Purpose and Policy in the Global Community

321 Pages·2006·33.597 MB·English

by  Bruce Russett (auth.)

PURPOSE AND POLICY
IN THE GLOBAL
COMMUNITY
Advances in Foreign Policy Analysis
Series Editor: Alex Mintz
Foreign policy analysis offers rich theoretical perspectives and diverse
methodological approaches. Scholars specializing in foreign policy analysis
produce a vast output of research. Yet, there are only very few specialized
outlets for publishing work in the field. Addressing this need is the purpose
of Advances in Foreign Policy Analysis. The series bridges the gap between
academic and policy approaches to foreign policy analysis, integrates across
levels of analysis, spans theoretical approaches to the field, and advances
research utilizing decision theory, utility theory, and game theory.
Members of the Board of Advisors
Allison Asrorino-Courtois Zeev Maoz
Steve Chan Bruce M.Russett
Margaret Hermann Donald Sylvan
Valerie Hudson Steve Walker
Patrick James Dina A.zinnes
Jack Levy Betty Hanson
Published by Palgrave Macmillan
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Edited by Alex Mintz
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Quest for International Peace
By Seung-Whan Choi and Patrick James
Economic Sanctions and Presidential Decisions: Models of Political
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By A. Cooper Drury
Purpose and Policy in the Global Community
By Bruce Russett
PURPOSE AND POLICY
IN THE GLOBAL
COMMUNITY
BRUCE RUSSETT
palgrave
macmillan
PURPOSE AND POLICY IN THE GLOBAL COMMUNITY
© Bruce Russett, 2006.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2006 978-1-4039-7183-8
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
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ISBN 978-1-4039-7184-5 ISBN 978-1-137-10058-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-137-10058-0
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Russett, Bruce M.
Purpose and policy in the global community / Bruce Russett ... let a1.].
p. cm.-{Advances in foreign policy analysis)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. International relations. 2. Social justice. 3. Poverty. 4. Equality.
5. Deterrence (Strategy) I. Title. II. Series.
JZ1242.R8672006
327-dc22 2005049538
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: June 2006
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Transferred to Digital Printing 2011
Contents
1 Change and Continuity: Four Decades
of Research and Policy 1
2 Rich and Poor in 2000 AD:
The Great Gulf 15
3 The Marginal Utility of Income Transfers
to the Third World 29
4 Comparative Public Health: The Political
Economy of Human Misery and Well-Being 45
With Hazem Adam Ghobarah and Paul Huth
5 Security and the Resources Scramble: Will 1984 be
Like 1914? 69
6 Conflict and Coercion in Dependent States 89
With Steven Jackson, Duncan Snidal,
and David Sylvan
7 Islam, Authoritarianism, and Female
Empowerment: What Are the Linkages? 115
With Daniela Donna
8 The Mysterious Case of Vanishing Hegemony, or,
Is Mark Twain Really Dead? 135
9 Theater Nuclear Forces: Public Opinion in
Western Europe 159
With Donald R. DeLuca
10 Away from Nuclear Mythology 177
11 What Makes Deterrence Work? Cases from
1900 to 1980 187
With Paul Huth
12 Ethical Dilemmas of Nuclear Deterrence 213
vi Contents
13 Seeking Peace in a Post-Cold War World of
Hegemony and Terrorism 231
With John R. Oneal
14 Bushwhacking the Democratic Peace 253
Notes 269
Index 313
Chapter 1
Change and Continuity:
Four Decades of Research
and Policy
This opening chapter introduces each of the following chapters in
order. They comprise both essays and research reports, the latter
including quantitative analyses chosen so as not to include technical
materials inaccessible to an advanced undergraduate. This introduction
uses the next chapter, "Rich and Poor in 2000 AD: The Great Gulf,"
as a thematic focal point for the subsequent pieces, considering their
theoretical, empirical, and normative implications as appropriate.
It considers how each subsequent chapter carries on themes from
"Rich and Poor," how they are developed, and how they may relate
to contemporary debates under changed conditions. I also remark on
what in those pieces seems to me to be more or less enduring and
what was wrong-headed. Each-even the older ones-does I think,
have something to say about current issues. I embed the chapters in
some discussion of my own intellectual and personal history and
conclude this chapter with comments about research and writing in
our profession. These include thoughts about where ideas come
from; how the study of international relations has changed; the
interaction of theory, empirical investigation, and ethical concerns;
and the importance of collaboration in research.
The Chapters and Their Origins
• "Rich and Poor in 2000 AD: The Great Gulf" is an exercise in
informal theory-guided speculation about the future. I originally
wrote it in 1965 as a plenary address to the American Sociological
Association, and I sent a revised version off to The Virginia
Quarterly Review, which was then publishing stimulating articles on
foreign policy. My cover letter described the article as developing out
2 Purpose and Policy in the Global Community
of an interest in three related influences that converged here:
First is a certain malaise with the terribly confident and optimistic
predictions my natural-scientist friends frequently make about the
world of the future. While perhaps technologically sound, I feel these
predictions depend on a very naIve social and political theory. Second
is my concern, for some time, with developing the data for some
at least moderately disciplined predictions about economic and social
conditions that will impinge on politics. This shades into a third influence,
which is my theoretical commitment to a macroscopic way of looking
at international politics. That is, when we want to understand or
predict major developments in international politics we can often do
so less by examining the political process per se than by trying to see
what the menu of political choice may be, what sets the limits within
which political choice must operate.
The chapter lays out several themes, largely around the problem of
global inequalities in human life conditions. It is about globalization
(before the word was common), including that of communications
and the world economy. The most prominent theme is that gross
differences in income between the rich and poor have enormous
implications for actual living conditions. Closely related to that is the
likelihood that these inequalities will stimulate political instability
and/or severe repression within poor countries. It also addresses the
implications for international peace and stability, including wars
between poor countries and whether the governments of rich countries
will ally themselves with repression by the governments of poor
countries. It mentions some of the possibilities for terrorism, though
without using that word and in the context of poverty, rather than of
religious fanaticism, which I now see as at least equally important.
It emphasizes the vulnerability of a high technology and highly
interdependent economy and culture to possible terrorism. A related
theme, not developed so thoroughly, considers relations between
great powers and the role of nuclear deterrence.
Some of the data and the language (not gender neutral) of this
piece reflect its age, but the themes remain central to contemporary
theory and policy discourse. Some details look too optimistic
(e.g., economical large-scale desalinization of sea water), and it was
a little pessimistic about food production not rising much above sub
sistence level, particularly in Asia. While it does not reflect the more
recent experience of rapid income growth in much of Asia, especially
Change and Continuity 3
the large countries of China and India, its pessimism has been borne
out in Africa, where per capita incomes typically dropped in the
1990s. Overall, the average citizen of low-income countries has
closed the overall income gap slightly, but for those in the poorest
countries the gap has widened. (The richest, Luxembourg, has a per
capita GDP more than a hundred times that of the poorest, Sierra
Leone and Somalia: $55,000 to $500).1 The chapter correctly antici
pates the rise of expensive high-tech weaponry for use by rich countries
in conflict with much poorer ones and the willingness of rich states to
spend money on such weapons. Like chapter 3 following, it largely
vaults over the cold war issues that otherwise seemed so central at
that time. Perhaps for that very reason it seems to wear pretty well in
the post-cold war world. There are a lot of consistent patterns and
issues in world politics .
• "The Marginal Utility of Income Transfers to the Third World"
is an empirical chapter addressing a major normative issue, and it
serves as table-setting to much subsequent material in the book.
With the help of some simple graphical presentations, it lays out
much more deeply than in chapter 2 the human consequences (in
health and life expectancy) of poverty and relative deprivation and
the relatively small cost at which those differences might be narrowed.
Some political implications of this fact left implicit here are developed
in subsequent chapters of this book. The high cost-effectiveness of
certain measures for poor countries, exemplified by insecticide-treated
mosquito nets and inoculations against common diseases, remains
true in this century.
I wrote another intellectually related piece at the time2 as part of a
collaboration to study the causes and consequences of dependence
and underdevelopment in the third world. That particular article was
a measurement exercise intended to produce a surrogate measure of
income inequality for the larger project. In it we showed that for
those countries with complete data, per capita income was strongly
related to high life expectancy and low infant mortality, as expected.
But controlling for income level, those countries with a relatively low
level of income inequality evidenced especially high achievement on
the health measures. We could thus use health and income levels to
estimate income inequality in those countries for which direct
inequality measures were not available, at the same time gaining
insight into possible causal connections.
I offered to do a condensed and nontechnical version of "Marginal
Utility" for Foreign Affairs, but the Managing Editor turned it down