinoceroses are known to be unpredictably aggressive, particularly as they age. In this model, there is no incentive to put forth any extra effort in keeping these animals alive and away from poaching operations, and a direct incentive to eliminate them if they pose the slightest of threats.

The introduction of trophy hunting changes these incentives. Now, with the willingness of hunters to pay big money for the “right” to a particular animal, these species have unambiguously positive value. Whereas before, a local lion may have represented no more than a threat to one’s livestock, it is now worth a huge sum of money—if one can keep it alive. Theoretically, this game changing shift in incentives would direct the actions of local populations to more altruistic aims of conservation and active protection against poaching operations, as they would benefit privately from doing so. Hence, in this “positive value” model, trophy hunting acts as a legitimate tool for successful conservation of endangered species.

And according to a considerable amount of empirical evidence, the positive value model is sound. Leader-Williams et. Al (2005) found that sustainable hunting license allocation “played a key role” in accelerating the recovery of the southern white rhinoceros in South Africa, where populations have recovered to a threatened, but not endangered, level. Similarly, Packer et. Al (2011) noted that “trophy hunting has been considered essential for providing economic incentives to conserve large carnivores,” so long as “hunting harvests not exceed sustainable levels,” with reference to Tanzania’s legal trophy hunting practices and steadying population of lions. Lindsey et. Al (2006) adds that economic incentives created by trophy hunting “effectively more than double the land area that is used for wildlife conservation” compared to that of state parks alone.

Even so, the model does possess a few major flaws. For one, the trophy hunting market is quite small, never claiming more than 0.27% of an African country’s GDP (Namibia). In addition, the growth potential of the trophy hunting market, if it is to remain sustainable and contribute to an overall increase in the population of endangered animals, is limited to the population growth of a given species, which is obviously quite low for endangered species. While not challenging the theory directly, this observation does undermine the ability for trophy hunting to claim to be a tool for dramatic population surges of endangered species, or even to grow populations quickly enough to outpace periodic losses as a result of natural disasters.

In addition, while regulation of this market may be key in limiting its growth to sustainable kill rates, regulators are subject to economic pressures as well. A 2013 report noted that “hunting companies contribute only 3% of their revenue to communities living in hunting areas” and that the vast majority of their expenditure accrues “to firms, government agencies, and individuals located internationally or in national capitals.”

While not particularly surprising or inherently immoral, this observation changes the game. While the farmer will likely be a farmer for the foreseeable future and thus theoretically cares about future revenue realized from trophy hunting, the regulator cannot know how long they will hold their position, meaning that logically they will prioritize present rewards over future ones to a much higher degree than the farmer. This undermines the idea that regulators will, on their own, sell a sustainable number of hunting permits per year, which threatens to unravel the “trophy hunting for conservation’s sake” narrative.

However, even if we assume benevolent regulators and long-term focused firms, the positive value theory still holds a fundamental oversight: the biological externalities associated with a given hunt. With some endangered species there are externalities involved in the trophy hunt, as the loss of that animal can damage the evolutionary and biological processes that contribute to an endangered animal’s long-term conservation.

For instance, the removal of elder male elephants from herds has documented effects on the psychology of younger males. Though not as a result of trophy hunting explicitly, when young males were removed from the elder bulls in Kruger national park in South Africa in 1992 and placed in a new park, they turned extremely aggressive and violent, chasing down and stomping more than 40 local White Rhinoceroses to death over 5 years for seemingly no apparent reason. After a time of confusion, it was proposed that the lack of elder role models present to curb violent behavior in adolescent males was to blame, a hypothesis that was confirmed when the introduction of 6 elder bulls coincided with an abrupt halt to elephant violence in the park.

As in the case of these elephants (as well as similar issues with externalities concerning pride takeover dynamics among lions), the true impact of trophy hunting cannot always be tied up in the direct implications of a given hunt, and that sustainable trophy hunting cannot be expressed via a simple accounting model in which the number of permits sold is less than the number of newborn animals. This, again, undermines the theoretic model of trophy hunting, which makes no reference to any incentive toward maintaining a balanced biological makeup of a species.

In fact, we see again and again in this analysis that the nuances of trophy hunting as played out in the real world undermine the theoretical model at multiple turns, suggesting that the model either incorrect, or severely over-simplified and reliant on untrue assumptions. And yet, the evidence suggests that the model, or at least the basic inputs and outputs of the model, is correct. What’s happening?

One theory is that the special comeback stories commonly attributed to trophy hunting  are actually simply due to covariation with other newer conservation practices. By far the widest reaching of these, and most certainly to be the main culprit of any covariation that may be occurring, is the development of ecotourism as a business model. Like trophy hunting, ecotourism places positive value on endangered species, as tourists will pay considerable sums of money to witness rare animals in the wild. This offers an economic incentive to keep these animals alive in the wild in order for them to be available to “sell” to tourists. In short, ecotourism follows the same positive value model as trophy hunting, capturing a similar effect in overall conservation, but while also addressing many of its key weaknesses.

In addition, ecotourism is a much larger market than trophy hunting, as the same animal can be “sold” multiple times, and its comparatively lower price point is better positioned to take advantage of such a highly elastic market such as tourism. This opens up the market to more buyers, and allows firms and individuals to profit off of the existence of an endangered animal more than once, tying the growth potential of the market to the longevity of the animal’s life. Indeed, Sims-Castley et. Al (2004) found that “non-lethal” ecotourism in private preserves yielded “more than 15 times the income of…overseas hunting,” meaning simply that, as it stands, ecotourism is a far more lucrative business than trophy hunting.

However, the downside of the large growth potential of the ecotourism model is that it brings animals in direct contact with humans at a constant, perhaps even daily, rate. While this does succeed in providing an incentive to keep the animal alive, it also can desensitize them to the presence of humans, changing their behavior and potential turning thoroughly wild animals into pseudo protected animals. This desensitization to presence of humans can theoretically also leave animals more vulnerable to poaching, suggesting that ecotourism may have a negative impact on conservation if handled improperly. In addition, large-scale operations threaten to degrade local habitats over time, even in protected areas and national parks.

Of course, despite these weaknesses affiliated with ecotourism specifically, at the very least it does appear that a combination of lethal and non-lethal positive value conservation strategies has contributed to the overall increase in the numbers of some endangered species. This indicates that the positive value model is sound, in both lethal and non-lethal forms.

And in retrospect, the diametric strengths and weaknesses of trophy hunting and ecotourism based conservation strategies complement each other quite well. Where the limited market size and adverse effects of adult male removal limit trophy hunting’s conservation ability, ecotourism offers a larger market size and lack of animal death. Similarly, where environmental degradation and  the desensitizing of animals to the presence of humans hampers ecotourism, trophy hunting offers limited animal-human interaction.

Unfortunately, this potentially complementary relationship is rather under researched. While there is a good amount of research concerning the economic and environmental impacts of trophy hunting and ecotourism respectively, there is very little academic comment on the comparative merits of the two strategies concerning conservation. What’s more, the possible covariant nature of the two strategies concerning their mutual effect on endangered wildlife conservation has attracted almost no academic attention, leaving it unclear as to which strategy is doing the heavy lifting in reference to recent conservation successes.

As it stands, Corey Knowlton and the various wildlife and hunting institutions that support his positive value model of conservation are likely correct. Trophy hunting is a useful tool for the effective conservation of endangered species, and deserves a space in that effort. However, that space is quite small, and may be better thought of as a supplemental tactic to a bigger, non-lethal strategy such as ecotourism, which is ultimately more profitable and offers the protection of endangered species without harming them on a larger scale. The question that remains however is whether the effectiveness of trophy hunting is worth the moral ambiguities inherent to the practice, and it is a question that I will leave to the careful consideration of the reader.

Samuel Woods is a student in the College of Arts & Sciences class of 2017. He can be contacted at sw8389a@student.american.edu.

All views expressed are solely those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the World Mind or of Clocks and Clouds.