Fall 2011

HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW

TIM ROEMER

DAVID S. MUIR

DISCUSSES INDIA AND POLITICS. p. 42

ON THE EUROZONE CRISIS. p. 43

VOLUME XXXVIII NO. 3, FALL 2011 HARVARDPOLITICALREVIEW.COM

Inside: Myth of the China Model, Feminism in Iran, and Jobs for Congress

HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW

VOLUME XXXVIII NUMBER 3 FALL 2011

UNITED STATES 17 Jobs for Congress

DANIEL BACKMAN & THOMAS GAUDETT

19 Super But Silent

HUMZA BOKHARI AND DANIEL LYNCH

21 An Unconstitutional Debate JACOB DRUCKER AND DANIEL KI

23 Caught Red Handed

NATHANIEL DONAHUE AND MATT SHUHAM

26 Policing the Street

COLLIN DE LA BRUERE

WORLD

DEMOCRACY IN THE DOLDRUMS 6 A Congress Divided How the moderates were pushed out ROSS SVENSON AND SIMON THOMPSON 9 The Particles of Confederation The federalization of state politics MEDHA GARGEYA AND ARJUN MODY

28 New Feminism in Iran

11 India’s Good, Bad, and Ugly A wake up call to fight corruption ZEENIA FRAMROZE AND RAJIV TARIGOPULA

30 Democracy in the Desert

13 The Dysfunctional Democracy A history of Pakistan’s meandering path to democracy NUR IBRAHIM

32 Pulp Friction: Israel and Turkey

15 The Myth of the China Model The rising tiger is not a model for the future CAROLINE COX AND ACKY UZOSIKE

34 The Andean Chameleon

INTERVIEWS

BOOKS & ARTS

42 Tim Roemer The former U.S. Ambassador to India on

36 Bollywood vs. Corruption

43 David S. Muir Director of Political Strategy to Gordon

CAITLIN PENDLETON & OLIVIA ZHU LINDA NEGRON AND GRAM SLATTERY ALI NURI BYAR AND MIKHAILA FOGEL

JONATAN LEMUS & SYLVIA PERCOVICH

ANITA JOSEPH

38 Neoconservatism’s Persistence LENA BAE

40 The Image of Guantanamo CHRISTINE ANN HURD

India-Pakistan relations

HARLEEN GAMBHIR

Brown discusses the Eurozone crisis

ALPKAAN CELIK

ENDPAPER 44 Sweat the Small Stuff JONATHAN YIP

Volume XXXVIII, No. 3, Fall 2011. The HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW, a nonpartisan journal of politics, is published quarterly through the Institute of Politics at Harvard University, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge, MA, 02138. Annual subscription: $25.00. Email: editor@hpronline.org. ISSN 0090-1030. Copyright 2011 Harvard Political Review. All rights reserved. Image Credits: Jin Lee: Cover. U.S. Federal Government: 1-The White House; 4-The White House; 4-Pete Souza; 17-Chuck Kennedy; 40-The National Guard; 42-U.S. State Department; 44-White House. Wikimedia: 3-IowaPolitics.com; 6-hellohowareyoudoing; 11-Pranav21391; 15-fearghalonuallain; 21-Howard Chandler Christy; 28-Milad Avazbeigi; 34-Antonio Cruz; Flickr: 2-Adam Jones; 5-Russell Heiman; 19-Mark Warner; 22-Thorne Enterprises; 23-Images_of_Money, DonkeyHotey; 25-sharonkubo; 26-David Shankbone; 30-NH53; 31-Surian Soosay; 32-Free Gaza Movement. Pragya Kakani: 10, 12, 14, 24, 27, 33. UTV Spotboy: 36, 37. Columbia University Press: 38. Les Films Adobe Inc.: 40, 41. Institute of Politics: 43.

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HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW A Nonpartisan Journal of Politics Established 1969—Vol. XXXVIII, No. 3

EDITORIAL BOARD EDITOR-IN-CHIEF MAX NOVENDSTERN MANAGING EDITOR CHRISTOPHER DANELLO ONLINE EDITOR JEFFREY KALMUS COVERS EDITOR NEIL PATEL UNITED STATES EDITOR ALEXANDER CHEN WORLD EDITOR JAMES L. WU BOOKS & ARTS EDITOR PAUL MATHIS INTERVIEWS EDITOR SIMON THOMPSON BUSINESS MANAGER ANDREW BOCSKOCSKY CIRCULATION MANAGER THOMAS GAUDETT DESIGN EDITOR ANDREW J. SEO GRAPHICS EDITOR PRAGYA KAKANI STAFF DIRECTOR JOSHUA LIPSON WEBMASTER ERIC HENDEY U.S. BLOG EDITOR PAUL SCHIED WORLD BLOG EDITOR BEATRICE WALTON BOOKS & ARTS BLOG EDITOR RAÚL QUINTANA HARVARD BLOG EDITOR CAROLINE COX HUMOR EDITOR JEREMY PATASHNIK

SENIOR WRITERS KATHY LEE, HENRY SHULL, JONATHAN YIP

STAFF JAY ALVER, DANIEL BACKMAN, LENA BAE, ELIZABETH BLOOM, HUMZA SYED BOKHARI, PETER BOZZO, GABBY BRYANT, ALPKAAN CELIK, SAMUEL COFFIN, CATHERINE COOK, TYLER CUSICK, FARHA FAISAL, NAJI FILALI, SAM FINEGOLD, ZEENIA FRAMROZE, MEDHA GARGEYA, ADITI GHAI, RAPHAEL HARO, KAIYANG HUANG, CHRISTINE ANN HURD, ANITA JOSEPH, ADAM KERN, SANDRA KORN, FRANK MACE, JIMMY MEIXIONG, PEYTON MILLER, LAURA MIRVISS, ARJUN MODY, CHRIS OPPERMANN, LILY OSTRER, SAMIR PATEL, MASON PESEK, JOHN PRINCE, ASHLEY ROBINSON, SARAH SISKIND, GRAM SLATTERY, MARTIN STEINBAUER, ALASTAIR SU, ROSS SVENSON, LUCAS SWISHER, RAJIV TARIGOPULA, POOJA VENKATRAMAN, BEN WILCOX, DANNY WILSON, JENNY YE

ADVISORY BOARD JONATHAN ALTER RICHARD L. BERKE CARL CANNON E.J. DIONNE, JR. WALTER ISAACSON WHITNEY PATTON MARALEE SCHWARTZ

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FROM THE EDITOR

NIETZSCHE ONCE SAID that all “great philosophy” takes the form of “involuntary and unconscious autobiography.” Philosophers try to give us Truth, he said, but in the process, they betray their vantage point, their specifics fears, their peculiar hopes.

Watch five minutes of CNN’s coverage of the Occupy Wall Street movement, and you might conclude the same of political punditry. No matter how rigorous their reporting, or esoteric their subject, journalists are always, in the end, writing about themselves.

Thus it shouldn’t surprise us that mainstream television reporters ridicule the Occupy movement. These journalists are trained to document Power—the President, Kim Kardashian, and so on.

They lack the intellectual bearings to understand a leaderless movement, one that (we shouldn’t forget) aims its moral ire directly at the world of privilege they depend on for a living.

But make no mistake, we student journalists have our biases too.

We’re graduating soon. Among other epistemological constraints, we have to find jobs. The arc of American history, our nation’s present “employment crisis,” and the first semester of our senior year, all mix into one. How could we not believe, at least a little bit, that our own futures are bound up in the fate of a movement that is advocating for a more inclusive, 21st century economy? How could we not see our own faces somewhere in the crowds at Zuccotti Park?

This might sound odd coming from a Harvard student, whose school has done more than basically any other to train the ranks of the 1%. But if you think that students and “the 99%” are in different boats – that this is

about “the privileged” versus “the unfortunate” – then you don’t get it.

Our problem, in a word, is not weakness, but strength. “The 99%” is just too strong – too educated, too individuated, too creative – to fit into an industrial age economic system that was set up over one hundred years ago, in order to make production and consumption as “mass” as possible.

Henry Ford’s factory wasn’t just about manufacturing cars quickly. It was also about making our jobs as menial and standardized as possible, so that anyone could duplicate our labor, and corporations could grow. And so they did, at tremendous costs. If the demise of this system is imminent, it is being wrought, in a way, by its own success. Automation renders humans so replaceable that we soon won’t be needed at all.

Which is either catastrophe (an “unemployment crisis”) or a tremendous opportunity. Technology might render our crappy factory jobs obsolete, but who wanted them anyway? By destroying labor, technology makes us stronger.

Make no mistake: the capacity to create stuff, to hack together organizations, and to do all the things of starting a business, are more widely distributed today than ever before. In this post-Industrial world, Labor dies as everyone becomes Capital.

And therein is the promise of our time. If we want an economy that’s more awesome – that’s more humane, more local, more equal, more meaningful – we can build it ourselves. Indeed, I see no other option.

Max Novendstern Editor-in-Chief

THE FUNNY PAGES

PRESENTED BY SATIRE V THE SCRIPT TO EVERY GOP DEBATE

MODERATOR: Good evening, I’m Anderson Cooper/Wolf Blitzer/Brian Williams/Charlie Rose, and welcome to tonight’s debate. First question for the candidates: How will you get Americans back to work?

MITT ROMNEY: We’ve got to get rid of Barack Obama and lower taxes, and I’m the guy to do it.

NEWT GINGRICH: Well, I agree we need to lower taxes, but I’m the guy to do it, and that’s because I’ve done it before.

Remember? Back when I was speaker of the House about 20 years ago.

MICHELE BACHMANN: My first priority as president would be to repeal Obamacare. I hate Obamacare more than anyone on this stage.

RICK PERRY: Yes, we all agree Obamacare is terrible. Except Mitt Romney. He loves Obamacare. In fact, Obamacare is really just Romneycare.

ROMNEY: That’s just not true. Look at the programs for yourself, and I’m sure you’ll see just how different they are.

But also, how I’d act as governor is different from how I’d act as president. And speaking of mandates, why did you make all girls in the state of Texas get an HPV vaccine, Governor Perry?

PERRY: If I had to make that decision over again, I might do things differently. But I always err on the side of life.

BACHMANN: Those poor little girls. Twelve-year-olds are going to be fornicating in the street because they’re immune to HPV. I hope you’re happy.

RICK SANTORUM: Yeah seriously, Perry, I don’t know what kind of twisted shit goes on in the classroom in Texas schools, but it sure as hell isn’t the twisted shit that we like in Pennsylvania.

MODERATOR: We seem to have gotten a bit off track.

Anything else on the economy before we move on?

HERMAN CAIN: 9-9-9.

MODERATOR: Mr. Cain, lots of analysts have looked at your plan and said that it really is pretty crazy.

CAIN: The problem with that analysis is that it is wrong.

It doesn’t make the same assumptions that I do. I assume that under 9-9-9, the United States would become a utopian nirvana, and that’s why it’s the best plan.

MODERATOR: Congressman Paul, this question is for you. I’m going to give you a hypothetical scenario that will strain your libertarianism to the breaking point.

There really is a common-sense solution to this scenario, but I’m curious if you’ll follow your ideology all the way to some absurd conclusion.

RON PAUL: I’m taking the bait, and absolutely rambling towards absurdity.

He does so.

JON HUNTSMAN: I haven’t said much tonight, but I just wanted to take a minute and remind everyone that I’m really not crazy—and I don’t mean just in relation to the other candidates—I mean, in absolute terms, I’m a pretty reasonable guy. I have massive appeal to independent voters, and most people agree that I’d win the presidency in a walk if I were the nominee. Just saying.

MODERATOR: Ok, now we’re going to get into some social issues, because let’s be honest: that’s why everyone’s watching this thing anyway. Senator Santorum, do you hate gay people?

SANTORUM: Of course I don’t hate gay people. I just think their lifestyle and values are corrupting America.

MODERATOR: Governor Perry, Texas has executed 236 people during your tenure as governor.

Massive applause from the audience.

Do you ever stay up at night wondering if any one of those individuals might have been innocent?

PERRY: No, sir, I don’t. I’ll tell you what I do lose sleep over though: trying to…trying to figure out what…uh…what Mitt Romney…ummm…what he thinks about abortion. Damn, I messed that up. It was supposed to be a sound bite.

MODERATOR: One final round: Barack Obama. Go. But try to lighten it up; it’s starting to drag.

ROMNEY: It’s time for Barack Obama to create a private-sector job for himself. And that’ll be the only private-sector job he ever creates.

Candidates laugh uncontrollably.

CAIN: I can’t wait till the general election. I’m going to give Barack Obama a good ol’ fashioned Caining.

GINGRICH: You know, this remains me of the time when I was speaker of the House— MODERATOR: That’s all the time we have for the debate. Thank you, and goodnight.

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THE FUNNY PAGES Face-Off: Obama 2008 vs. Obama 2012

Who’s more electable?

Obama ’08

Obama ’12

Campaign Slogan

Change You Can Believe In

Obama ’08

Potential Historic First

First African-American president

I Can’t Believe It’s Not Change First president since FDR to be reelected with unemployment rate above 9% Admitting he’s the sitting president Avoid-Another-49-StateDefeat Strategy Actual substantive changes like healthcare reform that might make people’s lives better Actual substantive changes like healthcare reform that might make people’s lives better

Biggest Campaign Blunder Campaign Master Plan

Going bowling on-camera 50-State Strategy

®

Obama ’08 Obama ’08 Obama ’08

Accomplishments

Brilliant orations, limited experience in the Illinois State Legislature and U.S. Senate

Why His Opponents Hate Him

He doesn’t have a birth certificate

Reason He Gives for Why America’s on the Wrong Track

Eight years of George W. Bush

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives

Obama ’08

Biggest Asset

Ability to inspire millions of Americans to believe our best days are still ahead

Not being Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, or Herman Cain

Obama ’12

Overall

The economy’s stagnant and He’s young, brilliant, and there’s not much reason to inspiring. After eight years of think things will get better an unpopular president, the anytime soon. Obama’s lost his nation is craving change, and mojo. Still, he’s not Mitt Romhe seems to be the only canney, Rick Perry, or Herman didate who can deliver.

Cain.

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Obama ’08

Obama ’08

Tie

COVERS DEMOCRACY IN THE DOLDRUMS NEIL PATEL

In The End of History and the Last Man, written immediately after the Soviet Union’s collapse, Francis Fukuyama argues the world was experiencing the end of “mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.” Indeed, in the last two decades, many countries in Southern and Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin American have held competitive elections for the first time. These democratic experiments and institutions, however, have faced growing political instability and legislative inertia over recent years.

The global economic recession has further compounded their challenges and have called the long-term sustainability of these institutions into question, leaving many searching for new models and strategies to promote political stability and sustain growth.

In the United States, for example, Americans view excessive congressional partisanship as evidence that officials believe the public interest is secondary to political gain. While political scientists have given legislators the benefit of the doubt and attribute partisanship to ideological differences, there is growing consensus that rancor in American politics is reaching historic heights, even in institutions like the traditionally deliberative Senate (p. 6). This polarization of federal politics and the

growing influence of money and the media potentially exacerbates economic inequality and has reduced political diversity at the state level (p. 9).

Ultimately, growing political brinksmanship may reduce the ability of legislatures to represent their own constituents effectively.

The challenges facing democratic institutions, including economic volatility, public dissent, and historical instabilities, extend beyond these shores. Throughout Western democracies, governments are struggling to maintain social welfare programs while enacting austerity measures to combat ballooning deficits. The difficulty the European Union has faced in alleviating member states’ debt crises has created doubt over the efficacy of an institution meant to preserve European unity. Even in the world’s largest democratic state, India, (p. 11) the government has struggled to reconcile widespread public dissent over decades of corruption. Meanwhile, India’s neighbor Pakistan (p. 13), despite having gained independence simultaneously, is still muddling through a staggered transition to democracy marked by historical conflict.

Many observers seeking inspiration have turned to China, which has weathered the economic recession relatively unscathed, through centralized stimulus programs. While

China’s streamlined autocratic approach might remove some administrative bureaucracies that plague democratic institutions, continued economic development will probably require and eventually produce gradual democratization of its governance structure (p. 15).

The prescriptions for strengthening these democratic institutions are thematically similar. These solutions must align with improvements in regulation and mitigate the social cost of necessary changes. While the challenges presented in this issue demonstrate that compromise frequently proves difficult to reach, democracy still enables a forum for compromise between individual needs and social will. As Winston Churchill stated, “No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise.

Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

Neil Patel ’13 is the Covers Editor.

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A CONGRESS DIVIDED

Blame gridlock on money, media, and voters ROSS SVENSON AND SIMON THOMPSON Twelve percent. That’s the portion of the country that approve of the job Congress is doing, according to a recent New York Times/CBS News poll. Lack of faith in its competence has led politicians, pundits, and ordinary citizens alike to claim that Congress is “broken.”

Incumbents in Congress face increasingly difficult reelection bids and the government has neared shutdown multiple times due to an inability to compromise. As Rep. Mike Michaud (D-ME) told the HPR, “parties have decided that partisan politics takes precedence over putting the country first.” This polarization has been fueled by the infusion of large-dollar donors in congressional elections and the decrease of nonpartisan political news sources. As members of Congress have been pushed to the ends of the political spectrum, there are few moderates left in the middle willing to compromise.

BIG MONEY AND PARTISAN RHETORIC Since 1980, congressional campaign spending has tripled, reaching an unprecedented $1.5 billion in the 2008 elections. Loosened regulations, combined with an influx in spending by lobbyists, political action committees, and corporations, have awarded interests groups more leverage with their donations. Some members of Congress dismiss the influence of the dollars that interests groups bring to candidates. Rep. Allen West (R-FL), a member of the Tea Party Caucus, told the HPR that his average campaign contribution in 2010 was ninety dollars. He believes that big money support “balances out at the end of the day,” as constituents want their elected officials to be a “representative voice” in Congress. Others like Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-ME) believe that the weight of “big money” interests is the primary reason for congressional dysfunction, telling the HPR that, “Our forefathers would [never] have ever imagined that money would have this kind of an impact on the national debate.”

The role of money, however, does not end once a candidate is elected. A fundamental shift has occurred in the fundraising strategy of incumbent members of Congress. Christina Bellantoni, associate politics editor at Roll Call, explained, “The more inflammatory you are, the more money you raise. In 2008, when Michele Bachmann said Barack Obama had un-American views, it was not good for her overall, but she was able to

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raise a lot of money.” Bellantoni notes the prevalence of the strategy on both sides of the aisle, citing former Democratic congressman Alan Grayson as someone who knew “how to make people mad and raise a lot of money.”

As politicians adjust their rhetoric to attract donors,

media outlets have followed a similar calculus. According to Rep. Pingree, American politics “is without a doubt about politicians and the media responding to sources of money, not what their constituents are feeling.” Polls by Rasmussen Reports have revealed that viewers perceive a conservative bias in Fox News. Similarly, MSNBC has been forthright in declaring its political progressivism.

Such partiality may reflect networks’ quest for ratings; studies have shown that news viewers are more likely to frequent a news source that shares their ideology. Bellantoni described how “people can turn on MSNBC and watch Rachel Maddow, and say ‘Hey, she’s more liberal than me.’”

Instead of seeking nonpartisan and unbiased news sources, the public prefers outlets that will reaffirm existing political beliefs.

POLARIZED CONGRESS, POLARIZED ELECTORATE? The influences of big money and the partisan media have created an environment in which Congress is less willing to work across party lines. Emily Ekins, a Cato Institute research fellow, explained to

the HPR, “There is little overlap between political parties nowadays, and there is more disagreement on what policies actually work.”

Economic uncertainty and the election of more ideologically extreme candidates have caused a deep ideological divide. Rep. Michaud, who feels both parties are equally to blame for the “partisan bickering” in Congress, says that, “If we had leaders who were willing to work things out... that would make a big difference.” Whether exhibited in the debate over health care reform or the ongoing budget negotiations, members of Congress have found difficulty in distancing themselves from the fiery rhetoric of talk-show hosts and the interests of their donors. As Rep. Michaud opined, part of the frustration we see in the electorate today is “reflective of the health care bill that passed,” and the partisan means by which Congress voted it through.

This factionalism, however, may not be exclusive to lawmakers.

Recently, David Gergen, professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, penned an editorial for CNN in which he suggested that the partisan Congress might merely reflect the “fractured” country it represents.

Such a view would suggest that, rather than blaming external factors or elected officials, constituents should first take a long look at their own actions. For example, David King, professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, cites “decline in turnout for primaries” as a leading cause of the increased polarization.

CROSSING THE DIRE STRAIGHTS Given America’s frustration with the climate in Washington, some members of Congress see opportunities for collaboration and progress. As Rep. Pingree told the HPR, “I do not think that the voting in the country today represents what the average voter feels.” Rather, the

Congresswoman largely blames gridlock on the moneyed interests pervading Congress.

Stephen Erickson, executive director of Americans United to Rebuild Democracy, views these interests in an even more negative light, and told the HPR that he feels our congressional system is one “based on extortion and bribery” and that “every piece of legislation that passes through Congress is tainted by this system.”

Erickson, whose organization promotes clean elections, termlimits, and an end to gerrymandering, said that one of the main problems today is that “our politicians are thinking too much about their next reelection, and not enough about the next generation.” In advocating for term-limits, Erickson sees them as solving the current problem of “virtually all incentives in the system serv[ing] narrow interests or shortterm interests.” Rep. West agrees with Erickson’s analysis, saying that the “Founding Fathers didn’t intend for politics to be a career.”

While some are critical of proposed reforms to “fix” Congress, it is evident that various factors have aggravated the broken state of the institution. As King told the HPR, one “could point to anything and make a reasonable argument that it is a cause” of its current state. While there is no easy solution, tackling the root causes of Congressional dysfunction, such as ideological polarization through the influences of money and the media are essential to moving forward. As Bellantoni opined, an ultimate fix to the system will be incredibly difficult, “People are rewarded for being polarizing, and as long as that’s the case, I don’t see any change happening.”

Ross Svenson ’15 is a Staff Writer.

Simon Thompson ’14 is the Interviews Editor.

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HarvardPoliticalReview.com

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THE PARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION The federalization of state politics

MEDHA GARGEYA AND ARJUN MODY In 2010, Democratic majorities became minorities in eleven state legislatures. While states like Alabama and North Carolina had long voted Republican for president and Congress, Democrats had historically maintained control over the statehouses. In 2010, all that changed.

The result parallels a larger trend. State-level Republicans’ campaigns against President Obama and liberal Democrats in Congress demonstrate the growing influence of national parties in state politics. This influence, the product of internet messaging, increased investment in state parties by the national parties, and political polarization, has weakened the ability of state politicians to carve out their own distinct political identities. As a result, the ideological diversity once common in state legislatures has declined, potentially degrading the efficacy with which politicians represent their constituents.

IDEOLOGICA L HOMOGENIZATION Even though national parties have always affected state politics, the influence has most recently hurt moderate politicians at the state level. Indiana proves a case in point. In 2008 and 2009, Senators Evan Bayh (D) and Richard Lugar (R) had the most similar voting record of any two senators of opposing parties from the same state. As the political ideologies of the national parties diverge, however, voters may suffer less tolerance for differing viewpoints within parties. Under pressure from Republicans and Democrats for either supporting the President or not supporting him enough, Bayh retired in 2010, and was replaced by Tea Party member Dan Coates. Dan Parker, Chair of the Indiana Democratic Party, told the HPR, “In 2010, the Democratic Party forgot that elections in the United States are determined by moderates.”

National party ideology nonetheless seems to play a less significant role in local governance. Edward Glaeser, Director of Harvard’s Taubman Center for State and Local Government, asked, “Would you know that Michael Bloomberg was elected as a Republican or that Richard Daley was elected as a Democrat? There’s no Republican or Democratic way to take out the trash – it’s much less ideological.” Citing a study in the Quarterly Journal of Economics by Joseph Gyourko and Fernando Ferreira, Glaeser indicated party affiliation bore no effect on the policies enacted by mayors or other city officials, though it mattered significantly for state legislators.

THE 50 FEDERAL STATES? The growing influence of the national parties has likewise made it more difficult for state parties to create distinct identities. Ray Buckley, Chair of the New Hampshire Democratic Party asserts, “With the internet, the national message and the national narrative reach every nook and cranny of the country. As more people watch CNN and Fox News rather than read their local newspapers, voters in California receive the same message as voters in Maine.” Similarly, Rick Farmer, of the University of Akron, found that state party websites in the 2000 election often simply linked to national party websites. Although state party websites have advanced since, people are still more likely to receive party information from the national website, while new technologies have standardized each party’s message at the state level.

National parties have also begun to play a more direct role in legislative campaigns and elections at the state level. Programs like the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee constitute a national clearinghouse in which state staffers learn the latest techniques in organizing, messaging, and fundraising. Buckley termed this “the professionalization of legislative campaigns and state politics,” and noted that these tools were not available to states in the 1990s, when legislative campaigns were mostly locally run.

Partnerships with the national party provide state parties with financial and strategic benefits in their own elections. In 2005, DNC chairman Howard Dean proposed the “fifty-state initiative,” which committed national party resources to districts previously perceived as unviable. While initially controversial, the plan proved useful to many states. Parker noted that he “needed to rebuild Democratic support in Southern Indiana, and the grant from the fifty-state program allowed [him] to create a more stable, robust infrastructure.” Similarly, when asked about his strategy for the 2012 election, Buckley indicated that first and foremost, his goal would be to “collectively encourage folks to be involved in the President’s reelection—the stronger President Obama is in 2012, the more likely Democrats will pick up seats.”

ONE NATION, UNDER PARTIES The current political polarization in Washington has broadened the divide between parties at the state level as well. Americans now have a more clear choice at the polling

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booth as the parties grow apart. Gerald Wright, professor of Political Science at Indiana University, maintains that state parties have become more ideologically driven, like their national counterparts. Yet Wright told the HPR that while moderates may feel that politicians neglect their views, the drive towards ideology may benefit most citizens on the whole. “For a long time, voters were saying it’s sad that parties aren’t more dissimilar.” Now that polarization provides a consistent choice of parties, Wright argues, “the electorate has a clearer directive.”

Even when considering the much-decried stalemate and rancor of our current congressional scene, Wright views these difficulties as simply results of the peculiarities of American democracy, like split-party government and the filibuster.

Nevertheless, growing ideological homogeneity could prove detrimental to public debate and the growth of new ideas. Farmer noted that state politics are characterized by the struggle of the state party leaders and grassroots movements. “Campaign finance regimes and ideological alignment make the state party leaders and national party officials interdependent,” claims Farmer.

DEMOCRACY DISINTEGRATES? The growth of national parties has caused tension with certain local movements, particularly grassroots campaigns. Such efforts, like the Tea Party movement,

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have grown powerful. State parties face the conflict of balancing the benefits of national organization with their own homegrown initiatives. Farmer offers some comfort, stating, “We need a government that is powerful enough to rule, but responsive enough to be held in check. The tension between grassroots and party leadership is where it’s at. This is a healthy thing for our democracy.”

Unfortunately, current conditions seem to indicate that American politics is losing this very dynamic: the balance between local, state, and national movements. As national parties play a larger role in dictating how state parties legislate and conduct campaigns, the political views unique to different localities begin to disappear.

Our first system of governance granted individual states considerable autonomy from the national government, yet now state parties have become mere puppets of their national counterparts. With Congress in shambles, almost incapable of performing its most basic duties, such as passing a budget, national parties have never been seen in such a poor light. If America is to tackle its most pressing national and local issues then, a necessary first step may be revitalization of the local state party.

Medha Gargeya ’14 and Arjun Mody ’14 are Staff Writers.

INDIA: THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY

An anti-corruption movement energizes the world’s largest democracy ZEENIA FRAMROZE AND RAJIV TARIGOPULA This summer, a powerful, organic, and populist movement emerged to combat the systemic political corruption that has plagued India for decades. The front of the movement, Anna Hazare, spearheaded an effort to pressure the Indian Parliament to pass the Jan Lokpal Bill. This proposal would establish an intermediary organization between the people and the government to investigate and root out corruption in government bureaucracies. Although initially contentious, the effect of Hazare’s hunger strike and the nationwide protests in support of his cause led the government to accede. As this issue goes to press, a legislative committee has been drafting legislation in support of the movement’s goals.

While Hazare’s anti-corruption movement has enjoyed short-term success, long-term change will depend on the ability of the government and the Indian people to work together in a rational and productive manner. The government must acknowledge its citizens’ long-standing grievances about corruption, and, with the general populace, take substantive steps towards building a more legitimate political system able to ensure future stability for the growing economy and enhance the legitimacy of the government.

THE GOOD(-GOVERNMENT SUPPORTERS) The average Indian has long been harassed by the prevalence of corruption. The persistence of bribery has thus enabled the anti-corruption movement to gain support across age, ethnic, and religious barriers. The dichotomy of an old-fashioned Hazare-style protest and a modern Facebook and Twitter social media-choreographed impact has allowed the movement to reach a broad population, attracting to the rallies young college students and aged anticorruption stalwarts alike. Sonya Mehta, a rally participant, told the HPR, “I don’t think there’s any Indian who hasn’t paid a bribe. Once an income tax officer asked for a bribe to accept my returns. It’s a pervasive cancer in the system.”

The popularity of the movement, particularly among the growing middle class, has empowered the average Indian citizen to refuse to pay bribes. The famous Indian anti-

Top: Protestors in Delhi take to the streets to voice their frustration with the corruption in government Middle: A man calls for the death of corruption Bottom: A woman cries for the passage of the Jan Lokpal Bill, which would establish an investigatory body

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corruption movement Fifth Pillar has been distributing “Zero Rupee notes” in five languages. These notes exist to shame public officials who demand bribes and have gathered a significant following among the Indian citizenry, especially among younger generations. Such populist initiatives to fight corruption at the most basic levels of Indian society demonstrate the movement’s resonance today with Indians across the country and among all age groups.

THE BAD (GOVERNMENT RESPONSE) The populist sentiment against corruption has nonetheless failed to make headway with the Indian government. This summer marked the largest mass protests since the Indian Independence Movement in the late 1940s, and the Indian government has fielded criticism on every front for its irresponsiveness.

As Soli Cooper, prominent Bombay attorney and Harvard alumnus, told the HPR, the conduct of the government was “politically foolish and seemed to lack any coherence.”

These protests brought the notable absence of a cohesive, visionary government stance on corruption into public eye. Instead of attempting to head off the movement’s demands, Manmohan Singh’s government proved reactionary and lackadaisical. Ministers offered no genuine plans for transparency until the Jan Lokpal bill was introduced in Parliament.

As long as they require full government involvement, the proposals of the anti-corruption movement may lack legislatively viability. The Lokpal Bill has stirred dissent and controversy with the famous Indian sociopolitical activist Aruna Roy, who heads a union that represents Indian workers and peasants. Roy criticizes the proposed anti-corruption institution, contending that it concentrates

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too much power in one place and that its prohibitive workload would render it ineffective and incapable of upholding its responsibilities to the people. If anti-graft measures are to succeed, then, they still require government support to make them socially and politically viable.

THE UGLY (IMPLICATIONS) Tackling corruption alone may not be sufficient to improve the daily lives of Indian citizens, but the moral growth of Indian governance can still bolster India’s international economic and political standing. As the largest functioning democracy in the world, India has long been perceived as the natural ally of the West. Joseph Nye, professor and former dean of the Harvard Kennedy School, told the HPR, “The U.S. and India have greatly improved their relations in the past decade. In part this reflects a common concern about the rise of China in Asia, but it also reflects opportunities opened by rapid economic growth in India, and the increasing importance of the

Indian diaspora in the U.S. Shared democratic values also help, and I would expect this trend to continue.”

Though the economy has soared, Indian society has experienced difficulties in its moral growth.

From corruption scandals to telecommunications imbroglios to failures in addressing the Naxalite terrorist movement, the nation has been buffeted by reports of doubledealings. Prime Minister Singh’s government remains unpopular, and stands at risk of losing the next election.

As citizens continue to lose faith in the efficacy of government policy, the West will no doubt soon experience a similar disenchantment. This hindering of India’s standing has definitive implications for India’s place on the world stage: compromised legitimacy and credibility will inhibit its international influence, and opportunities like a seat on the U.N. Security Council may suffer. Citizens will have to work cooperatively and strategically with the government to

raise the bar again. As India pushes for greater influence in the world, it needs to first adopt a rational approach to resolving the issues on its own domestic public policy agenda.

STEPS FOR THE FUTURE? India is at a crossroads. In order to modernize the politics of the world’s largest democracy and carry the Indian political regime into the 21st century, the nation needs to further legitimize the foundations

of its governance and gain greater credibility in the international sphere. Addressing the core causes of corruption through citizengovernment synergy will be an essential step towards achieving this goal.

Though Anna Hazare’s fast struck a traditional and historical chord with the people, it is not the means by which to change a government.

In Sanskrit, “Lokpal,” the anticorruption bill’s title, literally means “protector of the people.”

THE DYSFUNCTIONAL DEMOCRACY

The struggle for Pakistan’s soul NUR IBRAHIM Poet and philosopher Sir Muhammad Iqbal, once said, “Avoid the democratic system of government, because the combined thinking of two hundred donkeys cannot produce the wisdom of one man.” Iqbal’s criticisms of popular Western democracies and arguments in favor of Islam in public life hold sway even today. In 1930, he proposed the creation of a state in northwestern India for Indian Muslims to the All-India Muslim League.

Yet, on 14th August 1947, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the charismatic Western educated lawyer and first GovernorGeneral of the young state of Pakistan, addressed the new constituent assembly with the words, “You are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place or worship in this State of Pakistan.

You may belong to any religion or caste or creed that has nothing to do with the business of the State.”

The clash between Iqbal and Jinnah resonates in Pakistan today. Western democracy, with its stated commitment to liberty, equality and representation has long seemed at odds with Islamic governments in the East. Pakistan in particular, was created on the basis of religion, but its founder hoped to establish a secular democratic state. In practice, Pakistan has vacillated between Islam and more secular forms of government, democracy and military rule. As a state at odds with its own identity, Pakistan has struggled to find a brand of democracy to fit the Pakistani context.

THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS In its initial years, Pakistan struggled to unite its

But the Indian people should not need protection from their own government. Discourse, negotiation, compromise, and organization from both ends of the political spectrum and every cultural, religious and linguistic corner of society is the only way the young and fractured Indian democracy will be able to bridge the gap between the government and the governed.

Rajiv Tarigopula ’14 and Zeenia Framroze ’15 are Staff Writers.

two separate wings—East (now Bangladesh) and West Pakistan—under a democratic framework. According to Christophe Jaffrelot, visiting professor at Princeton and former director of the Center for International Studies and Research, the Muslim League was the only party in existence in Pakistan, but lacked the clout and civil society support of India’s Congress Party. As a result, initial power remained in the hands of a few landlords and muhajirs, immigrants of West Pakistan. Yet the clear majority of Pakistan’s population resided in East Pakistan, separated by India. Any democracy meant that power would devolve to East, something the original Muslim League, largely made up of West Pakistanis, found unacceptable.

Jinnah died in 1948, leaving behind a country struggling with seemingly divergent ideologies, and separate wings. The instability of the new state, coupled with fear of India next door, led the Pakistani government to emphasize short-term goals, designed to keep themselves in power and immediate threats at bay.

For the first ten years of its existence, then, Pakistan tried and failed to instill a democracy, largely because political parties were discouraged and the ethnic identity divided the land so strongly from the start.

ENLIGHTENED MODERATION AND THE MILITARY In addition to the ethnic struggle within the country, an existential threat from India and the dispute over Kashmir increased the role of security in public policy, establishing the military’s presence in Pakistani public life from the start. “It created the mindset of liberty afterwards, security before. Ayub Khan used this line when he took over in 1958,” says Jaffrelot.

Further, Pakistan inherited two highly militarized and underdeveloped provinces. The North West Frontier Province (now Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa) and Balochistan housed fiercely independent tribes that had evaded British influence and resisted efforts for development.

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They remain hotbeds of resistance movements today.

After alternating between two prime ministers in the 1990s, both of whom were ousted on charges of corruption, Pakistan embarked on its longest period of military rule under Pervez Musharraf. Musharraf remained popular, despite his controversial takeover, and appealed to many moderate Pakistanis. In 2004, Musharraf began his mantra of “enlightened moderation,” stating, “We must adopt a path of moderation and a conciliatory approach to fight the common belief that Islam is a religion of militancy in conflict with modernization, democracy and secularism.” Attempting to achieve this moderation as a military dictator seemed unlikely, yet his policies encouraging free media and open criticism seemed to support Musharraf’s benign image as a democratic reformer.

COMING INTO ITS OWN Musharraf’s efforts, however, were complicated by societal structure. According to Anatol Lievin’s book, Pakistan: A Hard Country, a culture of patronage rules all institutions in Pakistan. Political parties, tribes, courts, civil services and police all function according to a system of patronage between individuals and loyalists, reducing the appeal of large scale democratic voting.

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Some experts, however, view the systems of patronage as a contextualized adaptation to democratic processes. Ayesha Jalal, a historian and professor at Tufts University described to the HPR the traditional tribal Jirga: a council that normally resolves disputes within a village. Jalal argues that while jirga has its flaws, it can be adapted to the demands of a modern democratic state. As Jalal claims, the system’s existence as an informal alternative to the judiciary has produced a sense of ownership amongst the people.

The potential of systems like the jirga suggests that democracies must be allowed to grow out of their flaws.

Jalal explained the interrupted flow of democracy in Pakistan, “We have always voted a government in, but never voted one out.” Democratically elected governments in Pakistan have been plagued by corruption and inefficiency, prompting takeovers by military rulers at every juncture.

The consistent interruptions prevent accountability mechanisms from running the full cycle. In Jalal’s opinion, Pakistanis know what they want, but have not been given the forum to express themselves.

A NEW ERA? After Benazir Bhutto’s assassination in 2007, Pakistanis heralded a new government with the largest election turnout in the country’s history. Today, rising

prices, a refugee problem in the wake of military operations and natural disasters, and growing suspicion between the United States and Pakistan after Bin Laden’s controversial capture place this democratically elected government at yet another crucial juncture. The army seems to be stepping back from interfering, yet the intelligence agencies still influence public policy, especially in the wake of Bin Laden’s death.

In 2013, if there are no interruptions, Pakistan will have its next major election. Choosing between the existing political parties will be a challenge, since most have been tried, tested, and struggled. Yet, if history is any indicator, muddling through remains the best possible route. Even in Pakistan’s case, where democracy is dysfunctional and manifests itself through unconventional means, the universal principles of participatory governance and rule according to the will of the people should be emphasized. According to Amartya Sen, a Nobel laureate and professor of economics at Harvard University, people will mold the word “democracy” to their own ends, unless the universal values of democracy need to be applied.

Nur Ibrahim ’13 is a Contributing Writer

THE MYTH OF THE CHINA MODEL Why democracies shouldn’t look east CAROLINE COX AND ACKY UZOSIKE The economic stagnation in America over the last four years has led many to question the effectiveness of democratic systems of government. Sluggish to respond, paralyzed by gridlock, and torn apart by partisanship, the Western democracies have shown their flaws in spades.

By contrast, the past several years have seen China continue its staggering economic growth. Thoroughly undemocratic, the giant of the East overtook Japan in 2010 to become the world’s second largest economy and now boasts a GDP second only to the United States.

It is tempting to look to China as a possible source of inspiration for Western nations as they seek to rebuild from the economic downturn. China’s economic growth model might become the standard for other emerging economies while the traditional macroeconomic policies of Western democracies are shoved aside.

But China’s economic strategy suffers from long-term structural weaknesses. While The Economist and other

publications may herald the dawn of a dominant China, democracies should look to themselves, not the East, to find solutions for the future.

RED BOOK, IN THE BLACK Like the United States, China enjoys its own particular brand of national ideology. The Communist Party of China has total control of the government, and there is generally little outward opposition to the status quo. Its authority allows the government to implement policies unilaterally. The Chinese government exercises sole control over a large number of state-run ventures and is able to pursue nationally-directed agendas without the distractions of other interest groups vying for special treatment.

Professor David Lampton, the Director of the Chinese Studies Program at John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, explained to the HPR that while

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economic success and governance are not always directly related, the Chinese system has had significant impact on the nation’s long-term economic growth. “The regime’s emphasis on stability has, in part, accounted for the high rates of not only domestic investment, but foreign investment as well,” Lampton asserted. As Lampton expressed, stability and predictability are important factors for investment, and China’s dedication to both helped nurture the economic power it has today.

Many experts caution, however, that centralized authority in China may also be a point of weakness.

As Professor Daniel Lynch, an executive committee member of University of South California’s US-China Institute, explained, China’s swift action in the wake of the worldwide recession likely helped it weather the economic crisis. Roughly 50 percent of China’s GDP is driven by investments, such as the planned high-speed rail network. What is unclear, however, is whether these investments were profitable. “China preempted the reduction in GDP by unleashing a huge fiscal and monetary program starting in November 2008,” stated Lynch. “As a result, they have built a lot of infrastructure that is not necessary.” These “bridges to nowhere” will likely cost China more down the road. While decisions in the West are often slow, the speed with which China is able to respond does not always translate to optimal policy choices.

CHINA’S TROUBLED FUTURE Despite economic growth, there is less satisfaction among the Chinese populace than one might expect. The country’s loyalty to the Communist Party of China largely depends on the government’s continued economic success. As Dani Rodrik, professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, explained, people in China generally have same ideals and aspirations as individuals in the West. As such, Rodrik argued, “The Chinese government has essentially imposed a quid pro quo” in which the government provides a rapid rate of the growth and the citizens do not question the government’s policies.

Historically, very few countries have managed to rise above middle-income levels without democratization.

Without significant strides towards democracy, the very system questioned under the Chinese model, China may find itself floundering in middle-income territory.

Another pressing issue is the looming demographic challenge as a middle-aged workforce begins to age.

In addition, as Michael Szonyi, professor of Chinese history at Harvard University, points out, the nation’s distorted sex ratio is a large concern for China. There are 119 males to 100 females born in China annually, which could reduce the size of the next generation, making it difficult to maintain a large workforce.

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WHY THE WEST HAS WON With the long-term viability of the China model in doubt, many experts believe that Western nations need to continue embracing democracy. The democratic process, while flawed, enjoys a historically good track record of allowing for self-correction between government initiatives and market forces.

The safeguards of elections, free speech, and protest in particular contribute to long-term sustainability. These safety valves, while not always efficient, do ensure that problems are corrected. As Rodrik explained, the real problems of the last several years are generally related to a distrust of our own democratic system. Lobbyists and special interest groups are increasingly able to set the agenda, while the traditional self-correction mechanisms are devalued, especially when it comes to the economy. “Markets work best when they work along with governments,” Rodrik stated. “Markets and governments are not against each other, but they are just two sides of the same coin.”

Democracies, therefore, have to revitalize this connection between the government and the markets.

While China maintains large control over its economy, Western nations’ balance between state regulation and economic freedom ultimately appears the better bet.

A NEW ORDER Many experts thus suggest that China will find a way to introduce gradual democratization on its own terms and that Western democracies may influence the eventual form of Chinese governance. Lampton explained, “Most Chinese, and indeed many in the political elite itself, are looking for a mixed political solution in which a gradually pluralizing, progressively more liberal China emerges, but one that maintains political order, high growth, and expanded liberty.” This new China will take time to emerge and, according to Szonyi, in the short term, “China will be more demanding, more vocal, and will seek to reframe international order toward its own interests.”

As for the United States and the other democracies, Lampton is optimistic about the future of the broader laissez-faire democratic model. “The United States was once a well-governed nation state, capable of making long-run strategic decisions and marshalling public and private resources to achieve important objectives…In the past, we did that in a democratic context and we need to rediscover the genius we seemingly have misplaced.

The answer for us is not in China, it is within ourselves.”

Caroline Cox ’14 is the Campus Blog Editor. Acky Uzosike ’13 is a Contributing Writer.

UNITED STATES JOBS FOR CONGRESS: REWRITING THE OBAMA PLAN

The President’s plan won’t solve much on its own

DANIEL BACKMAN AND THOMAS GAUDETT “Pass this bill!” So exclaimed President Obama this September, as he proposed a plan to shore up the American economy. Facing weak job growth, ailing manufacturing, and a housing sector still in the doldrums, the President offered a package of tax cuts and spending increases, which he asserted would kick-start recovery. In his emphasis of fiscal policy, the President enjoyed some theoretical support. As Harvard economics professor Greg Mankiw told the HPR, “One of the unusual things about this recession is that monetary policy hasn’t been enough.” Yet a combination of high expense and poorly designed programs may ultimately doom the Preisdent’s proposal. If they seek to move America out of recession, legislators must substantively rewrite the Obama jobs plan to make the bill effective in promoting longterm growth and justifying the costs.

SHORT TERM STIMULUS The basis of the President’s plan focuses on stimulating demand.

As former Treasury Secretary and Harvard University Professor Larry Summers stated to the HPR, “The overarching obstacle in short and medium term growth in the U.S. is a lack of demand. If we don’t succeed

in increasing demand, it won’t really matter what the supply potential is.” As such, tax cuts comprise half the bill, including a one-year extension of the payroll tax holiday for employers and employees, and a credit for hiring the longterm unemployed. Economists

claim that the cuts offer temporary incentives to boost disposable income, increasing consumption and motivating businesses to invest

in production and labor. Mankiw echoes Summers’ sentiments, saying, “Anything that puts cash out the door will contribute to aggregate demand.” Another simulative aspect to the bill is direct infrastructure spending, which, as Summers suggests, “can increase demand, put people back to work, generate multiplier effects, and increase the quality of life for Americans going forward by increasing our economy’s capacity.” With interest rates at historic lows and construction unemployment at historic highs, now may be the perfect opportunity for such projects.

Some economists remain skeptical.

Harvard economics professor Jeffery Miron claimed

to the HPR that, at the federal level, “there are a lot fewer good infrastructure projects to do than

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people would assume.” Rather than simply fund projects to create demand, Miron suggests that projects should require a strict costbenefit analysis. Indeed, Miron, Mankiw and Summers all agree that any infrastructure projects must be well-managed and welldesigned. Thus Mankiw argues that infrastructure spending must be considered “in the context of longterm economic growth.”

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, argues that this concern over returns strengthens the case for another part of the plan, the creation of a national infrastructure bank. Zandi claimed to the HPR that such a bank “would incent private capital into infrastructure development that would be driven more by economics than politics.”

Whether the bank instead federalizes spending that should be done at the state and local levels, where the costbenefit analysis can be done more effectively, nonetheless proves an item of considerable debate.

A FAILURE OF CONFIDENCE While the president’s plan contains several stimulatory measures, it is still unlikely to incentivize private sector hiring and investment on the scale needed to tackle unemployment and bolster growth. To start, payroll tax cuts for employers have historically minute effects on employment, because hiring new employees is a long-term investment. The tax cuts directed towards businesses that hire the long-term unemployed are particularly dubious, as they may not convince an employer to recruit a worker with minimal or outdated experience. Summers adds, “My judgment would be that we may need [employer tax cuts] for a longer time,” in order to make any significant dent in the unemployment rate.

Indeed, incentivizing investment generally requires decreasing business uncertainty and boosting

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expectations for the future. Since business investment is a crucial contributor to economic growth, any good policy should aim to improve that metric. While President Obama’s plan contains some investment incentives, like allowing businesses to deduct investment expenditures from their taxes through 2012, these are transitory benefits around which businesses cannot build their expectations. What businesses need is increased confidence and less uncertainty about the future.

The source of this uncertainty remains largely political. The nation faces a looming fiscal crisis, and businesses question government’s dedication to resolving it. They remain unsure what their taxes will look like next year, or what deductions they may lose. Indeed, temporary tax cuts combined with a lack of clarity in funding may increase business uncertainty. By contrast, structural tax reform, an element absent in the legislation, would promote clarity in the tax code and allow for permanent decreases in tax rates, with substantial benefits for economic growth. As Miron puts it, “Almost everyone believes that’s a no brainer, if only we could get there.”

CRISIS IN THE POST-CRISIS ECONOMY Opponents still argue that Obama’s plan is too similar to the $787 billion stimulus package passed in 2009. Zandi points out that, “While much maligned, this stimulus was a success. Without it, the economy would have suffered a much darker fate and the cost to taxpayers would have been measurably greater.” However, the economy has changed since then.

The stimulus package passed in 2009, when immediate government spending sought to avert economic depression. Businesses were scared and the financial system had all but collapsed, so looking to private-

sector investment to increase aggregate demand would have been futile.

Today, businesses have amassed huge profits that they are not investing, and banks hold onto capital instead of lending. With low interest rates, high savings, available labor, and fiscal constraints on government spending, private business investment is both imminently possible and highly desirable. Businesses and banks have the funds necessary to kick start long-term economic growth; what is missing are government incentives to increase confidence and get these funds flowing. In that sense, the President’s goal – to immediately put people back to work – is more reminiscent of a crisis response to abate economic contraction than the structural reform necessary to strengthen growth.

Overall, the current jobs bill provides some limited support for long-term growth, but remains too short-term in scope and insufficiently focused on increasing business investment through structural tax reforms. Private investment must underlie significant recovery, and since businesses focus on the long run, politicians must as well. We should think of our economy not as submerged in crisis, but as laden with opportunity. The time to incentivize is now. Obama himself suggested in his speech that we must, “start building an economy that lasts into the future.”

Unfortunately, Obama’s jobs plan does not adequately accomplish this goal. Legislators should in upcoming months work to improve this bill.

Thomas Gaudett ’14 is the Circulation Manager. Daniel Backman ’15 is a Staff Writer.

SUPER BUT SILENT

Should Americans love the Congressional super committee?

HUMZA BOKHARI AND DANIEL LYNCH After a last-minute agreement with congressional leaders this August, President Obama signed into law the Budget Control Act, averting a debt ceiling breach.

As part of the deal, the President consented to the creation of a bipartisan “super committee,” charged with slashing $1.5 trillion from America’s ever-swelling deficit.

With Congress unable to resolve its fiscal differences, the agreement delegates powers to twelve handpicked members, split between House and Senate, Republicans and Democrats. Any proposal that emerges from this process with the support of a majority of members is guaranteed a swift, up-or-down vote in Congress. Should the process deadlock, however, $1.2 trillion of automatic cuts will hit defense spending and domestic programs like infrastructure spending and education.

Although they may reach a token agreement to mitigate public anger and create the appearance of progress, present polarization and gridlock make it unlikely that the super committee will solve longterm spending problems. Regardless of whether significant progress is achieved, however, the fact that such a secret committee remains America’s best hope for fiscal sanity seems only to indicate how dysfunctional our political process has become.

GOING FOR BROKE According to Agnes Bain, government professor at Suffolk University, the fact that the super

committee exists indicates, “how seriously the system is broken.”

Given the intractable nature of the deficit dispute and the current hyperpartisan atmosphere in Washington, experts see dim prospects for the panel. William Galston, former adviser to President Clinton and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, reports that, “There is spreading pessimism in Washington that the super committee will be able

inflexible stands on key issues.

Even co-chair Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) enjoys the highly partisan role of chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Four members of the committee also earlier served on President Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, better known as Simpson-Bowles; none voted for its deficit-slashing recommendations.

STUCK IN NEUTRAL Deadlock springs from several factors. For political and philosophical reasons, neither side enjoys much incentive to compromise. According to Bain, “The president has tried to govern from the center since he was inaugurated, and all he has got for his

Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) announces the formation of a bipartisan coalition comprised of more than 33 Senators. The coalition encourages the super committee to propose the broadest possible bipartisan compromise.

to do more than the bare minimum.”

The committee’s membership would seem to justify the dire predictions.

Several members, particularly in the House delegations, are known for their

trouble is a couple of bloody noses.”

As Bain explains, Democrats face the need to placate liberals who feel that the party has conceded too much in past negotiations, while Republicans are doubling down on their message

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of fiscal discipline, confident that it will resonate in 2012.

Humphrey Taylor, chairman of the Harris Poll, notes that the political calculus for Democrats may make them especially averse to any agreement. While both parties could face a backlash from extreme supporters should they reach any compromise, Taylor argues, “Republicans who are angry with Obama…will still come out and vote,” while Democratic intensity “could be hurt if [supporters] feel that Obama and the committee have given away too much.” Noting that “lawmaking under conditions of divided party control tends to be slow,” Yale political science professor Peter Mayhew likewise fears that, “It might not be possible to do much before the election.”

The positions of President Obama and House Speaker Boehner illustrate the partisan divide. Both have staked out positions that apparently make compromise impossible; Boehner has declared that tax increases are off the table, while Obama has vowed that entitlement cuts must coincide with tax increases on the wealthy. Some might compare Obama and Boehner unfavorably with the bickering Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich.

However, Mayhew observes that the 1997 budget deal happened, “only after an intervening election that showed that neither side could knock out the other.”

MOVING FORWARD Nevertheless, although most committee members may not be inclined to negotiate, one or two pragmatists could break a deadlock.

Experts name Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) and Sen. John Kerry (DMA) as potential dealmakers, who could resolve a committee otherwise split on partisan lines.

Another particularly intriguing figure is Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), a staunch conservative so averse to

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automatic defense cuts that he may compromise to avoid them. Party leaders will also retain considerable influence, and, while they may take inflexible stances in public, Galston suggests that “the leadership, left to itself, could probably make more progress” without pressure from

even if the committee creates a bill, other congressmen cannot offer amendments. While this setup intends to insulate the super committee from external influences, it is unclear how independent its members truly are. The party leaders who selected them have some

“More fundamentally, the inability of Congress to function without delegating its responsibilities to a secret committee speaks volumes about the health of America’s political system, or lack thereof.” more ideologically rigid caucus members.

Indeed, there exists precedent for such a deal. Mayhew notes that, “As a practical matter, all the big money management deals of the past have been struck by small groups of leadership.” In 1988, for example, Congress gave special powers to a similarly small commission to shut down unneeded military bases, which helped resolve a controversial topic. There may also be political rationale for a new willingness to reach an agreement. Mayhew observes, “The Republicans seem to have gotten chastened by their bad polls of the summer. They need to get some standing back.” Voters are disgusted with Congressional gridlock, and while they may dislike some elements of any agreement, inaction may prove more infuriating.

DO SUPER COMMITTEES STINK? Even if public pressure ultimately prods the super committee toward compromising, it is troubling that major problems can only be addressed through such a secretive process. Committee members meet behind closed doors and are silent about their deliberations. Other members of Congress are kept in the dark throughout the process;

expectations of how each member would vote. Furthermore, lobbyists have access to the process; nearly one hundred registered lobbyists are former staffers for the twelve members. More fundamentally, the inability of Congress to function without delegating its responsibilities to a secret committee speaks volumes about the health of America’s political system, or lack thereof.

This lack of openness is arguably necessitated by the increasing polarization of Congress, the media, and even society at large.

Recently, for instance, a dispute over arcane rules hamstrung the Senate, ostensibly the world’s greatest deliberative body, causing Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) to sharply curtail debate. If legislators cannot resolve seemingly minor procedural issues through normal means, they would likely not make much headway on the deficit. For all its many shortcomings, then, the super committee may be America’s best hope. While negotiations may not produce substantive cuts, deals behind closed doors are better than no deals at all.

Humza Bokhari ’14 is a Staff Writer.

Daniel Lynch ’15 is a Contributing Writer.

AN UNCONSTITUTIONAL DEBATE

America’s obsession with the Constitution affects modern American politics JACOB DRUCKER AND DANIEL KI As President Obama’s Affordable Care Act works its way through the federal courts, and public figures label numerous federal agencies unlawful, the Constitution has never been more relevant to modern political discourse.

Though the highest law of the land has historically been a fulcrum for debates over controversial legislation, three crucial factors have increased the quantity, though not necessarily the quality, of constitutional discourse: the demands politicians currently face in Washington, the Tea Party, and the

advent of instant communication.

However, this trend of heightened constitutional discourse may not be as beneficial for the American polity as its advocates presume. In an era of warp-speed constitutional warfare, the allegation of unconstitutionality has become an increasingly corrosive political weapon.

AN OLD DEBATE Claims of constitutionality are no new phenomenon in American politics. In 1832, President Jackson famously decried the Bank of the United States as unconstitutional

in validating his opposition to the institution. Over one hundred years later, the Supreme Court struck down several of President Roosevelt’s New Deal programs under a similar rubric. Labeling legislation as at odds with the will of the founders is as old as the Constitution itself, Harvard Law professor Mark Tushnet, told the HPR. “It’s always been the case that people say that controversial policy proposals they oppose are unconstitutional.”

Further, constitutional arguments have a cyclical nature. Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe asserts, “If you go back some decades, it was common to attack lots of attempts to use federal power… as an unconstitutional excess.” These past few years have been a throwback of sorts. “We’re simply going into another cycle in which people are questioning the extent to which the movement from the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution FALL 2011 | DEMOCRACY | HPR

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really did give the central government such types of powers,” Tribe continues. While Tushnet and Tribe are correct that the Constitution has long been relevant to American politics, a perfect political storm in today’s environment has heighted the import of constitutional debate.

THE GREAT REVIVAL Politicians seeking reelection in the polarized political climate face extraordinary fundraising and ideological demands. Policy arguments alone frequently fail to satisfy the base. Recognizing this limitation, politicians have capitalized upon the fact that Americans appear to align the morally good with the constitutionally permissible. As Harvard Law professor Richard Fallon maintains, “The more sharply divided people become… then the more people are likely to roll out the heavy guns of constitutionality.”

Politicians, seeking the ammunition that the Constitution provides, seek to take advantage of the moral weight of the founding document.

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Already, such claims paid huge dividends for Republicans in the 2010 elections, propelling firebrands like Allen West to Washington.

The never-ending media cycle adds fuel to the ideological fire.

“How did the debate play out 200 years ago in a newspaper people read once a week because it was delivered to them by pony?” asks Roll Call editor Christina Bellantoni.

“Now we have a debate at warp speed because of the Internet and 24/7 news media.” Steven Hayward, a political commentator and policy scholar, succinctly profiled what has become of national debate. Referring to then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s statement “Are you serious?” when asked about the constitutionality of the health care law, he reflected, “In a century, we’ve gone from three days [of discussion] to three words.”

Because short sound bites are far more likely to garner attention than detailed policy speeches, substantive discussion about whether legislation is constitutional is almost impossible.

Even the famed Lincoln-Douglas debates would likely be summarized

into several succinct sentences by today’s media.

Moreover, the endless news cycle has allowed the Tea Party to play a significant role in elevating the Constitution in the public discourse. Bellantoni offers her perspective, stating that, “The Tea Party sort of burst on the scene; they put on colonial garb and used the Constitution as their sort of weapon.

And once that happened…you just got more and more lawmakers echoing what they heard at those rallies.”

With the Tea Party championing a revival of the Constitution and the pressures of fundraising frenzies, invoking the founding document has become difficult to avoid for those seeking public office. Tea Party sympathizers and opponents have similarly been drawn into this discussion, laying the groundwork for continued heated rhetoric.

WHO’RE YOU CALLING UNCONSTITUTIONAL? Increased references to the Constitution, however, do not conflate with greater legitimacy.

The debate over who has the right answers to these important constitutional questions rages on.

Representatives Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) and Ron Paul (R-TX), among others, have called everything from the EPA to Obama’s health care policy unconstitutional. To be sure, scholars like Hayward do defend both claims. With regards to the EPA, Hayward fears that, “more and more we’re governed by administrators rather than by Congress,” which could have implications for the separation of powers. Regarding health care, he explains that, “with something like Obamacare, we are testing the limits of what is left of the Commerce Clause… if Congress has the power to [mandate that all citizens buy health insurance], what don’t they have the power to do?” Here, Bachmann and Paul’s constitutional arguments are rooted

in deeply-held ideological beliefs that government has exceeded its powers.

Yet others feel that such views run contrary to the very spirit of the Constitution. Tribe, for instance, views such positions to be “both ahistorical and functionally problematic.” Bachmann and Paul espouse “a kind of literalist reading which would cripple the economy and which one couldn’t accept without, in fact, dismantling the entire federal structure.” Tribe goes so far as to label such rhetoric as “Neanderthal,” emphasizing that the demands of modern society make such views antiquated. Indeed, opponents to landmark legislation like the Civil Rights Act similarly claimed that the Acts were unconstitutional.

Regardless of where the answer lies, broad discussion of constitutional values has some inherent value, simply because public discourse promotes civic awareness.

Unfortunately, however, the heightened rhetoric has generally not translated into a deeper understanding of the Constitution among the American populace. In fact, Bellantoni explains, “most young people don’t have as much familiarity with the Constitution… as they did 30 years ago.” Ultimately, today’s intensely partisan rhetoric has created a toxic environment in Washington, with the result that the 112th Congress is on track to becoming one of the least productive ever, a particularly dire situation, given its incredibly challenging tasks. For all the attention America has given the Constitution in recent years, Americans have failed to follow the founders’ wish to amicably resolve our differences.

Daniel Ki ’15 and Jacob Drucker ’15 are Contributing Writers.

CAUGHT RED HANDED

Corporate cash in politics distorts democracy

NATHANIEL DONAHUE AND MATT SHUHAM Over the past several decades, campaign expenditures have steadily increased, culminating with a shattering $5.3 billion price tag for the 2008 election. But perhaps more startling is the fact that independent expenditures, the money spent by non-party organizations often funded by wealthy donors and corporations, actually increased during the 2010 midterm election. Typically, without the star power of presidential politics, midterms draw less spending. Yet according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics, total outside spending for the 2010 elections exceeded that of 2008 by about $3 million. So what happened?

In the wake of the now-landmark Supreme Court case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the face of campaign finance law has changed, opening the floodgates to the influence of corporate money in politics. The introduction of unregulated corporate money into the election cycle may well skewer the political process, enabling the purchase of outsized influence in government and affecting the outcomes of issues citizens care about most.

(UN)INTENDE D CONSEQUENCES The influx of post-Citizens United money has largely been channeled through independent organizations known as Super Political Action Committees, or “super

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PACs.” Individuals or corporations can anonymously donate unlimited amounts of money to super PACs, circumventing many previously cumbersome donation restrictions. Further, Super PACs enjoy new freedoms, such as the ability to directly mention the names of specific candidates in attack ads. These well-funded, well-connected political entities have injected tremendous amounts of money into the political process. American Crossroads, a super PAC created by Karl Rove, raised $27 million in the 2010 election cycle alone. As Mark McKinnon, former chief media advisor to President Bush, noted, “Outside organizations today have an inordinate voice relative to their numbers, because they get big checks that allow them to buy big amplifiers and drown other voices out.”

Legally, super PACs cannot confer directly with individual campaigns, but their contributors know the inherent value in giving. “A campaign contribution is an investment,” contends David King, professor at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. “Of course there’s an impact of money on policy, otherwise [they] wouldn’t be investing in it.” While the President is under the continuous scrutiny of an entire nation, individual legislators generally fly under the radar and, “most members of congress are exquisitely aware of where their money is coming from.”

THE MEGA MEGAPHONE While politicians’ attachment to special interests is hardly new, super PACs are uniquely influential in their abilities to distort the public discourse. Because they are legally prohibited from having “common coordination and control” with campaigns, super PACs can actually

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usurp the candidate’s platform. Benjamin Ginsberg, an attorney specializing in election and campaign finance law, explained that, “The candidates can’t control the message of a super PAC, nor really have an impact on it.” Therefore, external messages can soon come to dominate the campaign. Steve Grand, a Republican media strategist, contends, “The voters will hear more from the independent groups than they may hear from the candidates themselves. Sometimes these candidates may have a tougher time getting their point out, because they’re not only competing with the other side, they’re competing with the independent expenditures that may or may not have their message right.”

Although super PACs remain unique political forces, they do not necessarily hold allegiance to individual candidates or even to one party. By diversifying their investments, Super PACs can create incentives for politicians from both parties to support their agenda, as acting against the Super PAC would swing massive expenditures against the party or candidate. Super PACs can use this tactic to take issues such as reducing oil subsidies off the political table, even though a majority of Americans may support curtailment. Mark Halperin, senior political analyst for Time magazine, told the HPR that by shifting donations from political parties and open political arenas into secretive super PACs, “Citizens United is changing the way business is done.”

For Halperin, effective campaign finance reform would ensure that money is not just squeezed “from one bucket into another,” as he claims happens now.

ALTERNATIVE SOLUTIONS? With the flaws of existing campaign finance system,

experts suggest several options for limiting the influence of special interests in the political process.

For some, the path to equitable campaigns and greater democracy lies not with reversing Citizens United, but changing campaign regulations. Ginsberg believes that candidates are handicapped by the $2,500 per person limit, McCainFeingold regulations, and that individual candidates should not solicit funding from “the groups that have legislation in front of Congress.”

Instead, Ginsberg suggests, “Let the parties raise that money, so that they can fund the campaigns.” Yet, this process could inadvertently ensure entire slates of legislators susceptible to special interest groups.

For others, money itself is a problem. McKinnon observes that, “If it’s money that gets you reelected, it’s money you’re going to pay attention to. And the more money you get, the less you’re going pay attention to the little guy.”

McKinnon, founder of the No Labels Movement, a group committed to the creation of a post-partisan Congress through grassroots organization, argues for publicly financed campaigns, claiming, “If politicians aren’t tied to special interests to raise money then they will turn

their attention where it belongs - to voters.” However, this change has to come from grassroots organizations, McKinnon believes, because, “Congress is incapable of reforming itself.” Establishing a truly national grassroots movement nonetheless requires strong organization and significant funding: the same thing No Labels attempts to counter. For the time being, however, No Labels and other similar organizations may provide the best hope for curtailing the influence of money in politics.

LINGERING QUESTIONS Analyses of campaign finance may involve complex legal opinions, but the significance of campaign finance law echoes at the core of American democracy. Is spending money really a First Amendment right?

Should voices cloaked in anonymity have the power to drown out the “silent majority” of Americans not wealthy enough to afford a broad platform? Unfortunately, the aftermath of Citizens United suggests that already, Super PACs’ influence greatly exceeds their numbers. According to Thomas Mann, a fellow at the Brookings Institute, “we are quickly returning to a state of nature in campaign finance akin to the Gilded Age when corporate and individual wealth reinforced economic inequality.”

While politics in the United States may not be harmonious, Americans from all walks of life place their faith in the sanctity of “one man, one vote.” Unfortunately, the High Court’s ruling reigns supreme for now, allowing the unfettered access of special interests to the ballot box.

Matt Shuham ’15 and Nathaniel Donahue ’15 are Contributing Writers.

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POLICING THE STREET

Financial regulations will prove ineffective

COLLIN DE LA BRUERE For decades, investors were perfectly happy to part with their savings and let Wall Street operate unhindered. The 2008 financial crisis changed all that. As America limped away from near-economic Armageddon, government officials worked to address deficiencies in the financial system. Liberals clamored for strict regulation of Wall Street excess while conservatives remained apprehensive about constraining the financial sector during recession.

What emerged from the fight were the Dodd-Frank Act and Basel III standards, proposed regulations from domestic and international policymakers respectively.

However, while policymakers were well intentioned, their products, particularly Dodd-Frank, are misdirected overreactions to a crisis that do little to solve underlying problems.

THE DODD-FRANK MORASS During the 2008 presidential campaign, then-Senator Obama campaigned on reforming the financial sector. In the summer of 2010, Congress produced the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the most extensive expansion of financial regulation since the Great Depression. Dodd-Frank aimed to end “too big to fail,” an understanding that some financial institutions are deemed too integral to the nation’s financial health to be permitted collapse. Politicians hoped to spare taxpayers from the costs of rescuing ailing firms from the consequences of their risky investments.

Though motivating the bill’s creation, ending “too big to fail” has proved a complicated and contentious task.

Although regulations preventing financial institutions from growing above a certain size too large may reduce the need for bailouts, would-be reformers found the tradeoff unattractive. Large firms may create systemic risk in the market, but they also offer services no combination of smaller firms can provide. Ultimately, policymakers seem unable to find a way to eliminate “too big to fail” without getting rid of “too big.”

Altogether, Dodd-Frank calls for about 350 new rules to be written by regulatory agencies, mostly the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The law gives agencies an unrealistically compact deadline and has caused them to rush a series of extremely complex new regulations.

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The short timeframe thus prevented the agencies from fundamentally analyzing the impact such rules would have, or how to effectively implement them. As Harvard Law School Professor Hal Scott explained, “That is fatal, because the D.C. Circuit [Court] in Washington recently threw out another SEC regulation, the proxy-access rule, because they did not do adequate cost-benefit analysis.”

The court’s precedent threatens every rule the agencies formulate under Dodd-Frank as companies dissatisfied with the unanalyzed restrictions enjoy a reason to challenge them. Lack of clear jurisprudence creates further uncertainty in the economy, leaving financial institutions reluctant to change their business practices.

AN AUTHORITY TO FLY? A rare bright spot in Dodd-Frank is its consolation of financial regulation into a few agencies to fill in the grey areas that plagued existing regulatory structure.

The law empowers the new Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) with broad authority to identify and monitor excessive risks to the U.S. financial system arising from the distress of large, interconnected firms.

Limiting the systemic risk created by large firms is at

the heart of what new regulation should be addressing, but there are many who are skeptical about how the council’s effectiveness. There is an important difference between “authority” and “commitment.”

While the FSOC has the authority to monitor systemic risk, they have no mandate. As one Harvard economics professor remarked, “I can give you the authority to jump out of the window and fly, but I’m not sure if you’d want to try it.”

Indeed, the only thing worse than poorly designed regulation is unenforced good regulation, which many economists cite as a contributing factor to the current

crisis. Harvard Business School professor David Moss states, “Over time, regulators may have begun to take prolonged stability for granted and become complacent,

particularly in the lead up to the crisis.” Long periods of financial stability lure officials into a false sense of security, and regulators can irresponsibly shirk their duties.

Financiers will always try to push the envelope in pursuit of profits.

Unless the regulations created under Dodd-Frank are crystal-clear and enforceable, Wall Street could very well find itself at the epicenter of another crisis.

BASEL III The financial regulatory zeal has metastasized beyond DoddFrank. Once the financial crisis spread across the globe, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision began to formulate entirely new solutions to the shortcomings of existing regulation. In summer 2011, they finalized the Basel III regulatory standards, which increase minimum capital requirements for banks, among other things. The increased capital buffer would reduce risk, but also make banks less profitable, in the mandate that institutions have more cash in reserves. The largest institutions would face an additional capital surcharge, resulting in an extraordinarily high 9.5 percent buffer. Even one of President Obama’s allies on Wall Street, J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon, has called the proposition “blatantly anti-American.”

Paralleling the controversy surrounding Dodd-Frank, economists ask questions about the effectiveness of Basel III. All regulation has macroeconomic consequences, and here the costs potentially outweigh the benefits.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development estimates that the implementation of Basel III will decrease annual GDP growth by .05 to .15 percentage points. Scott states, “I don’t have a lot of confidence that Basel III equals financial stability, but I’m

very certain that Basel III equals less banking activity and less economic growth, so I’m not willing to sacrifice hardly any GDP growth for Basel III.” Basel III will not be fully implemented until 2019, potentially providing valuable time for officials to tailor its provisions to minimize their adverse economic impacts.

Because Basel III would affect most western nations, American banks would not necessarily find themselves at a disadvantage against their counterparts like Deutsche Bank and BNP Paribas.

The Federal Reserve has signaled that it is receptive to implementing some of the proposed constraints, which Fed representative Mark Van Der Wiede declared, “not only toughens reforms but also leaves the playing field relatively level.”

When implementing the reforms, nonetheless, U.S. officials must take caution in avoiding the mistakes still extant in Dodd-Frank.

LOOKING FORWARD To be sure, regulation has its limits. The only way to completely prevent the next financial crisis is to eradicate the financial system.

As this may prove imprudent, policymakers should instead aim reduce crises’ frequency and magnitude. Dodd-Frank and Basel have attempted as much, but misdirected policies and poor implementation still threaten economic growth. Instead of focusing on stabilization, some policymakers have sought retribution against the financial sector, at a cost of making the economy worse off than before.

While greater oversight of the powerful financial services industry is essential, prospective rule-makers should not rush headlong into creating a regulatory nightmare.

Collin De La Bruere ’13 is a Contributing Writer.

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WORLD NEW FEMINISM IN IRAN

The Middle East’s most tumultuous women’s rights movement CAITLIN PENDLETON AND OLIVIA ZHU

The recent partial legalization of women’s suffrage in Saudi Arabia has sparked debate over the progress of feminist groups throughout the Middle East. In the wake of such news, however, advances in women’s rights in arguably the freest Middle Eastern state, Iran, have been overlooked. The feminist movement in Iran builds upon a long history and continues to gain strength. Its successes may serve as a model for women seeking political liberalization throughout the Arab states.

FREEST—IN THE MIDDLE EAST At Columbia University in 2007, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad infamously claimed that there were no gays in his country, setting off a global firestorm.

Yet what he said next might seem equally puzzling: that Iranian women were among the freest in the world. By Western standards, Ahmadinejad’s declaration may seem a stretch. However, Iranian women, though not actually the freest in the world, enjoy more liberties than most women in the Middle East. Iranian women are permitted to drive, and, while Saudi women just received the right to vote and run for municipal councils this year, Iranian women have been speaking through the ballot box since 1963. Two women have been vice presidents: Masoumeh Ebtekar from 1997 to 2005 and Fatemeh Javadi from 2005 to 2009. The 2010 Gender Gap Index, which measures equality between men and women in the 134 nations, gave Iran an overall score of 123, compared to Turkey at 126, Saudi Arabia at 129, Pakistan at 132, and Yemen at 134.

As Arzoo Osanloo, an expert on the Iranian women’s movement and professor at the University of Washington, told the HPR, the relative success of women

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in Iran might be attributed to the fact that “Iranians are the least religious of people living in Muslimmajority societies.” Osanloo points to the nation’s “high ratio of female literacy, education, and women in the work force.” Iranian women are also more involved in politics than their counterparts in other states, perhaps because of what Osanloo describes as a “long history of public activism for rights going back to before Iran’s Constitutional Revolution,” and an Iranian desire to be “well-versed in the language of democracy, equality, and civil liberty.”

A HISTORY OF ACTION The advances of the Iranian women’s rights movement spring from a variety of factors. The movement began at the inception of the twentieth century and grew steadily more prominent over the next seventy-five years. Focusing on education, specifically the literacy rate of Iranian girls, activists expanded in number and achievements, relatively unhindered by the government restrictions that hampered similar movements in other Muslim states.

Until the 1979 Iranian Revolution, women had

improved their opportunities in employment, especially in politics, family law, and education, supported by initiatives from groups like the Women’s Organization of Iran. The revolution nonetheless reversed several of these advancements.

A 2007 article for the Journal of International Women’s Studies by Iranian author Majid Mohammadi showed that the revolution saw representation in parliament drop from 7 to 1.5 percent; employment of women diminished by 4.3 percentage points to 6.8 percent, and the legal age of marriage plummet to nine years old from the previous sixteen. Interestingly, women may have benefitted from the revolution in other respects; Osanloo suggests that conservative families “felt they could let their female kin enter public fora,” given the new dress restrictions, perversely giving feminists a greater voice.

Regardless, circumstances have improved since reformist Mohammad Khatami’s presidency from 1997 to 2005. Though the laws of the 1979-1997 period imposed greater limitations on women, especially those advocating for more rights, the movement survived and evolved into its modern form, despite the turmoil that exists in Iran today.

Said Osanloo, “Although the last eight years have been difficult for women’s rights advocates, it has been equally difficult to turn back the social, legal, and political reforms that have given women greater voice, visibility, and status in social life.” Her words echoed those of Nobel Peace Prize recipient Shirin Ebadi, who stated in a 2006 interview that Ahmadinejad “cannot actually reverse the rights that women have achieved because the feminist movement inside Iran is very strong. Women will resist any attempt to reverse their rights.”

CALM BEFORE THE STORM The widely-disputed presidential election between President

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and former Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi in June 2009 sent Iran into political convulsions. But before countless cell phone videos were capturing the hundreds of thousands of protesters, Iran had already experienced surprising reformist strides, aiding the women’s movement.

Though past campaigns, including Ahmadinejad’s, neglected the issue of women’s rights, Mousavi’s embraced the subject. Where Ahmadinejad expanded the role of

progress in gender politics in Iran,” Nayereh Tohidi, Chair of the Gender and Women’s Studies Department at California State University, wrote in a 2009 paper. But the sudden burst of progress, she argues, was not spontaneous. It was the result of years of slow but persistent activism, including the work of numerous feminists and feminist organizations—the most famous being the One Million Signatures Campaign against discriminatory laws—that persisted despite state repression and threats.

“The unprecedented visibility of Iranian women, from the artist and politician Zahra Rahnavard, to the world-renowned martyr Neda Agha-Soltan, may have signaled a longawaited shift in Iranian politics.” the morality police during his first term as president, Mousavi pledged to disband it outright while speaking to female supporters in Tehran in May 2009. “We should reform laws that are unfair to women,” he added.

Mousavi’s wife, Zahra Rahnavard, exhibited a similar form of tenacity, surprising political analysts by vocally campaigning alongside her husband in a display atypical of most spouses of Iranian political figures.

The volatile post-election fervor further catapulted women to the forefront of Iranian news. Pictures of protests disseminated via Twitter and Facebook show women at the front-lines of the demonstrations, marching not behind men, but alongside them. The unprecedented visibility of Iranian women, from the artist and politician Zahra Rahnavard, to the world-renowned martyr Neda Agha-Soltan, may have signaled a long-awaited shift in Iranian politics. “[B]oth in symbolism and content, the tenth presidential elections [in 2009] signified considerable

EXPORTING FEMINISM? Even if the protests had not highlighted the active role of women in Iranian politics, the dedication and vitality of the women’s rights movement over more than a century of activism remains of interest more broadly. Indeed, the experiences of the women’s rights movement in Iran illustrate how social movements can survive even the most repressive regimes. After all, Iranian women represent a prime example of organized yet effective protest. Today, through film and Facebook, television and Twitter, they have managed to make their message compelling and their work incessant. Through their dedication and persistence, the Iranian feminists have become the inspiration for protesters, not only in the Middle East, but around the world.

Caitlin Pendleton ’15 and Olivia Zhu ’15 are Contributing Writers.

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DEMOCRACY IN THE DESERT Confronting Libya’s autocratic legacy

LINDA NEGRON AND GRAM SLATTERY

Since Libya’s independence in 1951, world leaders and political scientists alike have struggled to envision democracy in the dictatorial stronghold. Civil society has proved chronically weak, the authoritarian government strong, and middle-class yearnings for socioeconomic equality essentially nonexistent. However, in the past year, a grassroots rebellion erupted, defying many doubters, and culminating in the overthrow of Colonel Muammar Qadaffi. Since the Colonel’s ouster, the nation has begun the process of democratization under the guidance of the National Transitional Council.

As Libya demonstrates its willingness to dismantle its previous regime, analysts nonetheless question whether or not Libya can overcome the historical tensions, rooted largely in tribalism, oil, and regionalism, that now stand between the country and pluralistic democracy.

While skeptical writers have painted such obstacles as insurmountable, these concerns may prove as overblown as the leader who once presided over Libya.

THE END OF TRIBES The idea of Libya conjures images of heavily factionalized, semi-nomadic tribes locked in a vicious cycle of mutual distrust, thanks to the corrupted lens of Gaddafi. While tribal identity remains quite strong in parts of the country, it is not nearly as powerful a cleavage in Libyan society as it once was, nor potent enough to destabilize the emerging government. Ronald Bruce St. John, author of several books on Libya, told the HPR, “The last forty years in Libya have been marked by an enormous amount of urbanization,” a force which has done much to dilute local tribal identity. In fact, as of 2011, eighty-eight percent of Libyans dwelt in cities.

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Rapid urbanization has produced highest GDP per capita in North Africa and wiped out illiteracy in the major areas. For the educated, elite residents on the coastal urban strips of the Mediterranean, tribal affiliation seems increasingly irrelevant. This is especially true for Libya’s youth, for whom, as field journalist William McClean puts it, the idea of tribalism simply “does not compute.”

On top of urbanization, tribalism may further disintegrate with the fall of Qaddafi. For the first decade of Qaddafi’s reign, the Brotherly Leader actively attempted to undermine tribalism. However, by the late 1970s, Qaddafi reversed course, and began systematically patronizing tribes through the establishment of the People’s Social Leadership Committee, which exchanged state funds for loyalties and other conditions.

Thus, for the past few decades, tribalism has grown into “an artificial construction by the Qadaffi regime,” claims Brookings Doha analyst Shadi Hamid. As such, there is reason to believe that with the end of de facto government incentives for tribal affiliations, tribalism will slowly disintegrate and be replaced with a more common conception of democratic civil society.

HISTORIC REGIONALISM In addition to tribalism, many analysts have pointed to inter-regional tensions as a potential source of conflict in the emerging government of Libya. Arising from the vast separation between the developed regions of the country, regionalism asserts a pride in one’s own place of origin. Whereas tribes are a clan-based construction, regionalism is a geographic statement.

The nation of Libya began with the unification

of three of historical regions: Tripolitania in the west, Cyrenaica in the east, and Fezzan in the interior. Cyrenaica contains most of the nation’s oil riches; however, Tripolitania, Gaddafi’s homeland, has historically reaped the economic benefits of the resource. As a result of this imbalance, feelings of intranational alienation persist.

Nonetheless, the February 7th Revolution movement remains imbued with the idea of a singular national identity. As St. John claims, “Libyans see Libya as one country.”

Further, St. John indicates that the National Transitional Council has demonstrated devotion to fair inter-regional representation. The recent flood of images of pro-unity demonstrators celebrating in the streets of Benghazi reaffirms these notions of solidarity. Regionalism may still lead to political disagreements, yet this is not fatal for most other pluralistic societies.

Thus, apart from the remnants of Qadaffi’s cronyism, regionalism no longer divides and separates Libyans into differing identities, but rather invigorates the idea that they are parts to a whole.

THE CURSE OF OIL Under Qaddaffi’s rule, oil profits

proved the means of support for an autocratic structure, while leaving the majority of Libya’s population oblivious to the conduct of the stateowned companies. In order to make the oil companies more transparent, the government still needs to make strides to ensure that their wealth does not fall into the hands of the few again. According to reporter Vivienne Walt of Time, a large percentage of Libyan oil revenues came in the form of under-the-table contracts with large bonuses for Qadaffi and his supporters. These arrangements siphoned off valuable resources from the state coffers and prevented the rest of the country, particularly those not belonging to Qaddafi’s tribe, to reap the benefits of the nation’s endowments. The National Transitional Council has assured the country that the oil industry will no longer be a breeding ground of corruption.

As the NTC pledges, the cronyism built during Qadaffi’s regime will be done away with, and “contracts will be awarded on merit rather than political favors,” according to Guma el-Gamaty, the U.K. coordinator of the National Transitional Council.

If the national oil companies make strides in eliminating cronyism, it could lead to an economic boom that

would produce benefits across the socioeconomic spectrum. Although the country cannot continue to develop if it remains fully dependent on oil, the oil industry might very well be the catalyst for further economic development, urbanization, and job growth.

THE RESET BUTTON Perhaps the greatest threat to democracy is not tribalism, nor the emergence of the rentier-state, nor regionalism. Instead, as the former U.S. charge d’affairs to Libya, Charles O. Cecil, noted in a statement to the HPR, the nation has had “absolutely no experience with civil society for decades, and must start from scratch in the construction of its new government.” Of course, the virtue of this void comes in the fact that Libyans now have the opportunity to build democracy on a foundation free from the corruption, odium, and the political baggage of the past.

When the nation came together in 1951 to unite its historical regions into a common kingdom, societal fissures were intense.

Now these fissures rapidly melt away. What remains is a nation freed from the shackles of its past: a nation urbanizing and embracing the West.

To be sure, democracy will not come naturally; the NTC and the Libyan people face unforeseen challenges and must work out a governing system filled with the unknown. Still, as the previous constructions that held autocracy in place disintegrate, democracy is growing in its ability to replace the nation’s dictatorial tradition.

Linda Negron ’15 is a Contributing Writer. Gram Slattery ’15 is a Staff Writer.

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PULP FRICTION: ISRAEL AND TURKEY

Arab Spring adds a new wedge to a troubled relations ALI NURI BAYAR AND MIKHAILA FOGEL The long-standing friendship between Turkey and Israel seemed once to offer testament to the idea that Arab-Israeli Conflict based not on religion or ethnicity, but on solvable political difference. Since 1949, when Turkey became the first Muslim nation to establish relations with Israel, the two counties have created a beneficial partnership. Yet sixty years of cooperation appear to have been obliterated in the past three years, as relations between Ankara and Jerusalem chill by the day. Nonetheless, current tensions

largely reflect shifting geopolitical forces in the region, rather than ideological divisions. The driver of Turkey and Israel’s split remains the separation between Turkey’s new stature in the Middle East and Israel’s growing isolation in the region.

THE GOOD OLD-ISH DAYS Beginning with the election of the Justice and Development Party

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in 2002, Israel and Turkey enjoyed a period of unprecedented diplomatic cooperation and economic exchange. Excluding revenues from natural gas and petroleum products, Turkey’s trade agreements with Iran amounted to $2 billion in 2011, while its trade agreements with Israel amount to over $4 billion.

Shimon Peres enjoyed several visits to Ankara, Prime Minister Tayyip Erodgan to Israel, and the countries have exchanged hundreds of thousands of tourists every year.

Erodgan’s reaction to the Gaza

War of 2008-2009 catalyzed a break in the quasi-alliance between the two nations. In the so-called “One Minute Scandal” at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Erodgan offered a series of inflammatory remarks regarding the Gaza War and ignited a verbal sparring match between the two nations. The conflict culminated in diplomatic debacle in which the Turkish Ambassador to Israel was asked to sit in a lower

chair than his Israeli counterpart’s.

Although Israel apologized for the insult, residual resentment lingers in Turkey. A major turning point occurred on May 30, 2010 when nine Turkish activists were killed aboard the Mavi Marmara, a ship attempting to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza.

Controversy over the flotilla continues to sour relations. Turkey demands a formal apology and compensation for the families of the deceased, while Israel defends the legitimacy of its actions. In September, the United Nations’ Palmer Commission released a report declaring that, although Israel used excessive force in the Mavi Marmara raid, its blockade of Gaza is legally justified. The day after the release of the Palmer Report, Turkey expelled the Israeli ambassador and suspended all military agreements.

THE NEW MIDDLE EAST Despite these diplomatic disputes, the most important factors reshaping the Israel-Turkey relationship may not be these incidents, but rather the unprecedented transition in the Middle East. The revolutionary fervor of the Arab Spring has shifted the balance of power in the region, causing Western influence and regional authoritarianism to fall out, and enabled the ascent of a new order of Arab states, embracing democracy and religious expression.

The effects of Arab Spring have purchased for Turkey a new role in the region. “We are there to set a model that market-economy, democracy, and local cultural values can interact in a positive way,” a Turkish diplomat told the HPR. Prime Minister Erodgan has

emerged as a model for the new Arab leaders, and Turkey as the template for secular Islamic democracy.

With the falls of Mubarak, Qaddafi, and Hussein, a severely weakened Assad, and diminishing American influence in the Middle East, Turkey has become the standard-bearer of sound governing in the region.

While Turkey strives to maintain its traditional domestic policies, its foreign policy has become more active in taking advantage of a distinct power vacuum.

ISRAEL IN ISOLATION On the other hand, Israel’s position has become weaker and more isolated as popular revolutions overturn regional allies. Dr. Charles Freilich, former Israeli Deputy National Security Advisor and Kennedy School fellow, pointed out that Israelis enjoyed “a strong emotion attachment” to the alliance with Turkey, precisely because it proved Israel’s conflict was based in politics, not ideology. The sudden breakdown of relations has led many to reject this optimistic belief and “feel betrayed” by Turkey.

This feeling of betrayal has led to a backlash against Arab states and

pushed the Israeli government under Benjamin Netanyahu further to the right. Uncertainty has created an impasse between the Turkish and Israeli governments, polarizing both sides further. With Turkey’s increasingly belligerent tone and Israel’s continuation of settlement construction and military operations around the Gaza Strip, prospects for reconciliation are fading at an alarming rate.

Neither does reconciliation appear on any near horizon.

According to a senior Turkish official, if Turkey’s demand for an apology for the flotilla had been met, Turkey would not have expelled the Israeli Ambassador, and the nations could have normalized relations. Yet, Itamar Rabinovich, President of TelAviv University and former Israeli ambassador to the U.S., believes that an apology would not have made any significant diplomatic difference.

Rabinovich argues that Turkey deliberately chose to distance itself from Israel in order to boost its standing in the Middle East.

LOST IN TRANSITION The series of unfortunate events between Israel and Turkey has

brought simmering tensions in regional relations to a boil. Uncertain about its ability to join the European Union, Turkey turned its attention back to the East by increasing trade with its Muslim neighbors and increasing its advocacy for Palestinian statehood. It would be too much to say that Turkey is shifting its axis and severing its ties with the West. Since the creation of NATO, Turkey has served as a poster child for Middle Eastern democracy and continues to fulfill its duties as a central regional ally. Yet the Arab Spring and Turkey’s tradition of secular success means that Turkey faces a transition, from being bridge between two continents, to being a leader in its own right. This shift means that Turkey’s decisions will not be based on currying favor with any bloc, but rather focused on expanding its influence. As such, while revolutionaries in Egypt and Tunisia look to Turkey as a leader, Iran is threatening to cancel vital trade agreements with Turkey because of its NATO Early Detection missile defense systems and Turkey’s threat to sanction Syria.

A Turkish official told the HPR, “[Turkey wants] a stable, secure, and prosperous Middle East”. Yet neither stability nor prosperity can be achieved without collaboration between Israel and Turkey.

Collaboration existed for sixty years, proving that political shifts, not enduring ideology, have caused the present rift. If these two nations wish to be leaders of a secure region, they must be prepared to compromise, with the understanding that the Arab Spring has reshaped their geopolitical calculations.

Ali Nuri Bayar ’15 and Mikhaila Fogel ’15 are Contributing Writers.

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UNDERSTANDING THE ANDEAN CHAMELEON

Why did Humala turn to the center?

JONATAN LEMUS AND SYLVIA PERCOVICH

On July 28, Ollanta Humala was inaugurated as the 94th president of Peru. The victory did not come easily; he beat Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of former president Alberto Fujimori, by less then 2 percent of the vote. Further, Humala had to overcome baggage from his previous attempts for the presidency, most recently in 2006, when he openly embraced the influence of Hugo Chavez. The thought of having another leftist leader with a radical agenda sparked fears among international investors, business elites, and the urban middle classes in Peru. After a decade of continuous growth, many Peruvians feared that a major change in economic and social policies would bring the country back to the instability of the 1990s.

Understanding this, Humala’s campaign premised on maintaining the macroeconomic policies that allowed the breathtaking economic growth, while implementing a social agenda focusing primarily on tackling poverty, expanding childcare, and reforming the pension system. Yet, this moderation was not from an evolution of beliefs; rather, Humala understands that he

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is constrained by various domestic and international factors, and must tackle the center in order to survive politically. As the newly elected president begins his term, applying this understanding will remain crucial to his success.

DOMESTIC AWAKENING The differences between 2006’s candidate Humala and 2011’s President Humala appear startling.

In 2006, Humala ran on a nationalist platform that mirrored Hugo Chavez’s reign in Venezuela. When running again this year, Humala adapted to the demand of a more moderate electorate, allowing him to win the presidency. The apparent radical change nonetheless springs from several domestic factors that shaped Humala’s promises and rhetoric towards the center of the Peruvian electorate.

At the forefront of his constraints is the economy. According to the U.S. State Department, Peru’s economy grew at around 9.8 percent in 2008, unmatched in the region. Humala’s victory unnerved foreign investors, major players in Peru’s economy, and prompted a 12 percent drop in the stock market. Eduardo Dargent,

professor of political science at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, told the HPR, “These early signs of economic distress gave [Humala] the last push he needed towards economic moderation. He realized the market laws were real and that he needed market-friendly policies to govern.” His initial reception proved the motivation that brought Humala to embrace centrist policies that he had half-heartedly advocated in the campaign.

With the private sector and foreign investors apparently at ease, Humala continues to face a source of pressure that could ultimately challenge him as a leader: the public. All of Humala’s moderation schemes aim to secure a base of public support. When asked if Humala would remain a moderate, Dargent pointed out that “it partly depends on his approval ratings, if there are signs that these ratings are hurt when he takes steps away from moderation….But if he is applauded by the public when he takes some more radical steps, he may return to some of his more radical agendas.”

So far, the president’s approval ratings have risen since his election.

However, Humala remains a moving

target ideologically and might flip should his approval head south.

A DIFFERENT WORLD AROUND HIM Although most analysts agree that domestic factors are the most important when understanding Humala’s policies, there undoubtedly exist linkages between Humala’s moderation and shifting global conditions, especially in Latin America. As Cynthia McClintock, professor of political science at George Washington University, expresses, “Peruvians know that the major investors in the country are foreign—the U.S., China, Europe, and other Latin American nations.” Investments have become a major incentive for President Humala to maintain strong relationships with these countries, and he has pressure from domestic public opinion so to do.

For example, during Humala’s visit to Washington in the fall of 2010, “he presented himself as a social democrat and was calm, cool, and collected” says McClintock.

Had he pursued an extreme left agenda, Humala might have spooked investors even before the campaign, significantly weakening his electoral prospects.

Further, it is important to take into account how much Latin America has changed during the last five years.

Steve Levitsky, professor of government at Harvard University, argues that in 2006, Hugo Chavez was at the height of his power. Joining Chavez represented the possibility of obtaining subsidies from his oil bonanza.

Nevertheless, by 2011, Chavez’s domestic problems forced him to tone down his regional aspirations, while making other leaders more hesitant to follow his lead.

Today, the Brazilian model, championed by former President Lula, has become the pre-eminent form for Latin American development. Brazil’s success may have led Humala to realize that he should follow a more moderate path, to gather domestic and international support. After the 2006 election, he hired advisors from the Lula administration, and by 2011 he had already redefined himself as a moderate.

However, Michael Shifter, president of the InterAmerican Dialogue, told the HPR “I think the Chavez vs. Lula formulation contains false options. He will be neither.” In Shifter’s view, Humala remains a work in progress. The President may have to strike a balance between economic moderation—reforming rather than transforming the economic structure—and pushing social reforms, a problem which Humala has yet to tackle.

Further, conditions vary broadly across Latin America, especially between Peru and Brazil or Venezuela. Peru lacks the energy resources of either country and is still significantly poorer by any metric. Thus, Humala must juggle an entirely different set of concerns as he strives to shape the country from a center-left coalition.

LOOKING TOWARDS THE FUTURE After three months of Humala’s presidency, public opinion and private investors remain cautiously optimistic about the direction of Peru’s future. Humala has been able to overcome the first challenges of the presidency: to keep foreign investment secure and win the public’s approval. However, he has yet to attempt to fulfill his promises on social reform, which are bound to be more contentious and controversial.

Despite all of this apparent success, it remains an open question whether a change in the domestic and international conditions might prompt a sharp turn to the left. Many people in Peru are still skeptical and fear an ultimate ideological reversal. Should Humala take such a step, foreign investment could flee, Peru’s hardwon economic gains reverse, and the President’s ability to implement long-term sustainable reforms could be thrown into jeopardy.

Jonatan Lemus ’12 and Sylvia Percovich ’15 are Contributing Writers.

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BOOKS & ARTS

BOLLYWOOD AND INDIA’S ANTI-CORRUPTION MOVEMENT ANITA JOSEPH

NO ONE KILLED JESSICA, Raj Kumar Gupta. UTV Spotoy, 2011. 136 min.

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Two years ago on a family vacation to India, our taxi was pulled over by a policeman demanding to see the driver’s license. The policeman took the proffered license and told the driver to come to a Delhi police station the next day to retrieve it and sort the matter out. We drove off, my father offering his sympathies. But the driver shrugged; the license had been one of his five fakes. In Delhi, as soon as you get your license, you go across the street to buy a handful of counterfeits to cover for situations just like this.

Corruption in India is a nationwide game in which every citizen willingly participates, from politicians to peasants.

But in the hugely popular Bollywood political thriller No One Killed Jessica, a film that has become a landmark of India’s burgeoning anti-corruption movement, this message is largely missed. Rather than taxi drivers, the film wags a finger at the social elite: important figures in the corruption establishment, but far from the only culprits.

As India’s wave of anti-corruption advocacy gains force, finding popular media symbols that accurately represent the problem remains a crucial step.

No One Killed Jessica is based on the true story of the Jessica Lall murder. In April 1999, Lall, an aging model, was shot while bartending at the restaurant Tamarind Court Café in Delhi. Prosecutors identified Manu Sharma, the son of a Haryana state congressman, as the killer. Manu had apparently bristled at Jessica’s refusing to serve him after the bar closed and shot her out of anger. However, 29 eyewitnesses later retracted their statements, claiming that their memory of the situation had changed, and Manu was acquitted. After a national media storm, Manu was hauled back into court and sentenced to life imprisonment, 26 of the 29 eyewitnesses were accused of perjury, and the Tamarind Court Café was shut down.

The film, released in January, has been hugely successful, both financially and politically. It has grossed $4.6 million since release, $4.1 million of which was in India. This is an impressive total, given that Indian movie tickets often cost less than $1. Of course, the film was conceived as a popular success, headlined by Bollywood superstar Rani Mukherjee as a crusading reporter, and featuring a strong performance

by Vidya Balan, as Jessica’s quietly vengeful sister.

More importantly, however, No One Killed Jessica has become an important part of the national Indian discourse on corruption, as reflected by its reviews. The Times of India said of the film: “Raj Kumar Gupta shows absolute conviction in bringing to life one of the most significant murder-case convictions in the history of India. No one miss

this cinema!” The Hindu proclaimed: “Seven years after Jessica was shot dead, a nation wakes up to fight for justice.” The film grew popular at an opportune time for India’s anticorruption movement. Although complaints about corruption have bubbled since the disastrous 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, more full good-government movement gained traction in April 2011, coalescing around activist Anna Hazare’s hunger fast “unto death,” and demanding the passage of an anti-corruption bill in the Indian Congress. In this sense, No One Killed Jessica proved an important endorsement of the anti-corruption movement by powerful figures in entertainment and politics, at a time when the movement was still struggling for attention.

Of course, the entertainment industry knew its motives. The cinema proves a powerful tool in Indian politics. For a country only 63 percent literate, movies are an important form of information, as well as entertainment. The industry is valued at $1 billion and sells 36 billion tickets annually, compared to Hollywood’s 2.6 billion. Further, while the Western entertainment industry is highly fragmented between films, television, Internet media, social networks, and music, the Indian entertainment industry is mostly driven by Bollywood.

However, the political influence of No One Killed Jessica raises an important question: does the movie portray corruption in an accurate manner? In a noteworthy way, it does not. The film places undue responsibility for corruption on India’s rich and famous. The film’s eyewitnesses (which jump from 29 to 300) are cast as Delhi’s most fashionable and powerful, and Gupta posits that they were bribed and intimidated by the powerful Sharma family to retract their original testimonies. As one poor witness objects, “What would you do if you

were offered the choice of 10 million rupees or a bullet?” Not only are the eyewitnesses not commoners, but their corrupt retractions are motivated by plausible threats of death – quite unlike the experience of most day-to-day corruption in India.

Transparency International’s 2005 India Corruption study illustrates the many layers of the problem. Based on a sample of 14,000 citizens in 20 of 28 states, it found that, “As high as 62 percent of citizens think that the corruption is not a hearsay, but they in fact have had firsthand experience of paying a bribe or ‘using a contact’ to get a job done in a public office.” The study also showed that only 15 percent of Indians believe that corruption is the fault of citizens and that 33 percent believe that corruption is a fact of life.

In more qualitative terms, the daily presence of corruption can be seen through corruption blogs such as ipaidabribe.com, which allows users to post the most egregious bribes they have been asked to pay (and have often paid). From Meerut comes a post: “My father who is about to retire in one month’s time from UPPCL was asked by his Executive Engineer to pay a bribe

of 10,000 to release his service book, so he can get pension and funds on time.” From Bangalore: “I had to forfeit 20 percent of my Agriculture produce to HOPCOMS. They billed only for 80 percent of my supplied agri-produce and took almost 20 percent unaccounted.” Bribe posts are even split into categories: “police,” “registration,” “motor vehicles,” “municipal services,” and “customs.”

Corruption in India is a common thing, but No One Killed Jessica presents it as an almost rarefied event, shifting responsibility for better governance away from civic society. In a country where graft is as much a part of the exchange of goods and services as money itself, and the collective actions of a billion people give it staying power, anticorruption needs an accurate model of what it seeks to eradicate. In the days after Manu is initially acquitted of Jessica’s murder, the film shows a massive vigil for Jessica in a large public space in Delhi. People across the city come out in t-shirts and signs reading, “I am Jessica.” What they should be thinking is: “Am I Manu?”

Anita Joseph ’12 is a Staff Writer.

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NEOCONSERVATISM’S CONFLICTED PAST LENA BAE

Jean-François Drolet’s American Neoconservatism, a concise blend of political theory, intellectual history, and contemporary politics, marks one of those rare occurrences of highly relevant academic literature. Drolet’s aim in the work is to challenge the neoconservative hearkening for a moral, united America by uncovering the doctrine’s anti-Enlightenment ideological roots and reveal it as an ideology based on antiliberal values. His message is a persuasive one and adds insight into the ambiguous position neoconservatism has in contemporary American politics.

The story that Drolet details is a familiar one.

Neoconservatism took shape among the group of mostly Jewish intellectuals at the City College of New York from the 1930s to the 1950s, whose number included Irving Kristol, Daniel Bell, Irving Howe, and Nathan Glazer. The still-young theorists began as Trotskyists but quickly grew disillusioned with Stalin’s brutality.

Turning to support FDR’s New Deal, they also were chagrined by the “excesses” of the welfare state, and shocked by the social and cultural upheavals of the ‘60s.

So neoconservatism evolved in the next two decades as its own political faction, aligning with the Republican Party after Jimmy Carter’s weak performance as president and Ronald Reagan’s promising election.

Drolet digs deeply into this account by focusing most of his attention on the man who inspired these voices of neoconservatism: Leo Strauss. Strauss, a JewishGerman émigré who specialized in classical political philosophy, critiqued the prevailing progressivism of his era by problematizing Enlightenment liberalism, arguing its embrace of reason led to the dissolution of any commanding truth, which resulted in the kind of moral relativism that could lead to the rise of extremists, such as the Nazis. Strauss claimed that the state should not abdicate its hold on morality, but instead take on the responsibility of “cultivating” its citizens. Liberalism, by allowing individuals to define happiness on their own terms, led to democratic decline.

The idea resonated with the New York intellectuals, members of the silent majority who viewed ‘60s radicalism as a degrading exercise, and to whom valueneutral social science seemed only to justify individual morals. Kristol questioned in 1970, “how can a bourgeois society survive in a cultural ambiance that derides every traditional bourgeois virtue and celebrates promiscuity, homosexuality, drugs, political terrorism…?” His

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AMERICAN NEOCONSERVATISM: THE POLITICS AND CULTURE OF A REACTIONARY IDEALISM,

by Jean-Francois Drolet. Columbia University Press, 2011. $30.00, 256 pp. reaction was to fight liberal nihilism with a crusade of tradition. For Kristol, this was a return to ordinary American values. In fact, he argued that “the ‘neo’ in neoconservatism is [the] insistence that the American people have always had an instinctive deference toward such standards.”

Drolet paints these early neoconservative sentiments as deluded. Neoconservatives were not advocating for the preservation of the Framers’ virtues, but for an anti-democratic idea of society antithetical to natural rights. The neocon prescription was based on a static, homogenous definition of American culture and values, protected from interference by citizens. As Drolet argues, the neoconservative project “is not so much to ‘conserve’ this bourgeois society as to transform it into a postwelfare community of values within the existing class structure… a politically motivated de-politicization of social relations that ultimately separates liberalism from

democracy.” The de-legitimization of citizen demands and the role of the state in regulating economic inequities is far from the essential, creative role of dissent that the Framers had been careful to weave into the Constitution’s fabric.

At the heart of Drolet’s reading of neoconservatism is his assertion that the ideology is “polyarchic,” an idea developed by Seymour Martin Lipset and inspired by Joseph Schumpeter’s classic idea of elitist democracy— formed in the authoritarian inter-war milieu. According to Schumpeter, polyarchic democracy is a process by which competing elites battle for the approval of a largely passive electorate. The political elite also manipulates the public’s general will, supposedly for the good of society. Drolet argues that the polyarchic model is vital to neoconservatism for two reasons: first, like neoconservatism, the model separates politics from economics, leaving socioeconomic inequality unquestioned; second, it delegitimizes bottom-up struggles by civil society, removing the transformative potential of democracy. Drolet argues that such an elitist conception of democracy was legitimized under Reagan, who combined it with aspects of neoliberalism to form the Washington Consensus, shaping the world’s perception of the U.S. as a modern capitalist, imperial power.

In the early 1990s, neoconservatives might have dismissed this critical view.

Neconservatism had critics (and few back then), but so what? In the aftermath of the Cold War and the U.S. victory, the neocon reading of America’s role seemed aligned with world events—and its dangers weren’t apparent. The alternative, a drawback from ideological quests, seemed a sacrifice of the kind of political stability the U.S. had successfully created. And with 9/11, another battlefront opened

“The neocon prescription was based on a static, homogenous definition of American culture and values, protected from interference by citizens.” up; America launched a decidedly moral response to a threat— terrorists—harboring a complete lack of morality. This departure from realism may not have been less moral, but was certainly more dangerous.

Yet, despite the criticisms liberals and more traditional conservatives have made of it, as Drolet repeatedly emphasizes throughout American Neoconservatism, neoconservatism has been accepted as a thoroughly American ideology.

Of course, to Drolet, this is a strange anomaly. Given that neoconservatism is anti-liberal and largely anti-democratic, predatory upon the American ideal of natural right, how is it that the doctrine has become so established in the platforms of not only the Republican Party, but the Democratic Party as well? Alexandra Homolar-

The founders of the neoconservatism movement include: (clockwise from top left) Irving Kristol; Daniel Bell; Nathan Glazer; Irving Howe.

Riechmann of the University of Leicester notes in Contemporary Politics how neoconservative arguments for capitalism’s moral justification, religion’s public relevance, and individual merit’s stature within a limited welfare state are widely accepted in America. In the realm of foreign policy, institutions supportive of the Democratic Party (many of which sprung up to match the neocon network in recent years), call for promoting “Democratic” values abroad through a balance of ideals and realism, a program that doesn’t sound very different from that of neoconservatives. After all, military spending under Obama is higher than under Bush, and the current president hasn’t exhibited an effort to invest in diplomacy and cultural exchange before relying on military solutions.

The answer might lie somewhere in the difficulty Obama has faced in holding on to both value-based process and value-centric ends in a world of insecure nation-states and distinct codes of legality. Moreover, despite Drolet’s larger argument that neoconservatism is a liberal contradiction, the neoconservative championing of the free market ideal has been a common theme throughout our country’s short history. Ultimately, the fact that neoconservatism exerts a significant influence over American politics is one left unexplained in American Neoconservatism. However, Drolet’s well-articulated work leaves us in a better position to challenge it.

Lena Bae ’13 is a Staff Writer.

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THE IMAGE OF GUANTANAMO CHRISTINE ANN HURD A young teenager sits in a cell with hands clasped and head down. His face suddenly brightens when three visitors enter and say that they are from his home country of Canada.

They chat, give the teenager a Subway sandwich, and copiously use his first name, Omar. However, despite Omar’s enthusiasm in welcoming his potential saviors from the limbo that is Guantanamo Bay Prison, he is exhaustion personified. His eye, damaged from months of torture at the infamous Bagram prison, shuts in a lopsided slant. His English is slow and deep, and every word seeps out as if he carries a festering wound. His 19 year-old body slumps in his chair, as if it has seen twice its years.

You Don’t Like the Truth: 4 Days Inside Guantanamo tells the story of Omar Khadr. The movie consists of clips from seven hours of declassified

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Guantanamo interrogation footage, interspersed with interviews from Khadr’s cellmates, lawyers, and Bagram torturer. A then-15year-old Khadr was alleged to have killed combat medic S.F.C. Christopher Speer during an attack on an al Qaeda compound, a claim that the film dissects and largely disproves. Nevertheless, American interrogators tortured a bulletridden Khadr for three months, before shipping him to Guantanamo Bay Prison, a hell the film portrays not only as a Kafkaesque nightmare, but also as a symbol of American isolationism and hegemony. Yet the film’s message reaches broader than its nominal subject. While You Don’t Like the Truth wrenchingly describes the suffering of Khadr, the film cannot succeed in reconciling the fact that Americans simply do not care enough about the truth of

YOU DON’T LIKE THE TRUTH: 4 DAYS INSIDE GUANTANAMO, Luc Cote. Les Films Adobe Inc., 2010. 106 min.

America’s international “justice” system.

The basis of the film remains director Luc Cote’s compelling cinematography. The surveillance footage of Khadr’s interrogation could have stood alone, but the interspersed interviews incisively explain what is going through Khadr’s mind as the interrogators proceed with their games. The screen often comprises three to four boxes showing Khadr from different angles, the eeriest one from a camera hidden in the in-wall air conditioner.

Through the dusty slats, the camera shows the anguish and despair on Khadr’s face; over the raucous hum of the machine, the listener can hear Khadr crying “Ya Ummi,” Arabic for “mother.” After the Canadian interrogators repeatedly say he is lying, Khadr becomes desperate, begging them for support, imploring, “Promise me you’ll protect me from the Americans.” The interrogators leave in order for Khadr to regain composure, but their departure only sends the teenager into tears. When Khadr quietly says, “you don’t like the truth,” the fact stands as blaringly evident as Khadr’s orange jumpsuit The arc of the film ends with Khadr’s lawyers explaining that there was a good chance that Khadr did not even murder S.F.C. Speer. The film flashes a series of photos to make the case that Khadr was covered in rubble after Speer was supposed to have been killed.

This legal argument, however, is still less compelling as one of the last lines of simple white text on a black screen: “Omar Khadr is the first child soldier to be tried for war crimes since Nuremberg.” Upon reflection on that parting note, it seems absurd to think that a boy who might or might not have thrown a grenade, after having his world reduced to rubble, could ever be compared to a Nazi who sent thousands of civilians to death in a concentration camps.

If Khadar’s case seems outrageous, it seems even more shocking that the imprisonment of countless people with neither charge nor trial has so quietly settled at the bottom of the media trench. On Google Trends, the phrase “Guantanamo Bay” spiked only as a response to Obama’s promise to close the prison, a pledge that PolitiFact has now definitively declared “broken.” In part, it may be because of the physical remoteness of the location. It may also be that Americans will never need to worry about themselves or their children being imprisoned.

Anticipating this, the film tries to bridge the cultural divide by focusing their lens on Khadr, a Canadian, and Moazzem Begg, a British national, sharing their stories from behind bars and from freedom, respectively.

However, with such limited release, You Don’t Like the Truth cannot hope to enter into the political dialogue, as its crafted whisper is lost amongst the shrieks on the right for “freedom” from taxes, or on the left for “freedom” from corporations. It’s easy to forget that freedom for Omar Khadr means to not be tortured.

Yet Guantanamo lives on. The facility still contains approximately 180 detainees, and American authorities have offered provisions to continue operations there indefinitely. Even if a detainee is found to be innocent of charges through the military commission system, returning to one’s home country can prove to be impossible. Instead of systematically trying each detainee in a timely fashion, Guantanamo’s overseers seem to prefer to hold hundreds of prisoners for years, innocence or guilt be damned. Khadr, who recently came to trial, is now finishing an 8-year sentence at the prison. He will have entered a boy and be released in his 30s, most likely not even to his home country.

Most important, Guantanamo is the secret prison that everyone knows about. There could be hundreds of Omar Khadrs in any number of the truly secret prisons hidden around the world.

On its own, You Don’t Like the Truth stands as a powerful documentary in a time where Guantanamo has been relegated to a broken Obama campaign promise. After a prolonged legal battle, centered on the naïve assumption that the American public would accept expatriation of its detainees to America, the prison continues in a legal—and moral—limbo. Yet the main theme of the film is not necessarily a policy recommendation, nor even a commentary on the political figures who created and maintained the prison’s existence. Rather, it is the story of what happens when a country abandons its citizens, as did the Canadian interrogators. It is the story of people, the American military, who essentially tortured a child.

At the end of the You Don’t Like the Truth, its viewer is left with the sense that justice was not served for Khadr, even though a trial took place, that truth could only be exposed after bureaucracy let out its final gasp, and, that even so, working through the American people’s miasmic apathy is still a cause worth fighting for.

Christine Ann Hurd ’13 is a Staff Writer.

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INTERVIEWS AMBASSADOR TIM ROEMER Former Ambassador to India, U.S. Representative from Indiana on democracy in India HARLEEN GAMBHIR Tim Roemer was first elected to serve Indiana in the U.S. House of Representatives, and served through 2003. In May, 2009, President Obama nominated Mr. Roemer to serve as the U.S. Ambassador to India, a role he filled until April, 2011.

Harvard Political Review: What was your inspiration for entering politics?

Tim Roemer: Two things captivated me and sent me like a rocket ship toward politics. The first was the unconditional love and support of my parents. The second was a young senator by the name of Robert F. Kennedy. I’ll never forget in fifth grade class when the Sister asked for a volunteer to run a mock presidential campaign for Bobby Kennedy. My hand shot up so quickly that I think I dislocated my shoulder.

HPR: What inspired you to serve as Ambassador to India, and what experiences did you gain during your time in Congress to help you in the role?

TR: A very articulate, eloquent and convincing person asked me to do the job: President Obama. As ambassador, you work on many different issues, but one of the most compelling and consuming ones is national security. My time on the Intelligence Committee and other security commissions helped prepare me for building the relationship that we have constructed in the last couple years.

HPR: How do you balance all the different interests at play in working out export initiatives?

TR: I believe that since the late 1980s, Republican and Democratic administrations have not developed a compelling narrative for the American people so that they understand the importance of world trade and how exporting creates jobs and growth opportunities in America. This is a win-win situation because, as you build this relationship economically, the middle class gets more opportunities to prosper and poor people are able to escape poverty.

HPR: How troubling an issue is corruption to India’s ability of succeeding as a democracy?

TR: Corruption doesn’t just affect the wealthy and high-level government people, it affects the common men and women. The middle class is getting fed up with it and they want changes. To be fair to India, she is only 60 years old and, when our democracy was just 60, we had a myriad of problems ourselves. We’ve come a long way in the last 100 years to cure those ills, to move in a better direction. India’s in the midst of that, and you’ve seen democracy at work in recent weeks with the anti-corruption campaign.

HPR: What do you see as the greatest risks in the security relationship between Pakistan and India?

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TR: This is an issue of great concern to America and its national security policy. To address the problem we must first develop constructive, positive, bilateral relationships with both countries. Secondly, we must grow our strategic relationship with India and work to deflect the possibility of that next Mumbai attack by establishing ways to share more intelligence with India. We are working with India where they desire on border issues, technology, and helping to establish a new national counterterrorism center.

HPR: Are you considering ever running for elected office again?

TR: I’ve got four young kids and I’m spending more time trying to get my kids elected to the student council than I am trying to get myself elected to anything. But, when you’re at the Kennedy School...it puts the fire back in your belly to stay involved and maybe run again someday.

Harleen Gambhir ’14 is a Contributing Writer. This interview has been condensed and edited.

David S. Muir worked in global marketing for fifteen years prior to becoming Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s Director of Political Strategy in 2007. Mr. Muir came to the Institute of Politics this fall as a Visiting Fellow.

Harvard Political Review: How did your business background help you as a political strategist?

DAVID S. MUIR

Former advisor to Gordon Brown weighs in on the Eurozone crisis ALPKAAN CELIK

David Muir: Coming from a background in market research, you learn a lot about people and how they interact.

You also learn that what you want to say and how you communicate can actually be different. These elements of communication and engagement are important in the world of politics.

The other thing is the role of emotion.

Emotion drives people and markets, but too often political discourse is divided by emotion.

HPR: How did British politics change with Gordon Brown?

DM: The first two parliaments of Labour government, led by Tony Blair, were under fairly benign economic circumstances. The government was a clear beneficiary of globalization because, once China entered the market, there was massive downward pressure on inflation, and inflation has somewhat been the British disease.

Globalization also created lots of jobs in the U.K., especially in the financial and technology sectors. Conversely, in Gordon’s time as political leader, globalization was no longer a benign force. China’s huge growth created resource constraints...We had been a massive beneficiary from the downward pressure on prices and now we were struggling because pressure was upwards.

HPR: How do you think Mr. Brown’s decision to step back affected British politics and the Labor Party?

DM: I think his decision to stand down was exactly the right decision. If you’ve lost an election, it’s time for somebody new to take over. But he and Tony Blair

were absolutely giant figures within the Labour Party, and they dominated the field. I think it’s best for them to stay off the field in order for the new generation to build itself up. Blair and Brown cast a long shadow on British politics in a good sense, but it is imperative that the younger generation gets out from underneath that shadow.

HPR: What are your thoughts on the current economic crisis?

DM: It is clear with hindsight that Greece should never have become part of the Eurozone, but people have to be clear that, if Greece is kicked out of the Eurozone, you’d have not just a bankrupt state but also a bankrupt corporate sector. It wasn’t just the Greeks who wanted to be in the Eurozone, but was also the French and the Germans, thus making it an aggregate responsibility.

Ultimately, I think the E.U. as it currently stands is actually incapable of solving this crisis; instead, the IMF must be brought in to solve the problem, but that may be plausibly unpalatable and is likely to be resisted by the European leaders.

HPR: What do you think is the role of the U.K. during the Eurozone crisis?

DM: The U.K. is definitely going to be affected, but at the moment is very much a bystander. I think this bystander status is definitely a big change and would not have happened if Gordon Brown was still prime minister. Instead, the U.K. is confined to being a spectator. It will probably pick up a big tab, since the U.K.’s biggest export market is Europe, likely causing its growth further decline and weaken. Therefore, there’s likely to be political controversy in the U.K. over the next six months about whether having a fiscal austerity at a time when demand is contracting is the right thing to do.

Alpkaan Celik ’15 is a Staff Writer. This interview has been condensed and edited.

FALL 2011 | DEMOCRACY | HPR

43

ENDPAPER SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF JONATHAN YIP

This summer, I had the privilege of working at the White House National Economic Council. It was, day after day, awe-inspiring: seeing the President board Marine One, gawking at the Oval Office, running into the Director of National Intelligence in the hallway, and, the honor of a lifetime, serving cheeseburgers on the South Lawn of the White House.

But for all the pomp and circumstance, what truly amazed was the policy.

Even in my relatively small office, the breadth and depth of policy-making was breathtaking. The issues that passed through were varied, meticulous, and eye-opening. The far-reaching policies get the front page of the New York Times, whether healthcare reform or Dodd-Frank, but what often goes unmentioned or under-examined is just as important, if not more.

From electric infrastructure grants to rules on federal loans for for-profit universities, these policies rarely rile up activists, or, for that matter, anyone really. But these are the countless policies that cross the desks of policymakers at every level of government every day—and shape our daily lives.

Few know or care about the Department of Labor’s new rulemaking on whether retiree investment advisors should be held to higher “fiduciary” standards. But for our parents and grandparents, this rule could be worth thousands of dollars. Has your bank started charging you for debit card use?

You can thank the Durbin Amendment of the Dodd-Frank Act and new rules

from the Federal Reserve. Perhaps your doctor is keeping electronic health records or even using an iPad. That is the Department of Health and Human Services and their new incentives for using IT in healthcare.

By DC standards, these are, in fact, wide-ranging and weighty rules.

Far from minutia, they are worthy of hearing upon hearing and heavy lobbying from interest groups. Outside that realm, however, most of us would rather bury our heads in a problem set than learn more about the Appalachian Regional Development Initiative. Yet this “small stuff” is the stuff of everyday governance; it affects our lives in tangible and meaningful ways.

There is a propensity for all of us who fashion ourselves policy-minded or political to emphasize the big picture.

Where has Obama left liberalism? How does the Paul Ryan budget refashion the American social contract? What does Occupy Wall Street say about Rawlsian fairness? Is American drone policy constitutional?

These are important questions of equality, history, and justice. But, we should not lose sight of what government actually does each and every day.

Government is neither a theory nor an ideology. It exists to improve citizens’ lives, and much of that mission occurs in the details and the small bore. It is not particularly glamorous or exciting, but it is fundamental.

This focus on the particulars is sometimes mistaken for an argument of pragmatism over principle. President

44 HPR | DEMOCRACY | FALL 2011

Clinton’s second term “triangulation” may have been the epitome of political pragmatism in its small uncontroversial initiatives, child gun trigger locks and school uniforms. But, if anything, the everyday consequences of policy minutia demand nothing less than principled debate. Indeed, we should encourage and expect ferocious wrangling over the details of government.

The fight to cap debit card fees charged to merchants, the Durbin Amendment, had been raging for almost a year, and finalized after a storm of comment and lobbying from Wall Street, credit unions, and retailers—the National Grocers Association included— over every last cent banks could charge per swipe. Though on a significantly smaller scale, these battles are waged month after month across the policy map. Added together, these increments change things.

These are the trenches where government—and ideology—matter and affect our daily lives. It is in the postlegislation regulation and the seemingly minor announcements where policy shines and governing is done. It is not grand strategy, and it will not change the world, but it is the foundational work of government. And it affects citizens’ lives. So while we strive to tackle the big issues and big questions, as we well should, let us not forget the small ones percolating in government offices that push policy forward every day.

Jonathan Yip ’13 is the World Editor Emeritus.

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