Africa Notes

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  • Senegal is at a “critical historical juncture” today, writes Alpha Diedhiou. President Wade’s “unfortunate” (that was the U.S. Ambassador’s word for it, according to NPR this morning) decision to stand for reelection has challenged the peace of this otherwise stable and solid democracy. The poll is on Sunday.
  • “The BRICS want a BRIC Bank”. The proposal is said to originate with India. Also significant is that South Africa is part of this. It can been be seen in light of the BRICS’ desire to counter the weight of the West in the IMF and World Bank.
  • On Somalia:

Course Notes – IL: Medellín and Self-Executing Treaties,

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Opinio Juris has had a nice discussion this week on the exact subject we discussed yesterday and will continue to discuss next week: the relationship between international law and US law. The symposium is all online:

Opinio Juris/Yale Journal of International Law Symposium: Hathaway, McElroy, and Solow on International at Home

Some highlights:

1. This begins with a discussion by Oona Hathaway, Sabria McElroy, and Sara Solow about their article: “International Law at Home: Enforcing Treaties in U.S. Courts.” Much of that discussion focusses on the Medellín case we read about. Specifically, they aim to understand how that decision impacts the enforcement of international law in U.S. courts and they offer proposals for strengthening enforcement of international law.

2. Sloss argues for a different interpretation of Medellin, and in particular the sentence in the decision that says there is a “background presumption…that [treaties] … do not create private rights or provide a private cause of action in domestic courts.” He summarizes his argument:

“In sum, it appears that very little has changed since Medellín. Before Medellín, US courts vigorously enforced transnational treaty provisions, but they were hesitant to enforce vertical treaty provisions. After Medellín, US courts are arguably more reluctant to enforce vertical treaty provisions, but their enthusiastic enforcement of transnational treaty provisions continues unabated.”

3. John Bellinger, part of the Secretary of State’s Advisory Committee on International Law, makes an interesting comment on how the Medellín decision surprised him:

“..it does not make much sense to me that the President [Bush] would order compliance with an ICJ decision knowing his order would be struck down. His order was decidedly unpopular in Texas and with conservatives, and he received little credit in the international community for his effort to comply with international law. To my knowledge, the President made his decision, based on the recommendation of his Secretary of State, because the U.S. is required under the U.N. Charter to comply with decisions of the ICJ and because demonstrating commitment to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (VCCR) would help protect Americans who are arrested in other countries”

4. Finally, and most recently,Vladek blogged on “Self-Execution Beyond Treaties”: Enforcement of both domestic and international obligations is becoming more problematic.

Noted: African Summits, Direct democracy, and Jeremy Lin

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African Summits
I meant to write up a summary of the recent summit activity on the continent but never got around to it. Fortunately, Alex Thurston at the Sahel Blog, did it for me: “Summits around the Continent”.
More reasons not to like direct democracy
I have thought for some time that California’s proposition system is once of the worse things that happened to that state. When I lived there my general rule was to vote against all propositions because the system is plain bad. The propositions themselves are written poorly, unnecessarily tie the hands of the state legislature (making them increasingly dysfunctional), and are decided by an electorate that really has no clue what they are voting on. Representative democracy is a much better (albeit imperfect) way to make law as it enables individuals to specialize. Unfortunately, California is not the only place that has such a system…

Jeremy Lin
I’m still following the incredible arrival of Jeremy Lin into the NBA.  But some crazy stuff has been going on around him. Here SNL tackles the hypocrisy of the stereotyping surrounding Jeremy Lin.:
SNL: Linsanity (requires Flash)
– Thanks, Kathy for the link!

Fighting Somali Piracy In London

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David Leonard, writing for African Arguments, has an interesting take on the need to combat the international roots of the Somali piracy problem:

The real solution to Somali piracy lies with a partnership between NATO navies and European commercial interests. NATO needs to prevent international exploitation of Somali fishing waters while also patrolling defined maritime corridors. Higher insurance rates would induce international vessels to stay within these corridors. Ships should also employ self-protections, such as safe lock-in rooms for the crew, so that NATO patrol vessels can reach them before pirates force them to surrender. Finally, the focus should be on capturing those who plan and fund piracy, more than on the young-men who board the ships. Finding the organisers could start with tracking how piracy is financed and how ransoms are distributed. These solutions suggest that it is indeed in the financial hub of London, not just along the coasts of Puntland, that Somali piracy must be tackled.

GEP Course Notes: Game Theoretic Approaches

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Scott Barrett’s Environment and Statecraft heavily relies on game theory to make its arguments about environmental treaty-making. But what are the strengths and weaknesses of this approach?

Well, first it is important to note that Barrett has a lot of company with his approach. A nice article written in the Atlantic Monthly back in 1993, “Can Selfishness Save the Environment?”, explicitly considers how game theory was used then to discuss environmental cooperation. More recently, The Scientific American described Bruce Bueno de Mesquita’s use of Game Theory to predict the failure of the 2010 Copenhagen climate talks before they happened. And in 2011, some tried to use game theory to find ways pass the negotiating impasses at Durban: “Climate Change Solution Proposed by Scientists Incorporates Game Theory.”

In 2008, The Telegraph went so far as to say “Game theory could save the world.” That is nonsense, of course. Why? Well, while game theory does provide us with some useful tools for viewing strategic behavior (I’m not assigning Barrett without good reason!), it has a number of weaknesses as a basis for prescription, including:

  • It is only as good as its inputs, including assumptions about preferences which are rarely well understood
  • Some actors will choose to act ethically, rather than selfishly
    • However, that is not to say they are more likely to support solutions that also are in their self-interest!
  • There are a lot of limits to acting rationally… We’ll talk a bit more about this in class.
  • It is not really a theory. Rather, it is a set of analytical tools which require theoretical inputs.
  • All of which means that different analysts may come up with different predictions and prescriptions based on differences in their starting assumptions.

IL Course Notes: Actors

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The theme this week, carried over from last week, is “actors in international law”. We will finish discussing states, and move on to other actors. But the unfortunate events in Syria provide a lens for thinking about some of these actors.

One of the first things we learn in international law is that sovereign states are largely treated as “equal” subjects. However, over at Opinio Juris, Jens Ohlin notes that in the area of security some actors (the permanent members of the security council) are more equal than others (the rest of the states): “Syria, Intervention, and Recognition”. This is why the Security Council cannot act on Syria. Two of its members, Russia and China, seem unlikely to allow any resolution on Syria to pass, regardless of what the rest of the world may want.

However, another interesting aspect to the Syria issue is the question of forum shifting by actors. If the Security Council’s actions can be blocked by two states, what about the International Criminal Court. Julian Ku asks this in another post at Opinio Juris:“Since the Security Council Won’t Act, Send in the ICC?” These are two somewhat independent international organizations. And while one (the Security Council) is mostly focused on regulating the behavior of states, the other (ICC) is primarily focused on regulating the behavior of individuals. Unfortunately for those who would like to see ICC action, it would likely require Security Council support, given that Syria is not a member. And, once again, China and Russia will likely block such a decision.

Sudan is a case where the Security Council did ask the ICC to investigate a state who was not a member of the ICC. However, this has proved controversial in Africa. Just last month, the African Union asked its commission to consider seeking an ICJ advisory decision on whether Sudanese President Omer Hassan al-Bashir should be considered immune, whether the ICC process is against international law in this instance. (Likely the ICC is in the right here, I would say. But it could be an interesting ICJ decision to follow, should it get there.) See: “African Union may ask ICJ for opinion on Bashir’s immunity from ICC”.

WES-FID: Some thoughts

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I thought yesterday’s student-run Forum on International Development was a great success. The event was well-organized and well-attended. But most of all, I think there were opportunities for just about everyone who attended to learn something new.

Here is what I observed:

Morning Keynote
David Rice, Executive Director of NYU’s Development Research Institute, gave a nice opening keynote address, mapping out a macro-oriented perspective on development trends.

Approaches to Development
We were all invited to choose one of three presentations on “approaches to development”. I chose the Technology seminar led by Amir Hasson (Wesleyan ’98), Founder of United Villages. I thought this was a great talk about the ups and downs of being a social entrepreneur. He discussed how he began with a project developed for a graduate class at MIT to provide rural areas in India with internet access. That became an actual project implemented in Cambodia, a project which helped created UV. But today, about 10 years later, UV is doing something very different: connecting rural retailers with a more efficient supply chain. Some of the lessons: (i) you have to be ready to go when opportunities arise; (ii) you have to listen to those you want to help; (iii) technology can be an important tool for development but it comes with some caveats, including obsolescence (their technological solution for providing internet access is less useful today) and dependence on the specific development context; (iv) you need to be flexible and adaptable to take into account the above; and (v) success requires committed leadership which includes careful management at the local level.

I found it interesting that Amir did not see politics as playing a big role in their activities. Obviously, I am biased as a political scientist. But for him, the biggest issue seemed to be getting past the red-tape necessary in India for their ISP. Governance issues, in terms of their activities, were relatively unimportant. He did mention, however, that a project they did in Rwanda might have proved to be the exception to that experience. This made me wonder a bit how much the “governance” frame in development relies on a type of African exceptionalism.

Wesleyan Non-Profits
After these seminars were a series of workshops for critically assess non-profits students at Wesleyan have created. I was assigned to moderate a discussion of SHOFCO. I commented briefly about this a couple days ago. Given the expertise of our guest panelists, Harvard Professor Rema Hanna and Conner Brannen (IPA, Wesleyan ’10 and a former student of mine), we focused on the process of evaluation. I thought some of the important suggestions for SHOFCO, included:

  • Take the time to learn from the existing literature about what works;
  • Continue to build on your monitoring and evaluation program;
  • Learn from similar groups who are engaged in monitoring and evaluation (what are their best practices?); and
  • Don’t try to measure too many things with one survey.

Both Kennedy Odede and Nathan Mackenzie did a great job explaining SHOFCO’s mission and addressing some of the concerns. Both seemed to acknowledge the challenges of making the project sustainable for the long-term and the potential for mission creep. In terms of the latter, they seem to have had success thus far at finding projects that are synergistic, but there is always the concern of taking on too much before perfecting the rest. And, as Conner noted, it may be harder to measure progress in one area when one is moving in multiple directions at the same time.

In terms of involvement with the Wesleyan Community, there seemed to be a general consensus that this was a good thing that should continue into the future. As Professor Hanna noted, this is good for the students (it exposes them to parts of the world they may not otherwise visit) and for the people of Kibera (in terms of knowledge transfer). At least, I hope I am remembering her correctly! Conner and others mentioned how to them SHOFCO will always be part of the Wesleyan community. This place played a role as an incubator. Hopefully, it can assist the organization as it matures.

Lunch: Awesome food, as always, from Iguanas Ranas.

Afternoon Keynote
Nathanael Goldberg (Wesleyan ’98), Policy Director at Innovations for Poverty Action, spoke on “How do we know what works in development?”. I thought this was the best talk of the day. Being a little familiar with IPA’s work, I suppose there wasn’t a whole lot of new information for me, but it was well-delivered and comprehensive. I especially liked how he framed what they do (randomized control trials) with the uncertain findings of past research on development projects, especially micro-finance. What I didn’t realize before yesterday was how ambitious the scope of their work is: more than 400 projects right now. There have been criticisms of their approach to development and it might have been nice to hear some of that debate flagged for our students. As they mention on their own website, there has been a little backlash. I talked recent with an economist about Randomized Control Trials and he mentioned his concern that some developing countries might be getting over-saturated with these projects. And that could become a problem. But it was inspiring to hear their mission and their success thus far. A number of our students and alumni have done work for IPA and I hope more continue to do so.

Small Lectures
There were several choices and I decided to attend Professor Rema Hanna’s lecture on “Randomized Experiments to Improve Policy”. I thought this was an especially useful talk for our students who have not been exposed to research methods. She did a great job at presenting the experimental approach that she and her development colleagues at J-PAL and IPA are using. Unfortunately…

That was the end for me…
Unfortunately, I was unable to stay until the end. And I even missed the end of Hanna Rema’s lecture. But I really came away appreciating the wonderful event our students organized. I was glad to see both of my thesis students — Rachel Levenson and Kathlyn Pattillo — playing key leadership roles alongside a host of others. I hope students consider repeating this event in the future!

Noted: Climate Change Edition

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Some good news:

But also some bad news, and some just not-so-great-news, on the climate front: