Dissertation Proposal- Critical Security Studies and Terrorism

Research Question - Introductory Essay

Do 'Critical Security Studies' approaches offer important insights when theorising about the 'War on Terror'?

Introduction

I will argue that 'Critical Security Studies'(CSS) offer many important insights when theorising about the 'War on Terror.'(WoT) In this introduction I will outline what I mean by traditional approaches to Security Studies to help us understand what is different about CSS. Many of the theoretical insights into the WoT offered by CSS come from three sources; the rejection the state as the sole referent object of security; the rejection of a focus on security as simply threat and military response; and the acceptance of the social construction of security. I will work from the understanding that CSS share many philosophical and theoretical orientations but then diverge on many points making it hard to define in any one concrete way. The diverse influences of these approaches and their different orientations suggest to me that for clarity CSS can be loosely grouped into three sub-divisions, the Copenhagen School, the Welsh School and the Post-structuralists. I will outline these sub-groups to illustrate some of the central insights of these approaches for the WoT. First, the concept of 'Securitization' from a group of constructivist theorists known as the Copenhagen School. This will be followed by the insights from the Welsh School such as thinking of the production of knowledge as being a social process, proposing the denaturalisation of the state based in Frankfurt School Critical Theory traditions and a move towards the possibility of security as an emancipatory project. Finally, the Post-Structuralist stress the importance of rejecting positivist grand narratives, further problematising the state and a suggestion derived from French philosophy, particularly the work of Michel Foucault, illustrating the importance of power/knowledge in the creation of discourses. This approach shows the use of a 'discourse of danger' within US Foreign Policy, presenting a dangerous 'other' as helping to construct the identity of the 'self'.(Campbell, 1998)

Traditional Security Studies

Security Studies(SS), formerly Strategic Studies, has traditionally been regarded as the sub-disipline of International Relations(IR) that exclusively focused on military planning, threat assessment and 'national security' issues. This location of SS within a state-centric view of security is still dominant today and I think that the following quote sums up well how traditional SS views the subject.

"Security Studies may be defined as the study of the threat, use, and control of military force. It explores the conditions that make the use of force more likely, the ways that the use of force affects individuals, states, and societies, and the specific policies that states adopt in order to prepare for, prevent, or engage in war."(Walt 1991:212)

With the end of the Cold-War the status-quo of the bi-polar world system had been upset by the collapse of the Soviet Union. This, along with other important world events illustrated other dimensions of security, failed states, genocidal civil-wars, environmental degradation, famine and disease provided an opportunity for more 'critical' IR theories to attempt to illustrate what they saw as the inherent theoretical limitations of the hegemonic state-centric world-view. Since then 'critical' approaches from many different social science disciplines have been applied to almost all sub-disciplines of IR. This work is about the nexus between Security Studies and these 'critical' approaches within the context of theorising the War on Terror. CSS's starting point is asking questions about the foundational assumptions around the ontology and epistemology of dominant security discourses. One of the key ideas of CSS is the 'global/alternative we'. More traditional approaches would use the pronoun 'we' to represent the state as the referent object of security but CSS broadens this out to multiple levels of security right up to global security.

What is CCS?

I am going to be dealing with a label, Critical Security Studies (CSS), but I will not attempt to define it in one exclusive way, I will share in treating it as 'more of an orientation toward the discipline than a precise theoretical label.'(Williams and Krause,1997) Through an exploration of the themes, sub-divisions and alternative orientations of the field's chief theorists I will aim to come to a general understand of this orientation and the diverse academic work it has produced. Central to understanding CSS is their rejection of the dominant positivist approaches to IR and SS within policy making circles. This can be understood through the definitions Robert Cox gave us about the difference between positivist 'Problem Solving Theory' and post-positivist 'Critical Theory.'(Cox, 1981) Within the groups of CSS theorists outlined above I will look at the concept of 'Securitization'(Weaver,1998) in the WoT to place an emphasis on the socially constructed nature of security discourses. This will involve critical analysis of the 'speech acts' of 'securitizing agents' within the WoT. The influence of the Welsh School helps us look at CSS as a project for emancipation aimed at 'developing more promising ideas by which to overcome structural human wrongs.' (Booth, 2005) Finally using Post-Modern, Post-Colonial and Critical Feminist approaches CSS in the WoT highlight the constructed nature of language, the role power plays in knowledge formation, and where these ideas are cross-fertilised between all these grouping, illustrating thematic areas of conflict and cohesion within the field.

Copenhagen School

The 1998 the book 'Security: A New Framework for Analysis' by Barry Buzan, Ole Waever and Jaap de Wilde can be seen as the clearest articulation of the 'Copenhagen School' approach to CSS. It is a combination of an updated version of Buzan's ideas of a sectorial approach to security from his earlier book 'People, States and Fear' and Weaver's work on 'Securitization.' Buzan stressed that whilst security in its military context was still important there were also four other sectors to security; environmental security, economic security, societal security and political security. The concept of 'Securitization' is the most widely known offering from the 'Copenhagen School.' Briefly, this theory suggests that issues can be 'Securitized' by the speech acts of 'securitizing actors' stressing that '"Security" is thus a self referential practice, because it is in this practice that the issue becomes a security issue- not necessarily because a real existential threat exists but that the issue is presented as such a threat.'(Buzan, Weaver, de Wilde 1998:24) I will look at the role of 'Securitization' within the WoT. The Copenhagen School try to refine the broad church of CCS by suggesting that the approach 'want to challenge conventional security studies by applying post-positivist perspectives, such as critical theory and poststructuralism. Much of this work 'deals with the social construction of security, but CSS mostly has the intent(known from poststructuralism as well as from constructivism in international relations) of showing that change is possible because things are socially constituted.'(Buzan Weaver and de Wilde,1998)

Welsh School

The reasons for me leaving the definition of CSS open for interpretation is because many of the 'Schools' within CSS try to define it in a way that often marginalizes the other schools in favour of their own particular approach. This can be seen in the way the 'Welsh School' locates CSS in the specific theoretical tradition of Neo/Post-Marxist Critical Theory. Ken Booth suggests that 'there are times when lines need to be drawn'(Booth 2005: 260) and by this he is articulating a rejection of the broad church for CSS like Krause and Williams presented (1997) in favour of CSS being defined as coming from a similar critical background to himself with influences from the Frankfurt School's Critical Theory and neo-Gramscian approaches. It is the influence of Habermas who came from the Frankfurt tradition that the 'Welsh School' locate CSS in terms of an emancipatory project. They agree with Robert Cox when he says that theory is never neutral, that it is 'always for someone, and for some purpose.'(Cox, 1981)

Post-Structuralists

The final CSS sub-label I am working with here is the 'Post-Structuralists.' They share with 'post-moderists' a rejection of grand positivist meta-narratives and draw their influence from French philosophy. They are influenced by the work of Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault. Within this group the most important text for theorising about the the War on Terror is 'Writing Security: United States foreign policy and the politics of identity' by David Campbell. It is in this work where he illustrates how a 'discourse of danger' about some foreign 'other' has helped to shape the identity of the USA and recreates itself through it own practices. These discourses work to create fear and suppress dissent. (Giroux, 2002) CSS is committed to an ethos of critique and as Campbell said 'decisions must be taken only to be simultaneously criticised and taken again, and to enact the Enlightenment attitude by a persistant and relentless questioning in specific contexts of the identity performances, and their indebtedness to difference, through which politics occurs.' (Campbell, 1998:227) Other important texts in this field look at how a crisis like the events of September 11th 2001 are used to construct new discursive narratives that are then reproduced through cultural absorption like in movies and television (Croft, 2006) and the role of language in constructing what has become known as the 'War on Terror' security discourse (Jackson, 2005).

Conclusion

I have argued that by looking at CSS through three sub-groups of theorists, the Copenhagen School, the Welsh School and the Post-structuralist, it is possible to generalise about the insights offered on the WoT. The label CSS means slightly different things to each of these groups but they also share central core sets of ideas. The first two are rejections of the traditional SS assumptions that first, puts the state as the sole referent object of security and the second related idea is that SS should be conceptualised as thinking about threat assessment and possible military responses. The third is a far more complicated and far reaching idea, that security is a socially constructed concept that we play a role in creating/recreating. The way that dominant security discourses are constructed in the WoT is also a theme that will be looked into in much more detail to try show how a reconceptualisation of 'security' could lead to the possibility of looking at it as an emancipatory project based on the Enlightenment ethos of a constant critique.

Sebatian O'Brien

(The Return of) Carl Schmitt Essay

Why is an understanding of the political theory of Carl Schmitt still important to International Relations theorists today?


Introduction.

Carl Schmitt may be remembered by most more for his affiliation with Hitler’s Nazi Germany than for any of his academic work, however, his political theory was based on some interesting and unresolved questions within contemporary politics. I will argue that his legacy, good or bad, can not be ignored. It was to the surprise of many, that the last few years have brought intellectuals of many different political persuasions to have a renewed interest in some of the central ideas of his political theory. My suggestion is that this theory has never really gone away and arouses interest in International Relations theorists of many different types because of the quality of the questions he attempted to answer rather than his own conclusions. Due to the limited length of this essay I am going to look at the central themes of Schmitt via two broad but very different (and internally divided) schools of IR theorists to illustrate how his ideas are still important today. The first can be crudely classified as the ‘Neo-Classical Realists/ Neo- Realists/ Neoconservatives’ who share an interest in the primacy of his ‘Friend/Enemy’ distinction, allude to similar ideas around ‘Political Theology’, and share some of his criticisms of ‘Liberal’ democratic models and his related solutions around the role of executive ‘state of exception.’ The second broad grouping are IR theorists with more of a ‘Post-Structuralist’ view of IR who are interested in critical sociological theory of many types, like for example, the broad range of ‘Social Constructivists’ and people influenced by Michael Foucault’s ‘Discourse Theory.’ They reject the ‘Positivist’ ideas of the first grouping of IR theorists, are interested in the ‘social construction’ of key IR concepts like identity, the state, and national security, and/or are interested in the formation of ‘dominant discourses’ and the power distribution behind their formation. For this latter grouping the centrality of identity within Schmitt’s political theory and the way that his ideas have been used to help construct dominant discourses is why he is still of interest to them. Finally, I will illustrate how Schmitt’s theory is even having a renaissance in Neo-Marxist Anti-Globalisation theories from the far left whilst many other critics of the current United States government’s actions, their justifications for ‘American Exceptionalism’, and their rejection of international norms, laws and the United Nations draw parallels between their legal justifications and the ‘exceptionalism’ in Schmitt.


The Return of Carl Schmitt

Carl Schmitt was a jurist and political theorist who first came to prominence in the troubled post World War One Weimar Republic government in Germany of the 1930’s. He is remembered by most more for later joining the Nazi Party, being involved in anti-Semitic writings and holding a post as a professor at the University of Berlin right up the end of the Second World War. His authoritarian political views, reputed support for ‘exceptional’ executive actions like the ‘Night of the Long Knives’ and affiliations with Hitler’s Germany and Franco’s Spain doesn’t make him the most likely candidate for renewed interest in the 21st Century. Until recently an interest in Schmitt was mainly reserved for more right wing IR theorists in the US and Europe but with the explosion of interest in the debate around the ‘politics of identity’ he has attracted a renewed interest in his work from a more diverse group of intellectuals. New waves of critical theorists are interested in how the acceptance of Schmittian ideas (like, for example, his ‘friend/enemy’ distinction), amongst other things, underpins the assumptions of dominant IR theorists in the US and helps reproduce, recreate and affirm its central identity creating paradigms. I will look at three central ideas of Schmitt to illustrate why this revival has taken place. The first is the primacy of his ‘Friend/Enemy’ distinction within his political theory; the second is his ideas about ‘Political Theology’ and, finally, his criticisms of ‘liberal’ democracy and his solutions around the executive use of a ‘state of exception.’ I will explore these ideas using these two diametrically opposed methodological approaches to the study of contemporary IR theory to illustrate that his ideas are important today even if you do not like his conclusions.



Two Methodological Approaches to IR Theorizing

Carl Schmitt is important to different types of IR theorist for very different reasons. I will briefly explain the different academic approaches of the two general groupings of IR theorists that, for the purposes of exploring Schmitt’s legacy more fully, I have grouped together. Although I have already mentioned how crude these two groupings are I would just like to stress again that I am not suggesting that these groups of theorists are anything like homogenous groups, only that they share certain (but not all) academic approaches and assumptions to the study of the field. The first grouping I called ‘Neo-Classical Realists/ Neo- Realists/Neoconservatives’ and I will argue that they share a ‘Positivist’ approach to IR that claims that by ‘exercising parsimony and rigor, and by employing the “scientific method”, international relations can be studied in a objective manner, and scientific, neutral, and true knowledge can be produced. ’ I will argue that far from being objective, scientific or neutral, the hegemonic position realist thinking of these types has in IR is a political practice that helps to underpin the dominant discourses of U.S. national identity and foreign policy. I will go as far as saying that these ideas do not innocently seek to explain U.S. national security concerns but rather attempt to legitimize their own subjective views about the use of its hegemonic position in the post 9/11 world. For the second grouping of IR scholars, the poststructuralist, or critical theorists do not accept that IR theory can ever escape some sort of political influence because “[t]heory is always for someone and for some purpose ” These theorists are interested in digging deeper into our understanding of key concepts within IR to ‘problematize’ the very foundations of what most realist theory is built on like, for example, the hegemonic status of the ‘state’ or recognizing the implicit/explicit identity creation related to any ‘friend/enemy’ distinctions. I aim to illustrate how Schmitt’s political theory can be seen to be important to both these different approaches for very different reasons.



Schmitt and the ‘Godfather’ of Neo-conservatism

The most direct ideological link between Schmitt and the influential realist ‘Neo-conservative’ IR theorists in the US is through Leo Strauss who ‘is widely regarded today as a founding father, perhaps the Godfather, of neo-conservatism, with direct or indirect ties to the Bush administration in Washington. ’ Strauss, a Jew also born in Germany, was helped by Schmitt, to secure a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship in Paris in 1932 before he finally left France during the war. He lived briefly in England but later he moved permanently to American where he taught for many years at the University of Chicago. Strauss like Schmitt saw problems with the ‘Liberal’ democratic model of politics and he ‘regarded modernity as a mixed blessing that required certain premodern classical and biblical teachings to rescue modernity from its own self-destructive tendencies. ’ Strauss had a devoted following at the University of Chicago in the 1960’s where he taught political philosophy with the work of Schmitt being an important part of the Straussian canon. Strauss also taught about a method of identifying double meanings aimed at different audiences in ancient philosopher’s works. He believed that because many philosophers were restrained by what could be seen in their contemporary societies as heresy, they therefore wrote for two audiences, the first an exoteric meaning for the general reader but also there was cryptic esoteric meaning for the ‘gentlemen,’ the truly ‘wise’ who could read it properly. He also taught about Plato’s concept of the ‘Noble Lie’ and admired leaders like Lincoln and Churchill who had acted powerfully when in ‘state of exception’ situations. This has led to the suggestion that Straussian ‘Neo-Conservative’ IR theorists can be secretive about their own views on things like religion because this could fall into the ‘Noble Lie’ category.


Schmitt on Democracy: In the Context of His Contemporary World

Schmitt’s central problems with ‘liberal’ models of the state, ‘liberal individualism’ and cosmopolitan global governance can only be understood fully by exploring the historically specific time the ideas were first formulated by him. His problems with ‘liberal’ models of the state stem from his disappointment of the post World War One situation for Germany in Europe and this led to his assertion that the ‘essence of liberalism is negotiation, a cautious half measure, in the hope that the definitive dispute, the decisive bloody battle, can be transformed into a parliamentary debate and permit the decision to be suspended forever in an everlasting discussion. ’ The state needs strong ‘exceptional’ powers to maintain its own values but for Schmitt “[liberalism] has produced a doctrine of the separation and balance of powers, i.e. a system of checks and controls of state and government. [But] [t]his cannot be characterized as either a theory of state or a basic political principle. ” He was also strongly against any type of liberal ‘individualism’ because “to compel him [the private individual] to fight against his will…is,…lack of freedom and repression. All liberal pathos turns against repression and lack of freedom.” The result for him is that “we…arrive at an entire system of demilitarized and depoliticalized concepts, thus forming the society of individualist liberalism. ” Finally he is against the idea of any type of global governance, because even if there is an international ‘state of nature’ he chooses not to accept the possibility of any type of cosmopolitan global governance, so to him, there is no power (sovereign) to enforce its dictates. Schmitt was apposed to the League of Nations for the perceived injustices of the post war situation in Germany but his views are analogous to what Richard Pearle has said recently about the UN: "As we sift the debris of the war to liberate Iraq, it will be important to preserve, the better to understand, the intellectual wreckage of the liberal conceit of safety through international law administered by international institutions."


Friends and Enemies

To understand the political theory of Carl Schmitt it is important to recognize the primacy of his claim that ‘the specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy. " Although this is the starting point of his theory he warns against thinking that this is some abstract conceptualization by saying that "the friend, enemy, and combat concepts receive their real meaning precisely because they refer to the real possibility of physical killing. " This clear cut friend and enemy distinction although it may sound simplistic is still used in modern international politics like, when, for example, George Bush Jr. the President of the United States of America claimed in 2001: "You are either with us [friend] or against us [enemy] in the fight against terror." When defining the concept of enemy Schmitt wrote that ‘the other, the stranger; and it is sufficient for his nature that he is, in a specially intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in the extreme case conflicts with him are possible. ” These distinctions play another important role helping create and recreate identity as Samuel Huntington suggests in his (in)famous book the ‘Clash of Civilizations’: “People use politics not just to advance their interests but also to define their identity. We know who we are only when we know who we are not and often only when we know whom we are against. ” Schmitt was influenced by the English political theorist Thomas Hobbes, it is analogous to Schmitt because it has been said that ‘the central textual strategy of Hobbes’s political theory: a strategy of otherness designed to discipline the self. ’ This friend and enemy distinction in Schmitt is attractive to contemporary politicians for just these reasons; it helps to clarify binary opposites; illustrate who ‘They’ are; and reinforce ideas of homogeneity for ‘Us’ through articulating who are our friends and who are our enemies.


The ‘Politics of Identity’ Debate

The debate around the ‘politics of identity’ has reinvigorated the interest and exploration in the Schmittian concept of ‘Friend/Enemy’ for many poststructuralists. The problamatizing of identity and the role of the ‘state’ is of interest to critical IR theorists because the ‘identity of a “people” is the basis for the legitimacy of the state and its subsequent practices. [ …] Nationalism is a construct of the state in pursuit of its legitimacy. Benedict Anderson, for example, has argued in compelling fashion that “the nation” should be understood as an “imagined political community” that exists only insofar as it is a cultural artifact that is represented textually. ’ This rejection of the assumption of the centrality and legitimacy of the ‘state’ makes any analysis much more demanding but as Michel Foucault said: ‘Practicing criticism is a matter of making facile gestures difficult.’ These types of theorist accept the importance of Schmitt’s ‘Friend/Enemy’ distinction because for them ‘identity is constituted in relation to difference… [This] is achieved through the inscription of boundaries that serve to demarcate an “inside” from an “outside,” a “self” from an “other,” a “domestic” from a “foreign.” ’ They progress this logic onto the ‘national security culture’ of the United States to problematize the concept of an objective ‘security concern’ because ‘danger is not an objective condition. It [sic] is not a thing that exists independently of those to whom it may be a threat. ’ Thus, certain crises are used, to reinforce dominant discourses but at the same time these ‘‘discourses create and reflect identities, and thus they construct those who are our allies and those who are our enemies. When not in flux, they settle who ‘we’ are, and who ‘they’ are; what ‘we’ stand for, and what ‘they’ mean to ‘us.’ ’’ To suggest that Schmitt didn’t know about the ideational creation of enemy is to underestimate him because as he himself said “what constitutes an existential danger to one’s own form of life can be judged only by the participants in a potential conflict, because it is they who have experienced the challenge of the enemy. The specifically political perspective which informs this judgment emerges out of a first-hand encounter with the enemy. ”


Politics and God: or ‘Political Theology’

The Schmittian concept of ‘Political Theology’ has a strong resonance with ‘Post-structualist’ critical theorists who are interested in his central claims relating to the incorporation of theological concepts within politics but think that it is only part of the ideational formation and construction of state identity. This idea is also of interest to theorist with a more positivist approach because of what Strauss has called the relationship between ‘revelation’ and ‘reason’, or as he put it ‘Jerusalem’ versus ‘Athens.’ In relation to this Schmitt put forward the idea that:
“All significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts not only because of their historical development—in which they were transferred from theology to the theory of the state, whereby, for example, the omnipotent God became the omnipotent lawgiver—but also because of their systematic structure, the recognition of which is necessary for a sociological consideration of these concepts. The exception in jurisprudence is analogous to the miracle in theology. ” So for Schmitt the state has taken on many theological concepts as their own but the role of exceptions is a clear example of ‘Jerusalem’ taking precedence over ‘Athens.’ David Campbell in his poststructuralist work ‘Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity’ touched on these themes by saying: ‘The Enlightenment had been an attack on ecclesiastical authority through the instruments of reason and scientific rationality. […] the popular characterization of this period as the victory of reason over faith, experience over intuition, science over religion, and modernity over tradition, the outcome was not so clear-cut. […..] The problem was that once the “death of God” had been proclaimed, the link between the world, “man,” and certitude had been broken.[..] The state requires discourses of “danger” to provide a new theology of truth about who and what “we” are by highlighting who or what “we” are not, and what “we” have to fear. ’ He elaborates further by saying “In this way, the state project of security replicates the church project of salvation. The state grounds its legitimacy by offering the promise of security to its citizens who, it says, would otherwise face manifold dangers. ….. Both the state and the church require considerable effort to maintain order within and around themselves, and thereby engage in a evangelism of fear to ward off internal and external threats, succumbing in the process to the temptation to treat difference as otherness…. We can consider foreign policy as an intergral part of the discourse of danger that serve to discipline the state. ’


‘Ausnahmezustand’ Today


When I have previously talked about ‘exceptionalism’ within Schmitt I am talking about something derived from the concept within the German legal tradition called ‘Ausnahmezustand’ which in English political tradition is called ‘emergency powers’ but I will use the more popular translation the ‘state of exception.’ Schmitt is clear about who decides when this suspension of the normal constitution and laws when he says definitively that the ‘sovereign is he who decides on the exception. ’ This goes back to the problems Schmitt has with the traditional separation of power within liberalism because he doesn’t believe in Locke’s ideas about ‘checks and balances’ between the different parts of government or the primacy of law. This is clearly illustrated when he says ‘all law is "situational law." The sovereign produces and guarantees the situation in its totality. He has the monopoly over this last decision. ” He believes that "only the actual participants can correctly recognize, understand, and judge the concrete situation and settle the extreme case of conflict. Each participant is in a position to judge whether the adversary intends to negate his opponent's way of life and therefore must be repulsed or fought in order to preserve one's own form of existence. ” Critics of the current U.S. administration of G. W. Bush illustrate in their critique of his ‘exceptionalism’ echoes of Scmitt when they say ‘the White House has been eager to assert what is claimed to be the power of the "unitary executive," that is, the asserted power of the executive branch to override those provisions of laws with which it does not agree. ’ In both Schmitt’s political theory, Nazi Germany and the current U.S. administration the ultimate power of government lies not in legal legislation, but in the executive that has the right to ignore the ‘rule’ in favour of the ‘exception.’ Although I have used the examples of Nazi Germany and the United States of America because of the heavy use of these powers, this concept of ‘exceptionalism’ is present in most ‘liberal democratic’ models and leads to the necessity of re-examining the validity of such claims due to the likelihood of abuse. The necessity of this type of ‘exceptionalism’ for me cuts right to heart of issues around the current legitimacy of democracy and the need to examine what our political systems are actually saying about the ‘rule of the people.’


Schmitt, ‘Multitude’ and Perpetual War

Another different example of the recent renaissance of Scmitt’s political theory is illustrated by the fact that an exploration of his political theory is even present in ‘Neo-Marxist’ anti-globalization IR theorists Hardt/Negri in their 2003 book ‘Multitude.’ They suggest that the current global situation is one of perpetual war and that ‘the state of exception has become permanent and general. ’ This has ramifications for understanding contemporary international politics because ‘‘when the state of exception becomes the rule and when wartime becomes an interminable condition, then the traditional distinction between war and politics becomes increasingly blurred. ’ Schmitt uses the friend/enemy distinction as the cornerstone of his political theory but it ignores any problematization of the state as the primary actor in international relations and only has mild warnings about using difference as ‘otheness’ to help create your own identity. Schmitt never resolves the same problem that was an issue for me in Hobbes: if the reason an individual enters into a political entity only to protect their own life, how does that political entity ever demand that they risk serious injury or death for the state? As in Hobbes there is no attempt to universalize his theory to stop the international system being in a ‘State of Nature.’


Schmitt, the Geneva Conventions and Guantanamo

Although Carl Schmitt was both a political theorist and important scholar of international law his political theory places adhering to international law as secondary to the ‘exceptionalism’ of the executive. This position has resulted in the suggestion that the legal policy of the current American administration, with its rejection of the Geneava Conventions, many international laws on human rights and legislation on what constitutes torture, is similar to or influenced by, Carl Schmitt. An example of this type of legal ‘exceptionalism’ is Guantanamo Detention Centre where the US administration have said that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to the detainees at Guant́anamo, as it was, “written for a different kind of war.” In a recent article about Schmitt it was said that because of his views about the primacy of the political this ‘led him to ridicule international humanitarian law in a tone and with words almost identical to those recently employed by Yoo [US administration senior legal advisor] and several of his colleagues. ’ The striking similarities between the Nazi era rejections of the 1929 Geneva Conventions and those of the current American administration are interesting to those interested in the theoretical underpinning of ‘American Exceptionalism.’ When talking about Bush’s new powers the spectre of the founding fathers is more often conjured up but this link through Carl Schmitt is more reminiscent of Adolf Hitler.


Why We Can’t Ignore Schmitt

Although the political theory of Carl Schmitt may not be to the liking of many in the 21st century it is wrong to think that he lacks relevance. His ‘Friend/Enemy’ distinction is just as central to the thinking of many important IR theorists in the US and elsewhere, from Neoconervatives to poststructualists. The debate around ‘identity’ within ‘security studies’ and poststructuralist ideas around ‘political theology’ revive interest is some of the questions posed by Carl Schmitt. His criticisms of ‘liberal democracy’ and the need for ‘executive autonomy’ are shared by many influential IR theorists and policy makers in the United States of America. My suggestion here is that the conclusions of Carl Schmitt are still being used today in many ‘liberal democracies’ and the renewed interest in Schmitt’s ideas could highlight that these questions remain unsatisfactorily answered. The ideas of Hardt/Negri also suggest that the current ‘state of global war’ have ramifications for the adherence to Scmittian ‘state of emergency’ executive power because this is no longer the ‘exception’ but rather a constant situation. When war is fought against abstract concepts like ‘drugs’ and ‘terror’ it has the affect of being almost without end. I would be unfair of me not to mention that Carl Scmitt himself had a more nuanced understanding of the danger implicit in his theories, and that both the Nazi use and that of the current US administration ignored his warnings.


Conclusion

There are many different reasons why the political theory of Carl Schmitt is still important. I have attempted to illustrate that his theory, far from being forgotten, is still important today for many different types of IR theorists, policy makers and legal advisors. I particularly concentrated on two very different types of IR theorists to illustrate how some of the central themes of Schmitt’s political theory are still feeding debate, from the ‘positivist’ position of the influential Neoconservative IR theorists close the Pentagon to ‘Poststructuralists’ on the outer fringes. I also touched on how Schmittian political theory is experiencing a renaissance with the example of the attention shown to his theory in Hardt and Negri’s leftist anti-globalization manifesto ‘Multitude.’ I explored the ideological links between Leo Strauss, Neoconservative theorist close to George W. Bush and Carl Schmitt with a particular focus on his ‘Friend and Enemy’ distinction and ‘State of Exception’ to highlight its relationship with ‘American Exceptionalism.’ I wanted to show that the ideas of Carl Schmitt from in between the two world wars are still relevant today and the acceptance of his ideas of ‘exceptionalism’ are still important today for ‘liberal democratic’ states. This, for me, raises questions about the very foundations of our ‘democratic’ systems of liberal democracy that was described by Francis Fukuyama, another influential IR theorist in the US as ‘The End of History.’ The ‘Friend and Enemy’ distinction and his concept of ‘Political Theology’ are important to ‘Poststucturalist’ IR theorists who are interested looking deeper into the genealogy and formation of ‘Dominant Discourses’ and problamatizing many assumptions in the ‘Politics of Identity’ debate. Finally I look at the implication of his ‘state of exception’ when we are in a state of perpetual war. This has lead people to compare the way that way that the current US administration has reneged on many human rights treaties, rejected the Geneva Conventions on torture and rejected International law to the political to legal and political theory of Carl Schmitt. Although I previously thought that a political theorist who is associated with the Fascist governments of Hitler and Franco would be of no interest today it is the quality of the unresolved questions within Schmitt and the tacit acceptance of some of his central ideas that are still iimportant. This appraisal of his work has led me to question the theoretical underpinning of the ‘liberal democratic’ model and made me think that some of the current US administration’s policies are closer than most may think to a Fascist ideology.

Sebastian O’Brien May 2008 .







Bibliography

Books

Campbell, David, ‘Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity’ Revised Edition, 1998, Manchester University Press, Manchester.

Schmitt,Carl, ‘The Concept of the Political’ Wikibooks.com

Schmitt,Carl, ‘Political Theology’ Wikibooks.com

Blumenburg, Hans, ‘The Legitimacy of the Modern Age’ Cambridge, Massaxhusetts,1983

Huntington, Samuel P: ‘Who Are We? America’s Great Debate’, 2004, Simon & Schuster, London.

Huntington, Samuel P: ‘The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of World Order’, 1997, Simon & Schuster, London.

Gopal Balakrishnan, ‘The Enemy: An Intellectual Portrait of Carl Schmitt’ (New York: Verso, 2000),

Croft, Stuart, ‘Culture, Crisis and America’s War on Terror’ Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Hardt, Michael & Negri, Antonio, ‘Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire’ London UK, Penguin, 2005

Cox, Robert: ‘Social Forces, States and World Order: Beyond International Relations Theory’ in ‘Approaches to World Order’ Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press 1996.

Hobbes, Thomas, ‘Leviathan’ London UK, Penguin, 1968

Said, Edward, ‘Orientalism’ London UK, Penguin, 2003.





Articles and others

Grondin, David. ‘(Re)Writing the ‘National Security State’: How and Why Realists (Re)Built the(ir) Cold War’ Paper presented at the annual International Studies Association Convention March 17-20 2004.

Smith, Steven B.: ‘Reading Leo Strauss: Politics, Philosophy, Judaism’ Excerpt from pages 1-15 of Reading Leo Strauss: Politics, Philosophy, Judaism by Steven B. Smith, published by the University of Chicago Press. ©2006 by the University of Chicago.


Versluis, Arthur: ‘How Carl Schmitt Spawned Fascist America’ http://www.counterpunch.org/versluis08102006.html

Horton, Scott: ‘The Return of Carl Schmitt.’ Monday, November 07, 2005 www.balkin.com

Sociology of Crime: ‘La delincuencia y su circunstancia: Sociología del crimen y la desviación’ by Fernando Gil Villa

On Part One of ‘La delincuencia y su circunstancia: Sociología del crimen y la desviación’ by Fernando Gil Villa

Introduction

I will explore the most salient concepts within the first part of Fernando Gil Villa’s book ‘La delincuencia y su circunstancia: Sociología del crimen y la desviación’ whilst offering an overview of my understanding of the key concepts of the sociology of crime, an appraisal of the contribution of particular theorists and groups of theorists whilst offering a commentary on my own positions on the key debates. I start with a look at the history of analyzing crime and its importance for political and academic theorizing whilst exploring the important role a more sociological approach has played and will continue to play in this field. I aim to explore the different explanations of crime whilst comparing the terms of their theoretical and political contexts, their central concerns, their substantive themes and their policy prescriptions. The first specific group of theorists I investigate is ‘The Chicago School’ with a particular focus on the concept of ‘Differential Association’ brought to us by Edwin Sutherland. After that I look at the concept of ‘Anomie’ that was introduced by Emile Durkheim but then developed and refined by Robert Merton, this then leads naturally to an investigation of ‘Delinquent Subculture Theories.’ I then look at three important concepts together, the first, ‘Labeling Theory,’ the second, ‘Deviance Amplification’ and, the third, ‘Stigmatization.’ The final paragraphs are each devoted to a different approach to analyzing crime, from a Marxist view, to both Left and Right Realist views, then the Feminist views and finally I look at the ‘Post-modern’ views with particular emphasis on the relationship between criminology and sociology.




Crime and Sociology

Crime has been for a long time and remains today a very important issue, not just because the media serve us up a constant stream of crime related stories but because, possibly for the same reason, it is an important issue for the public and is therefore at the centre of political debate. Crime is clearly a major realm of societal concern and at the same time an important issue for the government agencies that have to come up with policy recommendations to try to monitor and positively affect the amounts and types of offences committed. In the last three decades of the twentieth century many countries recorded a massive increase in the numbers of recorded crimes. In recent years there have also been many ‘self-report’ studies done that point to the fact that there are many more crimes committed than those recorded with some suggesting that for every crime the police record, there were around three to four times as many unrecorded offences, but these figures varied according to the type of offence . As mentioned above, trying to understand crime is not just a recent thing, stretching right back to the nineteenth century people have been preoccupied with crime and its causes. It was only in the 1950’s that a more sociological approach to understanding crime took over from more individualistic explanations suggesting it was related to inherent biological or psychological predispositions.


Sociological Methodologies and Context

Even though the non-sociological and sociological approaches to the understanding of crime have very different methodologies they are both committed to the modernist project. That is for me that they believe that it is possible to establish and verify knowledge about crime, criminals and criminality and that with the use of a rational approach can come up with strategies and methods of deterrence and punishment that can improve the situation. As Heiderson said: “It is, after all, inherent in the nature of the sociological approach, deriving as the discipline does from intellectual reactions to and theories of social change, that its practitioners believe that states can be altered, institutions restructured and communities redeveloped. ” This is not to say that all sociological approaches are the same, I will explore the theoretical and political contexts that these different theories were developed, their central concerns and the policy solutions recommended. I will also argue that some of the best ‘Postmodern’ theories on crime do not reject the project for modernity or enlightenment ideals in the way some people suggest.

The Chicago School and Differential Association
Starting in the 1920’s there was a group of sociologists later know as ‘The Chicago School’ that pioneered an approach to urban sociology research that re-wrote the rule book of the study of crime by studying the urban environment and combining sociological theory and ethnographic fieldwork in their city. It was in part due to this new empirical approach that the sociological methodology was accepted into the main stream but there was at the same time a reworking of older sociological concepts that also attracted a renewed interest in the Chicago School. One of the most important offerings was from Edwin Sutherland who used a version of ‘symbolic interactionism’ to come up with his concept of ‘Differential Association’ which put very crudely suggest that criminal behavior is learned from small scale interactions with other criminal people in everyday life. His theory focuses on the how but not the why people learn to become criminals, the theory goes that exposure to other criminals teaches people about the attitudes, motivations and rationalizations of their behavior that can then lead to its replication. Sutherland developed the idea of the ‘self’ as a social construction through interactions with other people but it is interesting now in the twenty-first century to think of his ideas in a wider way to think how the representations of criminals on television, music and in the movies could also do the same thing. Due to his focus on human interactions as the key to learning behaviors he does not explain how people who have not been exposed to this type of behavior could commit crime but by broadening the influences out to encompass the media, music, television and the movies as well as human interactions his theory leaves us with much to think about.


‘Anomie’ in Durkheim and Merton
The concept of ‘Anomie’ borrowed from the work of the founding father of sociology Emile Durkheim has been interestingly reworked by Robert Merton to offer us some insights into the sociology of crime. For Durkheim ‘Anomie’ is where normal cultural norms break down because of the rate of change in modern society, his studies used this concept to explain increased rates of suicide when, for example, an economic downturn leads people to not be able to achieve the goals they learned to pursue. Merton alters this concept slightly, to refer to a situation in which there is an apparent lack of fit between the culture's norms about what constitutes success in life (or goals) and the culture's norms about the appropriate ways to achieve those goals (or means). Merton's formulation offers an explanation for the distribution of deviant behavior across groups defined by class, race, ethnicity, and for high rates of deviant behavior in the U.S. compared with other societies. Merton sees the U.S. as an example of a society where there are polar opposites between the goals (the accumulation of vast sums of money) that are emphasized for everyone in the culture, but the culture is at best ambivalent in its means of achieving this success. One version of ‘The American Dream’ is working hard and working your way up to a position of great wealth, but there is also an admiration for anyone who has ‘made it’ regardless of how exploitative (at best) or outright criminal (at worst) their behavior was to achieve this. This is the disparity between goals and means that he suggests is a reason for the high levels of crime in the United States.
Delinquent Subculture Theories

Building on some of Merton’s ideas there later came what became known as ‘Delinquent Subculture Theories’ that attributed crime in a similar way to the lack of opportunities available to young working-class males. In the late 1950’s and 1960’s ‘Delinquent Subculture Theories’ were developed in the United States of America most notably by Albert Cohen, Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin. These theories rejected non-sociological explanations of crime but were still rooted in the positivist tradition that sees the social world as an objective entity that are subject to the same cause and effect relationships as the physical world so, for them, the question was to look at the social causes that caused this behavior. This further advance on Merton’s ideas established the idea more firmly that criminality was actually a product of society not just something inherent in people, which could lead to the problems of alienation for some social groups (working class males) and lead them to commit more crime. This dissatisfaction led to the situation where, as Cloward and Ohlin said: “Delinquents have withdrawn their support from established norms and have invested in officially forbidden norms of conduct with a claim to legitimacy in the light of their special situations. ” This perception that they can not succeed in the normal ways approved by society leads them to embrace delinquent subcultures to allow them to an ‘explicit and wholesale repudiation of middle-class standards and the adoption of their very antithesis. ’ It is interesting to consider that in keeping with liberal positivism the policy solutions were to try create more opportunities for these groups not something more radical like the Marxist criminologists I will come to later.


Labeling Theory, Deviance Amplification and Stigmatization
The late 1960’s brought ‘Labeling Theory’ that was another innovation in sociological theory about crime that was again influenced by the work on ‘symbolic interactionism’ by George Herbert Mead and Charles Cooley. It was a rejection of positivist sociology that treated social reality as something unproblamatically ‘out there’ and observable and instead treated it in an anti-positivist way accepting that this ‘social reality’ was not something straightforward or absolute but was instead ‘socially constructed’, open to interpretation and problematic. This development needs to be seen within the political context of the late 1960’s which was a time where normal social norms in the US were being challenged by, for example, the civil rights movement, the Black Panthers, the Weather Underground and a more general anti-Vietnam War movement. This moved the question from what causes criminal behavior to which behavior is classified and defined as criminal and why? The answers these Labeling Theorists came up with were that it was a relationship between those who have committed offences and a range of other people, from the victims to witnesses and then the police and finally the criminal justice system. These theories stress the importance of power in these relationships and as Becker said: “Social groups create deviance by making the rules whose infraction constitutes deviance, and by applying those rules to particular people and labeling them as outsiders. From this point if view, deviance is not a quality of the act the person commits, but rather a consequence of the application by others of rules and sanctions to an ‘offender.’ The deviant is one to whom that label has successfully been applied; deviant behavior is behaviors that people so label. ” From this type of ‘Labeling Theory’ other interesting concepts within the field such as (the closely related) ‘Deviance Amplification’ and ‘Stigmatization’ were derived. Both these ideas are related to what happens to an individual who has been ‘labeled’ a criminal by the system. The first, ‘Deviance Amplification’ suggests that once someone has been labeled a criminal it damages their social identity and social status in normal society so can then lead to the amplification of more criminal behavior in the future because they feel that they don’t fit in anymore. The second, ‘Stigamatization’ is very similar, but this has led to the suggestion that in some cases it could be better to eliminate or reduce some of the ‘Stigmatization’ of the label of ‘criminal’ for lesser offences because this label once applied can then become a self-fulfilling prophecy.


Marxist Criminology

The next group of theorists I will look at are Marxist criminologists who had concerns with the way labeling theory (amongst others) neglected, in their view, more structural causes of crime. This was developed from the 1970’s by theorists like Frank Pearce, William Chambliss and Richard Quinney who, as with all Marxist theory, place a heavy emphasis on the structural-conflict caused by the capitalist system itself. Again this has to be placed in its historical-political context where there was a renewed interest in Marxism that reflected the social, economic and political tensions of the time. They stressed the importance of political economy and class division when it came to explaining the causes of crime in the western capitalist world. For them it was an obvious by-product of a system that is built on fiscal inequality and an ideology that promotes self-interest over social harmony. As Quinney said: “Some of the behaviors that follow from alienated work are an attempt at setting things right again. Some behavior is a conscious rebellion against exploitation and inhumane conditions. And there is the responsive activity which, in a responsive activity which, in a reproduction of capitalism, is pursued for economic survival or gain. Activity of a criminal nature becomes a rational and likely possibility under the conditions of capitalism. All this is to say that crime – including both crime control and criminality – is a by-product of the political economy of capitalism. ” Whether these claims are true or not the only solution they offer is the total reorganization of society within their Marxist paradigm and with anything short of that they don’t really have a very much to offer us.

Left Realist Criminology

One reaction to the Marxist views above and also Right Realism (which will be looked at in more detail below) was what has become know as the Left Realists. They shared with the Marxists the view that structural inequality was an important factor in the causation of crime but they avoid their simple structural explanation and instead consider this as only part of their explanation of the causes of crime. They recognized that crime is more of a problem in working class areas and inner-cities but that intra-class crime is most prevalent and this is not just caused by structural inequality or official bias. The Left Realists factor in some of the delinquent subculture theories, stress the role of relative depravation and marginalization to these more structural factors and consider their approach to be a rejection of 'the moral panics of the mass media or the blatant denial of left idealism. ’ For the Left Realists a multi-level approach is necessary to tackle the problem, the macro solution is based around the quest for social justice, improved opportunities, housing and education in the poorer areas whilst developing better relations through more locally sensitive policing, a penal system that can be more flexible and other local measures to help the most problematic areas.


Right Realist Criminology

The Right Realist views of crime reject the utility of sociological theorizing about crime and stressed the need for policies based on an understanding of human nature to deter people from committing crimes. As with many of the other different approaches I have looked at these Right Realist views were a product of their times, namely, the 1980’s that were dominated in the US and UK by New Right/Neo-Liberal politics of Reaganism and Thatherism. This rejection of a more sociological approach is illustrated by Thatcher’s (in)famous quote “There is no such thing as society.” The Right Realists rejected the ideas that came before them that relative depravation or marginaization were the causes of crime and even if they were they felt that it was not their role as governments to get involved. They consider people to have a natural human nature that is strongly motivated by self interest and high crime rates were a product of weak policing and ineffective deterrence from the penal system. Their solutions were to create a situation where the risk involved in committing crime was greater, this meant longer terms in jail and more police convictions. This led to policies such as ‘Zero Tolerance’ where the police confronted all anti-social behavior with heavy law enforcement measures. If this led to the occasional mistake it was a necessary evil for the greater good of the community. They also promoted greater involvement in the community to create ‘active citizens’ and to work together as a community to protect your own property with neighborhood watch schemes and more domestic security measures.


Feminist Criminology

The penultimate group of theorists I will look at is ‘Feminist Criminologists’ who fit their theorizing on this subject into their greater theoretical-political stance against the marginalization of women in society as a whole. Although they recognize that female offending is less prevalent than that of men, they highlight that the mainstream of criminological theory has a male orientated bias and that much theorizing on the subject has almost ignored women. They also stress that women need to be considered from the prospective of them as victims of crime and sexist stereotyping whenever they are brought into the criminal justice system. For them any general theory of criminology needs to take into account the criminal behavior of both men and women and reject ‘an exclusive interest in male criminality in a comfortable world of academic machismo. ’ Much of this theorizing rejected the crude biologism that suggests women are by ‘nature’ passive and virtuous and that any exception should be considered biologically or psychologically abnormal. This gender expectation was highlighted by the suggestion that in a court situation being considered a ‘good mother’ could have considerable bearing on the outcome of the case and criminal women tend to be medicalised as abnormal. Again the work of Heidenson showed that women were very often the victims of domestic and sexual violence and that this problem had been heavily under-reported in official reports and national crime figures.



‘Postmodern’ Criminology

The final group of theorists I will look at are generally called ‘Postmodern’ but this name is controversial to many theorists who receive this label. These theorists challenge the general meta-narratives of most general sociological theorizing around crime and aim to challenge assumptions that many other theorists take for granted. They challenge the idea that as Garland called ‘the Lombrosian project …that tradition of enquiry, begun by Lombroso, which aims to differentiate the criminal individual from the non-criminal. ’ The criticism of this group of theorists suggests that questioning theory that is ‘wedded to the positivist paradigm of modernism ’ leads to a nihilistic rejection of the enlightenment project in its entirety. For me questioning assumptions is exactly what this project was meant to be about, as David Campbell, a critical international relations theorist inspired by Foucault’s work says: ‘decisions must be taken only to be simultaneously criticized… to enact the Enlightenment attitude by a persistent and relentless questioning. ’ The ‘Post-Modern’ critique of criminology is therefore recognizing that it is too diverse to be dealt with one great totalizing theory and that it needs to be broken down and deconstructed into more manageable areas of sociological interest. I will end with another quote from Smart: “The whole raison d’etre of criminology is that it addresses crime. It categorizes a vast range of activities and treats them as if they were all subject to the same laws… The thing that criminology cannot do is deconstruct crime. It cannot locate rape or child abuse in the domain of sexuality or theft in the domain of economic activity or drug use in the domain of health. To do so would be to abandon criminology to sociology: but more importantly it would involve abandoning the idea of a unified problem which requires a unified response- at least at a theoretical level…. The core enterprise of criminology is profoundly problematic. ”


Conclusion

I have attempted to illustrate an understanding of the key concepts within the first section of Fernando Gil Villa’s book ‘La delincuencia y su circunstancia: Sociología del crimen y la desviación’ whilst offering a commentary with some of my own opinions on the contemporary debates. I commence with an exploration of the history of crime analysis and its importance for political and academic theorizing whilst explaining the way a more sociological approach has become more important. I explored the different explanations of crime whilst trying to compare their theoretical and political contexts, some of their central concerns, their substantive themes and their specific policy recommendations. I started with ‘The Chicago School’ particularly focusing on Sutherland’s concept of ‘Differential Association.’ I progressed by looking at the concept of ‘Anomie’ that was taken from Durkheim’s work but developed and refined by Merton, this led me to an explanation of ‘Delinquent Subculture Theories.’ The final three concepts I looked into were Labeling Theory, Deviance Amplification and, Stigmatization. The final paragraphs are each devoted to a different approach to analyzing crime. Although it does offer some interesting insights I was critical of the one-dimensional Marxist view because of its lack of anything but structural analysis and recommendations that could be called idealistic. I was more appreciative of the multilayered approach Left Realist views, whilst disagreeing with the rejection of the sociological approach in Right Realism. The Feminist views offered some interesting insights and has a relationship with the final group the ‘Post-modernists’ because both approaches suggest ways that the more established theories unwittingly base their theories on assumptions that are problematic.

Sebastian O’Brien May 2008

Freedom-Fighter Vs Terrorist Debate Essay

Account for the persistence of the ‘terrorist versus freedom fighter’ debate as we approach the 40th anniversary of international terrorism.



I will argue that to account for the persistence of the ‘terrorist versus freedom fighter’ debate more fully as we approach the fortieth anniversary of international terrorism we need to look at the central issues through different conceptual lenses. I will incorporate in this account the ‘Social Constructionist’ views championed by the ‘Copenhagen School’, along with more traditional analysis. I will show that the ‘Securitization’ of concepts, like ‘Terrorism’, is important when accounting for the persistence of this debate.

I will initially explain ‘Social Constructivist’ approaches to international relations theory and then, more specifically to this debate, the ‘Copenhagen School’ and their ‘Securitization Model.’ I will explore the different levels of importance attributed to having a definitive definition of what constitutes an act of terrorism. Following this I will look at the linguistic resonance of the names of previous ‘terrorist’ groups and how the understanding of the concept of ‘terrorism’ has changed throughout time. I look at how the confusion within this debate is caused by the blurring of means and ends. The right of self-determination is accepted but it is interesting to look at the political and media usage of the two terms when describing different organisations to see that they can have political consequences. Another factor for the persistence of this debate is the direct relationship ‘terrorists’ have with the media. I will look at some of the perceived successes of ‘terrorism’ in this area that could also account for the persistence of this debate. Finally, I will look at the role of civilian deaths and the strongly contested concept of State Terrorism as another important factor in the persistence of this debate.


‘Social Constructivism’ is a relatively new approach to international relations theory that stresses ‘how ideas define, and can transform the organisation of world politics, shape the identity and interests of states, and define what counts as legitimate action. ’ Constructivism is not a substantive theory of international relations but instead a social theory that is ‘broadly concerned with how to conceptualise the relationship between agents and structures, ’ with its central observation being ‘the social construction of reality. ’ Constructivism as an approach to international relations ‘concerns itself with the centrality of ideas and human consciousness [and] how the structure constructs the actors’ identities and interests, how their interaction are organised and constrained by that structure, and how their very interaction serves to either reproduce or transform that structure. ’


The concept of ‘Securitization’ is also new, brought to the field of international relations by a group of Constructivist thinkers known as the ‘Copenhagen School.’ They regard ‘security as a socially constructed concept ’ and this sociological approach considers ‘how the world is made and re-made through human action and intervention. ’ For them ‘what constitutes an existential threat is regarded as a subjective matter. It very much depends on a shared understanding of what constitutes a danger to security. ’ ‘Securitization’ is where ‘Securitizing Actors’ (government, political elites, military, even members of civil society) use ‘Speech Acts’ to attempt to ‘Securitizes issues by declaring something, a ‘referent object,’ existentially threatened, ’ the referent object being ‘things that are seen to be existentially threatened and that have a legitimate claim to survival. ’ This may not work but it is done because a ‘successful act of securitization provides the securitizing actors with the special right to use exceptional means. ’


Traditional International Relations theory might suggest that definitions of the two terms used in this debate are important but the Copenhagen School would focus on how these concepts are ‘socially constructed’ within each society. Western leaders are today in a ‘War on Terrorism’ but do not work from a definitive definition of what constitutes a terrorist act, rather, ‘academics, politicians, security experts and journalists, all use a variety of definitions of terrorism. ’ The conceptualisation of the two terms is the cornerstone of the ‘Terrorist Versus Freedom Fighter’ debate and from here we must progress with caution because ‘the matter of definition and conceptualization is usually a purely theoretical issue’ and ‘defining our terms tend to transcend the boundaries of theoretical discussion.’ Constructivists agree about the importance of the understanding of the words ‘Terrorist’ or ‘Freedom Fighter’, but, unlike a more traditional approaches it would not be concerned with dictionary definitions but more to do with the way influential actors like, for example, the President of the United States, use ‘speech acts’ to influence the way that the concept of ‘Terrorism’ is created in our minds.


Although the term ‘terrorism’ may not have been used, acts very similar to our current conceptions have been committed almost since we have any historical record and it is interesting to that some of the names of these groups are still used today. Most of these early proponents of ‘terrorist’ acts were millenarian but not from any one particular faith. There was a Jewish group called the ‘Zealots’ in the first century A.D. that would murder Romans (or fellow Jews that they judged to have colluded with the Romans) in public places by slashing their victim’s throat with a knife called a ‘Sica’. Starting in the seventh century A.D. there was a group of Indian religious fanatics called the ‘Thugs’ that murdered passing travellers as a sacrifice to the Hindu goddess of terror and destruction, Kali. The ‘Thugs’ operated for just over one thousand years and the term is still used today as an adjective to mean someone excessively violent or threatening. The way the names of these groups end up in popular usage is interesting and this is again true for a group of radical Muslim Shi’as called the ‘Assassins’ who after the turn of the first century A.D. murdered their Christian enemies in acts that they believed were sanctioned by a higher power. The thing that this highlights for a ‘Constructivist’ is the resonance linguistically of proper nouns that become adjectives could be to do with the power of pre-modern Securitization.

The terms ‘terrorist’ and ‘terror’ have changed meaning regularly and dramatically throughout the past two hundred years and this illustrates that there is a certain amount of fluidity to our understanding of a concept, and this is constructed by factors that can be located in a particular time. The term ‘Terror’ was first popularised after the French Revolution of 1789 in what was known as a ‘reign of terror’, and did not have the pejorative connotations that it has now; it was in fact, ‘an instrument of governance wielded by the recently established revolutionary state. ’ By the middle of the twentieth century the meaning had changed again to represent the oppression of totalitarian states against its own people like in Hitler’s Nazi Germany, Mussolini’s Fascist Italy or Stalin’s Communist Russia. After the Second World War ‘terrorism’ was once again associated with revolutionary movements, but, this time as only a likely stage in a greater campaign. During the 1960’s and 70’s the meaning changed yet again when ‘terrorist’ tactics were used not just by nationalist and ethno-separatist and iridescent groups within a guerrilla war but by ideologically driven or disenfranchised nationalist groups to publicise their cause. The Palestinian Liberation Organisation is said to have introduced the era of ‘International Terrorism’ hijacking planes using the ‘theatre ’ of terrorism to highlight their cause. Since then many diverse groups and organisations have used ‘terrorism’ for a wide variety of reasons but the terrorist attacks on the United States of America on September 11th 2001 illustrated the massive destruction that could be caused by ‘suicide’ terrorism and led people to examine this phenomena and conceptualisation of the words like ‘terrorism.’


As is highlighted by the problems around definition, ‘terrorism’, like most concepts in the social sciences, is contentious and never really escapes ‘relativist’ and ‘viewpoint’ considerations. Terrorism is a ‘complex phenomena open to subjective interpretation ’ so it is understandable that a person’s ‘viewpoint’ needs to be understood at the same time as their definition and conceptualisation of ‘Terrorism.’ It is also important to consider that ‘using relativist arguments, critical theorists suggest that Western states cannot claim moral superiority, and its associated legitimacy, on the basis of their willingness to contravene international norms as it suits them. If anything, the historical track record of Western states as colonial and/or imperial powers only legitimizes the acts of the disenfranchised who have no other option to combat their continued oppression and poverty. ’ It is no surprise then that ‘the concept of terrorism is deeply controversial. It has generally been used as a term of abuse against groups who engage in violent behaviour, by people who oppose the goals of the group’ In the ‘securitization’ model of the Copenhagen School it is the lack of objectivity of things like the ‘security threat’ of terrorism that is used to explain the use of extraordinary powers when a concept is successfully ‘securitized.’


Problems have been caused within this debate by people placing an emphasis on the ends or goals of a group rather than looking at both the ends and the means applied in achieving these. This is where the term ‘Freedom Fighter’ becomes very vague; the end that someone is ‘Fighting’ for is ascribed to be ‘Freedom’ but no further information is discernable about the methods applied in attempting to achieve this. It is also quite likely that both sides in a conflict are going to claim to be fighting for the positive notion of ‘Freedom’ but can this can not be objectively judged. Within this debate it is also important to accept that ‘much confusion occurs in the debate about the morality of terrorism because of a failure to distinguish ends and means. Terrorism is a method that can be used for an infinite variety of goals. ’ Constructivists would argue that the distinction between means and ends is not of central importance and that the more important thing is the way that issues like terrorism are ‘Securitized’ to add to the breadth of the range of possible responses.


Once the ‘aims’ or objectives of a group have been accepted the next step is to look at the ethical acceptability of methods or ‘means’ they use to achieve these goals. This is important to the persistence of this debate because ‘reaching consensus on what constitutes terrorism is difficult and one of the foremost reasons for disagreement relates to different interpretations of the legitimacy of terrorist means and methods. ’ In Palestine ‘terrorism’ can be seen as the only option, and they have a ‘martyr concept’ where they believe that due to the uneven distribution of armed force it is acceptable to use any means necessary, even suicide bombing by women and children. This again feeds into the fact that ‘using relativist arguments, critical theorists suggest that Western states cannot claim moral superiority, and its associated legitimacy, on the basis of their willingness to contravene international norms as it suits them. If anything, the historical track record of Western states as colonial and/or imperial powers only legitimizes the acts of the disenfranchised who have no other option to combat their continued oppression and poverty. ’ It could be said in this debate that both sides attempt to ‘Securitized’ their respective struggles to justify the use of extraordinary ‘means’ because they consider themselves to be existentially threatened.

After the Second World War and with the creation of the United Nations Charter the “principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples ” was codified in international treaties and this gave extra credibility to anti-colonial struggles and peoples battling against oppressive dictators. This then led to the thorny issue around labelling independence movements that is central to this debate. After the official destruction of the ideological dominance of Imperial nations this left ‘competing political and religious value-systems [that] are not subordinate to overarching authority. ’ Within the ‘Cold War’ there was ‘stability through nuclear fear ’ but with that came any distinctions between independence movements being dictated more by ‘Cold War’ politics than objective analysis. In the post Cold War era it is more obvious than ever that the ‘dream’ of an ‘international consensus order, based on agreed values and laws ’ has not been established and international relations theories based more on power like ‘realism’ or ‘neo- realism’ are as dominant as ever.


It is interesting to look back at the last forty years to assess the way that the two terms have been used politically by Presidents of the United States of America to help us understand what has been driving the distinction for the current world hegemonic power. When Ronald Reagan took control of the White House in 1980 the Iranian Hostage Crisis was quickly resolved but he was under no illusions about the new revolutionary Islamic Republic’s threat to the interests of the United States of America. This revolution in Iran roughly coincided with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and Reagan’s plans for a more aggressive foreign policy aimed at taking the fight back to the soviets, overcoming ‘Vietnam Syndrome’ and recreating the important role on the international scene the Americans had enjoyed since the second world war. He overtly supported the ‘Afghan Freedom Fighters ’ that would later evolve into the Taliban and in some cases Al Qaeda. He also supported the ‘Contras’ in Nicaragua in response to “an unusual and extra ordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States. ” It is accepted that powerful politicians have an advantage as a securitizing actor but ‘moves of securitization can fail. This results from the audience rejecting the speech act articulated by the securitizing actor. ’


Terrorism and the media have a direct relationship because ‘terrorism by its very nature is a psychological weapon that depends upon communicating a threat to the wider society. ’ That is not to say that terrorism was not possible before the advent of mass media as the earlier exponents of such tactics murdered their victims in crowded places like markets and relied on simple word of mouth to ‘communicate a threat to the wider society.’ That being said the necessity of communicating the message via news agencies is not lost on the actors wanting the media attention or in fact on news stations that compete for market share and use ‘terrorist’ activity to bolster their advertising revenues. This strange relationship has led people to suggest that ‘terrorism and the media enjoy a symbiotic relationship. ’ British PM Margaret Thatcher thought that some sort of censorship should be employed to stop [the ‘terrorists’] getting ‘the oxygen of publicity.’ The problems of implementation made this policy unravel without considering the central issue of this debate, who is a ‘Terrorist’ and who is a ‘Freedom Fighter?’


The lack of definition and obvious implications of the usage of the term ‘terrorist’ became something of a discussion forum for different media outlets before 9/11. It was recognised that ‘the term ‘terrorist’ has a pejorative value ascribed to it that further complicates understanding of the subject. ’ How could respectable News outlets use a term that ‘is highly pejorative, [and] tends to be used selectively and subjectively? ’ This led to different policies being implemented by different media out lets from never using the terms except in direct quotes etc and then this also ignited a debate again after 9/11. This debate still persists because of exactly these types of intellectual enquiry. Without definitive definition these terms can only be used selectively and subjectively and for any self respecting news agency this raises serious issues. In using these terms media organisations could be said to be helping the Securitization of the concepts.


It is hard to argue that terrorism has not had a certain amount of success in the area of publicising their causes but at the same time it is dramatically less successful on its own at recruiting support from the wider audiences they target. It has been said that ‘for terrorists, media coverage of their activities is, as we have seen, something of a double-edged sword, providing them with the attention and publicity that they invariably seek, but not always in a particularly useful or even helpful manner. ’ I would also agree that ‘the relationship between publicity and terror is indeed paradoxical and complicated. Publicity focuses attention on a group, strengthening its morale and helping to attract recruits and sympathizers. But publicity is pernicious to the terrorist groups too. It helps an outraged public to mobilize its vast resources and produces information that the public needs to pierce the veil of secrecy all terrorist groups require’ David Rapoport


Although terrorist may not have direct success in recruitment after a ‘terrorist’ attack, the situation for them can change dramatically when the same ‘target’ audience feels that the response in counter-terrorism terms is disproportionate and as indiscriminate as the original attack. In fact ‘many terrorist leaders hope that their actions will lead to disproportionate reactions by a state that in turn disaffects public or international opinion and increases support for their cause. ’ Looking at this issue we could come to the conclusion that the broad scope and hard to understand links between the western ‘War on Terror’ and the threat from Al Qaeda could be the greatest single factor in the apparent success of terrorism in the modern age. A national/ international police response to ‘terrorist’ attacks no matter how dramatic would not revitalise the ‘terrorist versus freedom fighter debate’ like the US Securitization of Terrorism after 9/11 has.


One of the most contentious issues is whether ‘states alone have a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force. ’ The successful securitization of terrorism by governments is important because within this paradigm, the use of violence by non-state actors is illegitimate so excluding the possibility of acts of ‘State Terrorism’. Many people associate civilian deaths with ‘terrorism’ and this leads to another related issue confusing this debate and keeping it alive. Can states can commit ‘acts of terrorism?’ I mentioned earlier the previous conception as ‘terror’ being exclusively the reserve of the state in Fascist states but this was in relation to its actions towards its own people. The exemption of states from being able to commit terrorist acts is one near constant when looking at the way in which states have attempted to define terrorism. Official definitions often state that the perpetrators have to be non-state, sub-state or extra-legal entities but without this distinction it is hard to argue against the possibility of state terrorism. Within the Second World War British politicians argued against the bombing of whole urban populations in Germany due to it being ‘terrorism.’ British World War Two leader Winston Churchill admitted when stopping the policy that it had been aimed at ‘terrorising the German people into submission.’ Along similar lines the dropping of atomic bombs on cities in Japan should also be seen as ‘terrorism’ as it could be argued that this was done not simply to win the war but also to communicate a political message to the Soviets about the post war ‘balance of power’. In the 2003 invasion of Iraq some claim that the necessary UN resolutions were not obtained in advance and therefore ‘actions by the coalition should be considered as an act of terrorism’ conducted by states ’. All these considerations are illuminated by social constructivist approaches; it is more to do with the competing forces constructing our understanding of the terms than any objective reality.











Conclusion


To account for the persistence of the ‘terrorist versus freedom fighter’ debate more fully as we approach the fortieth anniversary of international terrorism it is important to consider Social Constructionist views of international relations alongside more traditional approaches. The Copenhagen School help us to understand the importance of Speech Acts in creating Securitized concepts, and when this is successfully done it allows the use of methods that are normally considered outside the range of acceptable responses to a threat. It is for these reasons that this alternative conceptual lens helps us account for the persistence of the terrorist versus freedom fighter debate. Traditional analysis would suggest that having a definitive definition of what constitutes an act of terrorism is important but Constructivist would be more concerned with the way this is constructed or conceptualised in people’s minds after competing Speech Acts have been articulated. It is interesting to look at the linguistic resonance of the names of previous ‘terrorist’ groups and how the understanding of the concept of ‘terrorism’ has changed throughout time thus illustrating the social construction of these concepts. The confusion within this debate caused by the blurring of means and ends is based in more traditional analysis as Constructivist do not place much importance in this issue. The right of self-determination is accepted but it is interesting to look at the political and media usage of the two terms, when describing different organisations, to illustrate that there is awareness that the mental construction of these terms is important. Another factor for the persistence of this debate is the direct relationship ‘terrorists’ have with the media, they need to communicate their message and this battle ground is important in the construction of these concepts. The perceived successes of ‘terrorism’ are around the amount of publicity that they can generate but this can be used by securitizing actors to help convince their audience of a threat and allow extra ordinary methods to be used in response. The final issue I looked at was the role of civilian deaths and the strongly contested concept of State Terrorism and this is important to the persistence of this debate because, as Social Constructivists would say, it is a barometer of the success or otherwise of the securitization of terrorism.


Sebastian O’Brien

November 2007 .















Bibliography

Books

John Bayliss and Steve Smith. ‘The Globalisation of World Politics; An introduction to International Relations.’

Paul Wilkinson ‘Terrorism Versus Democracy: The Liberal State Response’

Hoffman, Bruce. ‘Inside Terrorism: Revised and Expanded Edition’

‘Introductory Sociology’ 4th Edition, Palgrave Macmillan,

Andrew Haywood ‘Politics’ Palgrave Macmillan

Edited by Alan Collins. ‘Contemporary Security Studies.’

Noam Chomsky. ‘Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance’ Penguin


Journal Articles

Boaz Ganor, Definining Terrorism: ‘Is One Man’s terrorist Another Man’s Freedom Fighter?’ Journal. Page 1

Frameworks for Conceptualising Terrorism

Philosophy- Is nature designed?

Are there any reasons for supposing that nature is designed?

I will argue that although it may sometimes appear to us that there are good reasons for supposing that nature is designed, that they are not as strong as some ‘intelligent design’ theologians suggest. There has been a long line of ancient thought that supposed this due the complexity of humans ourselves but once Darwin had popularized the ideas of evolution we had to look further for this supposition. The strongest of these is called the ‘Anthropic Principle’ that points to the delicate balance of natural laws and suggests that this points towards design. I personally think that there are good common-sense arguments to refute this, one of which I call the certain coincidence argument. There are also a great many ‘Multiverse’ or ‘Parallel Universe’ theories that it has been suggested are nothing more that scientific speculation but for me speculation that is grounded in science is better that that which is grounded in mysticism. I will also look at ideas around how our current biological form is resultant of evolutionary fluke and that if this world was designed, the designer created something rather nonsensical and inhumane. I finally look at the idea that if we suppose some sort of design that still leaves us with the question of who designed the designer?


One of the earlier arguments for supposing that nature is designed was the pre-Darwinian idea that man is such a complex being with such amazing capabilities that we must have some purpose and direction so therefore be designed by some greater being, in almost all cases, a God. We now know that, evolutionary forces have slowly created complex entities like ourselves over many, many millennia in a series of mutations but before the recognition of the theory of evolution this could be seen as a suggestion of design. One of St Thomas Aquinas ‘Five ways’ of proving the existence of God was a form of Teleological argument that suggests that we must have some purpose. He says: “Some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God. ”


The ‘Anthropic Principle’ is a name given for a more recent argument for the supposition that nature is designed and is related the scientific observation that the ‘fundamental constants’ of nature appear to be ‘fine-tuned’ in such a way as to suggest design. Some Cosmologists have pointed to things like the mass-to-charge ratio, the strength of the force which binds nuclear particles together, or even the laws of gravity to argue that these are so finely balanced that it could not be by chance. This has been warmly greeted by what I will call the ‘Intelligent Design’ wing of modern Christianity. I will admit that the odds of such a universe coming together in one attempt are extraordinary but if we look into this a little further there are a few possible explanations.


The first explanation I will classify as the certain chance/coincidence argument. This goes that it might be only possible for the universe to support life with a particular set of ‘finely-tuned’ fundamental constants but we would not be here to report them otherwise. This argument is articulated very well by Roger Penrose in the ‘Emporor’s New Mind’: “The argument can be used to explain why the conditions happen to be just right for the existence of (intelligent) life on the earth at the present time. For if they were not just right, then we should not have found ourselves to be here now, but somewhere else, at some other appropriate time. This principle was used very effectively by Brandon Carter and Robert Dicke to resolve an issue that had puzzled physicists for a good many years. The issue concerned various striking numerical relations that are observed to hold between the physical constants (the gravitational constant, the mass of the proton, the age of the universe, etc.). A puzzling aspect of this was that some of the relations hold only at the present epoch in the earth's history, so we appear, coincidentally, to be living at a very special time (give or take a few million years!). This was later explained, by Carter and Dicke, by the fact that this epoch coincided with the lifetime of what are called main-sequence stars, such as the sun. At any other epoch, so the argument ran, there would be no intelligent life around in order to measure the physical constants in question-so the coincidence had to hold, simply because there would be intelligent life around only at the particular time that the coincidence did hold!” Chapter 10


Then I personally feel slightly drawn (somewhat irrationally I must admit) to what has become known as ‘Multiverse’ theories. This explains the ‘Anthropic Principle’ by speculating that our Universe is only one of many, greatly reducing the necessity for any apparent ‘design.’ With the myriad of different ideas there is a constant that our Universe is only one of a great number of parallel Universes, but the relationships between the constituent Universes depends on which theory you subscribe to. There are a great many to consider such as; the Bubble theory, open Multiverses, Big Bounce, M-theory but I will not go into each one. It has been said that these theories themselves are not science because they are impossible to test empirically or to scientifically disprove. Some of these theories are though based on complex quantum physics like Hugh Everetts ‘Many Worlds Interpretation’ but not being particularly knowledgeable in quantum mechanics I cannot say anything about it strengths or weaknesses.


There is also an argument that only refutes the Theological argument that nature and the natural world was designed for the development of us homo-sapien-sapiens. This is that our development into our current form is based on many many evolutionary flukes? This does not discount the creation of ‘intelligent’ life forms of some sort, but only that, as most theologians suggest, that it was ‘created/designed’ to facilitate life in our present form.


Another argument (that possibly has no place in Philosophy) is that if nature was designed by some super-natural entity then why is life so random and so horrible for some? Disease, Depravation, Acts of Nature, and many other things cause immeasurable discomfort and distress to us so why not design some type of Utopia? Or at least ‘create’ some sort of correlation between what I’ll loosely call ‘good behaviour’ and a ‘good life.’ Although we are encouraged by people of a theological disposition, to act in this way or that, there does not appear to be any tangible results in this life.

We can finally consider, when that when looking at the ideas of any supposed design to nature, who designed the designer? This is a question that I believe that science, theology, and philosophy will never be able to answer. Trying to speculate about ‘Multiverses’ or ideas of that ilk can at least be inferred from scientific enquiry, and people may believe that we are just waiting some great ‘theory of everything’ but to go back any further leads to a insolvable circular argument.

To conclude, I concede that before we became aware of the ‘Theory of Evolution’ it could be easy to think that complex beings like ourselves could not have fallen from the sky in our present form so accepting the idea of a designer was not totally irrational. I have never accepted the ‘Anthropic Principle’ but can see that the argument about the ‘fine-tuning’ of the laws of physics needs an answer. I personally accept the idea that the ‘chance’ came first and then we followed giving the world this appearance of design. There are many different ways that this could be possible but I would point towards ‘Multiverse’ or ‘Parallel Universe’ theory as the most likely explanation. I think it is quite easy to refute the suggestion that the world was particularly designed to result in humans in their present form and easy to ask why the world is so cruel and inhumane if it was designed. I must admit that I have nothing of note to say about the question of “Who designed the designer?” but instead leave it as a question that I believe can never be answered.

Sebastian O’Brien April 2007

Revision Essay On 'Per Capita' Income (Development)

Why is per capita income considered an inadequate measure of a country’s development? Answer with reference to the various dimensions of poverty AND alternative ways of measuring human development.

Plan
1. Reason1- It tells us nothing about internal income distribution
2. Reason 2- Income measure only one part of broad view of poverty.
3. Reason 3- Currency measure not usually local currency PPP
4. Reason 4- Other ‘Dimension of Poverty’ debate issues not mentioned eg subjectivity ‘absolute’ ‘relative’ ‘snapshots
5. Alternative ways of measuring human development HDI. And why it is better
6. Measuring Poverty not simple. Even HDI not perfect but still working on innovations.


Intro

Per Capita income is considered an inadequate measure of a country’s development for a wide variety of reasons. It is based on the median GDP income and tells us nothing about the internal distribution of wealth within the country so it could be argued that the figure can sometimes relate to only a very small section of the population in the middle. It is also a money-metric measure that overlooks other important considerations when trying to understand a country’s development. There are other major issues around converting the local currency into an internationally recognized bench mark currency like the United States Dollar because local food prices, for example, can be relatively low in the local currency. There are also a whole raft of other considerations that fall into the ‘Dimensions of Poverty’ debate like, measuring ‘Absolute’ poverty or ‘Relative’ poverty, ‘Snapshot’ or ‘Time-line’ issues and the ‘subjective’ nature of Poverty. To try overcome some of these concerns and to get a broader picture of development the United Nations Development Programme has come up with the Human Development Index to try get a more balanced picture. Although HDIs are a massive improvement on measuring development on Per Capita income it is by no means perfect, measuring poverty and development is not easy but innovations are constantly helping us to refine our methods to look with more detail at specific internal groups.



1.
The first reason I would give for why per capita income is considered to an inadequate measure of a country’s development is because it tells us nothing about the internal income distribution of that country. The country’s GDP is crudely divided by the population to give this per capita income regardless of whether there is a massive disparity between the ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ within that country. With this type of disparity, per capita income is the median of these two groups so could be equally unrepresentative of both groups. Even where income distribution figures exist they are often measured with the ‘household’ being the unit so therefore ignoring any internal disparity within the family. This intrahousehold distribution of resources could take the form of the men of the house getting more nutrition or education.

2.
This income-centric measure also overlooks other important indicators of poverty like for example, average life expectancy or access to education or healthcare. Any number of factors could be taken into account to try gauge poverty but looking simply at per capita income is showing a lack of understanding for the complexity of poverty. Some people can live from the produce they can grow in their locality but something like this is not involved in a measurable financial transaction and without speculating about its market value would go uncounted. Also access to education and healthcare may appear to be less tangible indicators of poverty but they would be considered by any serious study or measure.

3.
Another reason that measuring per capita income based on GDP can be misleading is that this measure of production and its value is made in a currency that can be freely converted internationally like the US Dollar. This is misleading because the local currency may have a different purchasing power for commodities at local prices, and example of this is that in certain countries living off two US Dollars per day could buy enough food to have a reasonably high calorific intake whereas in the US it most certainly would not. The reality of this situation is taken into consideration with some measurements, when this is done is the result is given in ‘purchasing power parity dollars’ or ‘PPP Dollars.’

4.
The ‘Dimension of Poverty’ debate looks at the above issues but also has many other considerations, like ‘Snapshot or Timeline’ issues, the difference between ‘Absolute’ or ‘Relative’ poverty and ‘subjective perceptions of poverty’. What I mean by ‘Snapshot or Timeline’ issues is that poverty or relative prosperity can be something that is seasonal, or negatively affected by war or drought, we would need to look over a long period of life-cycle to try understand these. ‘Absolute’ or ‘Relative’ poverty are two different ways of measuring poverty, the former is people under a given benchmark(E.g. 1PPP Dollar per day) and the latter is half the mean income or in some cases considers exclusion from participation in society. Finally, when I talk about ‘subjective perceptions of poverty’ I am suggesting that there is no definitive ‘objective’ measure of poverty so there may be some disparity between local and development agency understandings of what ‘really’ constitutes poverty.

5.
There are many other ways to measure poverty but the Human Development Index goes a lot further than Per Capita income to try get a multi-dimentional picture of poverty. The HDI considers life expectancy, educational exposure/literacy and real per capita income with the ‘Purchasing Power Parity’ considerations mentioned above. It has been said that the HDI is ‘a more comprehensive measure than per capita income as it has the advantage of directing attention from material possessions toward human needs’. The United Nations Development Programme, who introduced these measures, uses the HDI to rank countries into three groups, low, medium or high human development. An example of HDI giving us different results to simple Per Capita income is that of Bolivia in 2004 with a much lower GDP scored a higher HDI than Guatamala illustrating that they were translating that lower income into better human development.

6.
Measuring poverty is not an easy business with so many different factors to try understand and take into consideration. HDI is not at all perfect, even the UNDP said that ‘‘the HDI is a useful starting point, it is important to remember that the concept of human development is much broader and more complex than any summary measure can capture…the HDI is not a comprehensive measure. It does not include important aspects of human development, notably the ability to participate in the decisions that affect ones’ life and to enjoy the respect of others in the community’’. These shortcomings have been recognised and some effort has been put into address some of the issues with recent HDI innovations being able to look at separate components like, gender, class, ethnicity and regional variation to get a better picture of the skewed incomes of these groups.

Conc

The reasons for Per Capita income being considered an inadequate measure of a country’s development are many and varied. Ignoring the internal distribution of wealth within the country can result it the Per Capita income measure being representative of only a small percentage of the population. Looking at development in an income-centric way misses other important considerations. There are also issues relating to usefulness of converting the local currency into an internationally recognized bench mark currency because local food prices can, in some cases, be relatively cheap in the local currency. The ‘Dimensions of Poverty’ debate also highlights other anomalies like, whether to measure ‘Absolute’ poverty or ‘Relative’ poverty, the inaccuracies of ‘Snapshot’ measurements and the lack of a universal ‘objective’ standard of poverty. The UNDP measure of HDI is a massive improvement to measuring a country’s development on Per Capita income but even with some of its latest innovations there can never really be a ‘perfect’ way to measure a countries development as particular idiosyncrasies based on a more sociological understanding are always present.

Sebastian O’Brien April 2007