Category: Politics

All posts on what Bismarck called “the art of the possible”

Fall term 2013

The year is off to a rapidfire start.

As part of the PhD, I need to do a second core seminar this year. I have chosen to take public policy because it accords well with my interests and experience, and apparently has a less onerous reading load than either comparative politics or international relations. I have been advised against taking courses with excessive reading requirements, given the need to re-take my Canadian politics comp in December.

PhD students are expected to take two courses in each term, so I am also taking an environmental politics and policy course. In addition, I am working as a teaching assistant for a course in U.S. government and politics, with three seminars back to back on Thursdays.

At our termly general meeting on the 25th, I will not be running for re-election to the executive of Toronto350.org. Nevertheless, I have some obligations to discharge with them, including two on-campus workshops on divestment and the October 15th film screening (free tickets still available).

In the background at all times, I should be thinking about and preparing for my re-comp in December. I find that I have already forgotten a lot of what I crammed for it the first time. When I re-take it, I will need to demonstrate both a comprehensive knowledge of the literature and an ability to formulate complex and convincing arguments. Toward the latter objective, I should be building up a database of convincing (and conventional, I’ve been warned off controversy) answers to recent comp questions.

War with Syria approaching?

The August 27 – September 6 issue of The Economist includes an article discussing the military options that may be possible in Syria, in response to the alleged use of chemical weapons by the government of Bashar Assad:

As The Economist went to press, it seemed clear how the attack would begin, if not when. Four American Arleigh Burke destroyers stand ready in the eastern Mediterranean, the 1,600km range of their Tomahawk land-attack missiles allowing them to stay well beyond the 300km range of Syria’s Yakhont anti-shipping missiles. There are doubtless American submarines in the area, too, and a British one may be on its way. Christopher Harmer of the Institute for the Study of War, a think-tank, says the destroyers should have about 45 Tomahawks each. Add in the submarines and there are about 200 available to make precision strikes, roughly twice the number used against Libya in 2011.

British and French aircraft flying out of Incirlik in Turkey, which has said it will support such missions, or Akrotiri, the British base in Cyprus, might be used too; this may be the only way for French forces to participate. They would probably also launch cruise missiles, as getting close to targets would mean being in range of the Syrian air-defence system, which is a great deal more capable than was Libya’s. Heavier ordnance, including bombs needed to destroy underground bunkers, could be delivered by stealthy B-2 bombers flying directly from America.

The objective of reinforcing the international norm against the use of chemical weapons does seem to have some validity. The world’s wars – civil and international – are bad enough without the use of such arms. Still, it’s clear that nobody is enthusiastic about the prospect of yet another war in the Middle East, particularly after all the suffering that has taken place in Iraq and Afghanistan with few and precarious results to show for it.

At this stage, most people seem to be expecting a military strike that is focused around cruise missiles. The Syrian regime is doubtless expecting this too, so there will probably be an effort to make it surprising at least in terms of the timing. For the last couple of weeks, I have been nervously checking the Google News front page every few hours.

The Economist on China and climate change

Some important and sobering information from a recent article:

China’s impact on the climate, though, is unique. Its economy is not only large but also resource-hungry.

…

The country’s energy use is… gargantuan. This is in part because, under Mao, the use of energy was recklessly profligate. China’s consumption of energy per unit of GDP tripled in 1950-78—an unprecedented “achievement”. In the early 1990s, at the start of its period of greatest growth, China was still using 800 tonnes of coal equivalent (tce, a unit of energy) to produce $1m of output, far more than other developing countries. Energy efficiency has since improved; China used 390tce per $1m in 2009. But that was still more than the global average of 300tce and far more than Germany, which used only 173tce.

Despite a huge hydroelectric programme, most of this energy comes from burning coal on a vast scale. China currently burns about half the world’s supplies. In 2006 it surpassed America in carbon-dioxide emissions from energy. By 2014 or 2015 it will emit twice America’s total. Between 1990 and 2050 its cumulative emissions from energy will amount to some 500 billion tonnes—roughly the same as those of the whole world from the beginning of the industrial revolution to 1970. And the total is what matters. The climate reacts to the stock of carbon, not to annual rises.

These emissions are adding to a build-up of carbon already pushed to unprecedented heights by earlier industrialisations. When Britain began the process in the 18th century, the atmosphere’s carbon-dioxide level was 280 parts per million (ppm). When Japan was industrialising fastest in the late 1950s, it had risen a bit, to 315ppm. This year the level hit 400ppm. Avoiding dangerous climate change is widely taken to mean keeping below 450ppm, although there are significant uncertainties surrounding this figure. At current rates that threshold will be reached in 2037. China is likely to be the largest emitter between now and then.

About a quarter of China’s carbon emissions is produced making goods for export. If the carbon embodied in those goods were marked against the ledgers of the importing countries China would look a little less damaging, the rich world a lot less virtuous. But even allowing for that, China is not playing catch-up any more. It is doing more damage to the stability of the global climate than any other country.

The claim that stabilizing the atmospheric concentration at 450 ppm will be enough to keep temperature increases below 2˚C is dubious. In James Hansen et al. “Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim?“, they conclude that: “If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm”.

Doing that would require much more aggressive action than what this article suggests.

Fall 2013 course planning

In its present format, the PhD program in political science at the University of Toronto requires each student to take core seminars and comprehensive examinations in two subfields. These are chosen from among Canadian politics, international relations, comparative politics, public policy, political theory, and development.

Beyond the core seminar, you need to take a set number of credits in courses related to each subfield.

Provided I passed my comp, I have dealt with the first requirement. The department is pushing me strongly to do international relations as my second option – because they can give me some course credit for the M.Phil in the subject I already completed – but I feel like I have already had more than enough of the core IR literature. I’m really not interested in the realist, liberal, constructivist debate.

My plan is to attend the first core seminar for at least IR, comparative, and public policy and then decide which seems most promising. I can then finalize my selection of an additional course in the field for the first term.

Some of the more interesting options include:

  • Advanced Environmental Politics and Policy in Canada – Andrea Olive
  • Politics and Policy Analysis – Jonathan Craft
  • Intelligence and International Relations – TBA
  • Globalization, Internationalization, and Public Policy – Grace Skogstad
  • Government, Law and Politics in Russia – Peter Solomon
  • Contentious Politics and Social Movements – Diana Fu
  • Globalization and Indigenous Politics – Rauna Kuokkanen

It may also not be a bad idea to take one of the methods courses.

Peter Russell is again teaching Canada in Question: A Country Founded on Incomplete Conquests, which I highly recommend to anyone interested in Canadian politics.

I was also planning to maintain my personal tradition of informally auditing one class per term, with HIS 343Y1-Y: Wesley Wark’s History of Modern Espionage course, for which I already read the textbook, but it seems he isn’t teaching it this term. The course is still running, however, so I may drop in regardless.

Tom Flanagan’s ‘Ten Commandments’

In 2007, Harper strategist Tom Flanagan enumerated ten ‘commandments’ for the effective use of power by the Conservative party:

  1. Unity. The various factions and splinter groups within the CPC coalition have to get along.
  2. Moderation. “Canada,” says Flanagan, “is not yet a conservative or Conservative country. We can’t win if we veer too far to the right of the median voter.”
  3. Inclusion. This means francophones and minority groups.
  4. Incrementalism: “Make progress in small, practical steps.”
  5. Policy. “Since conservatism is not yet the dominant public philosophy, our policies may sometimes run against conventional wisdom. The onus is on us to help Canadians to understand what they are voting for.”
  6. Self-discipline. “The media are unforgiving of conservative errors, so we have to exercise strict discipline at all levels.”
  7. Toughness. “We cannot win by being Boy Scouts.”
  8. Grassroots politics. “Victories are earned one voter at a time.”
  9. Technology. “We must continue to be at the forefront in adapting new technologies to politics.”
  10. Persistence. “We have to correct our errors, learn from experience, and keep pushing ahead.”

Certainly, they have done better in electoral terms than many people expected. When I moved to Ottawa in 2007, many people expected the Harper minority government to come to an end reasonably quickly, probably after the Liberals rebuilt themselves. Not least because of the Green-NDP-Liberal split on the left, that has yet to happen.

First-past-the-post consequences

1968: Pierre Trudeau’s Liberal Party wins 154 seats in the House of Commons, on the basis of 45.37% of the vote. The Progressive Conservatives form the official opposition with 72 seats, based on 31.36% of the popular vote.

1976: René Lévesque’s Parti Québécois wins a majority of 71 seats in the Quebec legislature, on the basis of 41.37% of the vote. The opposition Liberals get 26 seats, based on 33.78% of the popular vote.

2011: Stephen Harper’s Conservatives win a majority government of 166 seats, based on 39.62% of the vote. The opposition New Democrats win 103 seats with 30.63% of the vote (partly because the Liberals collapsed from 77 seats to 34, on the basis of a 7.36% drop in their share of the popular vote).

Canadian democracy in 1921

But what was the state of Canadian democracy in 1921? Women (other than those with relations in the military) were only permitted to vote in federal elections that very year, and in Quebec would not get the vote for another generation. Aboriginal Canadians were only allowed to vote if they legally renounced their Aboriginal status; within a few years, Parliament would make it illegal for “Indians” to raise money or to hire lawyers to pursue legal cases against the Crown. Candidates and parties were free to raise and spend money in any amounts and in any ways they wished, with no public scrutiny and subject only to the legal prohibitions in the Criminal Code of Canada against bribery and corruption. Freedom of information legislation was unknown. The public and organized groups, save the well-heeled and well-connected, had few opportunities to put their views on policy issues before decision makers through mechanisms such as public hearings. The country did have far more newspapers than today and all were independently owned, but many if not most were closely tied to political parties and offered their readers highly partisan and parochial slants on the news. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was scarcely imaginable and no human rights codes existed: factories in Toronto and elsewhere could with impunity post signs saying “Men wanted. No Irish or Jews need apply.” Moreover… well, let us not belabour the point: by current standards, many aspects of Canadian democracy were deeply flawed, making for a huge democratic deficit. (p. 230)

White, Graham. “The ‘Centre’ of the Democratic Deficit: Power and Influence in Canadian Political Executives.” 2008. in Lenard, Patti Tamara and Richard Simeon eds. Imperfect Democracies: The Democratic Deficit in Canada and the United States. 2012.

Governing from the Centre: The Concentration of Power in Canadian Politics

Donald Savoie’s 1999 book is the single-best account I have read of the functioning of Canada’s federal government. It focuses on the growth of the strength of ‘the centre’ of government over the previous thirty years, meaning the prime minister, Prime Minister’s Office, Privy Council Office, Department of Finance, and Treasury Board Secretariat. It discusses every important actor in Canada’s federal government, with specific attention paid to the prime minister, cabinet, deputy ministers, the Clerk of the Privy Council, line departments, the Public Service Commission, and so on.

The overwhelming message is about the new dominance of the Prime Minister: over cabinet colleagues, the central agencies, and over parliament itself, which Savoie argues has a diminished capacity to hold the government to account. Savoie devotes considerable attention to the internal structures and machinery of the civil service, as well as the incentives experienced by individuals within it.

I strongly recommend the book for civil servants (especially those who deal with the central agencies or aspire to join them) and for anyone with a strong interest in how Canada’s government functions.