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Review

Review. INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS (Course number MSFS 565, Spring 2010) Instructor: James Raymond Vreeland , Professor 2.0. Plan. Make explicit what has been implicit. One of the course take-aways:. Institutions matter…

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Review

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  1. Review INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS (Course number MSFS 565, Spring 2010) Instructor: JamesRaymondVreeland, Professor 2.0

  2. Plan • Make explicit what has been implicit

  3. One of the course take-aways: • Institutions matter… • The international arena partly depends on domestic & international institutions. • What is an institution? • A set of rules (structures/constraints/mechanisms) that govern the behavior of a given set of actors in a given context. • (An equilibrium)

  4. What international institutions do • Cooperation – especially coordinating actors on Pareto superior equilibria in prisoner-dilemma-esque situations • Commitment • Hands tying of present government (two level game) – change the payoffs for other veto players • Hands tying of future governments – LOCK-IN! • Hands tying of present governments – signaling resolve to foreign and/or domestic audiences • Laundering / Dirty work • (A 3rd-party source of information)

  5. Culture vs Institutions

  6. The Olympics: an international institution dedicated to peace Fahey argues there are 6 conditions for peace http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1141/is_1_43/ai_n17154089/?tag=content;col1: • athletic competition • intellectual discourse • artistic celebrations • trade agreements • diplomatic recognition • international alliances • International Olympic Committee (IOC) founded in 1894 • The Olympic flag (1914) includes 5 interlaced rings, representing the union of the 5 continents & the meeting of athletes from throughout the world at the Olympic Games • Olympic Charter Article 1 Section 1: • The goal of the Olympic Movement is to contribute to building a peaceful and better world by educating youth through sport practised in accordance with Olympism and its values

  7. Do some Olympic games privilege certain countries because of a cultural preference for different sports? • The Olympic Games program consists of 33 sports, 52 disciplines and nearly 400 events • Does culture determine who wins which games? • Does culture determine who wins the most gold medals?

  8. Culture • My languages : Spanish, French, (Haitian Creole) • Places I’ve gone for work (chronological order): • http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/jrv24/friends.html

  9. Non-culturalist (weakly culturalist) approach • This class: apply GENERAL theories to specific cases • The cases names do not matter – the theories are meant to apply generically • Bravely risk false generalization – (and sometimes are just plain wrong ) in the pursuit of general statements • Statements apply regardless of spatio-temporal location

  10. Political + Exchange-rate regime Multi-party dictatorships Age of democracy IO membership Military expenditures # of checks and balances Focal point Trade policy Domestic political constraints Political importance (UNSC) Alliance (voting at the UNGA) Economic ties Regional Organization Membership Distribution of global economic power population, GDP/capita, host-country, Soviet/planned country, "history" International Institution (the IMF) CAT membership (Vreeland) ECHR membership (Moravcsik) Democracy (Reiter) Alliance formation (Gilligan & Hunt) Slow, steady success of EU International reserve currency (McNamara) Forum shopping (Busch) International negotiation posture (Weiss) Foreign Aid (Kuziemko & Werker) Foreign Aid (ADB – Kilby) Conditionality (Lipscy) Democracy (Pevehouse) Global governance Olympic medals! Goal: Replace proper nouns & dates with the names of variables!

  11. Intercultural Center • If you only have a hammer, everything looks like a nail • We often rely on cultural lenses • Attribute differences in levels of economic development, political regime, crime rates, gender inequality to… • “culture” • This class offers a non-cultural lens • Explain differences across countries & regions to • individual incentives and constraints • shaped by institutions (domestic & international)

  12. Culturalist explanations? • Does culture explain? • “They are different because of culture” = • “They are different because they are different” • WHY ARE THEY DIFFERENT?

  13. What does it mean“to explain”?

  14. Nomothetic (law-like)vs. Idiographic (descriptive) approaches • Law-like statement: • Whenever & wherever X occurs, X is in a certain relation to Y. • Descriptive statement: • Specifies spatio-temporal locations and makes all subsequent propositions relative to these parameters.

  15. EXAMPLES OF THESE KINDS OF STATEMENTS:

  16. Law-like statements: • A particle to which no force is applied will move with constant velocity in a straight line. • E=mc2

  17. Descriptive statements: • In Africa during the early 1960s, ethnically based parties entered situations of violent conflict. • In Chile, 1973, the military staged a coup subverting this Latin American democracy. • In the US, 2000, the 2 major presidential candidates, Bush & Gore, offered remarkably similar policy platforms to the electorate.

  18. We can easily apply law-like statements to particular cases… • A particle to which no force was applied in Africa during the early 1960s moved in a straight line with constant velocity. • In Chile, E equaled mc2 in 1973. True - but redundant - statements.

  19. But some would judge the following “improper” because people don’t behave in a universal fashion the way “particles” do. • Poor democracies in which all parties are ethnically-based are unstable. • Polarization of the legislature in poor democracies causes regime breakdown. • Candidates in a 2-party system will adopt the preferences of the median voter.

  20. We have taken a law-like approach to what international institutions do: • Cooperation – especially coordinating actors on Pareto superior equilibria in prisoner-dilemma-esque situations • Commitment • Hands tying of present government (two level game) – change the payoffs for other veto players • Hands tying of future governments – LOCK-IN! • Hands tying of present governments – signaling resolve to foreign and/or domestic audiences • Laundering / Dirty work • (A 3rd-party source of information)

  21. Alternative (also valuable) approach: • History of international organizations • Descriptive • Less risky • Can lead to the view that every outcome is UNIQUE • (Aside: not necessarily – see the work of economic historian Barry Eichengreen)

  22. Does culture matter?Sports? • What predicts Olympic medal count? • GDP, Communist dictatorship, host country • http://www.theamericanmind.com/2008/07/02/economic-model-accurately-predicts-olympic-medal-count/ • http://results.beijing2008.cn/WRM/ENG/INF/GL/95A/GL0000000.shtml

  23. But specific sports? • United States, China and Gold Medals in soccer??? • Not part of our cultures so we’re not good at it?

  24. USA has, arguably, the most successful soccer program in the world • 2008: gold • 2004: gold • 2000: silver • 1996: gold • World Cup: Germany & US 2 each • Really???... • WOMEN’S SOCCER! • Why? Culture?… • or Title IX? • 1972: A federal law granting girls and women in high schools and colleges the right to equal opportunity in sports

  25. Title IX in action!

  26. The USA does not value soccer • The USA does value women’s/girl’s athletics • Institutional explanation for American dominance of women’s soccer • Scholarships*** (health, fun, self-esteem)

  27. Presumably, using public funds to promote sports is intended to produce a healthier, happier, and more psychologically balanced population. How can you achieve these goals if you only invest in the athletics of half of your population? (you can’t) The USA has an institutional solution (Title IX) which is upheld by other institutions (independent judiciary)

  28. Puzzles • Which countries do the best in athletics? • Which countries do the best in women’s athletics? • Which countries have the best health care? • Is the answer to these questions “culture”?

  29. Culture is malleable Study the incentives and constraints of actors

  30. Research project • What predicts WOMEN’s Olympic medal count?... • Check back here in a few years: • http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/jrv24/cv.html

  31. Consider another (seemingly unrelated) example…

  32. Germany, the United States & bankruptcy • Why is bankruptcy tolerated in the USA but not in Germany? • Different cultures? • What is the #1 reason for bankruptcy in the USA? • MEDICAL BILLS • Here the USA is failing to properly invest in the health of its population, and the price is great uncertainty in credit markets!

  33. One more example

  34. UK v. US • Similar • Cultural • Foreign policy • Legal traditions • Opposite ends of the spectrum on • gasoline tax policy • Addressing climate change

  35. Car culture: gasoline taxes and prices per liter in 31 countries (2004):

  36. Who needs the most gasoline? Urban v Rural

  37. Does “need” translate into policy preference?

  38. Malapportionment tends to weigh RURAL preferences more than URBAN (i.e., Proportional representation tends to weigh URBAN preferences more than RURAL) Does this have an effect on NATIONAL policy?

  39. Kyoto Protocolto the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change • Stabilize atmospheric “greenhouse” gas • 1997 (enter into force: 2005) • 2009: 187 states ratified • Commitment to reduce greenhouse gases: • carbon dioxide • Methane • nitrous oxide • sulphur hexafluoride

  40. Ratifiers, signers, and non

  41. Test: • Does malapportionment affect: • Gasoline prices • Kyoto ratification

  42. Which came first? • Car culture? • Malapportionment? • Once created, however, car-culture may reinforce malapportionment • Car-culture may have other effects: • Crash: • It's the sense of touch.... Any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people. People bump into you. In L.A., nobody touches you. We're always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much that we crash into each other just so we can feel something. • Hypothesis: car-culture exacerbates racial/ethnic tension • Operationalized: automobiles/capita  inter-ethnic/racial violent crime

  43. Time-inconsistent preference problem / Shadow of the future / Commitment problem Prisoner’s dilemma / Collective action problem / Free rider problem Coordination games Repeated games Principal-agent problem Nash equilibrium Factors & sectors Broad & shallow v. narrow & deep organizations Veto players Two-level games Second image reversed Audience costs Laundering Case studies Defining variables Coefficient / standard error Linear regression Logit Probit Tobit Survival/hazard models Difference-in-difference models Thinking dynamically Non-random selection / endogeneity Instrumental variable Regression Discontinuity Design Extreme bounds analysis 2 triangles… Take-home analytical tools from the course

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