Join the global debate at LSE ISSUE 3, SPRING 2011
CITIES AFTER THE RECESSION: WINNERS AND LOSERS
EDITOR
I
was in Abu Dhabi not long ago. Until you land in a place like Abu Dhabi, you forget – or become numb to – just how depressing the economic landscape is in a place like London or Madrid or Chicago these days. Here, we’re worried about the dreaded double-dip recession, houses “under water” (worth less than their outstanding mortgages), and cuts everywhere. Over time, our economies will improve, and we will sink back into our chaise-longue of smug satisfaction, comforted by the certain knowledge of our superiority in all realms.
Most Londoners and madrileños wouldn’t choose to settle long in a family-run petro-state that is in many ways alien to our way of life. In Abu Dhabi, however, I was drawn to other things. To vast swathes of the United Arab Emirates capital, between the soon-to-be-new airport and the “old” downtown (with buildings dating from the… 1980s), where construction cranes outnumber existing buildings. To the World Future Energy Summit, the so-called Davos of renewable energy, through which Abu Dhabi’s leadership purports to show it is thinking seriously and innovatively about life after oil. To Masdar Capital, a state-seeded business which invests in renewable and clean-tech companies around the world. I visited Abu Dhabi Men’s College, where you can see the strains and promise of a nation in transition. Like Abu Dhabi Women’s College, ADMC is part of the Higher Colleges of Technology, founded in 1988. Two salient facts that speak volumes: HCT has 20,000 students, all Emiratis; the faculty is composed entirely of non-Emiratis. Abu Dhabi has a way to go before it builds the knowledge economy it aspires to. More to the point of the cover story of this issue of LSE Research is something I saw while at ADMC. The administration was keen to show off a classroom wired with a sophisticated array of cameras and microphones that can turn a videoed lecture into a very slick production. The equipment alone cost $500,000. More significantly, the school says, similar rooms exist in only two other cities: Seoul and Singapore. We live in an urban age. Many of us will have known relatives who were farmers or knew farmers or lived near working farms. By 2050, an estimated 75 per cent of the world’s population will be concentrated in cities. That’s how much things have changed. I mention Abu Dhabi, as small as it is (the population of the entire emirate is about 1.6 million), because, as Ricky Burdett and Philipp Rode write in this issue, the cities of the global South and East are the ones which will lead the world out of recession – and, in some ways, leave the rest of us behind. LSE Cities, an international research centre that is home to Burdett and Rode, and the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based public policy organisation, recently produced the Global MetroMonitor. The details are inside the magazine, but try this datapoint on for size: of the world’s top 30 metropolitan areas – ranked according to their economic performance during the 2009-10 period of recovery from the Great Recession – all but one (the tech hub of Austin, Texas) were located outside the United States and Europe. The research that has gone into the cities cover package – with further contributions from Andrea Colantonio, Mariane Jang, Sylvia Chant, and Andrew Thornley – and into the rest of this issue of LSE Research is a testament to the work done by the academics and students I have met since 2009, when I came to LSE to produce three issues of this magazine. I trust that LSE Research has succeeded in its mission to, as I wrote in my first editor’s letter, “provide a forum for LSE’s legions of researchers who – in their investigations and teaching, in debates and panels on campus, in colloquiums abroad and as advisers to institutions and governments – are engaging with the major social and economic policy issues of our time.” The magazine celebrating their labour has come to an end. The research itself, of course, carries on. Stryker McGuire Editor, LSE Research
LSE RESEARCH This is the last of three issues of LSE Research. It was published by the Press and Information Office at the London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE. Tel: +44 (0)20 7955 7060. Fax: +44 (0)20 7852 3658. erd.researchmagazine@ lse.ac.uk
EDITORIAL Managing editor Claire Sanders Editor Stryker McGuire
DESIGN Art director Claire Harrison Senior designer Ailsa Drake Printed by: Quadracolour Published by The London School of Economics and Political Science (‘LSE’), Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE. LSE is a School of the University of London. It is a charity and is incorporated in England as a company limited by guarantee under the Companies Acts (Reg number 70527). Copyright in editorial matter and in the magazine as a whole belongs to LSE ©2011. Copyright in individual articles belongs to the authors who have asserted their moral rights ©2011. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be issued to the public or circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published. Requests for permission to reproduce any article or part of the magazine should be sent to the editor at the above address. In the interests of providing a free flow of debate, views expressed in this magazine are not necessarily those of the editor, LSE alumni or LSE. Although every effort is made to ensure the accuracy and reliability of material published in this magazine, LSE accepts no responsibility for the veracity of claims or accuracy of information provided by contributors. Freedom of thought and expression is essential to the pursuit, advancement and dissemination of knowledge. LSE seeks to ensure that intellectual freedom and freedom of expression within the law is secured for all our members and those we invite to the School.
Printed on recycled paper
2 LSE Research Magazine, Issue 3, Spring 2011
CONTENTS EDITOR 2 FINDINGS 6 FOOTNOTES 46
BREAKING GROUND 10 6
One size doesn’t fit all by Ethan Ilzetzki LSE Research reports on seminal research that used data from 44 countries to examine the varying effects of fiscal stimulus programmes around the world.
CULTURE 12 Mummy dearest by Tiffany Jenkins If you’re thinking about going to a museum to view human remains, think again. A misplaced respectfor-the-dead movement is changing what is off-limits.
RELIGION 14 Subverting Islam by Alia Brahimi Al-Qaeda took devastating advantage of a crisis of authority in the Muslim world. But by opening the floodgates of Islamic interpretation, it has sown the seeds of its own demise.
CONFLICT 16 Rethinking war by Mary Kaldor The Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza – the battlefields of recent history are causing military strategists to put Cold War thinking behind them and design better ways to manage security.
THE LAW 18
12
The rights stuff by Conor Gearty Beware over-compartmentalisation. Human rights transcend the confines of the range of charters and conventions that make up contemporary human rights law.
COVER STORY: THE URBAN AGE 20 Metropolis: the way we will be by Ricky Burdett and Philipp Rode 21 We have seen the future, and it is our cities. Not necessarily the cities that are most familiar to us, but the great 21st-century urban economic engines of the global South and East.
Gender and the city by Sylvia Chant 26
14
Urban women are often regarded as more “emancipated” than their rural counterparts, and yet there is ample evidence of persistent exploitation and deeply embedded disadvantage. performance
The London Olympics: legacy games by Andrew Thornley 28 high
Helsinki
Oslo
Stockholm
Copenhagen
average Moscow There is a long history of cities using the Games to score lasting benefits. Some succeed; some fail. Dublin Brussels Berlin low Warsaw Guess which category London falls into… London Paris
metropolitan population 20m 5m
Madrid Lisbon
Copenhagen Dublin
Madrid Istanbul Athens
Berlin
Lisbon
21
Dublin
Warsaw
Paris
Budapest
Naples
Moscow
Brussels
London
Milan Rome Barcelona
Helsinki
Oslo
Stockholm
Lon
Budapest Milan Rome Barcelona
M
Naples
Istanbul Athens
Spring 2011, Issue 3, LSE Research Magazine 3
Lisbon
24
42
44
SOUTH AMERICA 31 All is not well by Alonso Barros The rescue of los 33 – the miners trapped deep below Chile’s Atacama Desert – was justly celebrated. But the lingering image masks real problems in and around the mines.
IMMIGRATION 33 Misunderstanding multiculturalism by Alan Manning The UK multicultural project didn’t fail to create a sense of belonging among minorities; it failed to pay sufficient attention to sustaining support among the white British.
MEDIA 37 Managing the messenger – or not by Pablo Ibáñez Colomo and Damian Tambini A debate on how, when and whether the government should regulate the various complex and fastchanging communications media.
WELFARE STATE 40 The long goodbye by Howard Glennerster Over the next four years, at least, the share of UK national income devoted to the welfare state will fall significantly for the first time since 1945.
THE POLICY PERSPECTIVE 42 From facts to fiction by Justin Webb “Facts are stubborn things,” intoned John Adams, America’s second president. Sadly, his country now prizes opinion-mongering over the search for truth.
THE ACADEMIC PERSPECTIVE 44 Peeking through keyholes by Maung Zarni How a researcher-dissident who specialises in Burma resolves the tensions between detached and engaged versions of scholarship.
All three issues of LSE Research are available online at lse.ac.uk/LSEResearchMagazine COVER IMAGE: JAVARMAN/VEER
4 LSE Research Magazine, Issue 3, Spring 2011
William Henry Beveridge (1879-1963) Economist, social reformer, father of the welfare state. Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science. From Full Employment in a Free Society, 1944: “Ignorance is an evil weed, which dictators may cultivate among their dupes, but which no democracy can afford among its citizens.� LSE ARCHIVES
FINDINGS Brief summaries of recent research from LSE
A toss of the flipping coin 16 December 2010
also interviewed 240 players and coaches – both professional and amateur – and almost all said they would prefer to take the first kick; 96 per cent said that this was to put pressure on the team kicking second. Professor Palacios-Huerta reckons the tsars of professional football could be disconcerted by his findings: “I suspect that the heads of FIFA or UEFA are not going to like the fact that the winner of the World Cup, the European Cup or the Champions League is decided, in part, on the 60-40 flip of a coin. They would surely prefer the coin and the order that penalty kicks are taken in to be perfectly neutral.” In order to reduce the psychological impact of the kicking order, Professor Palacios-Huerta suggests a solution that mirrors what happens in a tie break in a tennis match. Here the first player (A) takes the first serve, then the second player (B) serves twice, then the first player serves twice, then player B serves twice again and so on. In a football penalty shootout, this pattern – which looks like this: ABBAABBAAB etc – would repeat until the ten penalties had been taken or the penalty shoot out has been won.
Football players knew it in their bones all along. Fans in the stands had their suspicions. Now comes Ignacio Palacios-Huerta with evidence to prove it: in a penalty shootout, the team that shoots first wins most of the time.
A
s football matches head into penalties, commercial broadcasters often cut to an advertising break, depriving the audience of the opportunity to observe a seemingly minor event: the coin toss that will determine which team shoots first. The TV producers may be doing their viewers a disservice, according to research published at LSE. The research shows that penalty shootouts give an unfair psychological advantage to the team that shoots first. Professor Ignacio Palacios-Huerta, from the Department of Management, and Jose Apesteguia, associate professor at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, studied 2,820 penalty kicks from penalty shootouts taken during major national and international competitions between 1970 and 2008. They found that the team taking the first kick wins 60 per cent of the time and that the team taking the second, 40 per cent of the time. Footballers instinctively understand the psychological advantage of taking the first penalty. Professors Palacios-Huerta and Apesteguia studied films of the penalty coin toss in 20 matches. In
6 LSE Research Magazine, Issue 3, Spring 2011
every case except one, the winner of the toss chose to take the first penalty. But this new research shows just how much evidence there is to support the hunches players learn from experience. “The coin [toss] gives a 20 per cent advantage to the team that shoots first,” says Professor Palacios-Huerta. “The psychological pressure of ‘lagging behind’ clearly affects the performance of the team that kicks second.” As an economist, Professor Palacios-Huerta is interested in how psychological factors affect the decisions and performance of people and institutions. The lessons he and Professor Apesteguia took from the football pitch are relevant elsewhere. “We face many competitive situations in life where our findings could have implications,” says Professor Palacios-Huerta. “For example, it might affect how teachers design and release information in academic competitions in schools or colleges, what policies electoral commissions put in place about the release of information about voting tendencies before an election, or how information is released in competitions for internal promotion in a company.” The research, published in the American Economic Review, is the first of its kind. The researchers
Says Professor Palacios-Huerta: “This pattern of penalty taking would greatly reduce the unfair ‘first mover’ advantage, since the second team is not always trying to play ‘catch up’ and the problem of leading or lagging would be compensated for. Not only would it be more fair, but it would also be much more entertaining for neutral fans.” What’s true in football is true in other sports. Working with Professor Julio Gonzalez-Díaz of the University of Santiago de Compostela, Professor Palacios-Huerta found the same phenomenon in chess matches where two players play a series of chess games against one another, alternating who plays with the white pieces. The player who plays with the white pieces in the first game – and so plays with the white pieces in the odd games – wins more matches than the player who plays with the white pieces in the even games. As in a football penalty shootout, the chances are about 60-40 in favour of the player who draws the white pieces in the first game. To lead is to win. “In a dynamic competitive situation when information on the performance of the competitors is released in stages while they are competing, the state of the competition clearly impacts performance – for purely psychological reasons,” says Professor Palacios-Huerta. “Leading helps performance, while lagging hurts it – whether it’s a cerebral activity such as worldclass chess or a more spontaneous activity such as kicking a ball.” n
An alternative to the alternative vote 19 November 2010 The Government is being urged to revise its agenda for electoral reform by MPs and members of the Lords who seized on analysis of the topic by LSE Professor Patrick Dunleavy. Both Houses of Parliament have heard calls to adopt the “London alternative vote system” recommended by Professor Dunleavy if the UK votes to abandon the existing first-past-the-post method when a national referendum is held in May. Professor Dunleavy, from LSE’s Department of Government, argues that the London system, in which voters register their first and second choices from a list of candidates, is best suited to Britain because it ensures the election of a candidate with substantial local support. The so-called Australian system of AV, which would be adopted as things stand, asks voters to rank all candidates in order of their preference – eliminating the least popular in successive rounds of voting.
Better early than late 24 November 2010 A joint study by LSE and King’s College London has established that the UK government could save tens of billions of pounds by re-tooling mental health services. By providing an early-intervention service approach rather than the standard mental health care offered to patients with psychosis, the UK could save £40 million per year in the short term, £33 million in the medium term and £18 million in the long term, according to the research.
The problem with the proposed system, says Professor Dunleavy, is that it may allow the candidate who is only third, fourth or even fifthmost popular to win an election. This, he said in evidence to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee of the Commons, means that “there will be a continuing problem of fewer and fewer MPs having local majority support, and that is very unlikely to go away”.
The research project was conducted by LSE’s Professor Martin Knapp, director of the Personal Social Services Research Unit (PSSRU) and the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) School for Social Care Research, along with Professor Paul McCrone from the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London and A-La Park of PSSRU. The early-intervention approach, according to the research, is especially effective in reducing suicide and unemployment. Apart from improving speed of access and reducing traumatic hospitalisation in crisis, this approach aims to reduce disruption in other areas of patients’ lives; maintain them in employment, education or training as appropriate; improve access to treatments; and work with the whole family to reduce the burden for carers.
Language lessons from the BNP 10 December 2010 The British National Party has attempted to boost its legitimacy by downplaying the issue of race, according to research from LSE. Daphne Halikiopoulou of LSE’s Department of Government and Sofia Vasilopoulou of LSE’s European Institute analysed BNP manifestos from before and after 1999, the year Nick Griffin took over the party’s leadership and began a reform agenda. Their research showed that the BNP, while maintaining its anti-immigration stance, has shifted its language from emphasising a nationalism based on race to putting the accent on British values and institutions. The researchers argue that this is an attempt to
replicate the success of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and its more inclusive, non-racist, idea of British nationality with “common citizenship and shared values”.
The BNP has shifted its language from emphasising a nationalism based on race to putting the accent on British values and institutions Spring 2011, Issue 3, LSE Research Magazine 7
The study focused on the line between Cologne and Frankfurt, which opened in 2002 and runs trains at almost 185mph (300kmh)
Fighting the fire next time 12 November 2010 Politicians and policymakers should avoid overreacting to the current financial crisis and instead focus on preventing the next one, according to a book published by LSE London, London: coping with austerity – a review of housing, planning and public policy issues in 2010. In one chapter, Mark Boleat, deputy chairman of the Policy and Resources Committee of the City of London Corporation, warns that, in order to retain London’s status as one of the world’s pre-eminent financial centres, the government must avoid introducing a regulatory regime that is tougher than what exists in other important global financial centres. “The more onerous regulation is, and the higher the capital requirements,” writes Boleat, “the less competitive financial services will be, the less they are able to lend, and the higher the cost of their financial product.”
More bang for your buck? High-speed rail delivers economic growth 13 September 2010 High-speed rail lines bring clear and significant economic benefits to the communities they serve, according to the first in-depth statistical study of the subject by the economists Gabriel Ahlfeldt of LSE and Arne Feddersen of the University of Hamburg. The study discovered that towns connected to a new high-speed line saw their GDP rise by at least 2.7 per cent compared to neighbours not on the route. The study also found that increased market access through high-speed rail has a direct correlation to a rise in GDP: for each 1 per cent increase in market access, there is a 0.25 per cent rise in GDP.
8 LSE Research Magazine, Issue 3, Spring 2011
The report, From Periphery to Core: economic adjustments to high speed rail, seems to support arguments for high-speed networks which are already being planned in the UK, the US and around the world. Until now, the authors maintain, no one has demonstrated that high-speed rail brings clear economic gains along its routes. Their research focused on the line between Cologne and Frankfurt, which opened in 2002 and runs trains at almost 185mph (300kmh). The authors looked at the prosperity and growth of two towns with stations on the new line – Limburg and Montabaur – and compared them with more than 3,000 other municipalities in the surrounding regions.
1 November 2010 A report on the future of the UK’s foreign policy asserts that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office offers the best means of upholding the nation’s declining global influence and should not be starved of resources. The authors, including Sir Malcolm Rifkind, Lord Powell of Bayswater, and Sir Jeremy Greenstock, argue that it is crucial to invest in Britain’s diplomatic power in order to strengthen its interests abroad. The authors also suggest that in an increasingly globalised and complex world, money spent on the work of the FCO might be better spent than money going to defence and overseas aid and development. The report, The Future of UK Foreign Policy, was published by the international affairs think tank LSE IDEAS. Its other authors are Sir Mark Allen, Sir Rodric Braithwaite and Sir Richard Mottram.
RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS
Kashmirshire Some acts of political violence in the UK are too simplistically blamed on al-Qaeda. Chetan Bhatt’s research shows many plots can be traced to Pakistani militias in Kashmir, writes senior press officer Joanna Bale.
T
he Himalayan region of Kashmir has been fought over by India and Pakistan for more than 60 years, with each controlling a portion and both claiming it in full. More than 100 people have died in pro-independence demonstrations in the Kashmir Valley in the past few months and tensions continue to simmer. Yet it remains, to most of us, a largely forgotten conflict in a remote part of the world. It could, however, be of vital importance in understanding anti-civilian attacks and plots in the UK, according to Chetan Bhatt, director of the Centre for the Study of Human Rights at LSE. He points out that virtually every major plot or operation targeting civilians in the UK is associated with paramilitary training by Pakistani militias operating in Kashmir.
In an article published in the journal Ethnic and Racial Studies, Professor Bhatt explores the background of Dhiren Barot, often described as the most significant al-Qaeda figure captured in the UK. He was born in India in 1971 and grew up in a cul-de-sac near the centre of Kingsbury, a north-west London suburb. In the early 1990s, he converted from Hinduism to Islam, though
whether he adopted a religion or embraced a political ideology is open to debate. In 1995 he went to a terrorist training camp in Kashmir where he was instructed in the use of weapons and explosives. In 2006, he pleaded guilty to planning a series of attacks targeting civilians in London using limousines filled with explosive fuels. Currently, he is a Category A high-risk prisoner on a 30-year sentence without parole. His treatise about his experiences as a fighter for a militia active in Kashmir was published by a Birmingham bookshop and is widely circulated in the UK. He openly calls his plans “terrorist” and describes the Madrid public transport bombings and the death of 191 commuters as a “respectable” operation. As early as 1999, before the invasion of Iraq and the 9/11 attacks, Barot was promoting terrorist operations in western countries. In the late 1990s he and others regarded Taliban Afghanistan as a near perfect state and society, and an ideal base for military training that had to be protected from western interference. Hence, the attention of key western countries had to be deflected away from Afghanistan through operations undertaken on their soil. Most experts believe that Barot and others are influenced by a global terrorist network which penetrates diasporas in
the West. Professor Bhatt disputes this view and cautions against generalisations about global terrorism and global terror networks. He argues against the common view that it is simply the impact of Salafism or Salafi jihadi ideology in South Asia that has generated these violent tendencies. Rather, he argues, it is important to take note of the political potency of the Kashmir dispute for UK citizens whose parents or grandparents may have come from South Asia. Direct links with al-Qaeda have been regularly alleged in many major attacks and plots, including the 7 July 2005 London bombings and the Glasgow International Airport attack in 2007. However, the actual “al-Qaeda link” is often a figure from a Pakistani militia operating in Kashmir rather than anything to do with a global terror network, according to Professor Bhatt. There is a consistent pattern of association between operations in the UK and training by powerful militia “families” in Kashmir, says Professor Bhatt. These include the Harakat-ul Mujahideen, Jaish-e Mohammad and Lashkar-e Tayyiba. These, together with extremely violent organisations like the Sipah-e Sahaba, often have strong political support and operate relatively freely, often as welfare fronts under different names. Professor Bhatt explains: “Evidence for the training of British citizens by Pakistani militias operating in Kashmir is consistent. Militias largely created and partially managed by the Pakistani secret state, supposedly to fight in Kashmir, have been a driving force in relation to major attacks and plots seen in the UK. Some of those same militias, now allied with new militant movements, have also wreaked havoc and destruction in Pakistan’s major cities through vicious attacks on civilians and minorities.” Dhiren Barot’s writings eulogise the Lashkar-e Tayyiba, which is the most powerful militia operating in Kashmir and is responsible for the coordinated bombings and shootings that killed nearly 170 civilians in Mumbai in 2008. He also speaks highly of the Harakatul Ansar, Harakatul Mujahideen and Al-Badr militias which also operate there. “The recent Wikileaks revelations have confirmed the role of Pakistan in continuing to support and maintain militias such as the Laskhar-e Tayyiba despite their involvement in mass violence against civilians in various countries.”
© GETTY
Instead of invoking carelessly the spectre of “global terror”, Professor Bhatt urges specificity in a dynamic and fast-changing situation. n
Spring 2011, Issue 3, LSE Research Magazine 9
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One country’s fiscal nudge is another country’s fiscal dud. In a piece of seminal research, Ethan Ilzetzki and two colleagues from the University of Maryland shine a light on the key interaction between monetary policy and fiscal stimulus. LSE Research editor Stryker McGuire reports.
W
hen the 2008 financial crisis hit the world, the world hit back. Policymakers around the globe responded rapidly and aggressively to the most significant financial crisis the world had experienced in close to a century. Central banks slashed interest rates, which fell to close to zero in industrialised countries. They unleashed a barrage of unconventional monetary policies – “quantitative easing” in the United Kingdom, “credit easing” in the US, “swap” transactions between the United States Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank. In the rush to fix things, there was a tendency to look for big, broad solutions, for one-size-fits-all strategies that would give the impression that our leaders, on whose watch the chaos had struck, were at least now in charge of events. Of course, it was never going to be easy, if only because a crisis born of almost unimaginable complexity was never going to submit to broadbrush countermeasures. In the wake of the first
10 LSE Research Magazine, Issue 3, Spring 2011
wave of the crisis (for the crisis is still very much with us), economists have been wheeling out powerful statistical tools to gauge whether – and, equally important, where – measures taken by policymakers worked or didn’t work. In a groundbreaking piece of research, for example, Ethan Ilzetzki of LSE’s Centre for Economic Performance and Enrique Mendoza and Carlos Vegh of the University of Maryland focused on the varying effects of fiscal stimulus programmes using data from 44 countries. The idea behind fiscal stimulus is to boost demand and nudge economies out of recession. One of the first acts of the newly elected Obama administration in February 2009 was to pass a $787 billion stimulus package through the US Congress. Most recently, in December, President Obama passed, with bi-partisan support, a bill prolonging both the previous Bush administration’s tax cuts and his own administration’s extension of unemployment benefits. Obama justified these measures as an additional attempt to stimulate economic activity. In the developing world, governments
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made similar attempts; the Chilean government, for example, increased its expenditure by close to 3 per cent of GDP. The UK pursued similar policies, but more recently, under the Coalition Government in place since last May, has put more of an emphasis on fiscal austerity, with some ministries facing budget cuts in excess of 25 per cent over the next several years. Austerity has also been the response favoured by eurozone governments. Most recently, the Irish government, facing a loss in market confidence for its sovereign debt, took measures to increase public savings by more than 3 per cent of GDP. Policy advice by economists on the relative merits of economic stimulus and austerity has been divided. In a January 2009 piece in the Wall Street Journal, the Harvard economist Robert Barro argued that the peacetime “fiscal multiplier” – the dollar increase in GDP caused by a one dollar increase in government spending – is essentially zero. At the other extreme, Christina Romer, when she was chair of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, used multipliers as high as 1.6 in estimating the job gains generated by the 2009 fiscal stimulus package. In the UK, in duelling letters to The Times and the Financial Times, professors from LSE and other universities were similarly divided on whether immediate action was required to reduce fiscal deficits or whether fiscal consolidation would deepen the UK’s recession. Why so much disagreement? One reason is that the evidence of the effects of fiscal policy on economic activity is limited and often conflicting. One of the biggest hurdles to obtaining precise and consistent estimates of fiscal multipliers has been the limited availability
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21 22 92.3 23 0.776 36 24 11 25 256 594 210 300 297
26 27 28 29 30 31 33 34 35 36 37 38
0.0004 13 0.06 20 0.06 2011 1485.5 2220 21151 92.3 29 0.75 9 11 25 34 11 66 2112 22256 22 19 34 2220 25 11 93 0.75 26 91.25 383320 1933.746 6.35 0.06 0.0004 24 22 0.776 33 221122 15 21 33.746 14512 2220 4162 0.776 8 22 12 56 13 16 1.25 35 1.25 21 76 11 1.25 23 23594 30 3 222012 33.746 76 256 2220 30 10 34 27 92.3 44.98 256 10 25 25 5 36 54 666 34 12 0.06 2213 16215 9 14 13 13 23173 30 36 22 20 76 594 0.0615 11 31 76 23 2 92.3 35 28 11 4 23 0.7512 33.3 3124 20 210 0.06 17 35 11 0.75 6 0.06 33.746 4 36 0.776 33.746 1024 14 560.776 1 67 16711 2314 17 18 594 222220 24 31 24 15111.987 23 37 34 210 36 29 36 0.75 25 256 15 726 36 7 12 24236 12 212220 1211 33.746 76 2 519 17 36 1233.746 2415 18 2 24 33 300 80 38 0.75 251610.5 300 37 11 21 26 25 5 11 92.3 594 210 37 25 76 2524 3 2220 5 18 33 25 27 0.75 13 22 92.3 12 16 11 97 25 2516 0.776 34 297 2220188 210 92.3 7 4 76 33 171485.5 38 30 2220 256 38 19 12 28 6 256 34 22 297 13 12 2568 27 620 14 23 0.776 56176 92.3 976 300 36 199 300 1317 111 35 0.776 31 594 34 180.0004 28 192592.3 7 26 36 76 9 7 14 18 0.776 35 594 0 29 9 1 24 721 11 0.75 2 18 26 36 36 15 10 0.75 36 26 210 1.25 29 26 594 297 14 0.776 35 92.3 297 13 11 15 19 19 5 3627 23 37 16 210 111 102 2722 26 25 256 92.320 12 11 2220 11 33 300 0.06 11 92.3 726198 27268 0.776 36 8 20 25636 2220 1627 300113 23 0.776 87 3728 24 38 15 30 27 594 2566 0.776 17 210 256 34 297 30 28 9 12 66 28279 37 36 21 594 2033.74628 36 1728 20 13297 92.3 927 9 120 24 5947 38 29 8 210 76 31 4 594 18 21 93 12 35 6.35 76 12 11 22 13 1621 876.35 31 292510300 11 29 210 36 25 2820 221 21011 11 182921 38 0.776 29 300 111 10 2810 210 256 36 44.98 0.75 11 1919 26256 13 9 11297297 300256 594 2314 2921 3 29300 22 54 8 44.98 22 0.75 36 22 93 17 300 297 30 37 33.3 2220 256 33 33.3 27594 132211 22 145 33 30 297 15 23 67 9 210 24 2220 11 30 12 6.35 30 297302376 23 38 20 111.987 31 54111.987 124 31 1110594 34 28210 156 34 10 594 300 2516 1824 80 13 20 24 76 87 26 30 3023 23 256 31 44.98 31 31 10.5 297 13 12 210 14 21 67 167 35 11 21 92.3 24 29300 25 35 10.5 27 17 92.3 594 3124 5 3331 11300 33.3 6.35 93 210 25 19 936 1485.5 1485.5 297 14 24 12 33 15 22 22 17 36 12 28 44.98 18 80 210 33 111.987 25 13 0.0004 92.3 37 33 16 0.776 2534 30 300 33.3 54 156 3433 13297 0.776 34 92.3 2333 0.0004 37 8 29 23 0 18 10.5 300 19 26 1.25 33 25 0.776 9 1.25 38 34 111.987 17 2434 26 38 67 167 35341414 35 0.776 13 36 9 24 31 19 35 36 1485.5 297 0.06 297 10.527 2027 120 0.06 36 34 353018 253526 17 36351515 36 36 1485.5 36 10 0.0004 25 80 6.35 33.746 14 2820 2111 11 3526 8 3736 16 19 36 2711 37 28 66 33.746 0.0004 36 31 37 11 12 18 1.25 11 44.98 256 33 20 12 93627 38371617 21 1.2529 29 11 12 37 28 37 15 256 38 0.06 38 256 199 33.3 594 0.75 0.06 22 34 2112 22256660.75 20 263829 594 03728 10 381718 33 38 33.746 33.746 2220 111.987 210 26 35 2213 16 594 21 11 23 594 27 30 29 19 2220 30 210 38 34 12 23 12 12 2011 76 300 10.5 27 36 22 0.7531 28 210 31 76 2314 17 300 24 35 18 0.75 30 210 2415 3623 297 1485.5 2220 66302112 24 28 37 29 20 297 25 2220 76 316.35 0.0004 24 300 33 29 38 6.35 11312213 1921 2516 18 37 76 33 25300 92.3 44.98 1.25 25 2314 30 34 22 92.317 19 44.98 38 34 297 0.776 33.3 297 33 0.06 92.3 31 35 23 0.776 33.3 2415 18 30 36 33 0.776 3526 33.746 34111.987 36 36 111.987 31 2516 2024 19 92.3 36 26 11 34 3627 1233 3510.5 26 37 11 10.5 11 17 2125 27 2027 0.776 256 1485.5 28 35 0.75 256 37 34 38 256 1485.5 36 18 594 0.0004 33 2820 2128 36 594 38 29 2220 36 22 35 37 594 0.0004 11 210 2619 210 34 29 7636 381.25 37 26 2102921 1.25 300 256 2327 0.06 300 0.06 27 3537 300 22 22 297 30 38 594 297 33.746 2820 2428 30 2973023 23 33.746 3638 31 210 12 2921 31 29 92.3 37 12 3124 300 0.75 22 25 0.75 0.776 25 24 38 297 33 2220 33 30 2220 3023 36 33 2534 34 76 31 76 11 3124 34 35 35 256 25 3526 36 36 33 594 33 27 92.3 36 • the output effect of an increase in of Most studies in this area have relied 37 37 34data.92.3 210 34 0.776 28 37 38is larger in 38government consumption 35 evidence 0.776from a300 on small number of countries, 36 3526 3829 36 36the US. 297 industrial than in developing countries; typically What evidence does exist 11 3627 37 11 from other sources shows a very wide range 256 3728 30 38 256 594 • the fiscal multiplier of effects 3829 594across time and countries. That’s 31is relatively large 210
30 31 33 34 35 36 37 38
why Dr 210 Ilzetzki and his colleagues decided to 300 300 broader and deeper data. “Rather seek better, 297 297 than adding yet another estimate of the effects of fiscal stimulus to an already confusing list of conflicting evidence,” said Dr Ilzetzki, “we tried to contribute to the discussion by using international data to ask where and when fiscal stimulus is likely to be effective.”
Until recently, most countries reported fiscal data on a quarterly basis, but they didn’t collect data quarterly; instead, they used statistical methods to estimate quarterly patterns. Fortunately, improvements in data collection encouraged by the International Monetary Fund and Eurostat have now made such data available. Dr Ilzetzki and Professors Mendoza and Vegh worked with the statistical agencies and finance ministries of a number of developing and high-income countries in order to ensure that the data used in their sample of 44 countries was reliably collected on a quarterly basis. What they found was that the impact of government expenditure shocks depends crucially on key country characteristics, such as the level of development, the exchange-rate regime, the country’s openness to trade, and public indebtedness. Specifically:
7 210 13 6.35 44.98 0.0004 300 34 33.3 8 111.987 1.25 25 10.5 9 297 10 0.0656 1485.5 0.0004 11 2 1.25 33.746 12For example, in a 2004 study, the 0.06 studies. 33.746 13 12 7 Italian economist Roberto Perotti estimated 12 0.75the14 0.759 that government expenditure multiplier in 2220 15 111the 76 UK declined from 0.1 in 1960-79 to minus 2220 16 13 in 1980-2001. “The significant decline 17 76 871.2 in92.3 the expansionary power of government
in economies operating under fixed exchange rates but 33zero in economies 34 operating under flexible exchange rates; 35
• fiscal multipliers in36open economies are 37 economies; and lower than in closed 38
• fiscal multipliers in high-debt countries are zero. A key finding has to do with the role of a country’s exchange rate regime in determining the fiscal multiplier effect of stimulus programmes. The long-run fiscal multiplier is large (approximately 1.5) in countries with fixed exchange rates; in contrast, in countries with flexible exchange arrangements, the long-run multiplier is essentially zero. The researchers came up with a similar result when they compared countries where trade comprises only a small part of overall economic activity (long-run fiscal multiplier: 1.4) and those highly exposed to international trade (long-run fiscal multiplier: approximately zero). As Dr Ilzetzki explains, these findings may help to explain the significant differences in the effects of fiscal policy across countries and time periods that had been found in earlier
The evidence of the effects of fiscal policy on economic activity is limited and often conflicting
18
0.776 93 purchases 19 in the UK may be explained by the 36 11 that the pound was pegged to the US 54 fact 256 120 the early 1970s, but allowed to float 594 until 92.367 dollar 2 210 freely thereafter,” says Dr Ilzetzki. “Moreover, 80 300 21 0.776 22 13 297 trade has played an increasing 9 international 23 36 0 role in34 the UK’s economic activity, with the 24 trade to GDP almost doubling since 11 12 ratio of25 25 256661960.”56 2 59411 Similarly, 726the data analysed by Dr Ilzetzki and 210 Professors 927 Mendoza and Vegh shines a light on 28 between monetary policy and 300 the interaction 111 29 fiscal stimulus. They found that central banks 297 13 committed to maintaining a stable exchange 87 30 rate tend to lower interest rates (by an average 31 93 of 125 basis points) in response to every 1 per 54 cent of 33 GDP rise in government consumption during 67 the 34 two years following a fiscal stimulus. 80 Conversely, 35 central banks with other aims (such 936 as an inflation target) increase interest rates (by an037 average of 60 basis points); they do 38 12 so presumably to counteract the inflationary pressures 66 caused by the fiscal expansion, but with the 11side effect of potentially negating the
effects of stimulus altogether.
These findings, says Dr Ilzetzki, have important implications for policymakers. “The interaction between fiscal and monetary policy is a crucial determinant of the effects of fiscal stimulus,” he says. “For example, it is vital to consider the reaction of the Bank of England in assessing the potential economic fallout from the UK government’s current austerity measures. If the Bank of England is capable and willing to respond to the Treasury’s actions by maintaining low interest rates and continuing unconventional expansionary monetary policies, our estimates imply that they may be able to significantly mitigate the costs of fiscal austerity.” Ireland, because it is part of the eurozone and cannot pursue an independent monetary policy, is in a much tougher bind, says Dr Ilzetzki: “Based on our study, I estimate that the cost of austerity measures pursued there could lower GDP by as much as 4 per cent in the upcoming five years.” n
Ethan Ilzetzki
is a lecturer in the Department of Economics and an associate at LSE’s Centre for Economic Performance. His research focuses on macroeconomics and fiscal policy as well as the effect of political influences on the conduct of fiscal policy. He has held policy, research and advisory positions at the International Monetary Fund, the US Treasury Department, the US Federal Reserve, the World Bank, and the Millennium Challenge Corporation.
Spring 2011, Issue 3, LSE Research Magazine 11
CULTURE
Museum-goers expect to see the dead on display, but a misplaced respect-for-the-dead movement is changing that. Tiffany Jenkins says curators are removing or covering human remains or erecting warning signs around them.
V
isitors to Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery are finding it difficult to locate the collection of ancient human remains. The institution recently changed their policy on such exhibits, including those in the Egyptian galleries. The previous arrangement presented mummies in their open coffins. Now, their display is only permitted with the lids semi-closed, which, curators say, is more respectful. Around the corner you can see a photograph of an unwrapped mummy, but only if you press a button to light up the picture, as it is encased in darkness. Nearby is a skeleton of a young man who lived in Britain thousands of years ago, in the Bronze Age. Museum curators only decided to display him, after careful consideration, because he is a very rare skeleton from this time. A label, in front of the case warns: “This display contains human remains.” Respect for the dead is one thing, but this new and cautionary approach, which veils ancient human remains, is significant because it is taking place in the absence of public demand for it. Audiences expect to see old skeletons on display. And yet, certain members of the museum sector are increasingly uncomfortable about displaying them. Instead, they are covering them, removing them, or erecting warning signs around them. The sensitivity about the display of ancient remains in Bristol is not an isolated case. Over the last 30 years, human remains in museum collections around the world have become the focus of various campaigns. The issue began to become contentious in North America and Australasia in the 1980s. From a regional problem affecting local
12 LSE Research Magazine, Issue 3, Spring 2011
archaeologists, indigenous groups and museums, it developed into an international concern involving major institutions and governments. Indigenous groups, archaeologists and anthropologists campaigned for the repatriation of human remains to culturally affiliated groups as a way of making reparations for historical wrongs and as an opportunity for these groups to write their own histories. The controversy over human remains in collections in Britain became prominent a decade later. After high-profile campaigns, and despite fierce opposition from those who use remains for important research, the Human Tissue Act 2004 was passed, amending the 1963 British Museum Act. The Act permitted, and indeed encouraged, the removal of human remains from specific – and previously resistant – institutions, including the British Museum and the Natural History Museum. The decisions to repatriate human remains are significant. Museums do not usually de-accession artefacts or human remains. There are legal barriers to, and a general presumption against, doing this. What is more, human remains are highly valuable research material and sometimes unique. Scientists study them to chart human origins and population diversity and distribution, as well as to study the past environments in which people lived. Their removal – and often subsequent destruction – challenges the foundational purpose of the museum as an institution designed to develop and diffuse knowledge. The emergence of the issue in Britain is different from elsewhere in two important respects. First, there was significantly weaker external pressure on institutions compared with Australasia, America
and Canada, which responded to claims for repatriation from indigenous groups. A scoping survey conducted in 2003 for the governmentappointed Human Remains Working Group, characterises claims from overseas indigenous groups on institutions as low, finding only 33 requests to English institutions, seven of which had already been agreed to and some of which were repeat claims. Second, while elsewhere the focus of campaigns has been on human remains associated with indigenous groups who suffered under colonisation, museum professionals in Britain extended the problem by arguing that all human remains require special attention. Theorists argue that museums become sites of controversy as a result of a number of social changes external to the institution. Arguments over human remains and cultural property are usually analysed as the result of pressure from indigenous movements on resistant professionals. My research suggests that the dynamic that warrants further attention, in the elevation of this issue, is an internal one. One of the most important observations about the controversies over human remains is that campaigns have been waged less by social movements external to the institution, as it is frequently characterised, than by insiders. Senior curators, directors and policymakers within the sector have been instrumental in raising various manifestations of the holding, display and treatment of human remains as a problem. This is highly unusual. These professionals were once gatekeepers, guarding and protecting the collection, defending their position. So why are they dismantling it from within? I argue that the campaigning museum professionals, in promoting this issue, are responding to a crisis of cultural authority and attempting to secure new legitimacy by distancing themselves from a discredited foundational remit. Museums have wielded considerable cultural authority, which frames and affirms the pursuit of truth and defines what is culturally significant. These institutions play a role in affirming ideas about the collection and organisation of knowledge, for reasons that are historically constituted. With the Enlightenment, ideas developed about the absolute character of knowledge, discoverable by the methods of rationalism and its universal applicability, which informed the purpose of the museum and the rationale for the display of artefacts. In the last 40 years, the justification of museum institutions has undergone criticism and scrutiny
PICTURE BY PERMISSION OF THE MISTRESS AND FELLOWS, GIRTON COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
which have contributed to a crisis of cultural authority, as those foundational principles were undermined. In addition to the constraints and pressures arising from the operations of the market, the central tenets of the Enlightenment, which informed the remit in the 18th and 19th century, have been called into question. Whilst there was always hostility towards the principles of this period, a number of intellectual trends since the late 1960s have consolidated this critical outlook, challenging the truth claims and the idea of the museum as a distinct realm removed from social and political forces. Postmodernism, cultural theory and postcolonial theory have variously raised questions about the traditional justifications of the museum as an institution. As these theories gathered strength, culture and science came to be viewed not as universal or objective, but as a damaging reflection of the prejudices of European cultures. Anthropologists, archaeologists and museum professionals, initially from North America and Australia, were the key drivers behind the problem of indigenous human remains. Their role at the forefront of this is well illustrated by following the emergence of the problem at the World Archaeological Congress, a non-governmental organisation. Anthropologist Peter Ucko organised the first Congress in Southampton, England, in 1986. At the time, the concern about the treatment of the human remains of indigenous groups began to emerge as a problem, raised by indigenous activists and American and Australian academics and professionals. Subsequently the
Steering Committee promoted the issue to the museum community in Britain, arranging meetings for museum professionals with overseas claimant groups. The main activists have been professionals who have campaigned within the wider museum community. Many are searching for a new mission, and the old way – researching the past and presenting that research to the public – is no longer considered valuable, indeed it is seen as potentially damaging. Human remains have become a highly charged focal point for the debate. Their treatment can be used to signal a repositioning of the museum away from its foundational role and towards a new role wherein the museum attempts to regain legitimacy by being socially relevant. In this way, questions over the ownership of human remains are lightning rods for a wider, internal debate over the purpose of the museum. It is worth pointing out that the public does not manifest the same sensitivity as some museum professionals when it comes to human remains, despite the attempts by activists to suggest that this is the case. All surveys I have come across demonstrate that most people expect and want to see human remains on show in museums. An opinion poll of 1,000 people commissioned by English Heritage in 2010 found that around 90 per cent said they were comfortable with keeping prehistoric human remains in museums.
three Egyptian mummies on display at Manchester Museum were covered with a white sheet in the name of respect. Without being requested to do so by present-day Egyptians, or the public, with whom the display is popular, professionals at the institution took it upon themselves to place a sheet over the unwrapped mummy of Asru, partially-wrapped Khary, and a child mummy. It was only after protests from local audiences and the media that the museum uncovered the mummies, though it also stated that it wished to continue a conversation about how to respect the human remains. Seventeen museums in the UK have since drafted policies on human remains, with most advocating that signs be erected to warn visitors in advance. The Museum of London’s policy states: “As a general principle skeletons will not be on ‘open display’ but located in such a way as to provide them with some ‘privacy’.” It also states: “The Museum will normally not allow its holdings of human remains to be photographed or filmed for external media purposes.” This is significant for several reasons. Professionals are taking it upon themselves to remove and hide their exhibits, which threatens research and public access. Furthermore, they are dismantling from within the purpose of the institution: to research and display important artefacts and human remains. In the process, museums have lost their way. As cultural institutions, they no longer consistently hold up the values and sense of purpose integral to their formation in the 18th and 19th centuries. There has been a profound questioning of the purpose and remit of museums generally by influential members of the profession who no longer pursue the development and diffusion of knowledge as a core mission. n
Tiffany Jenkins
is a visiting fellow in the Department of Law, researching conflicts over cultural property, focusing on repatriation issues. Her work explores contested authority in the cultural sector and concepts of cultural value. Dr Jenkins’s monograph – Contesting Human Remains in Museum Collections: the crisis of cultural authority – is published by Routledge. She blogs on http://tiffanyjenkinsinfo.wordpress.com.
That hasn’t stopped activists within the profession from carrying on in their campaign. In May 2008,
Spring 2011, Issue 3, LSE Research Magazine 13
RELIGION
SUBVERTING
ISLAM
There is a crisis of authority in the Muslim world, says Alia Brahimi, and the architects of global jihad have taken advantage of it to devastating effect. In the end, however, the fallout will be al-Qaeda’s undoing.
S
econds after smiling at her local MP and shaking his hand, Roshonara Choudhry plunged a knife into his stomach. The attack on Stephen Timms last May was not the most high-profile assault inspired by al-Qaeda, nor was it fatal. It did, however, offer a commentary on an important dynamic underlying the global jihad – the question of legitimate authority, where it comes from and who owes allegiance to it. According to her police interview, Choudhry realised she had an obligation to join in the jihad, even as a woman, after viewing a lecture by Abdullah Azzam on YouTube. A theologian of Palestinian origin, Azzam was bin Laden’s mentor until his death in 1989 and his brother-in-arms during the jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Choudhry was especially drawn in by Azzam’s explanation of how jihad becomes obligatory for every Muslim when Muslim lands are attacked. Azzam argues that if Muslims native to those lands are not able to expel their attackers, the obligation spreads in the shape of a circle from the nearest to the next nearest Muslims. This process continues until jihad becomes an individual duty for Muslims anywhere and everywhere. The Roshonara Choudhry case shows how modern jihadism has re-invented one of the most important Islamic legal ideas. Al-Qaeda’s leaders are eager to portray the concept of jihad as a popular uprising by individual Muslims. However, historically, the idea was for Muslim rulers in neighbouring provinces to come to the aid of their co-religionists in other parts of the empire. The
14 LSE Research Magazine, Issue 3, Spring 2011
assumption was always that all jihad, including defensive jihads conferring an individual duty, would be led by established Muslim leaders within clearly defined communities. The architects of global jihad today, however, reach out to Muslims as individuals, rather than as members of politically organised communities; hence lone-wolf attacks like Choudhry’s. This subversion of established patterns of authority is distinctive to modern radicalism, and it is also part of a larger crisis of authority in the Muslim world. This crisis of authority is the product of three main developments. Firstly, the abolition of the caliphate in 1924 left the Muslim world without a vestige of centralised leadership. The repudiation of the caliphate by the secular Turkish government marked the culmination of a period of Islamic imperial decline that had begun in the 17th century. At the same time, the European powers made their thrusts into Muslim regions – partly a cause and partly an effect of the empire’s dwindling fortunes. The absence of a caliphate, of a political umbrella sheltering Muslim communities around the world, was especially keenly felt during the era of colonialism, with its perceived onslaught on indigenous cultures and religions. Secondly, the conservative Islamic religious establishment, the ulema, has either been coopted or marginalised by regimes presiding over Muslim-majority countries. This was possible largely because the ulema had no independent sources of income. From Abdurahman’s Afghanistan to
Gaddafi’s Libya, rulers have dramatically weakened the ulema, usurping control over religious endowments (awqaf) in a deliberate policy to render them dependent upon state patronage. In Saudi Arabia, the Wahhabi religious establishment has been virtually indistinguishable from the alSaud dynasty. Because religion remains the primary potential challenger to both the legitimacy and the loyalty of many ruling governments, the imperatives of regime survival have often militated against the cultivation of an autonomous and empowered religious establishment. Thirdly, and as a consequence of the weakening of the ulema, laymen have increasingly taken it upon themselves to interpret Islamic sources such as the Quran. Indeed, the most influential “Islamic” texts of the last century have been penned by intellectuals who have not completed formal theological training. From Sayyed Qutb to Osama bin Laden to Anwar al-Awlaki, the ideologues of radical jihadism are almost all autodidacts. Just as this democratisation of interpretation was helped along in the 20th century by mass education and broader access to the printed word, in the 21st century it is made increasingly possible and prolific by the internet. The culmination of this crisis of authority is represented by the fact that a layman like bin Laden presumes to lead a jihad on behalf of the Muslim world. Moreover, and further fragmenting authority structures, he exhorts individuals like Choudhry to make war against other individuals as part of a jihad that is at once universal and highly particularised. The US-born, Yemen-based Anwar al-Awlaki captured well the extremes of this process of democratisation when he stated on 8 November that no fatwa or prior consultation with Islamic experts was necessary to “fight and kill Americans.” But what of Choudhry’s chosen target? Here, forms of democracy again become relevant. Stephen Timms was selected because he had voted in favour of the Iraq war in Parliament. “He was directly involved in the declaration of war,” she remarked under police interrogation, “and he’d committed a crime”. The weaponisation of a democratic institution such as voting is increasingly common across the ideological landscape of the global jihad. Indeed, it is one of the main ways in which Osama bin Laden justifies the deliberate targeting of western civilians. Because of taxation and popular representation, the citizens of western countries are directly involved in the wars waged by their governments and so are directly engaged in harming the umma (the whole worldwide Islamic
community of believers). Wielding the vote, we are all effectively combatants, therefore targeting us is legitimate. This current state of affairs flies in the face of centuries of Islamic thinking on the laws of war which have provided an absolute ban on deliberately targeting unarmed civilians. It also goes against the Quran’s clear rejection of the notion of collective responsibility, as contained in the verse “no bearer of burdens can bear the burden of another” (17:15). As with many of the most worrying and permissive developments in the jihad tradition that have emerged in recent decades, this erosion of the non-combatant immunity principle began in the context of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Defending the legitimacy of suicide bombings against Israeli civilians, respected jurists such as Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi and Sheikh Ali Gum’a argued (controversially) that Israeli society in its entirety is militarised. Osama bin Laden has extended this line of argument to apply to vast swathes of the western world. His attempt lacks the urgency that is commonly perceived to attach to the situation in Palestine, but more than anything, considering that the majority of al-Qaeda’s victims are in fact Muslim civilians, bin Laden’s argument about democracy conferring culpability becomes meaningless. The average Iraqi, Afghan or Pakistani, for example, does not directly vote for and pay taxes to a government that commits massacres against the umma. In fact, many Muslims live under the sorts of regimes which bin Laden himself decries for being corrupt, unrepresentative and illegitimate. Bin Laden’s other justifications for targeting civilians also ring hollow when considered in light of the reality on the ground. His oft-heard argument about “reciprocity” – the US and its allies attack Muslim civilians, therefore al-Qaeda is permitted to attack western civilians – is inapplicable to cases in which al-Qaeda attacks Muslim civilians. Another jihadi argument asserts that civilians are only killed unintentionally in lawful operations conducted against legitimate targets. This claim of “accidental manslaughter” is impossible to defend, however, when bombs are detonated in crowded areas populated solely by Muslim civilians (an Iraqi marketplace, for example, or a Pakistani mosque). In such cases the Muslim civilian is the direct object of attack because he is the only object of attack.
about its proper course. Thus, as a flurry of important radicals have renounced their support for al-Qaeda since 2007, they have emphasised the group’s authority deficit. For example, Sayyed Imam al-Sharif, a former colleague of Ayman al-Zawahiri in the Egyptian Islamic Jihad group and a principal ideologue of jihadism, has made clear that “all of them are not religious scholars on whose opinion you can count. They are ordinary persons.” Bin Laden’s former mentor, the Saudi Sheikh Salman ibn Fahd alOdah, likewise dismissed his co-national as a simple man without scholarly credentials. Meanwhile, the Libyan jihadist Nu’man bin Othman, once a brother-in-arms of bin Laden in Afghanistan, wondered how it is that al-Qaeda’s leaders have established their authority Islamically. The problem is that they haven’t. Indeed, bin Laden et al eroded the authority of the religious establishment and opened up the arena, without being able to claim a monopoly over it themselves. The global yet individual jihad has proven very difficult to control. Choudhry’s stabbing of Stephen Timms is but one contained example of this phenomenon in which no fatalities were involved. More commonly, however, small alQaeda-related groups have wreaked havoc in the name of bin Laden’s jihad, taking the lives of thousands of Muslim civilians.
Al-Qaeda’s democratisation of Islamic authority has enabled it to rival the most asymmetric distribution of capabilities, with attacks continuing almost a decade on from 9/11 and occurring from Manila to Madrid. At the same time, however, the consequences of opening up the floodgates of Islamic interpretation have been catastrophic for the very Muslims bin Laden needed to attract to his cause. This reality, more than any counter-terrorism policy, spells al-Qaeda’s undoing. n
Alia Brahimi
is a research fellow at LSE Global Governance. Dr Brahimi is also a senior research associate at the Changing Character of War Programme, University of Oxford, and a research associate at the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict. Her research focuses on Islamist ideology and western and Islamic arguments about war. In Jihad and Just War in the War on Terror (Oxford University Press, 2010), Dr Brahimi examined, in the context of the western and Islamic “just war” traditions, the war arguments put forward by the George W Bush administration and al-Qaeda.
Bin Laden has been unwilling, but more likely unable, to control these cycles of violence. He has spoken out publicly against senseless bloodshed and irrational fanaticism. Intercepted communications have shown that he very much disapproved of the sectarian slaughter and beheadings of hostages that took place under the banner of al-Qaeda in Iraq when it was led by Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi. Indeed, for bin Laden and his close associates, popular support is crucial to the success of the global jihad. Without it, they realise, al-Qaeda will be, in the words of Ayman al-Zawahiri, “crushed in the shadows”. Accordingly, violence must not be employed wantonly, but strategically. But the controlled use of violence appears to be incompatible with the global/individual jihad, which has tended, more often than not, to involve violence for violence’s sake. For every targeted stabbing in London or booby-trapped parcel addressed to a synagogue in Chicago, dozens of suicide bombers have been unleashed on areas populated by Muslim civilians.
Scepticism about bin Laden’s authority has intensified precisely because of the grave harm which has befallen Muslims at the hands of al-Qaeda. The civilian death toll immediately calls into doubt the qualifications of alQaeda’s leaders to manage a jihad and make judgements
Spring 2011, Issue 3, LSE Research Magazine 15
CONFLICT
RETHINKING The Cold War mentality is still deeply embedded in our military and intelligence institutions, not to mention in the discourse of our political leaders. That has got to change – as more and more US and UK military officers are coming to realise, says Mary Kaldor.
We are sick of being caught in this political struggle; sick of coal-dark nights with airplanes circling above our homes; sick of innocent farmers getting shot in the buffer zone because they are taking care of their lands; sick of bearded guys walking around with guns abusing their power, beating up or incarcerating young people demonstrating for what they believe in; sick of the wall of shame that separates us from the rest of our country and keeps us imprisoned in a stamp-sized piece of land; sick of being portrayed as terrorists, home-made fanatics with explosives in our pockets and evil in our eyes; sick of the indifference of the international community, the so-called experts in expressing concerns and drafting resolutions but cowards in enforcing anything they agree on… Gaza Youth’s Manifesto for Change, January 2011
G
aza is one of the most insecure places in the world. Yet this cyber cry for help exemplifies the combination of vulnerability to conventional military attack, local thugs, and the indifference or ineffectiveness of the international community experienced by millions of people, especially youth, in many other places. Global economic crisis and climate change are likely to make this syndrome of insecurity even more intense and more contagious. Together with an American serving army officer, I have written a book about how we need a new way of thinking about and doing security in the 21st century. In The Ultimate Weapon is No Weapon: human security and the new rules of war and peace, Shannon Beebe and I argue that current security capabilities consisting largely of conventional military forces designed in the Cold War period are quite unsuited to address this syndrome of insecurity. In places like Iraq and Afghanistan and, indeed, Gaza, their use only makes things worse. The resulting security vacuum is being filled by a range of security actors – from private security contractors and NGOs to warlords, private militia, criminal gangs and militant fundamentalists of various kinds – creating a dangerous market in insecurity. My ideas and Beebe’s developed in parallel over the last two decades since the end of the Cold War. For me, the wars in the former Yugoslavia were a turning point once I realised that the use of military force is sometimes necessary to stop ethnic cleansing and genocide. At the same time, I learned, particularly after the war in Kosovo, that how force is used also matters, that air strikes and conventional war fighting can risk the lives of the very people who are supposed to be protected. Lieutenant Colonel Beebe concluded, after experiences in deployments in the Balkans and Africa, that heavy military equipment, designed for something like the Cold War, is rarely suitable for use in contemporary conflicts and that basic services like health care, water, electricity, the rule of law, or the clearance of unexploded ordnance, constitute a security need in many places. We argue for a new language of security and use the term “human security” both as a new narrative and as an implementing framework. What do we mean by human security? First, human security is about the everyday security of individuals and the communities in which they
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A human-security approach aims, above all, to prevent violence by tackling the conditions that lead to violence live, rather than the security of states and borders; it is about the security of Israelis and Palestinians, not just the security of the Israeli state or even the Palestinian Authority. Second, it is about different sorts of security, not just protection from the threat of foreign enemies. It is about not being shot at, arrested or tortured, robbed or forcibly expelled from your home – the sort of insecurity experienced in violent upheavals such as in Gaza. But it is also about the way in which this kind of insecurity is made worse if people lack jobs or enough to eat, if they cannot use their land because of unexploded ordnance, if they are vulnerable to earthquakes or forest fires, or are not able to go to a doctor if they are ill. It is about both freedom from fear and freedom from want. In a place like Gaza, young men who are unemployed or who have lost their livelihoods often have no choice but to join a criminal gang or an armed militia. The main effect of the Israeli boycott of Gaza has been to destroy legitimate businesses and increase the income from smuggling, much of which helps to finance Hamas. Finally, human security recognises the interrelatedness of security in different places. Violence and resentment, poverty and illness, in places such as Africa, Central Asia, or the Middle East, travel across the world through terrorism, transnational crime, or pandemics. The desperate situation in Gaza is exploited by Islamic militants, for example, to mobilise more young people to their cause. Instead of allowing insecurity to travel, we need to send security in the opposite direction. The kind of security that Americans and Europeans expect to enjoy at home has to spread to the rest of the world. We cannot any longer keep our parts of the world safe while ignoring other places. The world is interconnected through social media, transportation and basic human sympathy. As a narrative, human security puts the emphasis on reducing violence in the world rather than on defeating enemies. It suggests that the security of Americans or Europeans, or indeed Israelis and Palestinians, can be best safeguarded not through unilateral efforts to defend borders or particular groups but rather through a strengthening of the multilateral system and an international rule of law. External security is not about the capacity to fight future wars but rather the capacity to prevent or dampen down wars, to uphold human rights and enforce international law. A human-security approach aims, above all, to prevent violence by tackling the conditions that lead to violence. But where people are in the midst of violent upheavals, as is the case now in Afghanistan or in Gaza, it also focuses on how to dampen down the
violence rather than on how to “win”. And in the aftermath of violent upheavals, a human-security approach looks not just at reconstruction but also at preventing new outbreaks of violence, since the conditions that led to violence – weak rule of law, unemployment, criminality, surplus weapons, losses of livelihood, or extremist ideologies – are often worse after conflict than before. As an organising framework, we argue for a transformation of security capabilities from conventional military capabilities designed for warfighting to a mix of military and civilian capabilities designed to protect people and reduce violence. There is a need for military forces but used quite differently from at present – to keep people safe rather than to defeat enemies, to establish safe zones where humanitarian aid can be provided and political solutions discussed, to stabilise rather than to win. This can only be done together with police, mediators, aid workers, legal experts, health officers and so on. And we develop a set of principles for how such capabilities might be used. Many of these ideas are not new. Indeed, they resonate among military forces who have directly experienced conflicts in the Balkans, Africa and most recently in Iraq and Afghanistan. Soldiers have learned that excessive firepower in civilian areas where insurgents/terrorists/combatants are supposed to be hiding has counter-productive effects; it adds to the insecurity of the local population, causing them to turn for protection to local strongmen. The new counter-insurgency doctrine developed by US Army General David Petraeus prior to the surge in Iraq emphasised the importance of “population security” as well as military-civilian cooperation; the doctrine is spelled out in Counterinsurgency, published jointly by Department of the Army (Field Manual 3-24) and United States Marine Corps (Warfighting Publication 3-33.5) and echoed in Afghanistan by General Stanley McChrystal, who focused on stabilisation and even used the term “human security”. Both the United Nations and the European Union have been developing new crisis-management tools that include civilian protection and assistance for reconstruction and development. Statistics show that the number of armed conflicts has declined, despite Iraq and Afghanistan, and the number of casualties in conflicts has also declined, and this may be at least partly explained in terms of the ongoing learning process. But the Cold War mentality is still deeply embedded both in military and intelligence institutions and in the discourse of political leaders. Although Obama has tried to drop the term “war on terror”, he still says the primary goal is the defeat of America’s
enemies rather than the security of human beings in general. The very term “counter-insurgency” suggests that the goal is to defeat the insurgency and that population security is a means to an end rather than an end in itself. Alongside stabilisation is strategy in what the military jargon calls “kinetic action” to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaeda in particular, intelligence agencies continue their war against al-Qaeda, including a dramatic increase in long-distance drone attacks in Pakistan. Even though there have been considerable efforts to minimise civilian casualties, Afghans feel as though they are pawns in a wider global game and this affects their calculations about who is most likely to protect them. Their plight is worsened by the continued role of repressive warlords and criminals in the Karzai government, who are seen as allies in the fight against al-Qaeda. Likewise, the international community still tends to perceive the problem in the Middle East as being about the security of the Israeli state rather than the security of Israelis and Palestinians. The conflict is still often seen in the framework of the “war on terror” so that the deaths of Israeli civilians from deliberate attacks by Palestinian militants seem somehow worse than the more numerous deaths of Palestinian civilians from collateral damage. In terms of capabilities, the bulk of military spending still goes to the kind of weapons systems that were important in the Cold War – aircraft carriers, longrange missiles, nuclear weapons, strike aircraft, or heavy tanks – despite efforts to “rebalance” the budget. In the UK, the recent defence review imposed equal pain on the traditional services, and because the big systems are so expensive, this effectively meant eroding the UK’s capacity for crisis management. And in NATO’s new strategic concept, there is still a powerful role for “deterrence” and for nuclear weapons alongside a new concern with crisis management. The same, of course, is true for the Chinese and Russian military efforts. If we are to address the growing syndrome of insecurity, there needs to be a radical transformation away from the Cold War mindset. This change of mindset needs to be backed up by sufficient investment in human security capabilities so that the international community can actually act in situations like Gaza rather than appear indifferent. n
Mary Kaldor
is professor and co-director of LSE’s Centre for the Study of Global Governance. She is the author of many books, including The Ultimate Weapon is No Weapon: human security and the changing rules of war and peace (Public Affairs, 2010), New and Old Wars: organised violence in a global era (Polity, 2nd edition, 2007), and Global Civil Society: an answer to war (Polity, 2003). Professor Kaldor was a founding member of European Nuclear Disarmament and of the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly. She is also convenor of the European Commission’s Human Security Study Group.
Spring 2011, Issue 3, LSE Research Magazine 17
LAW
I unlocked quite a groundswell of hostility to libertarianism. Feder liked his references to Latin America and also many of his phrase to preserve the status quo to the detriment of the dispossesse
With a little help from the public and his family, Conor Gearty is writing a book about human rights on the web. Those rights, he says, are in the best sense political, taking their cue from the community in which they emerge and driven forward by argument, persuasion and energetic commitment.
I
t is Sunday afternoon, so movie time in our house. Except these days, it is not watching but making them. Well “movie” is a tiny exaggeration. What I have to create are two short videos to introduce various segments of my latest writing project, a collaborative book-onthe-web called The Rights’ Future. Published in weekly instalments on therightsfuture.com, it began last October with the launch of my rights Manifesto. By the time you read this, it will have ended with delivery of the finished product at LSE’s Festival of Ideas in February. And the collaborative element? The general public are helping me to write it. Back to my film-making. First off, I sign on to my discreet YouTube channel and record my video intro for the next main track essay, the 13th in my roll-out of 20 – this one on the interrelationship between religion and human rights. Last week was on business, the week before on double standards. I have “done” law and the foundations of human rights, and have, among other subjects, libertarianism (WikiLeaks), the environment and animal rights still to go. My family and I have fun doing these short videos, positioning me in different places around the house and in various poses from week to week. When I am done with talking about the new essay track, I do the second video, an intro to my reply to the comments that have come in from all and sundry on the previous week’s essay. The quality of these has been very good, and I try to capture this in a few brief words of acknowledgement and
18 LSE Research Magazine, Issue 3, Spring 2011
reflection. Every so often I also do a third video, an intro to one of my side tracks, comments off schedule on some unfolding event or great drama, but I have not got one of these to send into the ether this week. I do have a common track though. These don’t come with a video intro – they are longer and more academic on subjects like asylum, the history of human rights and the challenge of universality. This is my sixth common track, and I will aim to do two or perhaps three more before the project ends. Then we are done. I send everything to my web manager, Caroline Mockett. Caroline will later put all these essays up and embed the videos into each one at the relevant point. We aim to go live with all the new stuff at midday every Monday morning. It has been a busy writing week with three of the four kinds of writing on the project appearing in the same week: the norm is a main track and a reply with a common or side track only from time to time. But despite the work, I am still very enthusiastic about this means of communication. The difficulty is not getting material onto the web, it is in trying to calm myself down – it is the Christmas break, after all, as I write this, and I need to be less tyrannical with my reader-contributors. The project stands or falls by their engagement as much as my own. The whole process is taxing for sure, but mainly it has been a revelation. Writing for the web is different – more informal, more conversational, in some ways addictive in its easiness and simplicity. I have learnt a lot from the responses I have got; they have deepened my views and given
many of my opinions more nuance. The study of human rights is interdisciplinary so thinking about it is immensely helped by this kind of broadbased collaborative endeavour. People from all sorts of disciplines are coming in with powerful comments. I had wondered whether this would eventually work as a traditional book but now I can’t wait to write it up: the trick will be to keep the energy and spirit of the website while pushing the debate along in book form. What we are after is not a single-authored manuscript of the usual sort but an author-led collaborative writing project, producing what I hope will be readable and reflective essays which combine together to offer a lively, accessible and engaging account of its subject. And also to push its argument, to aim to convince. That I have an agenda is clear to anyone who looks at the site. Each essay is intended to argue in favour of one or other of the project’s ten Manifesto pledges (“claims” might be better). I see human rights as essentially the best way of preserving social democratic values in this dark age of global capital and addiction to high finance. To me, human rights are the best tool we currently have to realise the universal values of dignity, equality, fraternity/sorority and solidarity. I approach them in that vein, as open-textured, energetic and mobile reflections of the better part of what we as humans happen to be. It follows that I am sceptical of overcompartmentalised approaches to the subject. Human rights are composed of more than the narrow range of philosophically credible speculations about the person that many academics identify as being at their core. But equally they transcend the confines of the range of charters and conventions that make up contemporary human rights law. Human rights are much more broadly based than this. Sure, they include civil and political rights but also social rights and latterly such innovative notions as the rights of indigenous peoples and of persons with disabilities. The latest idea that is coming
My argument here is that the subject of civil liberties (or to use human rights language, civil and political rights) has got to its honoured position in contemporary democracy by creative exploitation of the pressures that result from three paradoxes that lie at its heart. This is exactly what our project is about, ploughing down into old ground to turn up new (and A true commitment to we hope more effective) ways human rights demands we of saying what has always been true but which we are in danger ditch this old idea of a blank of forgetting.
rico Burlon was first off. I es (“Libertarianism seeks ed”).
cheque for dictators.
Duygu Akdag captures the consensus well in one of the last posts, when she frames “hypocrisy as a temporary weapon of human rights”.
fast is the concept of a human right to water. Now, of course, the disciplined lawyer and the precise philosopher might want to turn up their noses at such a dilution (to use an appropriate metaphor) of the truth of their subject. But I celebrate it. It follows from all of this that I am relaxed about the content of human rights. I am not so keen on immutable charters overseen by trained judges, imposing their version of right and wrong on the rest of us. Instead, I see human rights as in the best sense political, taking their cue from the community in which they emerge and driven forward by argument, persuasion and energetic commitment. There is truth in human rights: it lies not in the specifics of any particular right but in the core idea that lies behind the phrase, the thought that we are all entitled to equal respect and esteem, a chance to make a good go of our lives, and that we all have a right to this even if we are born into poverty and without any apparent hope to cling on to. The idea of human rights is what supplies hope even to the seemingly hopeless. It is the best phrase we have to capture the sense of giving to and feeling for the other that is – seemingly indelibly – part of what it is to be human. Maybe
once upon a time religion did this work, and certainly socialism aspired to for a while. But in this phase of global capitalist hegemony, it is human rights or nothing. I think that as academics many of us have been slow to realise quite how vast is the web’s potential for global learning. I read the other day that Socrates used to wander up and down the street being questioned by all and sundry. Well none of us can be Socrates but we can all be questioned – and by a far larger range of people than was possible in the Athens of old. The most magical aspect of this new world is how cheap it is – you don’t need to pay lavish overseas fees to join in. There are no journeys to navigate or books to buy. True, there is no degree conferred at the end of a project like The Rights Future, but not all learning needs to be about seeking recognition via exams or progressing career ambitions. Universities in Britain face enormous challenges if they are to preserve even an inkling of an opening for anyone other than the brighter offspring of the already privileged. On the whole, academics did not enter their professions in order to be private school teachers – they know that brains are no respecters of family background. The web can be a way of fighting back against the
The “person” evokes an image of the isolated individual, separated from the world, identity-less in his or her desiccated, universalised humanity: the sort of libertarian nightmare we all attacked in the last track.
reassertion of elitism that is being forced through the university sector off the back of this bankergenerated economic emergency. My project stands or falls by the extent to which it attracts readers and (especially) contributors. So far the signs are good: we have had large traffic onto the site and plenty of people willing to throw their comments into the mix. All have been of outstanding quality – I have not had to remove a single intervention for any reason. It ended on February 17. Have a look. Just click on therightsfuture.com. n
Conor Gearty
is professor of human rights law at LSE and a barrister. His chief research interests are human rights, civil liberties and terrorism. Professor Gearty has written a number of books and articles on these topics. He has advised successive UK governments on human rights and civil liberties issues, continues to lecture before the senior judiciary on these topics from time to time, and has appeared in human rights cases in the House of Lords, the Court of Appeal, and the High Court.
Spring 2011, Issue 3, LSE Research Magazine 19
CITIES AFTER THE RECESSION: WINNERS AND LOSERS As the world stutters toward economic recovery, the world’s cities are leading the way. In a joint research undertaking, LSE Cities and the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based public policy organisation, developed the Global MetroMonitor, which examines data on economic output and employment in 150 of the world’s largest metropolitan economies in 53 countries between 1993 and 2010. Researchers then ranked cities according to their economic performance before, during and after the late-2000s recession. Of the top 30 ranked metropolitan areas in the recovery period (2009-10), all but one (Austin, Texas) were located outside the United States and Europe. Eleven were in China and India, seven in Latin America, and four in the Middle East. The rest: Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Melbourne, Montreal, Singapore, and Taipei. We’ve been here before, as Ricky Burdett and Philipp Rode write in the main article. In 1800 China and India made up one half of the world’s economy – a share roughly equivalent to what the US and the European Union represent today. Resilient cities are not confined entirely to the global South and East, as Rode, Andrea Colantonio, and Mariane Jang illustrate in a series of city profiles. Aside from the shift in the global economic balance of power, another feature of our increasingly urban age is a gender gap, says Sylvia Chant: women shoulder a disproportionate burden of the ills and deprivations in city slums. Finally, Andrew Thornley looks ahead to how the 2012 Olympics will affect the regeneration of East London.
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COVER STORY: THE URBAN AGE
Our cities, our future The world’s cities are launch pads for national and international economies. By examining their relative economic standings before, during, and after the Great Recession of recent years, say Ricky Burdett and Philipp Rode, researchers can gather important evidence on future economic growth, where it will come from, and how global economic power is shifting. Here, Burdett and Rode take us through the findings of the Global MetroMonitor, an undertaking of LSE Cities and the Brookings Institution. LSE Cities researchers worked in tandem with a Brookings team led by Alan Berube, senior fellow and research director of the Metropolitan Policy Program.
T
he global financial crisis of 2007 to 2010 precipitated an economic downturn of such magnitude and reach that we continue to feel the shockwaves. According to the International Monetary Fund, global economic output, which had grown at an annual rate of 3.2 per cent from 1993 to 2007, actually shrank by 2 per cent from 2008 to 2009. A precarious economic recovery is now underway. The shape and speed of that recovery will depend on what happens in cities: for never before have cities been so important as the world’s engines of growth. Aggregate views of the global economy are one thing. Unfortunately they mask the distinct experiences of the global economy’s real hubs – the world’s major metropolitan areas. Metropolitan areas are economically integrated collections of cities and their surrounding areas. And because metros form the fundamental bases for national and international economies, understanding their relative positioning before, during, and after the Great Recession of recent years provides important evidence on emerging shifts in the location of global economic resilience and future growth. That is why, together with the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution in the United States, LSE Cities undertook what we called The Global MetroMonitor, an in-depth examination of data on economic output and employment between 1993 and 2010 in 150 of the world’s largest metropolitan economies located in 52 countries. The study looks at 50 metros from the US, 50 from Europe, and 50 from other regions of the world, representing the world’s largest
economies where comparable data are available. The study covers a period of 17 years, from 1993 to 2010, and is divided into three discernable time periods: 1993 to 2007, measuring trends in performance prior to the recession; 2007 to 2010, taking the worst performing year in each case as an indicator of performance during the recession; and 2010, using existing and forecasted data to assess recovery. The ranking rates economic performance of metropolitan areas according to two main indicators: first, rising incomes and standards of living measured by the annual growth of real Gross Value Added (GVA) per capita; and second, the generation of widespread labour market opportunities as measured by the annual growth rate of employment. The study aimed to compare the dynamics of metropolitan economies, and to establish how metros stack up in terms of their growth performance and potential, rather than their absolute performance levels. The ranking over each of the three time periods was made by using interdecile range standardisation as a statistical tool. Taken together, the Global MetroMonitor rankings act as a prism through which to view the continued evolution of the global economy in metropolitan areas.
The global urban context With a population share of just above 50 per cent, but occupying less than 2 per cent of the earth’s surface, urban areas concentrate 80 per cent of economic output, between 60 and 80 per cent of global energy consumption, and approximately 75 per cent of CO2 emissions. Seventy-five per cent of the world’s population is expected to be concentrated in cities by 2050 – a
large proportion in megacities of several million people each and in massively urbanised regions stretching across countries and continents. But these patterns of human and urban development are not equally distributed across the surface of the globe. Cities in developing countries continue to grow due to high birth rates and by attracting migrants, while rural settlements are transformed into urban regions. At the same time, some cities of largely urbanised developed countries have had to adapt to profound economic restructuring with shrinking populations. While urbanisation has helped to reduce absolute poverty, the number of people classified as urban poor is on the rise. Between 1993 and 2002, 50 million poor were added to urban areas while the number of rural poor declined by 150 million. Urban growth puts pressure on the local environment in such a way that disproportionately affects disadvantaged people who live in precarious structures in more vulnerable locations such as riverbanks and drainage systems. But why then are so many cities continuing to grow? From an economic perspective, cities bring people and goods closer together, help overcome information gaps, and enable idea flows. The national development of countries has always been linked to the growth of their cities, as evidenced by the fact that manufacturing and services have increased their share of global GDP to 97 per cent, and most of these activities are located in urban areas. Analysing and understanding their precariousness or vitality in the face of crises is a crucial part of planning and managing the 21stcentury city.
Resilience and the uneven crisis Virtually no place completely escaped the effects of the global financial crisis and ensuing economic downturn in the late 2000s. Yet impacts across the 150 global metropolitan areas were highly uneven. To better illustrate the uneven crisis, the Global MetroMonitor focuses on the employment performance and income growth of these places during three distinct economic periods from the past two decades. It is not enough to know how cities are performing after a crisis, but precisely how they performed before it, how they were affected during it, and how well they are recovering after it. This knowledge can give us clues to the resilience, or the lack of it, of certain cities to weather future crises. What we have learned also suggests a key reorientation of urban development: the confidence that characterised the cities of the United States and Europe during the 20th century is shifting towards the metropolitan areas in other parts of the world during the 21st.
Spring 2011, Issue 3, LSE Research Magazine 21
BARCELONA
Rebranding la ciutat Barcelona has achieved an extraordinary transformation in its economy since the 1980s. Franco’s death in 1975 heralded the beginning of democracy in Spain but left Barcelona with a substantial legacy of economic problems. By 1986, unemployment reached 21 per cent, and parts of the city fell derelict. The creation of the European Union by the Maastricht Treaty in 1993 provided Barcelona with a unique opportunity for economic renaissance. Our story here follows Barcelona, the capital of Catalonia, the largest economic region in Spain, as it successfully reinvented itself following nearly 40 years of the Madrid-centric Franco dictatorship, strengthened its position in Europe and attracted foreign investment, international entrepreneurs and tourists. While Barcelona has been hit hard by the recent financial crisis, its rebirth offers important insights into the fundamentals of urban economic transformation -- fundamentals like defining a unified vision and adopting a global perspective. In 1988, then-mayor Pasqual Maragall initiated the city’s first highly participatory strategic planning process, positioning Barcelona as the capital of the Mediterranean. From this vision, city and regional governments and consortia drove forward a set of interconnected initiatives, mobilised by new governance models and a vision of Barcelona’s future, but above all, by Barcelona’s brand. In 1986, the city council founded Barcelona Activa, a pioneering local development agency that has been quick to respond to changes in technology and new markets. Its creation marked a stepchange in Barcelona’s approach to employment and economic development. Embracing entrepreneurship, Barcelona was one of the first cities in Spain to create a business incubator and seed capital funds, and the first city in Europe to develop an online business incubator. But while Barcelona Activa consolidated and supported the city’s vision internally, a strategic reorientation towards the rest of the world was key. Mayor Narcis Serra’s successful bid for the 1992 Olympic Games shone a light on Barcelona and attracted the international investment needed to kick-start its transformation. Barcelona’s attractive brand is now effectively leveraged to develop priority growth sectors, such as design, media, logistics and biotechnology, and to attract international entrepreneurs. When international finance and entrepreneurs began arriving at Barcelona’s doorstep, the city was quick to respond. It created the Barcelona
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Economic Triangle, three sets of clusters, each specialising in different aspects of the “next economy”. The results of these initiatives are impressive. Catalonia has grown faster than Spanish and European averages over the past two decades. By 2007, unemployment in Catalonia had fallen to 6.5 per cent, a significant achievement given its starting point in the 1980s. Over 8 per cent of the working age population engages in some form of business-creation activity each year, compared to the European average of 5.4 per cent. Barcelona is now ranked as the fourth best city in Europe in which to do business. The Port of Barcelona, one of the fastest growing in Europe, is well positioned in relation to emerging economies, having captured 38 per cent of traffic between China and Spain, and benefits from the largest logistics cluster in southern Europe. Airport and rail capacity has also increased. The city is linked to Madrid by high-speed rail, and a link to France is under development. These new infrastructures have allowed a massive increase in tourism – from 1.8 million visitors a year in 1992 to over 6.7 million in 2008. And while the current global financial crisis has severely impacted Barcelona, the city has a robust framework, a clear vision, and a myriad of actors to help it achieve the next stage in its transformation. n
Andrea Colantonio
is a research officer at LSE Cities. In cooperation with the European Investment Bank, he led research concerning social sustainability and urban regeneration in European Union cities, including Cardiff, Rotterdam, Turin, Barcelona and Leipzig. Dr Colantonio is a co-author of Urban Regeneration and Social Sustainability: best practice from European cities (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011). His main research interests are economic and social development, institutional governance and urban growth.
What we found echoes recent international trends – moving away from one or two centres of economic and political power and towards a more distributed, multi-polar world. Of the top 30 ranked metros in the recovery period, a diverse group of 29 was located outside the United States and Europe. Ten in China and India, seven in Latin America, and four in the Middle East. Most of these metros posted annual growth rates of at least 2 per cent in employment and 5 per cent in income in the first year of worldwide recovery. This is the upshot: the past two decades have seen lower-income metro areas in the global East and South close the gap with higher-income metros in Europe and the US, while the worldwide economic upheaval of the last few years has only accelerated the shift in growth toward metros in the East and South. Perhaps this should not come across as surprising to many of us. With regards to the great rise of Asian cities, in 1800 China and India comprised one half of the world’s economy – roughly what the US and Europe represent today. In the early 19th century, Beijing was the world’s largest city. We have been here before. The Global MetroMonitor helps to contextualise discussions about the economic resilience of cities, and points us in the direction of two factors relevant to metropolitan economies that are often overlooked in debates by urban enthusiasts. The first requires a reconsideration of values associated with different industrial bases. The second reminds us that while we might live in a world full of global cities, we must not overlook the impact of national fiscal, monetary, and trade policies. • The presence and magnitude of certain industries is tied to economic performance. Metros with high shares of their economics in construction industries performed much better than average in the pre-recession period, particularly in the US, but much worse than average in the recovery, particularly in Western Europe and other high-income regions. Before the recession, energy and manufacturing was associated with strong performance of lowerincome metro areas, particularly in China and the Middle East, and weaker performance of US metros. And high output in non-market services, such as government, health, and education, was a boon for European and American metros in the recession, signalling that those industries remained relatively healthy amid market turmoil. • National context does matter. While the focus of the study was inherently urban, we found that the resilience of a metropolitan area, or the lack of it, owes as much to the city’s own demography or the diversity of the marketplace as it does to national policy. In any given period, roughly half to three-quarters of metro economic performance was tied to that of their respective nations. For example, Krakow and Warsaw were the only European metropolitan areas that did not experience a decline in income or employment during the recession. The reasons? Policy at the national level. In 2004, Poland set targets for loan-to-value ratios, preventing an
1993-2007
performance high
Beijing
performance high
average low
average low
Tokyo
low
Seattle
low
metropolitan population metropolitan population 20m 20m 5m 5m
Dublin Brussels Chicago Denver
Salt Lake City
Paris Monterrey Madrid
high
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metropolitan metropolitan population population 20m 20m 5m 5m Lisbon
Monterrey Madrid
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Budapest
Examining national economies alone, however, overlooks the important variations in metro performance that separated nearby metros such as Leipzig (77th in economic performance) and Berlin (144th) in the pre-recession period; Abu Dhabi (16th) and Dubai (97th) during the recession; and Cleveland (49th) and Buffalo (120th) in the recovery. As we continue to work through the implications of the findings from the Global MetroMonitor, we are reminded, if nothing else, of the importance of metropolitan areas worldwide – and of the importance of lessening, at both the metropolitan and national levels, the vulnerabilities to crisis through intentional policies.
Dublin Brussels
London Paris
Stockholm
Seattle
London Dallas
San Francisco Los Angeles
Paris
Helsinki
Brussels Berlin
London Paris
Warsaw
Warsaw
Budapest
Budapest
As global metro areas emerge from the shadow of the recent recession, they also find themselves in markedly different places along their own growth trajectories. Many in Asia and Latin America were scarcely affected by the recession at all, or have posted a full recovery. Several in the US and other high-income regions have rebounded to their prior employment or income level, but not yet both. About half of the 150 continue to lose ground on one of the key measures, in most cases employment, and the bulk of these metros are in Western Europe and the US. A small handful of metros, most of them in Europe, continued to decline in employment and income through 2010 as the recession raged on. Across the globe, a sustainable economic recovery will depend on active strategies at both the macro and metro levels to chart a path forward. Macro-
Dublin Brussels
London Paris
Milan Milan Rome Rome Madrid Madrid Barcelona Barcelona Naples Istanbul Naples Istanbul Lisbon Lisbon Athens Athens
Reorienting the 21st century city
Oslo
Istanbul
Helsinki
Helsinki
Stockholm
Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Moscow Dublin
Naples Athens
Stockholm
Moscow Berlin
Budapest
Milan Miami Rome
Barcelona
Oslo
Stockholm
Moscow
Washington, D.C.
Atlanta
Houston
Guadalajara Lisbon Mexico City
Montreal
Boston Berlin New York Warsaw
Dublin Brussels Chicago Denver
Salt Lake City
Istanbul
Helsinki
Toronto Copenhagen Detroit
Minneapolis
Portland Moscow
Monterrey Madrid
Naples
Helsinki
Oslo Vancouver
Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Moscow Dublin
Milan Milan Rome Rome Madrid Madrid Barcelona Barcelona Naples Istanbul Naples Istanbul Lisbon Lisbon Athens Athens
overextension of its credit market, and therefore decreasing the vulnerability of its cities to the larger financial crisis.
Oslo
Budapest Milan Rome Brisbane Barcelona Naples Istanbul Sydney Athens Auckland Melbourne
Madrid
Athens
Stockholm
Paris
Lisbon
Milan Miami Rome
Barcelona
Oslo
Stockholm
Brussels Berlin
Houston
Guadalajara Lisbon Mexico City
Copenhagen
Copenhagen Dublin Brussels
London
San Francisco Los Angeles
Milan Miami Rome
Oslo
Stockholm
low
Budapest
Salt Lake City
Athens
Oslo
Dublin
Washington, D.C.
Barcelona
Guadalajara Lisbon Mexico City
Portland Moscow
Boston
Warsaw
Helsinki
Stockholm Toronto Montreal Copenhagen Minneapolis Detroit Boston Dublin Chicago Brussels Berlin Denver New York Warsaw London Dallas Washington, D.C. Paris Atlanta Budapest
Berlin
Singapore London
Jakarta
Budapest
Helsinki
Moscow
Manila Brussels
Chennai Dublin Bangkok Kuala Lumpur
Milan Rome Brisbane Barcelona Naples Istanbul Sydney Auckland Athens Melbourne
Oslo Seattle
Montreal
Atlanta
Houston
Paris
Madrid
Vancouver
Berlin New York Warsaw
London Dallas
San Francisco Los Angeles
performance performance high
Toronto Copenhagen Detroit
Minneapolis
Moscow Bangalore
Singapore London
Tokyo Oslo Osaka Stockholm Nagoya Taipei Shenzhen Copenhagen
Kolkata Guangzhou Hong Kong Hyderabad
Mumbai
Berlin
Seoul
Tianjin Shanghai
Delhi
Warsaw
Lisbon
Stockholm
Portland
Manila Brussels
Helsinki
Oslo
Helsinki
Oslo Osaka Stockholm Nagoya Taipei Shenzhen Copenhagen
Jakarta
Budapest
Vancouver
Tokyo
Chennai Dublin Bangkok Kuala Lumpur
Warsaw
Beijing
Seoul
Kolkata Guangzhou Hong Kong Hyderabad
Milan Rome Brisbane Barcelona Istanbul Sydney Naples Auckland Athens Melbourne
Madrid
high average
Moscow Bangalore
2009-2010
Tianjin Shanghai
Delhi
Mumbai
Paris
Jakarta
performance
average
Helsinki
Oslo Osaka Nagoya Stockholm Kolkata Guangzhou Taipei Mumbai Hong Shenzhen Copenhagen Kong Hyderabad Manila Chennai Dublin Bangkok Bangalore Brussels Berlin Kuala Lumpur Singapore London Delhi
Lisbon
high
Beijing
Seoul
Tianjin Shanghai
metropolitan population metropolitan population 20m 20m 5m 5m
performance
2008-2009
Brussels Berlin
London Paris
Moscow Berlin Warsaw
Warsaw
Budapest
Budapest
Moscow
Milan Milan Rome Rome Madrid Madrid Barcelona Barcelona Naples Istanbul Naples Istanbul Lisbon Athens Athens
level trade and currency policies must support a rebalancing of global demand that reduces both trade deficits in advanced economies and trade surpluses in emerging economies. National policies must also invest in fundamental drivers of metropolitan economies – innovative institutions, infrastructure, human capital – to align with metropolitan goals. Viewing the continued evolution of the global economy through a metropolitan prism makes clear that these places can fuel a new era of widespread growth and prosperity, if they have a grounded vision of their role in the next economy and the national supports necessary to achieve it. The Global MetroMonitor thus portrays a world economy whose continued transition from recession to recovery will be driven in large part by the distinct experiences of its powerful network of major metropolitan economies. As metropolitan
Spring 2011, Issue 3, LSE Research Magazine 23
MUNICH
Staying ahead leaders worldwide confront the challenges and opportunities that accompany continued global economic integration, and many seek new growth models to replace the old ones, the shifting metro map points toward an emerging array of productive, metro-based economic relationships that could drive regional and national prosperity in the decades to come. n
Two decades ago, the Munich we now recognise as Germany’s Silicon Valley was facing an uncertain future. The recession of 1993-94 dealt a heavy blow to Munich’s export-orientated industries, and the end of the Cold War triggered a rapid drop in demand in the defence and aerospace industries. German reunification and globalisation both threatened to shift growth away from Munich and Bavaria, and towards Berlin and even other countries moving up the value chain. Something had to change. As Professor Christiane Thalgott, head of the Department of Urban Planning for Munich from 1992 to 2007, said: “The city really had to grapple with the new economic conditions after re-unification – we all did.”
Ricky Burdett
is professor of urban studies at LSE and director of LSE Cities and the Urban Age Programme. He was director of the 2006 Architecture Biennale in Venice and chairman of the jury for the 2007 Mies van der Rohe Prize. He is architectural adviser to Genoa, Italy, and a member of the Milan Expo 2015 steering committee. Recent books by Professor Burdett include The Endless City (Phaidon, 2008) and Living in the Endless City (Phaidon, 2011). He is chief adviser on architecture and urbanism for the London 2012 Olympics and the Olympic Park Legacy Company, and was architectural adviser to the Mayor of London from 2001 to 2006.
Philipp Rode
is executive director of LSE Cities and the Urban Age Programme. He is Ove Arup fellow at LSE Cities and co-convenes the LSE Sociology course City Making: The Politics of Urban Form. As researcher and consultant, he manages interdisciplinary projects comprising urban governance, transport, city planning and urban design. The focus of his current work is on cities and climate change. Mr Rode’s most recent reports from LSE Cities include ‘Cities and Social Equity’ (Urban Age, 2009) and ‘Integrated City Making’ (Urban Age, 2008).
This is the story of how Munich overcame these challenges through the cooperation of actors in the private, public and not-for-profit sectors – through, in other words, what we call “institutional thickness” helped along by state-sponsored innovation. With over 55,000 full-time-equivalent R&D positions, 13 universities, and an abundance of government-financed research centres, Munich recognised that the profound level of connections between the business, university, and research community is one of its most valuable assets. In 1994, in the heat of the European recession, the Bavarian state government took a risk and sold off government-owned shares worth €2.9 billion. Rather than spending the money on electionfriendly programmes or one-off capital investments, it created the Offensive Zukunft Bayern (Future Bavaria Initiative), designed specifically to encourage innovation. As Dr Gerd Gruppe, head of the Department of Innovation, Research and Technology, Ministry of Economic Affairs, State of Bavaria, said: “There is a conviction that economic policy requires an explicit commitment to future technologies, even if on occasion this does not appear [politically] expedient.” The Future Bavaria Initiative invested in knowledge infrastructure and transfer, established itself as a public “venture capital” firm, and worked tirelessly to support the formation of high-tech firms. The initiative oversaw 80 projects including the construction of eight new polytechnic colleges
and helping over 450 innovative, but risky, startups through subsidies and low-interest loans. Five years later, another sale of state owned shares raising €1.35 billion was put towards creating the High-Tech Initiative. This initiative expanded worldclass high-tech centres, invested in technological infrastructure for all regions of Bavaria, and promoted high-tech start-ups. In 2006, the state government launched the Cluster Programme. This programme was established with limited funding but with a highly targeted approach of supporting maturing economic clusters. The programme works by setting up management teams that support state-wide networking and collaboration between firms, researchers and venture capital. Though these three initiatives were state-led, they were metropolitan-focused and relied on the spatial benefit of clustering inherent in a city like Munich and specific clusters in its environs like Garching and Martinsried. The results are impressive. Munich has strengthened its presence in science and advanced manufacturing, for example, with output related to transport equipment more than doubling since 1990. In the process, it diversified into new activities, notably biotech and increasingly “cleantech” such as green energy and low-carbon vehicles, chalking up a three-fold increase in patents related to climate-change mitigation over the last 20 years. Munich’s share of patents within Germany has grown from 11 per cent in 1980 to 13 per cent 2007, the third largest in Germany. By 2008, economic output per capita had doubled since 1991 (from €32,078 to €64,625) and is now above regional and national averages. Munich’s story, full of the particularities of history and financial capability, can nonetheless teach us many lessons as metro regions continue to re-imagine themselves in the wake of the Great Recession. Innovation remains key, and in times of need, government intervention and support in the vulnerable economies of start-ups through investment in infrastructure, cluster programmes and venture capital. n
24 LSE Research Magazine, Issue 3, Spring 2011
Philipp Rode
SEOUL
Orchestrating a competitive future There was a time, with Seoul increasingly tied to the global market, when the city was battered by uncertainty and vulnerability. Starting in the 1970s, rising oil prices, rapid fluctuations in international interest rates, and an increasingly strong currency made the costs of manufacturing goods in Seoul perilously non-competitive. Seoul’s export economy was further undercut by other Asian competitors. Then, in 1997, the Asian financial crisis dealt a real blow to Seoul’s economy, itself central to the economy of South Korea.
The Korean government responded with a barrage of public-private partnerships and initiatives by local government. With a string of technological breakthroughs that have captured the global market and an industrial and economic dynamism stimulated in the 1970s which continues today, Seoul has won its reputation as a “miracle economy”. How did it happen? Seoul’s growth and success can be traced back to central government’s vision to transform the country into a global leader in exports. Since the end of the Korean War in the 1950s, the highly centralised government has used its range of powers to orchestrate a competitive future. It identified new market opportunities, incentivised companies to enter specific sectors, promoted collaborative R&D projects in very specific industries, and identified and eliminated market redundancies. In this way, the government virtually ensured all the conditions were in place for firms to thrive. The 1973 Electronics Industry Promotion Law, for example, increased investment in electronics research and persuaded large companies to focus heavily on this sector. The central government also supported the creation of the Korea Institute of Electronics Technology, which conducted research into semiconductor design, processes, and systems. In order to get this research to market quickly, the government spearheaded the Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) research consortium at a time when three major Korean semiconductor producers were making overlapping and redundant investments. Their combined efforts not only brought the chip quickly to market, but also laid the groundwork for a chip that became the world market leader just a few years later. Samsung, one of the Seoul companies supported by such policies, increased its global market share in memory chips from virtually none in 1984 to just over 10 per cent in 1993. In 1995, power devolved slightly from central government, but locally elected mayors continued the tradition of government intervention. The City
of Seoul introduced the Creative Industry Promotion Programme that promotes knowledge-based industries as the new engine in Seoul’s economy. In 2007, the city government designated six industries as the new growth engines: tourism; design and fashion; digital content; conventions; R&D in information technology, nanotechnology, and biotechnology; and financial and business services. Each industrial strand is associated with a major new development project in Seoul to agglomerate related firms. One of these developments is Guro, an aging former light industry complex that has been reconfigured into an urban high-tech industrial complex to nurture and advance urban manufacturing for high-tech firms. Within a decade, the Seoul Digital Industrial Complex attracted more than 6,700 businesses, primarily consisting of small start-ups, which collectively employ more than 100,000 people and generate approximately $8 billion in annual revenue. As long ago as 2003, the capital region accounted for 55 per cent of all manufacturing firms, 73 per cent of total R&D institutions, 77 per cent of Korea’s venture companies, and 88 per cent of all headquarters of major large enterprises. While the industrial success of Seoul was clearly born out of strong central government policies and regulations, Seoul’s continued economic success today carries on in part through partnerships and new policies designed to improve the capital and support business. n
Mariane Jang
is a project manager at LSE Cities. Prior to this, she worked in sustainability consulting and research at Arup. Ms Jang’s research interests include developing sustainability strategies for a range of built-environment projects and urban policies.
Seoul’s growth and success can be traced back to central government’s vision to transform the country into a global leader in exports
COVER STORY: URBAN AGE
GENDER
and the city Don’t forget the women. Sylvia Chant says we have a responsibility to make visible the work that urban women do and to properly calculate its value to lives and livelihoods in cities around the world.
F
or the first time in history – and certainly not before time – gender personnel at the Nairobi headquarters of United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (UN-Habitat) have expressed the intention to produce a special report on women in cities as a companion to its next biennial State of the World’s Cities 2012/13. One can only hope that this will set the stage for gender to become a much more sustained priority in academic, policy and popular debates on urbanisation.
“deprived” if it lacks access to an “improved facility” such as direct connection with a sewerage network, or does not avail of a septic tank or a ventilated pit latrine, or where sanitary facilities are shared by more than two households. Women’s contributions to coping with such deficiencies are not only time-consuming, but also health and life-threatening. Contact with contaminated material, the ritual cleaning of rudimentary facilities, and supervising the biological needs and play of children in environmentally-hazardous communities, impacts negatively on their personal well-being, health and safety.
This is perhaps particularly pertinent to developing regions where at least 90 per cent of the world’s 800 million-plus “slum dwellers” contend with one or more serious “shelter deprivations”. Given women’s commonly disproportionate responsibility for the unpaid labour that underpins household survival, this impacts on them to a far greater extent than men, and not only disadvantages female slum dwellers on a daily basis, but usually has much longer-term – if not lifelong and intergenerational – ramifications. Where mothers are unable to cope single-handedly with the burden of maintaining essential routine reproduction, their daughters, along with other female relatives, are drawn upon, making sacrifices to assist in efforts which go largely unrecognised, and almost invariably unrewarded. That this impinges on girls’ educational attendance and accomplishments is widely documented. While urban women are often regarded as more “emancipated” than their rural counterparts, evidence of persistent exploitation and disadvantage is all too apparent.
The 2010 Amnesty International report on Nairobi slums has demonstrated how women’s reluctance to use communal facilities owing to social mores around female propriety and culturally-valued principles of privacy, together with women’s fear of assault and rape, especially at night, make even basic human needs for dignity unattainable. That some women try to avoid relieving themselves at all costs, or resort to “flying toilets” (a term describing the wrapping of bodily waste in plastic bags which are then thrown off-site), is likely to aggravate their own physical and mental health and social relations with others in the community, not to mention worsen environmental problems. Little wonder that the UN’s independent expert on human rights obligations related to safe drinking water and sanitation recently asserted that being so closely related to dignity and selfrespect, sanitation should be regarded as an equally explicit and distinct human right as food, clothing and shelter.
It is difficult to consider any of the criteria listed as a “deprivation” in the current inter-agency (UNHabitat/UNDP/World Bank) definition of “slum” in a gender-neutral fashion. Take sanitation, for instance, where a household qualifies as
Another official criterion of deprivation, “housing quality and durability”, is also redolent with gender implications. This descriptor comprises dwellings built in hazardous locations, non-permanent structures built of materials insufficient to protect
26 LSE Research Magazine, Issue 3, Spring 2011
inhabitants from climatic conditions such as heat, cold or extreme weather events such as flooding and hurricanes, and housing in need of major repair, prone to easy destruction and so on. Here we must acknowledge that women do not just spend more of their daily lives in the home enduring insecurity and discomfort, but have to take on heavier burdens of domestic labour to ensure that routine activities such as cooking, cleaning, washing, bathing and so on are performed, and in a manner which protects themselves and others from ever-present health risks. Moreover, for women, the home often also serves as a basis for informal economic activities while they are looking after children, and not infrequently as lone parents. In addition, there is the danger of sexual abuse attached to flimsy dwellings, as revealed by the alarming but poorly reported rise in the rape of women and girls in Haiti as thousands of Port-au-Prince residents have been forced to sit out the long process of post-quake “reconstruction” in temporary encampments. Then there is “secure tenure”, the fifth and final criterion of deprivation. Along with access to safe and affordable drinking water (where potable water is minimal or non-existent, it falls mainly to women to provide it) and sufficient space to avoid “overcrowding” (which exposes women to additional violations of privacy and bodily integrity), security of tenure is a major one from a gender perspective. Frequently this actually has to be omitted from calculations on shelter deprivations owing to murky data. Yet while few developing countries have robust, or even basic, records of land and property ownership, let alone registers which are sex-disaggregated, detailed case studies suggest that women are severely disadvantaged in respect of formal and customary entitlements. Emerging data from larger-scale statistics available on a recently-launched FAO database for a growing number of countries and from UN-Habitat’s Global Urban Observatory show the same thing. While women may have marginally greater access to housing in their own right in urban areas than they do in rural ones, they are more often confined to renting rather than owning. Furthermore, rights which may be their legal due through inheritance or divorce are often lost under pressures from male kin, co-wives and inlaws. In India and a number of African countries, stories of dispossession of HIV-infected widows whose husbands have died of AIDS, resulting in their destitution, are disturbingly common. Contemporary criteria for evaluating “slum households” and “slum communities” are closely aligned with many of the targets enshrined in the
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) agreed by the vast majority of UN member states in 2000. Target 11 attached to Millennium Development Goal 7 – to “improve the condition of one hundred million slum dwellers” – is one of the few MDG targets which has already been achieved. However, as with poverty reduction, this result is due largely to efforts undertaken in China and India, not to mention the fact that the initial benchmark was set decidedly low. And while some progress is occurring in achieving the safe drinking water target, the target of sanitation, namely to halve the proportion of people without access to an improved sanitation source by 2015, remains elusive, even if urban residents fare rather better than their rural counterparts. But where does MDG 3 – to promote gender equality and empower women – fit in to this scheme? Despite the rhetoric about it being one of the most cross-cutting goals, there is a worrying lack of explicit cross-referencing of goals and targets, and this conspires to render invisible the burdens women bear as well as their roles in countering urban infrastructural deficiencies. The case for reversing such pervasive gender-blindness is hardly helped by the fact that the UN’s system of national accounts continues to deem unpaid labour as being unworthy of accounting in gross domestic product. MDG 3 focuses mainly on gender parity in education, with additional targets including women’s share of the non-agricultural labour force and their representation in parliament. These latter indicators often exclude women at the grassroots level whose economic activity is usually informal and whose political participation (and protest) is rarely captured by measures confined to the upper echelons of national governance. Moreover, there are several indicators which are conspicuous by their absence. Some of the critical ones – including freedom from violence, women’s reproductive and sexual health and rights, and the reduction of occupational segregation and gender pay gaps – were highlighted by the UN millennium project task force on education and gender equality. The task force, headed up by leading feminist scholars and activists Caren Grown, Geeta Rao Gupta and Aslihan Kes, recommended, among other things, that explicit gender indicators, including statistics on property ownership and hours spent in domestic work, be incorporated in all the MDGs. It also called for new “strategic priorities”, such as guaranteeing women’s property and inheritance rights, and investing in infrastructure to reduce women’s and girls’ time burdens. Yet while poor urban women in particular would undoubtedly benefit from the latter in several ways, and indeed, investments in shelter and services correspond with the imperatives of MDG 7, this has not yet been officially endorsed. And what also, of the links between gender and living conditions when it comes to MDG 1 on reducing extreme poverty, MDG 2 on education, MDG 5 on maternal mortality, and MDG 6 on halting or reversing HIV/ AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis?
As with the more general and rather depressing scenario painted by scholars of gender and development (GAD), there is a seeming lack of joined-up thinking in what is a rather obviously intrinsically inter-linked terrain of gender, slums, cities and development targets. The naturalisation of women’s “altruistic”, unpaid and formally undervalued familial and social roles has led to a deadly cocktail of selective silence about women’s work, to naked instrumentalism regarding their place in development processes and initiatives in a neoliberal age (normally as rank-and-file voluntary labour or self-styled entrepreneurial subjects rather than as salaried and professionalised decision-makers), and to a persistent sidelining of women’s human rights. What should be done, for example, to even out the disparities between women’s routinely uncelebrated contributions to creating housing stock in the predominantly self-built and/or selffinanced informal settlements which comprise around one-third of the built environment in cities of the global South (and up to half in subSaharan Africa)? What recompense is owed to women who through their daily efforts in domestic labour and unpaid care work keep labour forces ticking over in the interests of profit maximisation by greedy states and national and international corporations? Where are women’s voices being sounded (and heeded) in the 21st-century era of multi-stakeholder urban governance? There are so many gender issues not covered adequately in the shelter deprivation/slum-dwelling literature – ranging from transport, to time-poverty, to rural-urban and cross-border migration, to labour force insertion, gender wage gaps and “decent work”, to physical and mental health, to environmental adaptation and protection, to household transitions, to politics and decisionmaking – that one might be led to the conclusion that gender is incidental when it comes to urban growth, development and sustainability. Yet one might also be reminded of Manuel Castells’ caution in his 1978 book City, Class and Power that “if women who ‘do nothing’ ever stopped to do ‘only that’, the whole urban structure as we know it would become completely incapable of maintaining its functions”. Anyone who has set foot inside a slum in the global South will immediately become aware that women’s responsibilities are vital to the survival of millions of urban inhabitants. However, the recognition and rights that should accompany these are long in coming, despite the fact that many of the latter are already enshrined in various international conventions and national laws, and have been promoted in numerous UN Platforms for Action.
There is also a huge groundswell of initiatives on the part of women at the grassroots, forming their own organisations and alliances with local activists and NGOs to demand better shelter and better access to shelter, better and more affordable service delivery, transport, amenities and infrastructure. All of this, of course, takes time, a commodity so precious given the demands on poor women’s labour that gendered burdens keep stacking up in unsustainable ways. One small but effective start, especially given that more than 90 per cent of urban growth will occur in developing regions in the coming decades, would be to make visible the work that women do and to properly calculate its value to urban lives and livelihoods. If UNHabitat’s intended report on Women in Cities 2012/2013 is to go ahead, then performing these preliminary but long-overdue tasks will be essential in raising awareness of some of the most extreme inequalities characterising cities in the South – and, with luck, raising a platform for concerted political and policy action to redress existing injustices and lay the groundwork for ensuring that cities become spaces of equal rights and responsibilities for women and men, now and in future generations. n
Sylvia Chant
is professor of development geography in the Department of Geography and Environment. She has published on a wide range of themes related to gender and development in the contexts of Mexico, Costa Rica, the Philippines and Gambia. Professor Chant’s books include Gender, Generation and Poverty: exploring the ‘feminisation of poverty’ in Africa, Asia and Latin America (Elgar, 2007) and, as editor, The International Handbook of Gender and Poverty: concepts, research, policy (Elgar, 2010).
Spring 2011, Issue 3, LSE Research Magazine 27
LONDON
The LEGACY games The plan to regenerate East London preceded the award of the 2012 Olympics to London, says Andrew Thornley. In the end, any urban makeover that occurs will have less to do with the Olympics than with a process that would have taken place anyway.
T
he potential legacy of the London Olympic Games was a major feature of the original bid, and one of the important elements that contributed to its success. It has been claimed that London’s legacy proposals received more attention in the period before the Games than in any other previous host city. Will the expectations be realised? Although we can learn from previous Games, we can only speculate until after London’s have actually taken place. However, I would argue that the whole issue of legacy is so vague and difficult to assess that we are never likely to get a clear objective conclusion.
Can legacy be defined and measured? There is a long history of cities using the Games to obtain some lasting physical benefit for their city. The early examples such as Rome (1960) and Tokyo (1964) focused on transport facilities. From around 2000 the International Olympic Committee itself began to get more interested in the impact of the Games on the host cities and has introduced a detailed system of indicators and monitoring. However, the concept of legacy remains extremely vague and encompasses many different aspects. At a broad level, legacy is discussed in terms of how the games can change the image of a city, or indeed the country, in which it is located. This can be in terms of allowing a city to escape from an image based upon an outdated industrial past (such as Barcelona), or enabling a host to demonstrate its modernity and managerial proficiency (such as Beijing and China). Even so, the success of such an image
change will be particularly difficult to quantify in precise terms. A second dimension of legacy that attracts considerable attention is employment generation. This comprises the short-term jobs in the construction for the Games and the longer-term benefits from changes in economic activity such as tourism. Estimates of the employment impacts of past Games have usually been controversial as they are difficult to determine with accuracy. Then there is the physical legacy, which can encompass the actual venues and transport facilities as well as the broader notion of area regeneration. In discussing legacy it is therefore necessary to specify what aspects are being included. In this case we will focus on the physical aspects. It is necessary to acknowledge that there will also be some negative aspects of legacy – sometimes called the “dark side” of the legacy. These are often ignored and they are particularly difficult to quantify. For example, there is the issue of the concentration of resources on the Olympic site which generally involves a shift away from other potential projects and locations. Sometimes, as in Athens, this can create regional hostilities as development resources are diverted to the Olympic programme. The eviction of existing communities also evokes hostilities and needs to be analysed in the legacy assessment. Most Games have also been the catalyst for a process of gentrification – either through the use of the Athletes’ village or through the upgraded image of the surrounding area. In many cases this can be regarded as the most prominent
physical legacy. This raises the question of value judgements. For some, this legacy would be regarded as an indication of a highly successful urban regeneration impact as the whole area is transformed with higher quality housing and services, while others would see the process in negative terms, focusing on the dislocation of the existing communities. Thus any evaluation of legacy is likely to be partial, only covering certain aspects, inconclusive, due to difficulties of measurement, and value laden.
The Games in broader context Another difficulty in assessing the Olympic legacy is that putting on the Games takes place within a broader ongoing financial and planning process. There are interactions between this broader process and the Olympic project, and it is difficult to identify the exact impact of the Games as a discrete entity. One of the lessons of past Games is that in nearly all cases the materialisation of the legacy that has been promised depends greatly on the budget conditions. Nearly all Games underestimate costs at the early stage – perhaps in the hope of improving the chances of winning the bid or pacifying citizens who may not be happy with high expenditure. Then, as the preparation years progress, increasing financial problems arise. The common approach to at least partially solving this problem is to sell off assets after the Games to the highest bidder. This has again and again meant that promised social and public benefits have not materialised. Another contextual issue that makes it difficult to assess the extent of the urban regeneration legacy is that some or all of the infrastructure construction and other projects might have occurred regardless of the Olympics. Thus, it can be difficult to isolate the direct impact of the Olympics per se. In some cases, the Olympics
The London case How many of these issues are likely to arise in London? What do the portents look like at this stage? There have been a number of legacy plans over the last five years alongside many institutional changes. In the official bid document, the legacy aspect focused on the urban regeneration of an impoverished part of East London, the creation of a major new park, and 4,300 housing units inherited from the Athletes’ village. The London Development Agency then commissioned the Legacy Masterplan Framework to provide more detail, and this was published in 2007. The framework proposed removing many of the venues after the Games but retaining the velodrome, the swimming complex and the main stadium. The last would be reduced in size and continue in use as an athletics venue. The framework also included suggestions to transform the media centre into commercial space, to create a secondary school and sports academy in the main stadium, to open an Olympic University, and to construct primary schools and a further 10,000 homes across the site in addition to recycling the Athletes’ village. Since then, however, we have had the financial crisis of 2008, a new London mayor, and a new national government with a programme of public sector cuts. The original plan for the Athletes’ village was that it would be built by a private company but that after the Games 50 per cent of the housing would be allocated as “affordable” under the policy of the then-mayor, Ken Livingstone. But because of the financial crisis the company could not raise money for the development and the government had to underwrite it. The underwriting has been done on
the basis that after the Games the housing can be sold on the market to recoup public expenditure. In addition, the new mayor, Boris Johnson, is not pursuing the affordable housing strategy. Thus London would seem to be following the pattern of past Games in which the promised social legacy becomes lost in the budget calculations. Meanwhile, the institutional arrangement for the legacy has also been changing. In 2009, a new organisation was set up called the Olympic Park Legacy Company, which is half controlled by central government and half by the mayor. The new company has been reviewing the Legacy Masterplan Framework; it wants more family housing and is seeking private sector offers for the main stadium. This is likely to mean that it will not be reduced in size and would be used for football rather than athletics. It is also presenting the postOlympics park as a London-wide attraction and suggesting that it could become a major tourist attraction. Some will detect in all of this a shift in the legacy approach – from one that focuses on public housing and urban renewal to one that focuses on market forces and gentrification. Boris Johnson, meanwhile, has proposed a new authority to take over the legacy function – the Olympic Park Legacy Company would become the Mayoral Development Corporation, which he would control. He has suggested to central government that this should form part of their decentralisation strategy. One of the key tensions over legacy in the coming years will be between the authority responsible for the legacy of the Olympic site itself, whether the Olympic Park Legacy Company or the Mayoral Development Corporation, and the authorities responsible for the regeneration of the wider area – the councils that run the five host boroughs. The former will be focused on making the most of the assets, while the latter will be more concerned about the impact on the poor communities around the site. At the end of the day, the urban regeneration of this part of London will have less to do with the Olympics than other plans and decisions that have been taken. The plan to regenerate the area preceded the award of the Olympics bid. The area
has undergone a massive change in transport facilities and accessibility, including the Jubilee Line extension, Docklands Light Railway, high-speed rail, and Crossrail. These have had a huge impact on the attractiveness of the area for investment and development. For example, the Stratford City development which gained its planning permission in 2004 – a year before London won the Olympics – has been described as one of the largest development projects in Europe and will include a vast amount of office space and the third largest retail centre in London. So what can the Olympics add to this transformation? There will of course be the retained venues and the park, but it could be said that its main contribution will be to the process rather than to the actual physical legacy. The Games will have ensured that all the agencies and levels of government worked together and that land acquisition and reclamation were pursued in a speedy fashion. It will also have ensured that the resources continued to flow to the project even against the background of economic crisis and changes in political leadership at both national and London level. n
Andrew Thornley
is emeritus professor of urban planning in the Department of Geography and Environment. He is a leading expert on the relationship between urban planning and politics. He has written extensively on this topic. Professor Thornley is co-author of Planning World Cities: globalization and urban politics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2nd edition, 2011) and Urban Planning in Europe: international competition, national systems and planning projects (Routledge, 1996), and the author of Urban Planning under Thatcherism: the challenge of the market (Routledge, second edition, 1993).
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can be seen as a way of unlocking an existing plan (Barcelona), but in other cases (Beijing) the state would probably have transformed the area anyway. The difficulty in extracting the impact of the Olympic Games project from the broader urban processes and investment means that any assessment will be approximate and open to interpretation and political influence.
Shanghai Global MetroMonitor Ranking: 6th, 2009-10
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SOUTH AMERICA
© GETTY IMAGESD
“We are well in the shelter, the 33”
All is not well Last year’s rescue of Chilean miners trapped deep below the Atacama Desert was justly celebrated around the world. It may also have projected a too-rosy image of life in and around the mines, says Alonso Barros.
V
ariously translated from the Spanish, these words launched a thousand headlines and encapsulated the eventual happy ending to the ordeal of the Chilean miners who survived more than two months deep underground in a hot, dark tunnel last year. Not only were the miners rescued and then celebrated; the image of Chile and its president, Sebastian Piñera, got a boost in the eyes of the world. The president even came to LSE to show his video trailer of Chile’s brush with fame. But of course the story of mining in Chile doesn’t begin or end with los 33. My fieldwork in the Atacama Desert gives a much more complex, and darker, view of life in and around Chile’s mining industry. Deserts are, in this sense, an ideal social laboratory. Here the macro and micro
effects of mega-extractive operations collide with messy legal claims to land and water around the mining operations and raise serious questions about corporate social responsibility issues in an industry that has helped to shape Chile politically, socially and economically across the centuries. Periods of mining bonanza like that which the country is experiencing at present can mask but not bury real problems of racial discrimination and profound inequality. The power of the mining industry in Chile is not to be underestimated. Even as los 33 were being rescued, two important legal packages that would benefit mine operators were being railroaded through the Chilean congress. One of the laws, by way of example, now guarantees a fixed and comparatively low tax rate on mining until 2023 in spite of sky-rocketing copper prices driven in large part by China’s demand for copper.
The story of copper is in some ways the story of Chile. Chilean copper was nationalised in 1971 under the socialist President Salvador Allende. After a US-supported military coup in 1973 (and with the help of the current Chilean president’s brother, José Piñera), Augusto Pinochet deployed an aggressive privatisation policy that continues to this day. (The late dictator’s ex-son-in-law owns Chile’s world-leading lithium and potash extraction company, Soquimich Comercial SA.) Pinochet’s 1980 Constitution incorporated the declaration that mineral reserves belong to the nation, but José Piñera, who served as secretary of mining and of labour and social security under Pinochet, made sure that mining concessionaires continue to enjoy full ownership of the minerals they extract, along with special rights to water needed for mining. Over the past two decades, additional fiscal incentives have encouraged private foreign investment in mining, which accounts for fully 30 per cent of direct inward investment in Chile. Private mining’s share of national mineral production grew from 25 per cent in 1990 to Spring 2011, Issue 3, LSE Research Magazine 31
SOUTH AMERICA
Legal loopholes allowed mining companies to get away with declaring huge paper losses or zero profits, which in turn allowed them to avoid taxation
68 per cent in 2009. Over the same period, Chile’s share of global copper production has, in turn, jumped from 18 per cent to 35 per cent. Chile’s geological potential is, needless to say, astounding: the country holds 40 per cent of global copper reserves; lithium, 40 per cent; molybdenum, 23 per cent; iodine, 15 per cent. Chile is also a major producer of so-called rare earths that are essential to high-tech manufacturing. Why, then, have so many Chileans not benefited commensurately from the country’s manifest mining destiny? For one thing, legal loopholes allowed mining companies to get away with declaring huge paper losses or zero profits, which in turn allowed them to avoid taxation. Until 2005, only one private mining operation effectively paid income tax. In 2005, under the social democratic President Ricardo Lagos, Chile tried to change matters by rewriting the tax laws. In exchange, however, the private mining lobby won deep concessions that are guaranteed to last until 2017. Historically, the mining and energy industries have been intertwined in Chile. Mining is by far Chile’s largest single energy consumer. It uses 90 per cent of the power generated by the country’s northern energy grid and close to 40 per cent of the national total. The energy sector, which was also privatised under Pinochet, is hence quite straightforwardly in the hands of mining conglomerates. The domestic energy market has no choice but to foot the bill, making household energy costs the highest in Latin America despite Chile’s abundant natural resources. The imbalance helps explain why the poorest citizens in Chile’s seven major regional capitals burn heavily polluting greenwood for heat. Water resources were also privatised by José Piñera under Pinochet’s rule. In the mining 32 LSE Research Magazine, Issue 3, Spring 2011
districts, a permanent flow of water at one litre per second – enough to irrigate one hectare – costs $150,000 or more. Furthermore, 3 per cent of the copper concentrate that the mines pipeline down to Chilean ports and export out of Chile to smelters around the world is water, along with highly valuable rare earths and trace metals for which the mining operations pay nothing. Unsurprisingly, in 2009, Chileans footed the highest per capita water bill on the continent. Now, as Piñera’s right-wing government openly embraces Pinochet’s economic legacy, commodity oligopsony (where the number of buyers is small) and oligopoly (where the number of producers is small) lend modern Chile a colonial look. You would not necessarily know this from the Chilean news media – perhaps understandably, given that two former Chilean senior executives of BHP Billiton, the world’s largest mining company, are running the state-owned TVN television channel and the state-owned copper mining company CODELCO. No wonder there was no media coverage or much public debate on new mining taxation laws before, during or after the 33’s rescue. That nearly ten miners have died across Chile in mining accidents since the rescue of los 33 hasn’t got a lot of attention either. The mining bonanza has tended to elude Chile’s indigenous populations. The very same day the miners were rescued, a small-print constitutional reform was submitted for “urgent discussion” in the Senate by President Piñera. It was supposedly designed to “recognise” Chile’s nine indigenous peoples: the Atacameño, Aymara Coya, Diaguita, Kaweskar, Quechua, Mapuche, Rapa Nui and Yagan people – about 1.5 million people, or 8 per cent of Chile’s population. But this is no great step forward. If it passes, the constitutional reform will recognise indigenous peoples as individuals and communities only –
not as indigenous communities protected by international treaties to which Chile is a signatory. What is more, the proposed legislation would deny indigenous Chileans ownership rights over mineral resources – in blatant contradiction to the existing constitution and international declarations that Chile officially supports. At present, mining companies obtain state concessions over indigenous lands and water easily, and for next to nothing. Yet copper and water extraction take place within more than five million hectares of territory that was legally and officially claimed by indigenous peoples and recognised by the Chilean government over 15 years ago. Since then, these peoples have been waiting for the government to provide them with secure title deeds. Bringing back to life the colonial aphorism that laws are to be abided by but not obeyed, Chile’s government, like most of its Latin American neighbours, constantly fails to do the right thing. The research into land titles and other legal matters, and advocacy work which I have done on behalf of Atacama oases like Peine and Quillagua, has provided me with historical data on Chile’s cyclical resource struggles: censorship, growing inequality, weakened union rights; privatisation; race- and class-segregated education; the highest water and energy bills in Latin America; dreadful pollution levels, etc. The state of affairs is starkly evident in surveys showing that the per capita income of 50 per cent of Chileans is below $165 per month, that the richest 10 per cent make 46.2 times what the poorest 10 per cent make (when state subsidies are not counted), and that five families control half of Chile’s stockmarket shares. This is not necessarily the picture the world took away from the welcome rescue of los 33, but it is a picture worth bearing in mind. n
Alonso Barros
is an LSE fellow in the anthropology of modern law, in the Department of Anthropology. His research interests include the historical anthropology of law and the human rights of indigenous peoples. Between 2006 and 2009 he was principal investigator for FONDECYT, Chile’s National Fund for Scientific and Technological Development. Dr Barros is the author of, among other publications, several scholarly articles on the history and life of indigenous peoples in Chile’s Atacama Desert.
IMMIGRATION
Misunderstanding multiculturalism “State multiculturalism” has been a failure, says British prime minister David Cameron. The greatest failing, says Alan Manning, is not that it has failed to create a sense of belonging among minorities. It is that the multicultural project has paid too little attention to how to sustain support among the white population.
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ot long ago Angela Merkel expressed the view that multiculturalism in Germany has been an “utter failure”. As I write, an Iraqi-born Swede with links to Luton in the UK has blown himself up in Stockholm in a failed attempt to kill others, and articles in the British press opine that his journey to extremism was aided in part by “multiculturalism”. A certain smug satisfaction that the UK had been relatively successful in building a multicultural society has
turned to dismay expressed from all parts of the political spectrum as some young Britons turn suicide bombers. But is this assessment correct? My research suggests it is not. First, let us try to understand the most important features of multiculturalism. I think it is fair to say that the essence of multiculturalism is the idea that, if one makes immigrants feel welcome by allowing them to retain their culture and by seeking to address discrimination against them, immigrants will reciprocate by
embracing a British identity and the values needed for a harmonious society. In 1966, the then home secretary, Roy Jenkins, said: “I do not regard [integration] as meaning the loss, by immigrants, of their own national characteristics and culture. I do not think that we need in this country a ‘melting pot’, which will turn everybody out in a common mould, as one of a series of carbon copies of someone’s misplaced vision of the stereotyped Englishman… I define integration, therefore, not as a flattening process of assimilation but as equal opportunity, accompanied by cultural diversity, in an atmosphere of mutual tolerance.” (It is a quote that, while showing respect for other cultures, also shows its age by its neglect of women, the Scottish, Welsh and Irish.)
Spring 2011, Issue 3, LSE Research Magazine 33
Why did anyone ever think multiculturalism was a good strategy? Often these days, it is thought to be the product of cultural relativism, a reluctance to claim that some value systems are superior to others, so it would be wrong to insist on immigrants changing their values. But, there was another, more muscular argument for multiculturalism, namely that the values underpinning liberal democracies are very appealing to all people from whatever background. In this way, that immigrants from different cultures will come to adhere of their own volition to the values that matter for the smooth functioning of society, while perhaps choosing to keep their particular cultural practices relevant only in private. From this perspective, forcing immigrants to change their behaviour risks being counter-productive – better a society of volunteers than conscripts. One interpretation of what has happened in Britain and other countries is that there has been a failure of confidence in the universal appeal of liberal democratic values. This confidence has been replaced by the feeling that some immigrant groups (and their Britishborn descendants) either have no intention to integrate or that the process is happening too slowly. It is inevitable that events like the 2005 London bombings attract attention, but are the extremists behind them representative of the population as a whole? In spite of the fact that many commentators have very strong views on the subject, we have remarkably little large-scale quantitative evidence on the factors associated with feeling a part of society. My research with Andreas Georgiadis at the Centre for Economic Performance at LSE uses data from the England and Wales 2007 Citizenship Survey to shed more light on the identity and values of different communities in the UK. This article summarises our findings about identity.
Table 1: Percentages reporting a British national identity by ethnicity Ethnicity
All
UKborn
Foreign -born
White British
100%
100%
92%
Indian
73%
97%
64%
Pakistani
81%
95%
71%
Bangladeshi
80%
92%
77%
Black Caribbean
88%
97%
79%
Black African
51%
86%
45%
34 LSE Research Magazine, Issue 3, Spring 2011
Table 2: Sense of belonging by ethnicity Ethnicity
Fairly or very strongly feeling they belong to Britain
Fairly or very strongly feeling they belong to the local area
Agreeing one can belong to Britain and maintain a separate/ religious identity
White British
85%
72%
66%
Indian
89%
75%
84%
Pakistani
89%
81%
89%
Bangladeshi
87%
78%
86%
Black Caribbean
84%
75%
77%
Black African
84%
66%
82%
Identity and ethnicity A lot of concern about multiculturalism is related to the belief that some ethnic and religious minorities do not think of themselves as British, subscribing to some other identity. But much of this seems to be exaggerated. The first column of Table 1 shows the fraction of different ethnic groups who report that their national identity is British. Essentially, all the “white British” do, but the percentages are lower for those from ethnic minorities. However, most of this difference has a simple explanation: the foreign-born are much less likely than the UK-born to report a British national identity and ethnic minorities are more likely to be foreign-born. The second column of Table 1 shows very modest differences between whites and non-whites for the UK-born. And it is also worth noting that the pattern of variation across the minority communities is perhaps not what one might expect eg, the overwhelmingly Muslim Pakistanis and Bangladeshis do not stand out as having much lower levels of British national identity.
Responses to questions about national identity may be very legalistic, with many respondents saying they are British simply because they have a British passport. But the Citizenship Survey also asks more subjective questions about whether one feels that one belongs to Britain. Table 2 contains responses to some of these questions. Perhaps the most striking feature of the first two columns is that ethnic minorities show very similar levels of belonging, both to Britain and their local area, as do the white British. One could interpret this as saying that Britain has been relatively successful in making ethnic minorities feel a part of society, or that Britain has failed to sustain a high sense of belonging among the majority white community. There could also be elements of truth in both of these statements. For the ethnic minorities it is fairly clear that one reason they feel they belong to Britain is that they feel no conflict between their cultural and religious identity and being a full part of British society – the third column shows that 80 to 90 per cent of ethnic minorities perceive no such conflict. Again, there is no evidence that the Muslim communities perceive more of a conflict
IMMIGRATION
Table 3: The effect of residential segregation on the sense of belonging Ethnicity
feel they belong either to Britain or to their local area.
Fairly or very strongly feeling they belong to Britain
Fairly or very strongly feeling they belong to the local area
Local area more than half of same ethnicity
Local area more than half of same ethnicity
Local area less than half of same ethnicity
Conclusion
Local area less than half of same ethnicity
White British
85%
79%
74%
58%
Indian
91%
88%
79%
71%
Pakistani
90%
87%
84%
80%
Bangladeshi
84%
90%
81%
76%
Black Caribbean
83%
84%
80%
73%
Black African
84%
84%
79%
63%
than others. But the third column also shows that one-third of the white British do not accept one can belong to Britain while having a minority religious or cultural identity. Although Table 2 shows a generally high sense of belonging, there are clearly some people who do not feel they belong and our research investigated the factors which seem to be associated with a sense of belonging.
Belonging and segregation Concern is often expressed about residential segregation, about communities becoming isolated when living apart from others. Table 3 shows the sense of belonging for those who live in areas where more or less than half are of the same ethnicity as the respondent. The first two columns of Table 3 show that the ethnic composition of the local area seems to
make little difference to the sense of belonging to Britain. The last two columns show it seems to have more effect on the sense of belonging to the local area, although only for some ethnic groups, notably the white British. Overall residential segregation seems to play little role in affecting the sense of belonging.
Belonging and respect One factor that is very important is being treated fairly and with respect. People of all ethnicities are much more likely to report feeling that they belong if they feel treated fairly and with respect. The Citizenship Survey asks respondents whether they feel they would be treated better or worse than people of other races by 15 public services, covering health, education, criminal justice, local government and housing. Table 4 shows that those who think they would be treated worse by at least one of these services are much less likely to
Table 4: The effect of perceived discrimination on the sense of belonging Ethnicity
Fairly or very strongly feeling they belong to Britain Do not think treated worse than those of other races by any of 15 services
Fairly or very strongly feeling they belong to the local area
Think treated worse than those of other races by any of 15 services
Do not think treated worse than those of other races by any of 15 services
Think treated worse than those of other races by any of 15 services
White British
89%
81%
77%
69%
Indian
91%
87%
79%
66%
Pakistani
93%
83%
82%
81%
Bangladeshi
94%
79%
85%
70%
Black Caribbean
94%
77%
84%
70%
Black African
89%
78%
67%
66%
We interpret these findings as lending support to the key ideas behind multiculturalism – that making immigrants and their cultures feel welcome and respected and fighting discrimination, without worrying too much about where minorities choose to live, will result in those minorities coming to feel part of Britain. Our other research also shows that these same factors are associated with having more pro-social values. The fear that the separation between communities might be creating alienation does not appear well-founded. But there is one important aspect in which multiculturalism has failed. While the multicultural project may be the right way to make minorities feel a part of the wider society, it pays little or no attention to white natives, taking their identity and values for granted. But our findings indicate that segments of the white population have come to feel that they are neglected and discriminated against, and do not feel a part of British society. It is not too much of a leap to imagine that this is the segment of the population from which the BNP draws its support. So, the biggest failure of multiculturalism is not that it has failed to create a sense of belonging among minorities but that it has paid too little attention to how to sustain support among parts of the white population, who are sceptical about the ability to retain a minority ethnic or religious identity while being British and who perceive conflict over resources (especially access to social housing) with immigrants and ethnic minorities. Addressing these concerns is what needs to be done if Roy Jenkins’ ambitions for equal opportunity and cultural diversity to thrive in an atmosphere of mutual tolerance are to become anything like reality. n
Alan Manning
is head of the Department of Economics and director of the Labour Markets Programme at LSE’s Centre for Economic Performance. His principal research interests are labour markets, unemployment, minimum wages, and monopsony (the market situation in which there is only one buyer). Professor Manning is the author of Monopsony in Motion: imperfect competition in labor markets (Princeton University Press, 2005). He is a member of the National Health Service Pay Review Body.
Spring 2011, Issue 3, LSE Research Magazine 35
The
happiness map
George MacKerron writes: This map was created from data contributed by participants in the Mappiness study, which I am running as part of my PhD research at LSE. The study uses an iPhone app to contact participants at random moments during the day, presenting them with a 30-second survey and recording spatial location via the device’s GPS (satellite positioning) chip. I am using this data to investigate relationships between different elements of environmental quality, including habitat types, and immediate subjective wellbeing. Each map cell is sized according to the number of responses – from 16km across where the responses are fewest, down to 1km where responses are highest – and coloured according to the happiness reported within it. The colours represent quartiles, and lighter colours are happier: the least happy 25 per cent of cells are in dark red, while the happiest 25 per cent are in yellow. Locations reflect where people were when they responded, not necessarily where they live. Colours are based on means not of the raw response values, but of values corrected for various influences on happiness, including what participants were doing, whom they were with, and local weather conditions at the time of each response. For more information, or to take part, see www.mappiness.org.uk.
HAPPY
UNHAPPY
George MacKerron
is a researcher in LSE’s Department of Geography and Environment and at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. His principal research interests include subjective wellbeing, climate change, carbon offsetting and innovation, geographic information system and spatial econometrics, and surveying techniques for the web and mobile devices. Mr MacKerron is running the LSE “Mappiness” project along with Dr Susana Mourato, a reader in environmental economics in the Department of Geography and Environment.
36 LSE Research Magazine, Issue 3, Spring 2011
DEBATE
Managing the messenger – or not As the airwaves, internet, and newspapers heated up with debate over Rupert Murdoch’s attempted buyout of BSkyB, Pablo Ibáñez Colomo and Damian Tambini took to their keyboards to discuss how, and whether, to regulate the communications industry.
• Pablo to Damian
Reply
Dear Damian, If I had to summarise my impressions about the future of communications regulation, I would point out, first of all, that there is a risk that the full richness of the communications industry is not entirely understood and/or considered by legislators and regulatory authorities when making policy choices. These are extremely complex and fast-moving markets, and therefore a close understanding of their dynamics is the least one should expect from policymakers. In this regard, my impression is, in fact, that the natural reflex of regulators is to ignore these difficulties. Even worse, it is not unusual for regulators to go as far as to fine-tune markets if this simplifies their dynamics and makes intervention and monitoring easier.
In fact, and because regulation has become increasingly complex, regulatory intervention must change in nature and move in the opposite direction. Simply put, regulation must evolve towards forms of intervention that are more flexible and adaptable. In particular, the desirability of intervention needs to be carefully pondered on a case-by-case basis. Instead of providing details about the triggers for intervention and the appropriate remedies, as is currently the case, legislation should be based on more abstract and general objectives (as competition law is). Only in such a way can communications regulation adapt to future challenges. In this sense, I share the views you expressed in a recent op-ed piece published in The Guardian, in which you criticised the proposed reform of Ofcom. We both share the view that only a strong and independent regulator is in a position to address the emerging challenges in the communications sector. Relying on the executive to regulate these matters represents a step-back of several decades that is difficult to justify.
One example is Ofcom’s pay-TV consultation, now on appeal before the Competition Appeals Tribunal. It would seem that Ofcom is not ready to accept the idea that one of the operators providing the so-called multiple-play services (ie, bundles combining broadband internet, voice telephony and television) may enjoy a competitive advantage over its competitors. One has the impression that the regulator prefers an economic landscape in which all retailers provide the exact same services and compete primarily on prices, even when this comes at the expense of the objectives of sector-specific regimes and is not justified. Priority is given to simplicity in regulation and to the creation of a “level playing field” in which there are no asymmetries between market players.
Best, Pablo
We can see a similar tendency elsewhere. Take the example of “net neutrality”, a label that has gained in popularity in the past few years (to the point that the European Commission has devoted a public consultation to the issue). The idea behind net neutrality regulation is simple: its proponents argue that, if there is a risk that broadband internet operators (eg, BT, Virgin, TalkTalk) discriminate against some content and application providers (think of Google and YouTube, Facebook, Apple’s iTunes and so on), a non-discrimination obligation imposed on the former and applying across the board is an appropriate response. Again, such a reaction (which, admittedly, has the advantage of being predictable and easily practicable) seems inappropriate in a fast-moving industry. In the absence of a solid theory underlying intervention on the part of its proponents, the obvious potential negative effects of net neutrality regulation should be sufficient to dissuade policymakers. But it is not obvious to expect that this will happen, as we have seen in the United States. Simple and intuitively sound rules are undoubtedly appealing, and this may compensate for their shaky theoretical foundations in the eyes of legislators and policymakers.
If I understand your proposal correctly, you want communication regulation to be simpler and more flexible, but to reflect the complexity and instability of the market. I am not sure that is possible. But I would like to hear more about what precisely you are proposing.
Reply
Forward
• Damian to Pablo
Reply
Dear Pablo,
Recent decades have seen a dramatic transformation of communications regulation in the UK and elsewhere in Europe. Competition has arrived in many parts of both telecoms and broadcasting markets, with some huge gains for consumers in terms of choice, price and
Spring 2011, Issue 3, LSE Research Magazine 37
The tension between competition-based interventions, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, solutions based on market failure, rights, the public interest, social value and externalities was never resolved in the Communications Act 2003, and has never been resolved at Ofcom. Perhaps we should accept that these fundamental issues in communications regulation will never be resolved. Tough questions remain: not only about the nature of the intervention (whether to go for behavioural remedies or some kind of structural separation at BT for instance) or about to what extent dominance should be tolerated. There is also a variety of ongoing debates about to what extent market failures justify some kind of sector specific rule. For some, broadcasting regulation is a relic dealing with market imperfections and will eventually be completely removed. For others, including me, there are good reasons to retain both some notion of dynamic competition, but alongside other forms of public accountability mechanisms that are not based on market relationships. The examples you refer to – pay TV and net neutrality – are indeed difficult cases. I would agree that any call for intervention should be treated sceptically and subject to rigorous impact testing. But we do need to have a debate about regulation of these issues, as they are areas where remedies based on competition (such as transparency obligations) could have a limited impact, and where there may be “citizen” implications – ie, implications that raise issues of rights, externalities or broader social value that must be taken into account. Broadcasting regulation is an area where these issues are obviously triggered, but arguably they are prevalent across communications policy: think of the social and democratic implications associated with having a reliable broadband connection. It would be great if we could be sure that competition between providers would enable consumers to chose between neutral networks and those that discriminate. But we don’t know that it would. The irony is that the vision of a radically simplified regulatory framework consisting of basic
38 LSE Research Magazine, Issue 3, Spring 2011
competition law is now being called into question. Content regulation is still necessary in some form, as is managing the boundaries between the players in a mixed ecology of public service and commercial content in Europe. Indeed the current government sees internet content regulation as requiring its urgent attention. And whilst spurring competition was effective in rolling out the previous generation of unbundled broadband services, a growing group of experts is questioning whether a similar simple paradigm of regulation can deliver the next generation of broadband services, or whether the scale of investment will require an entirely different approach. The government will – hopefully – set in place the policy framework for the next Communications Bill during 2011. The new framework needs not only to be simplified; it needs to offer some long-term certainty about the boundaries between competition and other ways of ensuring accountability and protecting the public interest, and it needs to assess the longer-term strategic importance of communications infrastructure for society and the economy. As the new framework is implemented, I am not sure if flexibility should be the aspiration. That was the plan in 2002: give the regulator wide discretion and high level objectives and let it get on with the detail of how to achieve them. But where the issue of political independence of Ofcom management is not resolved, and where the scope for discretion is now so contested, such flexibility can be problematic. At worse, a flexible regulator is a regulator open to lobbying, contestation and ultimately the undermining of its own legitimacy. Best, Damian Reply
Forward
• Pablo to Damian
Reply
Dear Damian, I indeed would like regulation to be more flexible, so it can adapt to the evolution of communications markets and react to new challenges. The idea is that legislation should sketch broad principles or objectives that are subsequently fleshed out by an independent regulator. In my opinion, this will ensure that rigid regulatory solutions are not perpetuated in time and can be replaced much more easily. But let me clarify my position in light of some of the issues you raise in your email:
© CORBIS IMAGES
availability. With the rise of competition in the cosy oligopoly of British broadcasting in particular, a tantalising simplification of regulation beckoned: perhaps broadcasting markets, following the example of telecoms, could be radically deregulated. Perhaps competition is the best way of ensuring that consumers have their needs and interests met?
• Flexible regulation is not the same as deregulation or less regulation. The idea of flexible or adaptable regulation is often associated with the deregulation moves seen in particular in the telecommunications sector. The idea that regulation should be “smarter” does not necessarily mean that there should be less regulation. It simply means that regulation should be fit for purpose and that it should be proportionate (ie, that it does not go beyond what is necessary to achieve its goals). I can think of at least two reasons why this approach to regulation is indispensable. First, many forms of intervention in communications-related markets were conceived in a completely different economic and technological context. For instance, it cannot be ignored that the current model of public service broadcasting was initially implemented in a technological reality that has little to do with the current technological context. Second, (and this is often ignored, in particular by lawyers), regulation has a cost, which is why it should be proportionate. Take the example of the BBC. I do not believe anybody questions the quality and impartiality of its news service. It is often ignored, on the other hand, that this highly praised service comes at a price. As a result, an assessment of the proportionality of intervention is indispensable. • Flexible regulation is not the same as competition regulation. The idea that regulation should be more flexible and adaptable does not only apply to competition regulation. It is true that the trend towards more flexible tests has come from regulation that was primarily concerned with promoting competition, but this does not mean that these principles should be disregarded when intervention is guided by other concerns. The debate on net neutrality, which we have both
DEBATE
mentioned, is a very good example. Net neutrality proponents defend that intervention in this sense is justified even in the absence of competition or innovation concerns (in The Master Switch, Tim Wu no longer justifies net neutrality claims, it would seem, on competition or innovation grounds, and he resorts instead to constitutional arguments). This does not mean that intervention should be less flexible or that the unintended consequences of regulation can be ignored. Even assuming that the debate on net neutrality has to do with freedom of expression and “citizens’ rights”, it is necessary to reflect thoroughly on the convenience of intervention. This means that it is necessary to identify with precision how and why a non-neutral network would affect the interests of consumers as “citizens” and which mechanisms can respond optimally to these concerns. Rigid and inflexible net neutrality rules applying across the board could have a destructive impact, which is wholly unjustified if there is not a solid theory justifying intervention in the first place. In the case of net neutrality, I have not yet come across such a theory. • Flexible regulation is not without problems. By the end of your email, you mention a few problems that are associated with more flexible forms of intervention. I cannot dispute this idea. There is a risk of regulatory capture and there is also an issue of legitimacy, this is clear. The question we should be asking ourselves is whether the alternative (ie, rigid and detailed legislation giving less discretion to an independent regulation) is better. And this is where I probably disagree with you. When regulatory choices are made via legislation, the risk of lobbying also exists. What is more, it is more problematic for at least two reasons: first, the level of technical expertise of MPs and second, the fact that rigid regulatory choices become perpetuated and cannot be reviewed on appeal before a court. On the issue of the independence of the regulator, I wonder whether one (including the current members of government) can seriously dispute that a strong, independent and technically well-equipped regulator is indispensable (as is the case of the BBC, for instance, the status of which is not open to discussion). There are various ways in which the democratic accountability of the regulator can be preserved. Best, Pablo Reply
Forward
• Damian to Pablo Dear Pablo,
Reply
At the end of your comment you put your finger on one of the key challenges as government contemplates reforms of Ofcom and a new Communications Bill: the democratic accountability of the regulator. Reforms have to strike a difficult balance: to ensure accountability – and thus legitimacy of decision-making – at the same time as permitting the regulator a degree of flexibility as you suggest. I believe that the past 12 months have seen a serious crisis in the way that Ofcom relates to government and we need to innovate with new structures to ensure that such problems are avoided in future. We must acknowledge the key trade-offs and tensions between independence, flexibility and accountability. Regulators of communications (in contrast to other sectors) should be clearly independent from government in a democracy, but decisions should nonetheless have democratic accountability that can be provided by government or, preferably, Parliament. There is a need for flexibility and lightness of touch, but this must be squared with delays and heavyhandedness when key decisions need to be approved by Parliament. And as we debate whether to invest public money in the BBC, for example, or to improve superfast broadband access in the longer term, there is a continuing role for Parliament and the public in deciding what kind of communications institutions and infrastructure we want. The dynamism and innovation of the market must be freed, but markets unfortunately do fail. Where Parliament decides it is appropriate, markets must also be harnessed in service of broader public interests. I would argue that Parliament should be bolder in clarifying the broader longer- term policy objectives in communications markets, and in particular the balance between public provision and the market. At present, Parliament has not made a view clear on whether the BBC has a long-term role to play in the internet age or whether the broadcaster is essentially a 20th-century institution. Commercial providers currently face huge uncertainty made much worse by unpredictable actions of public service providers like the BBC. The BBC public value framework does not improve matters. It simply slows the BBC down by making it more difficult for them to launch new services. To set out long-term policy objectives is easier said than done of course, but the stakes are very high in the current battle between public service and commercial media now that the press and broadcasters compete directly on new platforms.
Constraining the BBC’s provision too much in new media such as iPads and mobiles could cause longterm damage to established institutions such as the BBC at a time when journalism more broadly is in crisis. This is why I argued in a recent book chapter (in Options for a New Britain, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) for a much more wide-ranging debate about long-term provision of public service post spectrum scarcity. I agree with most of what you suggest, Pablo, and this has been a useful exchange. I indeed hope that government will set out some broad objectives of policy in this area and permit the regulator some flexibility of response as innovation transforms the sector. But as we have both argued, dealing with flexibility and squaring it with accountability and other problems is fiendishly difficult and will require a great deal of careful thought and consultation. I also believe that the accountability of media institutions themselves to their users and the wider society is a matter not only for the market, but that Parliament and the public should continue to discuss – in forums such as www.mediapolicy. org/general/do-we-really-need-a-right-to-publicexpression – how our changing communications infrastructure and the key institutions of our public sphere should be managed to support a positive approach to free speech. Best, Damian n Reply
Forward
Pablo Ibáñez Colomo
is a lecturer in competition law in the Department of Law. His research focuses on the interaction of competition law with sector-specific regulation in the communications sectors, including media and telecommunications regulation. Dr Ibáñez’s work examines the extent to which intervention is capable of reacting and adapting to economical and technological changes. He is a co-author of a competition-law manual, Manual de Derecho de la Competencia (Tecnos, 2008).
Damian Tambini
is a senior lecturer in the Department of Media and Communications and convenor of the London Multimedia Lab for audiovisual communication and composition. His research addresses a range of current issues in media law and policy. Dr Tambini’s writings focus on public service broadcasting, privacy, self-regulation, censorship, and migrants and the media and the public sphere.
Spring 2011, Issue 3, LSE Research Magazine 39
WELFARE STATE
The LONG GOODBYE
benefit changes. If growth goes according to forecast, we shall see a reduction in the share public spending takes of GDP from 47 per cent in 2010 to 39 per cent in 2015. So these are very big reductions on any historical comparison. One has to remember that in the 1920s and 1930s governments did not raise spending sharply in recessions and so have to adjust afterwards. Even so, for the first time since 1945, the share of the national income devoted to the welfare state will fall significantly in the next four years. It had risen sharply as a result of the Blair and Brown governments and the recession. The welfare budget as a share of GDP will probably fall back to a little above what the Blair government inherited in 1997 – 26 per cent compared to the 25 per cent it was in 1996, on my figuring.
In the land of Lloyd George and Beveridge, the coalition axe has fallen. Over the next four years, says Howard Glennerster, the share of national income devoted to the welfare state will fall significantly for the first time since 1945.
The cuts are historically large
35
The coalition government’s 2010 Comprehensive Spending Review represents the largest sustained fall in public expenditure since 1922.
40 LSE Research Magazine, Issue 3, Spring 2011
Social security
30 Welfare spending as a % of GDP
Health and care 25
Education
20
15
10
5
14 /5
20
08 20 10
01
98
20
20
91
19
88
81
19
19
71
68
78
19
19
19
61
58
19
19
19
48 19 51
41
19
19
31 19 38
28
19
19
19
21
0
00
How far real spending will fall this time depends on the rate of inflation and to what extent the government holds its nerve in keeping to its cash limits. But assuming it does, the Office of Budget Responsibility estimates suggest that from the end of 2010 to the end of 2015 there will be
All welfare (pre-1921)
19
The cuts required by the IMF in 1976 produced a fall in real public spending of 4 per cent followed by a return to the previous level of spending two years later. Cuts in social programmes after the Suez crisis and the Korean War did not reach even that scale. After the 1931 crisis, real spending once more fell by about 4 per cent for two years and then grew again. From 1921-24 government spending, central and local, fell by over 8 per cent – the “Geddes Axe” as it was called, after the chairman of the committee that recommended the cuts.
So where does all this leave us or, more to the point, where does it leave the most vulnerable? Here it is difficult to improve on the judgement of the Institute for Fiscal Studies that despite some headline-grabbing moves to cut some benefits for the better off, the major immediate impact is going to fall on poorer younger families, notably those in the bottom 40 per cent of income distribution. They depend most on public services. School spending is to rise by 0.1 per cent a year in real terms and hence is “protected”, but school populations are rising by 0.7 per cent a year so this amounts to real year-on-year cuts per pupil.
a fall in current spending (staff and year-onyear expenses) of 7.4 per cent. Government investment (on buildings) will fall, on their figures, by 20 per cent up to 2014 (only to rebound to its present level during what is likely to be a pre-election year, 2014-15). Social security spending will fall in real terms by 0.4 per cent a year; this arises partly from choosing a lower price index to set benefit rates, partly because unemployment will ultimately fall, and because more people will be pushed back into work through welfare reform and child
19 10
T
here are many questions that can be asked about the cuts Britain’s coalition government announced in October. Were they necessary to reassure the bond markets? What impact will they have on jobs and the economic recovery? I am neither a macro-economist nor an expert on bond markets. I am asking a different set of questions. How significant are the cuts for the social welfare system? Who will gain and lose? What are the long-term implications for the welfare state?
Who will the cuts affect?
The effect is going to be considerable in the case of services for older people. Real spending on the NHS is planned to rise by 0.1 per cent a year but the impact of ageing on health care means that the NHS needs an extra 1 per cent a year just to stand still. Local authority grants are to fall by more than a quarter and despite small extra funds for social care this is going to have a large impact on services for older people and children in need of care and support. Just how much will depend on what councils do to raise more revenue. I assume they will find that difficult in the coming economic and political climate.
The problem is long-term These immediate issues, however, mask a longerterm problem. Between 1986 and 2008 the share of the GDP going to pay for the welfare state grew by 5 per cent. Yet national revenue fell as a share of national income. Britain’s social policy ambitions outran the electorate’s willingness to pay for them. Or, more accurately, outran politicians’ willingness to ask them. Nor will this problem go away. In work I did for the Royal Society of Arts 2020 Commission, I showed that simply to sustain existing service and benefit levels and fulfil promises made by all parties we would need to spend 4 per cent more of our GDP on social welfare by 2030 and 8 per cent more by 2060. We are becoming an older population with all that means for demands on public spending. That figure would be even more if free personal care for the elderly, as in Scotland, were added to the menu. None of that looks in prospect. But private alternatives are not that easy to see either.
Private insurance not the answer Doom-mongers have forecast the end of welfare states before. It has not happened. One reason is that all the features that make it difficult for governments to sustain benefit levels pose even more problems for the private insurance sector. The chances of living longer are rising steadily. Hence, so are the actuarial costs of private pension schemes. Employers are cutting back on occupational pension schemes and leaving the financial risks of old age to individuals. For economic reasons we now understand much better than we used to why individuals put off taking pension decisions. The same is true for long-term care insurance. There always seems to be a good reason for putting off such decisions. Taking out private loans for the full cost of higher education is a non-starter for those from poor backgrounds and many more. The state needs to be involved in all these markets. But it need not simply take on the whole cash burden. Individuals can decide to share the burden with some help.
Nudging forward? Encouragingly, behind all the political sound and fury, steps have begun to be taken to put the funding of the welfare state on a sounder footing and members of the LSE community have been playing a role. The involvement began with the work of the Turner Commission (2005), whose members included Professor John Hills. The commission, which looked squarely at the failure of past pension policy and the consequences of rising life expectancy, suggested that the age at which full state pensions could be drawn should rise in line with life expectancy, effectively ending the steady growth of life in retirement. State pension ages send important signals to individuals and private pension schemes too. The commission further recommended the creation of a national scheme that would take minimum contributions from employees and employers unless employees actively contracted out – a “nudge”, or better, a big shove, towards greater saving. It also said basic state pensions should be made more generous over time to give individuals greater incentives to build their own pensions. It is remarkable, though relatively unremarked upon, that in the midst of all the cuts this crossparty strategy has survived with a clear and speeded timetable.
Similar tough options will face the government later this year when the Dilnot Commission on long-term care reports. Once again, I suspect, people will be called upon to share more of the cost of their care with the state. The detailed work done by colleagues at LSE Health will play an important part in the debate. All these are examples of what I have called “quasi taxes”. Bit by bit we may be nudging the electorate and users to pay for the extended life and longer education they are enjoying. But even if all these proposals are implemented, it will take higher taxes or more new ideas to balance the books in the long term. n
Howard Glennerster
is professor emeritus in social policy at the LSE Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines and an associate at the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion. Professor Glennerster’s research interests include the economics and finance of health education and longterm care and other aspects of social welfare. He has advised a number of public and semi-public bodies on these topics.
Some of us, and notably my colleague Professor Nicholas Barr, have been urging a major reform of higher education funding for many years. This is now happening in a way that will require beneficiaries to pay a lot more towards the cost. This is not so much a nudge as a hefty kick up the backside. You do not have to agree with all the detail – such as no funding at all for teaching the humanities and social sciences! – to conclude that this is absolutely the right direction in which to go. With all the other fiscal pressures I have discussed, there will be less and less for universities from the ordinary taxpayer.
Spring 2011, Issue 3, LSE Research Magazine 41
THE POLICY PERSPECTIVE
From FACTS to FICTION Once upon a time, a US senator warned Americans that they were entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. How quaint that now seems, says Justin Webb, in a land that prizes partisan opinion-mongering over the search for truth.
Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence. John Adams, summation in defence of British soldiers in the Boston Massacre Trials, December 1770
W
hen I arrived at LSE I was interested in opinions. By the time I left I was interested in facts. Of course I learned that the latter cannot be finally separated from the former, but the idea of evidence-based civilisation appealed to me and it still does. What I did not realise then is how delicate the flower of rational decision-making really is, even in (especially in?) the supposedly modern post-ideological developed world. In eight years of reporting from America I saw what increasingly looks like a new revolution, which has taken the nation in a direction far removed from the intellectual traditions of LSE or indeed John Adams. As with all revolutions, the one I am thinking about began long before it was noticed. You sensed it, if at all, as one senses an unexplained breeze that ruffles the hair or causes a newspaper to take flight and flutter into
42 LSE Research Magazine, Issue 3, Spring 2011
the distance, before stillness returns, fooling you into a false sense of calm. What was that, you wonder? Is there a storm brewing? And then you go about your business and forget. I can still remember one such moment. I was in the office of a former congressman and I was interviewing him on the subject of the Bush administration and science. The president was still in his first term, Iraq was still uninvaded, but those who believed in actions being taken only after “the meaning of things” was properly known were feeling nervous. I had gone to see this man to get him to defend a White House decision to pack a committee offering scientific advice on the efficacy of a morning-after pill known as Plan B with people who had no scientific standing. I will not bore you with the details of the arguments but the point of the story is this: the former congressman was amiable and courteous and absolutely unshakable in this view: that folks in Harvard and Yale were, in the future, going to have to share their influence on science policy and the assessment of scientific evidence with folks off the street in Boise Idaho. It seemed a quaint idea. America was certainly not in every sense an evidence-based society, but President Bush’s men surely had some respect for facts? I have to say that the conclusion of our radio documentary on the subject was that their respect was limited – often rhetorical rather than real. And in the world since then, post-documentary and post-Bush, it seems to me that the relationship between American politics and journalism on the one hand and American learning and scholarship on the other has become ever more tenuous. How can I say that after the arrival of President Obama, who is in many respects the most academic of modern presidents, and indeed is often described as professorial to a fault? It is true that, however disappointing he has been to many Americans, this president is science-interested and science-aware. When I interviewed him for the BBC in 2009, we were talking before the cameras went on and I mentioned to him that I had a son who had recently been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, a rare and unpleasant autoimmune condition. President Bush (a man I always found very decent and engaging one-to-one) would have teared up or grasped my shoulders and offered a prayer. President Obama offered advice – and a percentage chance that it could be cured in ten years. To be honest, at that moment he knew more about it than I did.
Britain feels mighty academic in comparison. One of the joys of coming back to the UK has been the richness of its political debate. This may sound odd to the jaded British public who associate their MPs with abuse of expenses and their constitution with sclerosis and only stuttering tentative reform. But we are – it seems to me – still on the whole respecters of evidence. When Tony Travers comes on the Today programme to talk about local government, the audience accept and appreciate his standing as an expert at LSE whose opinions are based on firm foundations. Do the UK’s broadcasting impartiality rules help? My sense is that they might. If Tony were competing with a Fox News alternative the dynamic would change – some kind of spurious “balance” would have to be sought out. And nobody would believe him anyway because nobody will think anyone who doesn’t share his or her prejudices is worthy of respect.
So the president is a believer in knowing the meaning of things. But the president is one man and, as I think we all know now, he does not find it easy to take his nation where he wants it to go. America, in the years I worked there, fell out of love with facts and research, in particular with inconvenient facts and discomforting research. The coming of Obama did not change that.
a weasel word, associated with stodgy, dishonest mediocrity, while jagged, nakedly partisan reportage is seen as laudable and clean. Fox’s slogan – “We report, You decide” – is gorgeously Orwellian. Nobody in the audiences of America’s most successful cable news shows is doing any deciding, in the sense of making choices based on a fair-minded review of the evidence. (The same applies to MSNBC on the left.)
The late Senator Daniel Moynihan once issued a warning to Americans that they were entitled to their own opinions but not their own facts. At the time he spoke, it seemed a reasonable point of view. Now it looks deeply anachronistic. Along with the battering of the scientific establishment, we have seen in America a broadcasting environment where left and right fight nightly battles from their respective castles (Fox for the right and MSNBC for the left) and where the middle ground (CNN and the old broadcast news programmes) are caught in the crossfire, arrows raining down on their unprotected heads. They are slaughtered in the ratings and (crucially) in public affection, seen as folks who cannot get off the fence, cannot admit their own biases.
But would-be providers of impartial news find themselves in a psychological bind. In a desperate effort to fight off those who regard them as just as biased as everyone else but merely less honest, they become trapped in the timidity and faux impartiality of the “on the one hand, on the other hand” school of reportage that sees any drivel spouted by anyone as equally valid. They have lost the safe space they once had. The suggestion that they simply compete in the market place (as, say, The Economist does very happily in the world of news magazines) misses the point that broadcasting reaches and shapes a national debate in a way no print media does.
The cable channels were never subject to the US Federal Communications Commission’s Fairness Doctrine – in which the broadcast channels were forced to be impartial or to pretend to be – but the abolition of the doctrine in 1987 by President Reagan certainly assisted in creating a general atmosphere in which balance is seen as
This general attitude towards truth pervades much of American public life. People talk past each other. If someone comes up with some evidence, someone else trashes it. Nobody believes anybody or feels the remotest bit tempted to change their mind when the facts change, because the facts don’t change! America blogs rather than reads.
We are a little way away from the end of Tony Travers. But our current broadcasting rules are going to come under great pressure in coming years and will be increasingly difficult to defend in terms of freedom or practicability in the world of multimedia offerings and multi-device consumption. The evidence from America is that in my line of work in the modern digital world, the search for truth is replaced by the dictates of truthiness which, as fans of the political satirist Stephen Colbert will know, is something completely different. Can the rigours of an LSE education prevent this drift in generations to come? Over to you. I make no claim to have any answers but the questions about the value of evidence versus opinion, which began for me at LSE in 1980, are as live and difficult as ever. n
Justin Webb
graduated from LSE with a BSc (Econ) in 1983. He joined the BBC as a graduate trainee a year later and worked in Northern Ireland before returning to London and a reporter’s job on the Today programme on Radio Four. Mr Webb became a TV foreign affairs correspondent, reporting from the former Soviet Union, South Africa and the greater Middle East, where he covered the first Gulf War. He also covered the Bosnian war and after a stint presenting breakfast TV, he became the BBC Europe correspondent before leaving for America in 2002. There he started as a radio correspondent and eventually became the North America editor. He returned to Britain in 2009 to present the Today programme.
Spring 2011, Issue 3, LSE Research Magazine 43
THE ACADEMIC PERSPECTIVE
Maung Zarni describes himself, academically, as a hybrid – a researcher-dissident who comes at his subject, Burma, with a transparent agenda. Here, he writes about the tensions between detached and engaged versions of scholarship. In the photograph on the next page, Dr Zarni (centre) is pictured with Karen National Liberation Army fighters in 2003.
L
ast year I spent nine months in Thailand, Burma’s neighbour, peeking through keyholes into the worlds of Burmese migrant workers, business people, dissidents, foreign diplomats and intelligence officials, travelling journalists, INGO workers, dissidents in exile, labour activists, academics and experts, Burmese defectors, weapons specialists and religious leaders. My research on Burma examines the dark side of globalisation – that is to say, the negative consequences of market expansion and regional economic integration on the Burmese people. As someone who spent his formative years in Burma, my formal and informal conversations with this diverse group of interlocutors have certainly given me some fresh insights into a country that has been soaked in conflict since independence in 1948. I lived the first 25 years of my life in Burma under the military dictatorship of General Ne Win. During the second half of my life, first in the United States and since 2005 in the UK, I have been not only a professional student of the country’s politics, economy and society, but also deeply involved in the Aung San Suu Kyi led uphill struggle towards democratic change in Burma. So perhaps the personal reflections of a hybrid researcher-dissident – of a dissident scholar, if you will, who has been working for social change in his native country – are of interest not only to a wider community of academics but also to the “uninitiated”. Needless to say, there are
44 LSE Research Magazine, Issue 3, Spring 2011
tensions between detached and engaged versions of scholarship. While the two types of scholarship don’t necessarily have to be, and indeed are often not, mutually exclusive in the general scheme of things, they are sadly irreconcilable in the case of scholarship and research on Burma.
there needs to be some meaningfully shared experience between the two sides. A researcher’s personal and political background will determine what type of information can be extracted from the “subjects”. For instance, military defectors in hiding in and around Burma, who may have valuable insider knowledge about the military, will be less likely to meet with a Burmese of a non-military background than with other dissident officers from the same military academies or with similar political views. Needless to say, Burmese officers in service who have chosen to remain loyal to the military and its leadership will avoid coming into contact with any researchers at all costs, except for a handful of intelligence officers who are authorised to interact with foreign and local researchers and scholars. As professionals, they of course won’t spill any beans.
Professional scholars by and large believe that activists, political exiles, military defectors and their international supporters offer nothing more than a bunch of politically motivated, overly moral, saving-Burma discourses. For their part, dissident communities tend to write off “expert” knowledge as nothing more than self-censored, “careerist” professionalism that is part and parcel of the oppression of 50 million Burmese people. Even the choice of what to call the country – Burma or Myanmar? – is morally loaded, as the use of one displeases those who favour the other.
The lack of access to this kind of valuable information renders the quality of research and scholarship woefully inadequate. As an institution with monopoly control over politics, society and economy in Burma, the military has the greatest impact on the population. Not being able to generate quality research or scholarship on this centre of power has resulted in a serious deficit of expertise – which in turn leads to bad policies and sketchy approaches towards change in Burma.
Generally speaking, to carry out research in countries drenched in pervasive poverty and raging conflicts is a difficult task because of the moral, ethical and emotional dimensions involved in extracting “data” from informants and interviewees. It is worth repeating the obvious: for a researcher to understand those whose lives have absolutely no correspondence with his or her own personal or professional background,
Which brings to mind an overlooked but important community of knowledge-producers – the foreign diplomatic corps in Burma. When diplomats get it wrong, there can be serious practical implications, for their information helps to shape their governments’ foreign policies. For instance, in an April 2009 US Embassy cable sent to Washington by Chargé d’Affaires Larry Dinger in Rangoon under the subject line “Burma’s generals: starting the conversation”, the ageing despot, senior General Than Shwe, was described
Researchers generally find the war zones of Burma inaccessible and the risks to personal security too high
as seeking “friendship” with the Americans and offering a “warm” reception to American officials. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Information from defectors is often written off too peremptorily by many among the Burma research community because of the defectors’ political baggage. Many researchers pooh-poohed allegations from defectors about the Burmese dictatorship’s development of a nuclear weapons programme. Whether the nuclear programme is in a primitive stage or not, it is not helpful to dismiss outright the claims of defectors and dissidents. There are other impediments to obtaining information. Researchers generally find the war zones of Burma inaccessible and the risks to personal security too high. But on-the-ground information, whether about rape or pillage or forced relocation, can be obtained from dissidents, not to mention NGO workers who make their way to inhospitable places. In professional research and scholarly circles this sort of testimony is sometimes deemed less than reliable. That doesn’t mean it should be ignored, however. Dissidents who have spent time in and out of jail are willing to talk to researchers and scholars, either from local institutions or from abroad, and share their views and first-hand knowledge of the oppressive political system. But most scholars avoid meeting with dissidents either openly or under the radar for different reasons. The Burmese regime makes serious attempts to ostracise dissidents and their families, and to punish those who attempt to mingle with dissidents by, for example, denying
visas or throwing people in jail. Take the case of Dr Khin Zaw Win, a dentist who, while doing his research in Burma for his master’s degree in public policy at the National University of Singapore, was given a ten-year sentence in 1994 simply for hanging out with a small group of well-known dissidents. Thus selective self-censorship becomes the norm among scholars who wish to trade access to the regime for selective silences. The best known example of this is the Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, who, in sharing his economic analysis of Burma’s economy with the generals during a seminar in Rangoon in December 2009, apparently felt obliged to omit the predatory and exploitative nature of the Burmese state from his diagnosis of the country’s economic ills. Most of us experts have been caught flat-footed when popular discontent and anger boiled over. This happened to me when I was in Oxford, thousands of miles from the field, and students, monks and civilians took to the streets in what became known as the “Saffron Revolution” of 2007. At the time, Burma researchers around the world categorically failed to discern the pulse of the public. When confronted with such failures to anticipate significant political processes or events, Burma experts tend to dismiss them as simply futile, as opposed to acknowledging their own professional shortcomings as researchers. The moral narrative about Burma betrays a deeper global significance and complex dynamic that goes beyond good and evil. Burma is home not only to oppression but also to a major natural resource scramble. Southeast Asia’s
largest mainland country is home to one of the world’s ten largest natural gas deposits, boasts 80 per cent of the planet’s remaining teak forests, and is rich in copper, gold, uranium and “rare earth” minerals. It is to be expected, then, that the production of research-based knowledge becomes both divided and fiercely contested. Where the control of information has become such an important weapon for all sides, the veneer of academic objectivity becomes very thin. Thus my nine months of research have been important in orientating my own path through differing versions of the truth – and reassessing the potential value of my own work as a researcher-dissident hybrid. n
Maung Zarni
is a research fellow at LSE Global Governance. His research interests include the negative human and ecological consequences of globalisation on the Burmese people. A columnist for The Irrawaddy news magazine, Dr Zarni has been a pioneer in internet activism since 1995 and has been recognised as one of Southeast Asia’s most influential bloggers and social networkers. He has contributed to a number of books, including Global Civil Society 2011: globality and the absence of justice (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) and Myanmar/Burma: outside interests and inside challenges (Brookings Institution Press and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, 2010).
Spring 2011, Issue 3, LSE Research Magazine 45
FOOTNOTES
At home abroad Hilary Weale’s remit is to connect travelling LSE academics with non-academic audiences. The School’s 60,000 or so alumni outside the UK are often the first port of call, she says, but they are hardly the only beneficiaries.
LSE has never simply been an ivory tower. It is an institution in which the pursuit of rigorous academic scholarship is combined with a view to reaching beyond its walls to a wider audience that now includes the general public, government, policymakers, and the media. The extent of this reach is international. Faculty travel all over the globe to conduct research, participate in conferences, and share their expertise. Helping them to do so with nonacademic audiences abroad is my remit. What I do is partly a question of opportunism: trying to find out where and when someone is travelling, and seeing what might be incorporated into a crowded schedule. The Linking Up Fund was established three years ago in order to help connect all these dots. The broad premise is that if faculty are travelling abroad on academic business and are willing
and able to undertake additional external relations activity, the Fund can meet the extra costs. Some academics apply to the Fund with their plans already made, while others do so knowing that they will be abroad and are open to suggestions. The School’s 100,000 alumni around the world are often our first port of call. Former LSE students the world over are delighted to meet travelling academics – to maintain their intellectual link with the School, as well as for social reasons. During the current academic year, Howard Davies and Nikolas Rose have addressed alumni in Beijing, Richard Macve in Shanghai, Eileen Barker in Vienna and Prague, Michael Cox in Hong Kong, Jeffrey Chwieroth in Seoul, and Iain Begg in Tokyo. The benefits of these encounters are far from one-dimensional. A conference in Rio de Janeiro
If we find out that someone is travelling abroad, and think that they might be open to the idea of external relations activity, we approach them to see if something appropriate can be arranged 46 LSE Research Magazine, Issue 3, Spring 2011
in September given by Arne Westad and Tanya Harmer of LSE IDEAS incorporated a book launch and reception. Having set up a range of seminars, lectures and meetings with industry and government representatives in Bogota, Ken Shadlen got in touch with the Fund. Paul Woolley and Charles Goodhart will showcase Future of Finance: the LSE report in Frankfurt in May. By the same token, students abroad who will be heading off to LSE in future find meetings with travelling faculty members extremely useful. We don’t always wait for an academic to come to us – plenty of them, it must be said, undertake external relations work without our intervention – nor do we rely solely on Linking Up as a starting point. If we find out that someone is travelling abroad, and think that they might be open to the idea of external relations activity – or if their plans already include it, but they hadn’t thought of or known about the Fund – we approach them to see if something appropriate can be arranged. Therefore, I rely heavily on communication with colleagues to find out about forthcoming trips, and I scour the academic conference listings to see where LSE faculty might be heading next and what scope there might be for international engagement. There are only winners, on all sides, in this outreach effort, so there’s no room for complacency. n
Hilary Weale
is external relations executive in LSE’s External Relations Division. Miss Weale is responsible for the LSE Experts Directory and for helping to raise the profile of LSE and its research with non-academic audiences, particularly abroad.
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A different class of executive teaching...