As for Prof. Francis Fukuyama, please refer to my previous postings (http://d.hatena.ne.jp/itunalily2/20070731)(http://d.hatena.ne.jp/itunalily2/20090612)(http://d.hatena.ne.jp/itunalily2/20140101)(http://d.hatena.ne.jp/itunalily2/20140219).(Lily)
1. Japan Times(http://www.japantimes.co.jp)
(1)Islamic State threatens to kill two Japanese hostages unless $200 million ransom is paid, 20 January 2015
AP, AFP-JIJI, Staff Report
CAIRO – An online video released Tuesday purported to show the Islamic State group threatening to kill two Japanese hostages unless they receive a $200 million ransom in the next 72 hours.
The video shows two hostages kneeling in orange jumpsuits that a British-accented militant identifies as Kenji Goto, a freelance journalist, and Haruna Yukawa, a private security contractor.
The militant says that the ransom demand is to compensate for nonmilitary aid that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pledged to support countries affected by the campaign against the Islamic State group during an ongoing six-day Middle East tour that on Tuesday saw him in Jerusalem.
Speaking at a press conference in Tokyo, chief government spokesman Yoshihide Suga said the Japanese government would not bow to extremism.
“Our country’s stance — contributing to the fight against terrorism without giving in — remains unchanged.”
An official in the Foreign Ministry’s anti-terrorism division had said earlier that the government was investigating the threat and the authenticity of the film.
The video, identified as being made by the Islamic State group’s al-Furqan media arm and posted on militant websites associated with the extremist group, mirrored other hostage threats it has made. The militant in it also directly addresses Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
“To the prime minister of Japan: Although you are more than 8,000 and 500 kilometers from the Islamic State, you willingly have volunteered to take part in this crusade,” says the knife-brandishing militant in the video, who resembles and sounds like a British citizen involved in other filmed beheadings by the Islamic State group. “You have proudly donated $100 million to kill our women and children, to destroy the homes of the Muslims.”
The British-accented jihadi also has appeared in the beheading videos of slain American hostages James Foley and Steven Sotloff, and with British hostages David Haines and Alan Henning.
In August, a Japanese citizen believed to be Yukawa, a private military company operator in his early 40s, was kidnapped in Syria after going there to train with militants, according to a post on a blog kept. Pictures on his Facebook page show him in Iraq and Syria in July. One video on his page showed him holding a Kalashnikov assault rifle with the caption: “Syria war in Aleppo 2014.”
Goto is a respected Japanese freelance journalist who went to report on Syria’s civil war last year and knew of Yukawa.
“I’m in Syria for reporting,” he wrote in an email to an Associated Press journalist in October. “I hope I can convey the atmosphere from where I am and share it.”
The video comes several years after the 2004 beheading of Japanese hostage Shosei Koda during the U.S.-led war in Iraq. At the time, militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi cited Japan’s participation in the conflict as the motive for his execution.
The Islamic State group has beheaded and shot dead hundreds of captives — mainly Syrian and Iraqi soldiers — during its sweep across the two countries, and has celebrated its mass killings in extremely graphic videos. It also holds British photojournalist John Cantlie, who has appeared in other extremist propaganda videos, and a 26-year-old American woman captured last year in Syria while working for aid groups. U.S. officials have asked that the woman not be identified out of fears for her safety.
Tuesday’s video marks the first time the Islamic State group specifically has demanded cash for hostages. Though the militant in the video links it to the Japanese funding efforts to counter the Islamic State group, it comes amid recent losses for the extremists targeted in airstrikes by a U.S.-led coalition. Its militants also recently released some 200 mostly elderly Yazidi hostages in Iraq, fueling speculation by Iraqi officials that the group couldn’t support them.
(2) In Israel, Abe says Japan is committed to Mideast peace, 19 January 2015
Kyodo, AFP-JIJI
JERUSALEM – Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu, said Monday their two countries will strengthen cooperation in countering cyberattacks and promote exchanges between defense officials.
The leaders, meeting in Jerusalem for a second straight day, also reaffirmed close cooperation regarding peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific and Middle East regions.
Israel has been pursuing human resource development in the cyber arena and last November the two countries held their first cybersecurity talks in Tokyo.
The Abe administration is keen to enhance Japan’s ability to combat cyberattacks in the run-up to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
“The two countries are deepening relations in various fields,” Abe said at a joint news conference with Netanyahu. “We will try to strengthen relations with Israel as a true friend.”
Netanyahu pledged to do the same, saying the two countries are capable of shaping a new future.
In the economic field, Abe and Netanyahu confirmed that the two countries will aim to begin preparatory talks soon for signing an investment accord, according to Japanese officials.
On Sunday, the two leaders agreed to jointly enhance counterterrorism measures amid heightened threats around the world.
Earlier in the day, Abe said Japan is committed to working for Middle East peace during a visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust History Museum in Jerusalem.
“Japan is determined to contribute even more proactively to world peace and stability,” he said in a statement translated into English after touring the harrowing memorial.
“Today, I have learned how merciless humans can be by singling out a group of people and making that group the object of discrimination and hatred,” he said.
Abe laid a wreath in the Hall of Remembrance and re-stoked the “eternal flame,” as is customary for international leaders and diplomats visiting the site.
He also paid tribute to late Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara, who is known one of the “righteous among the gentiles.” He gave travel documents to some 3,500 Jews trying to escape the Nazi Holocaust while he was posted to Lithuania, and in whose honor a tree is planted at Yad Vashem.
“In March, last year, I visited the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. Today, I find myself fully determined. The Holocaust, never again,” Abe said.
“This year as we mark the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II and the liberation of Auschwitz, I make a pledge that we should never ever let such tragedies be repeated.”
After visiting the memorial, Abe — the first Japanese prime ministers to visit Israel in nine years — held separate talks with Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin.
He was scheduled to travel Tuesday to the West Bank to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, his last stop on a six-day tour of the region which began with a visit to Egypt and Jordan.
(3) The future of Netanyahu and the Jewish state, 18 January 2015
by Shlomo Avineri
The dissolution of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, just a day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sacked two senior Cabinet ministers, marks a surprising turnabout. Indeed, when Israelis vote again in March, more than two years ahead of schedule, Netanyahu could be voted out of office, with important implications not only for Israel, but also for the wider Middle East.
Until last summer, Netanyahu appeared politically unassailable. His coalition government, despite some internal bickering, was expected to serve out its term. Not even 10 percent of Israelis would have preferred the opposition leader, the Labor Party’s Yitzhak Herzog, as prime minister.
Things began to unravel when two Cabinet ministers abruptly resigned, citing family commitments or policy disagreements. Then came the inconclusive war in Gaza, which, given Netanyahu’s unfulfilled pledge to “crush Hamas,” undermined his credibility, especially when ministers like Naftali Bennett, the leader of the nationalist religious Jewish Home party, openly challenged his policies.
When some European parliaments voted in 2014 to recognize Palestine as an independent state, many Israelis, who had long blamed the Palestinians for the continued failure of peace talks, began to worry.
More significant, Netanyahu’s public clashes with U.S. President Barack Obama fueled concerns among Israelis — including supporters of Netanyahu’s Likud party — that their government’s policies were deepening Israel’s isolation and thus undermining its security.
The domestic situation is not much better. Netanyahu has failed to fulfill his promises since the massive demonstrations of 2011 to address prohibitively high living costs, especially for young couples. On the contrary, housing prices have continued to rise.
When Yair Lapid — the ambitious but inept finance minister, who leads the centrist Yesh Atid party — proposed waiving the value-added tax on first apartment purchases by young couples, Netanyahu failed to respond decisively, giving the impression that he lacked control over his own Cabinet.
But it was Netanyahu’s support for draft legislation seeking to constitutionalize Israel’s identity as the Jewish people’s nation-state — to the detriment of Israel’s Muslim, Christian and Druze citizens — that brought the situation to a head. The bill, which emphasizes Israel’s Jewish identity above its democratic principles, has caused deep divisions not only among the electorate, but also within the government coalition.
Netanyahu, with his weak and vacillating leadership exposed, sacked his opponents, Lapid and Justice Minister Tzipi Livni (who also denounced Netanyahu’s settlement-construction plans), and called for new elections.
But the real game changer was the declaration by Herzog and Livni, who leads the small centrist Hatnuah party, that their parties would run jointly in the elections. If they win, they will rotate in the prime minister’s post.
This changed Israeli political discourse almost overnight. Far from invincible, Netanyahu is now viewed as a failed prime minister, confronted by a center-left bloc that may well become the most powerful voice in the Knesset. Yesh Atid voters, who have been disappointed by Lapid’s failure to deliver the “new politics” of efficiency and transparency that he promised, may supply the Herzog-Livni alliance with the necessary votes.
Some of the moderate orthodox parties, which have been undergoing their own internal splits, have also signaled their willingness to work with a center-left bloc that might enable Israel to make real progress.
Even Minister of Foreign Affairs Avigdor Lieberman, head of the right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu party, is now criticizing Netanyahu for alienating the U.S. and has suggested that he would not rule out joining a centrist government.
All of this bodes well for the Herzog-Livni alliance. But three months is a long time in politics. Netanyahu may be a dismal prime minister; but he is also a formidable campaigner.
And if the centrist alliance finishes first in the election, it will still need coalition partners to form a majority in the Knesset. Gaining fewer than 30 of its 120 seats might drive it to seek potential partners among the orthodox — an approach that could alienate moderate secular voters.
Moreover, once in power, the Herzog-Livni alliance would be met with serious challenges — beginning with reaching an agreement with the Palestinians.
Given that the Palestinians’ political leadership is divided between the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, which controls the West Bank, and Hamas, which has established an Islamic fundamentalist regime in Gaza, a deal between Israel and PA President Mahmoud Abbas would mean little.
Nonetheless, a Herzog-Livni government would bring significant change, particularly in terms of relations with Europe and the U.S.
Netanyahu’s provocative policies and statements, which have undermined support for Israel among even its closest allies, would be supplanted by a willingness to negotiate in earnest and make genuine concessions.
Such a shift would reinvigorate hope among Israelis — and not a moment too soon. There is a growing realization in Israel that it is time to chart a new path.
Netanyahu, always eager to impress upon the Israeli public the impossibility of making peace with the Palestinians, failed to address the question of what kind of country Israel will become if it continues to rule millions of people against their will. This is what has turned so many people in the West against Israel, leading some to question its very legitimacy. If Zionism means eternal dominion over the Palestinians, is it really worthy of support?
The Herzog-Livni alliance has tentatively named itself the “Zionist Camp.” It may not be catchy (and it is likely to be changed), but it expresses an essential truth: Zionism is about the right of the Jewish people to self-determination, not about the permanent domination of another people. One hopes that Israeli voters recognize this in March.
・Shlomo Avineri is professor of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. © 2015 Project Syndicate
2.Algemeiner（http://www.algemeiner.com）
Netanyahu Was Right to Attend Paris Rally , 18 January 2015
by Ronn Torossian
Following the horrific terror attacks in France, world leaders marched in Paris against terror – and while French President Francois Hollande proclaimed in front of the cameras, “Today, Paris is the capital of the world,” he urged Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to attend.
To his credit, Netanyahu rightfully attended and marched in the front row. The world’s most prominent representative of the Jewish State must be present at a rally against terrorism – no matter how anyone else feels. No people has been targeted by terrorists as much as the Jews.
When Netanyahu confirmed his attendance, media reports claim that French officials relayed that there would be an adverse effect on ties between the two countries as long as Hollande was president of France and Netanyahu was prime minister of Israel. Netanyahu is the leader of the Jewish State – and if someone does not like it, that is too damn bad.
As Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the Revisionist Zionist leader, wrote many years ago:
We constantly and very loudly apologize… Instead of turning our backs to the accusers, as there is nothing to apologize for, and nobody to apologize to, we swear again and again that it is not our fault… Isn’t it long overdue to respond to all these and all future accusations, reproaches, suspicions, slanders and denunciations by simply folding our arms and loudly, clearly, coldly, and calmly answering with the only argument that is understandable and accessible to this public: ‘Go to Hell!’?
Who are we, to make excuses to them; who are they to interrogate us? What is the purpose of this mock trial over the entire people where the sentence is known in advance? Our habit of constantly and zealously answering to any rabble has already done us a lot of harm and will do much more. … The situation that has been created as a result, tragically confirms a well known saying: “Qui s’excuse s’accuse.”
We do not have to apologize for anything. We are a people as all other peoples; we do not have any intentions to be better than the rest.
We do not have to account to anybody, we are not to sit for anybody’s examination and nobody is old enough to call on us to answer. We came before them and will leave after them. We are what we are, we are good for ourselves, we will not change and we do not want to.
・Ronn Torossian is a regular contributor to The Algemeiner – Read all his columns here.
3.Nikkei(http://asia.nikkei.com)
January 13, 2015 2:20 am JST
Francis Fukuyama interview
The end of history? America's fall from grace
by Hiroyuki Nishimura(Nikkei senior staff writer)
NEW YORK -- For good or ill, perceptions of the U.S. color views on democracy and capitalism. America has been more apt to disappoint than inspire in recent years, critics say. The global financial crisis, widening economic disparities, gridlocked politics and aimless foreign policy have shaken confidence in the superpower.
When the Cold War ended, American political scientist Francis Fukuyama was among those declaring victory for the West. The Nikkei recently asked him about the contradictions in today's world and what can be done to correct them.
An edited transcript of the interview follows.
Q: A quarter century after the end of the Cold War, the world is in disorder, the most recent stemming from Russia's aggression in Ukraine. What do you think are the important developments that took place during the post-Cold War period?
A: Obviously, especially in this year 2014, there are some very troubling shifts that are going on in world politics. I think the two most important are Russia and China, both of which are authoritarian; they're large countries, they're making territorial claims against their neighbors, and they've got a lot of momentum behind them. And probably the single biggest disappointment is what happened in Russia because, in 1989, when Gorbachev was in power, it looked as if Russia was really going to change in a fundamental direction and join Europe. But, under Putin, all of that has been reversed and it is actually, now, descending into a very nasty kind of nationalism. He keeps labeling other people as "fascist," but his regime is actually much closer to fascism.
Q: People are now even talking about the new Cold War. Do you have any new thoughts about your 1989 essay "The End of History?" in which you wrote about the victory of democracy and capitalism?
A: The Cold War was both a geopolitical and ideological conflict. What's happening now isn't ideological anymore. The end of history, really, it's not about stopping something. The question is: What's the direction of evolution of human societies, its end in the sense of objective. And the question is, I think, are we going to end up as democracies, or are we going to end up with something else? And I think, I think, to the extent that there is an end of history, it continues to be democracy. The Russian model is not really a model that anyone can emulate; it's just based on energy and very low-quality institutions.
Q: What about China? Aren't they presenting a new model?
A: They have a pretty competent state and the country is very focused on development and, in certain ways, they can do things more efficiently than a democracy. So, it really leaves only China as a kind of vigorous modernizing force. But for various reasons, I don't think that one is going to sustain itself over the next couple of generations. I don't see that everybody is going to evolve towards a China model. I just don't think that that's going to be the end of history.
I think that, first of all, it's very hard to replicate the model. I think it's very culturally specific to China. So if you said, "Well, what's the China model and what does that represent?" -- well, part of it is Marxism-Leninism, part of it is Confucianism, both of which are mutually, really, incompatible. Part of it is just naked self-interest. So, there's not a kind of coherent set of ideas underpinning the Chinese system, the way there is in the American system. So, in that respect, I think they're going to have trouble winning the battle of ideas.
And the Chinese aren't trying to propagate their model to other countries. It just works for them. In that sense, I think the Soviet Union did represent a universal model that they tried to export to other countries. So that's what's different from what the Soviets were trying to do.
Q: You don't see the same kind of Cold War that existed between the U.S. and the Soviet Union emerging between the U.S. and China?
A: Well, there's going to be a big rivalry; that's already occurring, I think. The relationship is becoming strategic, with all the territorial claims China is making. But they're not making these demands in the South China Sea and East China Sea because they are communist. They're making them because they're big, and they're continuing to get bigger. So, I just don't think that it's the ideas that are what's driving this; it's really just old-fashioned geopolitics.
I just think it's a matter of national interest, that China feels that it's getting more powerful, that it used to be the center of the system in East Asia, and it's not getting the respect that it once had a few hundred years ago. But now that it's powerful, it ought to. So, I think that's really what's the issue; it's not ideology.
Q: The increased radicalism of Muslims is another source of concern in today's world. What is your view now about the late Harvard professor Samuel Huntington's arguments about the "clash of civilizations," which was often contrasted with your "end of history"?
A: Well, I never found them very persuasive, because nobody thinks of themselves as being part of a "civilization." They think of themselves as being members of countries, and so countries are still the major way that human beings organize themselves. And identity is built around national identity and the identity of a single country. In Asia, nobody thinks that "I'm an Asian," or "a Confucian." They think, "I'm Chinese," or Korean, or Japanese. And the differences between those countries are much more important than any shared culture.
The only real exception to that is in the Islamic world, where people do sort of think of a larger Muslim community. But I don't think, really, that Islamic fundamentalism is going to take over the world.
Q: We are now witnessing young people in the Western world join terrorist organizations like ISIS. Do you think Muslim radicalism is being seen as an antithesis to the Western world?
A: No, I think that it's actually the result of the failure of an Arab model. Arab government has been a failure everywhere. It's been dictatorial. It has not produced strong economic growth, unlike China. It's not raised living standards significantly, or dealt with poverty, or anything else. As for the people joining organizations like ISIS, at most, there's like a couple thousand of them. It's really not a significant number. And I think, even in the Middle East, you still get very large majorities that are not supportive -- they don't really find this particularly attractive.
Q: On the other hand, it's undeniable that the United States has lost its luster and so did democracy and capitalism. What do you think caused this?
A: I would say that the most important events of the recent past are the Iraq War and the financial crisis. I think the Iraq War showed the limits of American military power to shape events in the Middle East, which continues to be a very unstable and important part of the world.
And I think it had a very negative effect on American prestige, on American power, because it discredited the idea of democracy promotion, in the eyes of many people. It also wasted a huge amount of money and I think the United States doesn't want to intervene anywhere now, because they're exhausted from two big wars in the Middle East, one of which I think was completely unnecessary. I think that if we had only intervened in Afghanistan, and if we had pulled out or reduced our presence at the right time -- if we had done more at the beginning and less later, I think we would have a very sustainable kind of policy. But we spent so much money on the Iraq War and all these lives, and I think people just don't want to do that again.
Q: The rise of neoconservatives, who supported the wars in the Middle East, is said to be based on your assertion that the United States take an active role to bring about a democratic world. Do you think that is true?
A: Well, first of all, I never made a big deal about the importance of American military power to bringing about a democratic world. And I think their big failure was the thought that use of just hard power could politically transform the Middle East. I never believed that, so I think that was a distortion of anything that I believed.
Democracy has been spread, I think primarily, through the force of example. With American institutions working well, people want to emulate that. And then there's other stuff. I'm on the board of the National Endowment for Democracy, which gives a lot of grants to labor unions and women's rights groups and other civil society organizations that want to give voice to people that don't have power in other societies. I think that's been the primary method and it's been discredited, because of the Iraq War.
Q: You also mentioned the financial crisis. How did that affect the prestige of America and its model?
A: It really began with a crisis in Europe in the early 1990s and the Asian financial crisis in 1997, and then both the American and European financial crises in 2007 to 2010.
The financial crisis, I think, was actually just part of a series of financial crises that I think properly should mark the end of this free market move that began with Thatcher and Reagan. I think what we should have learned is that liberalized financial markets are very unstable and they're very dangerous, and that all of the efforts to unleash the financial sector were a big mistake.
I think modern economics played a certain role in it, because if you take a standard microeconomics course, it'll teach you that in a well-functioning market economy everybody is going to be earning their actual social utility, and so if a hedge fund manager earns $5 billion and a waiter earns $20,000, it's because the hedge fund manager has contributed so much more to society. There is something fundamentally wrong with that. I just think that that theory has been proven wrong, but people continue to believe that. The financial sector, as a whole, arguably, actually created negative value in the 2000s. But before the crisis, they represented 40% of all corporate profits. There's something very distortive about the financial sector, because finance is supposed to be a helper to the real economy. It provides capital as an input to production. But somehow finance has come to be the dominant force within the capitalist system. There's something wrong with an economy that is so finance-based, because these people are just not creating that much wealth.
Q: You just published a new book, "Political Order and Political Decay," in which you warn about the political dysfunction in the United States and other places. Is this book your response to why democracy looks less promising than immediately after the Cold War? Could you talk about how the theme relates with the financial crisis?
A: As for the financial sector, there are some things that didn't take place, like adequate regulation. But that's also a response to what I consider political decay. If you want to ask why you don't have adequate regulation, it's because the political system has been captured by very powerful, well-organized interest groups.
And I think the pendulum has begun to swing back towards greater state control over international capital movements. But, I think the correction hasn't been strong enough yet. It needs to go further. It's been blocked because the banking lobby, for example, in both Europe and the United States, is politically too powerful, and they won't let this happen. So, in a sense, there has also been a political failure in terms of democracy and in terms of democratic societies being able to really control things that go on within their borders.
Q: You've warned the rise of society where patrimonial dynasties and interest groups became too politically influential. Is Wall Street among the most powerful?
A: Wall Street is the richest one, but there's actually quite a lot. Oil, and agriculture, and a lot of special interests have been able to use the political system to protect themselves at the expense of a broader public good. We have a tax code that is full of special exemptions and privileges, and when we try to do a major policy reform like Dodd-Frank or the Affordable Care Act, it turns into terrible legislation because you've got to satisfy hundreds and hundreds of interest groups, and I think it's a sign that the democracy really is not working well.
Q: What do you think is at the root of all this?
A: It's a couple of things. Over time, if you go through a prolonged period of peace and prosperity, there is a natural tendency of well-established groups to get bigger and stronger. Elites have a way of using the system to their own advantage.
There is also this other external factor, which just has to do with growing inequality, that as a result of technological change, primarily globalization, you're getting a high concentration of wealth, not just in the United States but in many other countries. And wealthy people can use the political system to their own advantage. So, we have an extremely low degree of trust in our own major institutions, and that's a real problem because it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you don't trust the government and you don't want to pay taxes, and you don't want to give the government any authority to do anything, then it doesn't do well, and so you end up in a vicious cycle.
Q: What is your take on French economist Thomas Piketty, dubbed by some "the modern Marx" by his controversial study on rising inequality?
A: Actually, the real causes of inequality are not a long-term characteristic of capital, per se, but of the particular technological age that we're living in. Whether his argument is right, I think we're not going to know until you've had several years of graduate students picking over his data and making much more detailed analysis. However, he represents a concern, a global concern, about inequality, which I think a lot of people, politically, weren't ready to recognize, as little as five or six years ago.
You know, when President Obama talked about redistribution, back in 2008, the Republican Party in this country were universally hostile and criticized him for being a socialist and so forth. And most of them would simply, flatly, deny that there is any increase in inequality, and even if there was they would have said it's not a problem. I think it's harder to maintain that position right now.
Q: You are politically conservative, and I think it's rare for somebody like you talk a lot about inequality. Don't you think that is causing a lack of real debate?
A: I think that's just ideology, that some people just have a fixed view of the world.
Q: Do you see any solution to this issue?
A: No, I have no solution whatsoever. Because I think it's fundamentally being driven by technology, by the ability of "smart machines" to replace more and more forms of human labor.
The classic solution was just redistribution, which I think you need to do. You need to have a safety net and you need to protect people, to some extent, but it's not going to help, fundamentally, in the long run. It's going to destroy incentives to work and it will, in the end, probably not be sufficient to really fill in some of those gaps.
The other solution that economists always point to is just better education, but, again, I'm just not sure that that's actually going to solve the problem. First of all, it's not that easy to reform educational systems. And secondly, even if you did a much better job of educating, it's not clear that everybody is actually trainable to do useful things.
I'm interested in the political system and how it deals with these economic and social realities and whether it can make decisions and actually provide services on an impartial basis. That's what I am concerned about. I think that it really should be able to deliver certain basic public goods and public services in ways that are responsive to the whole population and not just to the narrow interests of the people running the government. For example, you don't give better-quality police services to rich people than to poor people.
But it does not necessarily mean that the government equalizes the incomes between rich people and poor people. But the services that it does provide it needs to provide impartially. And it may be that there's no system of government that ultimately is going to be able to deal with some of these problems.
Q: You see strength in the Scandinavian political system. Could you explain why?
A: What I like is not the level of redistribution -- this is one of the most important points in my new book. I don't think that the actual level of redistribution is nearly as important as the quality of government, and what is really good about Scandinavia is that they have very low levels of corruption. It's not that they redistribute a lot and have a big welfare state; it's that they manage to run even that big state very efficiently, and I think that's really what they've got going for them.
A good political system has three components. So, it has to have a state that can generate power and use it. It should have a rule of law that constrains the state and makes it operate according to certain rules, and it should have democratic accountability. It's a kind of balance. And, if you have too much power and not enough constraint, that's one problem. If you have too much constraint and no power, that's another kind of problem.
For example, being able to come up with a budget every year that is sustainable over a 10- or 15-year period of time is a pretty good indicator of the quality of a government, and there are a number of democracies that have been able to do that, and the United States has not been able to.
Q: It's puzzling why the frustration has not lead to any serious explosion in the United States.
A: If a political system gets too much out of sync with the social reality, there's going to be an explosion at a certain point. Right now, I don't see that happening in the United States because I think all the anger and the unhappiness has been diffused in a lot of different directions. For example, on the left, in this country, if you look at the Democratic Party, it's a big coalition and identity politics is, overall, more important than economic issues. So probably more people are going to vote for Hillary Clinton because she's a woman than because she represents a solution to this problem of inequality.
What are people worrying about now? Ferguson, and racial politics and this sort of thing. I think that has been one of the problems on the left. There's a really big faction that thinks that global warming is the most important issue and that that's more important than inequality. These are all serious issues. But, there are just a lot of them, and it pulls the progressive left into a lot of different directions.
Q: And what's happening on the right?
A: Well, the right is a little bit more focused, because they really are focused on the state and cutting back government. But, even in that case, it's complicated because, in this country, we have these cultural issues like gun ownership and abortion, which actually attract a lot of working-class voters who vote Republican, even though the Republicans are hurting their economic interests. But they're more interested in being able to keep their guns than in international competition or outsourcing or things like that.
Q: So, does this mean the U.S. will not be able to get its agenda focused? It is a nation with very diverse ideas after all.
A: That's the role of leadership. A really great leader will explain to people what a good agenda is and why their interests are really different from what they say. I just don't think there have been particularly good leaders in recent years.
Q: In the United States, wealth and power concentrated significantly towards the late 1920s, but the nation managed to overcome it. Will history repeat itself?
A: Maybe. But if you want to answer the question, why did the problem get solved? First of all, we had a horrendous depression with 25% unemployment that lasted for the next 15 years. And it caused so much pain and anguish that people were ready for a really big change in the political system. You had some good leadership, in the form of Roosevelt. And you had a popular mobilization, which led to the New Deal and the establishment of the American welfare state. So yes, the problem was ultimately fixed, but it was fixed at a very high cost, and it also was fixed for reasons that had to do with things that are not necessarily easily reproducible, like great leadership.
I do think that there are some institutional changes that you can make that would make this country more governable, but whether that's going to fundamentally solve the problem, I sort of doubt. If you got rid of the stupid series of Supreme Court decisions that permit money in politics, I think you would reduce the impact of lobbyists and campaign contributions and this sort of thing. But our system is so hard to change that that's not going to happen anytime soon.
(End)
