Freedom from Harm: The Lasting Legacy of the Laissez Faire Revival, by Thomas O. McGarity

EDITOR

DEMETRIOS JAMES CARALEYBarnard CollegeColumbia University

MANAGING EDITOR

MARYLENA MANTAS

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CONTENTS PSQ • Volume 129 • Number 1 • Spring 2014

Pakistani Opposition to American Drone StrikesC. CHRISTINE FAIR, KARL KALTENTHALER and WILLIAM J. MILLER ............................................................................... 1

Did History End? Assessing the Fukuyama ThesisJOHN MUELLER ...................................................................................... 35

Contesting the U.S. Constitution through State Amendments: The 2011 and 2012 ElectionsSEAN BEIENBURG ................................................................................... 55

Democracy beyond the State: Insights from the European UnionACHIM HURRELMANN ......................................................................... 87

Managing Group Interests in ChinaYONGSHUN CAI ........................................................................................ 107

Book Reviews ........................................................................................... 133

New PSQ eBook

NINE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS, 1980–2012

Edited and Overview by

Demetrios James Caraley

Available at www.psqonline.org

Avery Goldstein and Edward D. Mansfi eld, eds. The Nexus of Economics, Security, and International Relations in East Asia ANDREW SCOBELL ......................................................................................................... 133

Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Presidential Leadership and the Creation of the American Era H.W. BRANDS ..................................................................................................................... 134

Fred Kaplan, The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War COLIN F. JACKSON .......................................................................................................... 136

Emily R. Gill, An Argument for Same-Sex Marriage: Religious Freedom, Sexual Freedom, and Public Expressions of Civic Equality SUSAN McDONOUGH ..................................................................................................... 138

Andrew Karch, Early Start: Preschool Politics in the United States WILLIAM T. GORMLEY, JR. ......................................................................................... 139

Paul J. Zwier, Principled Negotiation and Mediation in the International Arena: Talking with Evil ROBERT JERVIS ............................................................................................................... 141

Michael Sulick, Spying in America: Espionage from the Revolutionary War to the Dawn of the Cold War MARK STOUT ..................................................................................................................... 142

Jeffrey E. Cohen, The President’s Legislative Policy Agenda, 1789–2002 ANDREW E. BUSCH ......................................................................................................... 144

Ralph da Costa Nunez and Ethan G. Sribnick, The Poor Among Us: A History of Family Poverty and Homelessness in New York City DONNA KIRCHHEIMER ............................................................................................... 145

Stephen M. Feldman, Neoconservative Politics and the Supreme Court: Law, Power, and Democracy ROBERT B. HORWITZ .................................................................................................... 147

Daniel C. Kramer and Richard M. Flanagan, Staten Island: Conservative Bastion in a Liberal City BRUCE BERG ...................................................................................................................... 148

Richard Breitman and Allan J. Lichtman, FDR and the Jews ERIC M. USLANER ........................................................................................................... 150

Gregg L. Frazer, The Religious Beliefs of America’s Founders: Reason, Revelation, Revolution BILL REDDINGER ............................................................................................................ 152

Thomas O. McGarity, Freedom to Harm: The Lasting Legacy of the Laissez Faire Revival PETER LINDSAY ............................................................................................................... 153

Bertram N. Johnson, Political Giving: Making Sense of Individual Campaign Contributions MICHAEL SCHWAM-BAIRD ........................................................................................ 154

BOOK REVIEWS

José Marichal, Facebook Democracy: The Architect of Disclosure and the Threat to Public Life MARIO GUERRERO ........................................................................................................ 156

Cindy I-Fen Cheng, Citizens of Asian America: Democracy and Race during the Cold War CHARLOTTE BROOKS .................................................................................................... 157

Manny Diaz, Miami Transformed: Rebuilding America One Neighborhood, One City at a Time DAVID L. PRYTHERCH .................................................................................................. 159

Alfred A. Reisch, Hot Books in the Cold War: The CIA-Funded Secret Western Book Distribution Program Behind the Iron Curtain A. ROSS JOHNSON ........................................................................................................... 160

Robert Mandel, Global Security Upheaval: Armed NSGs Usurping State Stability Functions KATHLEEN GALLAGHER CUNNINGHAM ............................................................ 162

Kenneth T. Walsh, Prisoners of the White House: The Isolation of America’s Presidents and the Crisis of Leadership MARK NEVIN ..................................................................................................................... 163

Gary Dean Best, The Life of Herbert Hoover: Keeper of the Torch, 1933–1964 MATTHEW CECIL ........................................................................................................... 164

Thomas W. Devine, Henry Wallace’s 1948 Presidential Campaign and the Future of Postwar Liberalism KEVIN MATTSON ............................................................................................................. 166

Amitav Acharya, The Making of Southeast Asia: International Relations of a Region MARK T. BERGER............................................................................................................. 167

Ray Raphael, Constitutional Myths: What We Get Wrong and How to Get it Right KEN I. KERSCH .................................................................................................................. 169

Mariano-Florentino Cueller, Governing Security: The Hidden Origins of American Security Agencies SHARON K. WEINER ....................................................................................................... 171

Katherine A. Scott, Reining in the State: Civil Society and Congress in the Vietnam and Watergate Eras JIM TWOMBLY .................................................................................................................. 172

Rebekah Peeples Massengill, Wal-Mart Wars: Moral Populism in the Twenty-First Century PETER CLEARY YEAGER ............................................................................................... 173

Reinoud Leenders, Spoils of Truce: Corruption and State-Building in Postwar Lebanon JULIA CHOUCAIR-VIZOSO .......................................................................................... 175

Michael Avery and Danielle McLaughlin, The Federalist Society: How Conservatives Took the Law Back from Liberals AMANDA HOLLIS-BRUSKY ......................................................................................... 177

2013 FINANCIAL CONTRIBUTORS

The Academy of Political Science thanks the following individuals and foundations for taking on special memberships and making other financial contributions in 2013. These contributions allow us to keep student rates low, hold Academy conferences, and publish special books.

BENEFACTORS ($1,000 to $50,000)

Demetrios James Caraley E. Virgil Conway Carmen A. Corrales Ralph da Costa Nunez Thomas F. Egan Peter John Goulandris

Patricia Green Conrad K. Harper Institute for Children, Poverty,

and Homelessness Albert B. Knapp Donald H. Layton

Judith A. Miller Victor Antonio Morais George B. Munroe Robert J. Sparr Tuck Stephenson

PATRONS ($250 to $999)

Richard J. Anderson Margaret Wilmer Bartlett P. S. Cherian Christopher Sean Edmonds M. F. Elkady Shawn F. Hansen Kastriot Ismailaj A. Rahman A. Karim

John E. Karr Thangavel Mudali Kesavan Stephen M. Kotran Denis Leblond Nicholas Lemann R. D. Macdonald Diana T. Murray Linus Nwachukwu Nwanemuogh

Francis X. O’Donoghue Jan Olofsson Robert D. Reischauer Robert Y. Shapiro John Francis Strang Pen Yen Wu Kathryn B. Yatrakis

FELLOWS ($150 to $249)

Subbaraman Anantha Willie J. Banks, Jr. John Brademas Elliott A. Brown Julio Redondo Buendia Steve Calivocas Joaquim Margalho Carrilho Jorge Miguel Castro-Ferrer Alex Clausius Athos I. Christodoulou Antonio de Deus Teles Filho Barry M. Dorsey Harold T. Duryee Mohammad Elkholy Chukwuemeka Enyiazu Deann J. Farr Aaron Hunter Ford Francis V. Frazier Alexander Gigante Horace J. Gilpin Syung D. Han Peter K. Hankinson Lenneal J. Henderson Jocelyn Hidi Rhoderick M. Holliday John Hsu

Piotr P. Iskrzycki Mohamad M. I. Issa Khieu Kanharith Anwer Kirmani Mark M. Koga Jozef Wieslaw Kowalczyk Robert L. Layman Khanh Lekim Angelo Cesar Machado A. Hamid Madjid Randolph L. McClain Frank W. McNally Mark J. Meissner Nasir Muhammad Harry L. Murray III Roche Francois Myburgh Ivana Nardecchia Alvin L. Natt Cornelia B. Navari Henry Ian Nowik Corneliu N. Pivariu Phillip Ogden Powell Joseph Priselac, Jr. Edward M. Proctor Benn Prybutok Edward L. Rose, Jr.

Eugene T. Rossides Risto I. Routti H. Richard Schumacher Eugene Francis Sebastian Donald E. Sharp Richard Clarke Shaw Jimmy Ong Sio Oj rs Skudra Daniel M. Solomon Beverley Irene Stewart Alexander Stewart Walter Peter Stocker James L. Sundquist Takashi Takeo Kohei Tani James G. Tripodes James Walker James P. Walsh Joel James Weaver Christopher E. West Peter M. Wetzler Robert M. Wicklund Louis Emovbira Williams Hideo Yanai Tamas D. Zsitvay

CONTRIBUTING MEMBERS AND OTHER DONORS (up to $149)

Anonymous Lorenzo Adamson Martin B. Amdur David M. Armstrong James L. Baumgardner Michelle Helene Belco Miguel Antonio Bernal Jack M. Bernardo Jeffrey T. Bugg Craig S. Byrnes Lois Esperanza Caicedo Jeffrey Lee Canfield Charles R. Chambers, Jr. Lucia M. Chavez Joseph D. Coccoli Robert Coe Charles P. Cona Sherry Connors Stephen Robert Curtis Raymond John Davin Johan De Schryver Robert Diclerico Daniel Dusch Paul R. Ehrlich Tim Elgin Brian Ellison Elizabeth Enright Edward R. Ettner, Sr. Anthony Fabri David W. Faris Daniel L. Feldman Clarence Fernandes Carl Ford Bobby L. Gaddis Troy A. Garcia Salvatore Joseph Giambanco David Gold Alejandro R. Gonzales-Garcia Thomas Gregory Sergei A. Grigoriev Luiz Raul Guimarães Daniel Habas

Gregory J. Haberkorn Taibul Haque Roy A. Harrell, Jr. Jonathan Harris Jerry B. Hopkins Fernand A. Hosri Earl C. Huse William Lee Jackson Adrian M. Jaffer Bjorn Ulv Jensen Virginia F. Johnson Jimmy Johnson Thomas Kalau Makoto Kato Anita Koncsik-Endreffy Dimitrios Kourkouvis Adam B. Kozicharow Melinda Scott Krei Henry R. Kwiecinski Marie J. Langlois Louis F. Laporta Kemal Lepenica Charles Joseph Lercara Harti H. Löffler di Casagiove Scott B. MacDonald Michael A. Mandile Marie-Claire Marroum Redmond J. McConnell John McLaughlin Gerald A. Miller, Jr. Eric Thomas Mogren Paul Scott Morrison Ron Moss Timothy P. Moynahan Victor R. Muravin Carmen Nunez R. L. Nwafo Nwankwo John H. Parker R. Scott Peterson Chad M. Pillai Jean Victor Poulard Eric V. Pringle

John J. Raffaeli III Antonios C. Raftis Robert Scott Ralston Anthony J. Ramienski Robert L. Ranf Miguel Rendy Giovanni Ricci George D. Rives Arthur H. Rosenbloom Melvin S. Rosenthal Lewis F. Royal, Jr. Richard J. Rozon Blair Schoell Alexander Scott Bob Seltenheim Hickmet Ali Shaban David Shannon Jaigobin Shivcharran Dusan Sidjanski Patrick W. Simien Samuel A. Sinayigaye Edmond C. Smith Phillip A. Sorrentino Callie Jeanetta Spady Patrick J. Spann Sharon L. Spray Bernard Stancati Kenneth Michael Stone Harvey Gay Su Frankie P. Taylor Timothy J. Terrell Kenneth W. Umbach Robert A. Vanella Benton L. Walker Brandon Joseph Weichert George S. Westerman Charles Williams John R. Willis Hugh A. Wilson Leon K. Wolfe, Jr. Thomas Allan Zampieri John S. Zawacki

From the EditorIN THIS ISSUE …

C. CHRISTINE FAIR, KARL KALTENTHALER, and WILLIAM MILLER seek to explain why some Pakistanis oppose the American drone program while others support it. They fi nd that the principal grounds of opposition to the drone strikes in Pakistan are not religious in nature. Instead, most Pakistanis oppose the strikes because their only knowledge of them comes from highly negative coverage in the elite media.

JOHN MUELLER refl ects on Francis Fukuyama’s 1989 essay that advanced the notion that history had come to an end in the sense that “liberalism, democracy and market capitalism” had triumphed as an ideology and that effective future challenges were unlikely to prevail. He concludes that Fukuyama seems to have had it fundamentally right and that his celebration of the “autonomous power of ideas” is justifi ed.

SEAN BEIENBURG examines attempts at amending state constitutions in the 2011 and 2012 elections and fi nds that they were efforts to infl uence the interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. He argues that some elected state offi cials see themselves as legitimate challengers of Supreme Court decisions. In addition, he fi nds that national interest groups use state constitutions as platforms for federal constitutional politics, and that such efforts were predominantly, though not exclusively, conservative in the last two election cycles.

ACHIM HURRELMANN looks at lessons that could be drawn from the European Union about the democratization of other non-state entities. He argues that the EU’s non-state character is no insurmountable obstacle to democratization. The “democratic defi cit” of the European Union is rooted in the institutional design of its multilevel system and is further infl uenced by limited and uninformed citizen participation in EU politics.

YONGSHUN CAI discusses why both powerful and weak interest groups in China have been able to pursue their interests successfully. He fi nds that both groups have access to sources of power and that their success depends partly on the state’s policy priorities. By assisting weak groups to pursue their interests, the state enhances its legitimacy and resilience.

DEMETRIOS JAMES CARALEY

Pakistani Opposition to AmericanDrone Strikes

C. CHRISTINE FAIRKARL KALTENTHALER

WILLIAM J. MILLER

AMERICA’S EMPLOYMENT OF WEAPONIZED unmanned aerial ve-hicles (UAVs), popularly known as “drones,” to kill alleged terrorists inPakistan’s federally administered tribal areas (FATA) fuels sustained con-troversy in Pakistan. Pakistani outrage has steadily deepened since 2008,when the United States increased the frequency of the strikes.1 The increas-ing use of “signature strikes” has been particularly controversial in (andbeyond) Pakistan, because such strikes are targeted at “men believed to bemilitants associated with terrorist groups, but whose identities aren’talways known.”2 Whereas personality strikes require the operator to

C. CHRISTINE FAIR is an assistant professor at the Security Studies Program within theEdmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. She has publishedwidely on South Asian security issues and is the author of Fighting to the End: The PakistanArmy’s Way of War (forthcoming, Oxford University Press). KARL KALTENTHALER isprofessor of political science at the University of Akron and adjunct professor of politicalscience at Case Western Reserve University. He has published several books and articles onpublic opinion, terrorism and political economy. WILLIAM J. MILLER is director ofinstitutional research and effectiveness at Flagler College. He has published on politicalattitudes toward various public policies in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East inleading journals.

1SeeNewAmerica Foundation, “The Year of theDrone: AnAnalysis of U.S.Drone Strikes in Pakistan, 2004–2012,” 2013, accessed at http://counterterrorism.newamerica.net/drones, 9 May 2013.2AdamEntous, SiobhanGorman, and JulianE.Barnes, “U.S. TightensDroneRules,”TheWall Street Journal, 4November 2011, accessed at online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204621904577013982672973836.html?mod¼WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories, 9 May 2013.

POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY | Volume 129 Number 1 2014 | www.psqonline.org# 2014 Academy of Political Science 1

develop a high level of certainty about the target’s identity and location,based on multiple sources such as “imagery, cell phone intercepts andinformants on the ground,”3 operators may “initiate a signature strikeafter observing certain patterns of behavior.”4 When conducting signaturestrikes, the United States assesses that the individuals in question exhibitbehaviors that match a pre‐identified “signature” (for example, pattern ofobservable activities and/or personal networks) that suggests that they areassociated with al Qaeda and/or the Pakistani or Afghan Taliban orga-nizations.5 Because the identity of the target is unknown, even during thestrike, it is possible that these persons are innocent civilians, a possibilitythat both current and former U.S. government officials concede.6 Whilethe George W. Bush administration employed both personality strikesfrom 2004 and signature strikes from 2008 in Pakistan, the administra-tion of Barack Obama has redoubled the use of both types.7 This hasignited public protests against the drones in Pakistan, particularly inPakistan’s urban areas—far removed from the tribal areas where dronesare employed. It has also galvanized a vigorous debate within Pakistan’sNational Assembly, which tried, but ultimately failed, to curtail thestrikes.

While the use of armed drones clearly antagonizes segments ofPakistan’s polity, it is only one of several issues causing conflict betweenPakistan and the United States. Others include the infamous RaymondDavis affair of early 2011, in which Davis—a CIA contractor—shot and

3Greg Miller, “CIA Seeks New Authority To Expand Yemen Drone Campaign,” The Washington Post, 18April 2012, accessed at http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012‐04‐18/world/35453346_1_signature‐strikes‐drone‐strike‐drone‐program, 9 May 2013.4Columbia Law School Human Rights Clinic and Center for Civilians in Conflict, “The Civilian Impact ofDrones: Unexamined Costs, Unanswered Questions,” 2012, 32–33, accessed at http://civiliansinconflict.org/uploads/files/publications/The_Civilian_Impact_of_Drones_w_cover.pdf, 9 May 2013.5Micah Zenko, Reforming U.S. Drone Strike Policies, January 2013, accessed at http://www.cfr.org/wars‐and‐warfare/reforming‐us‐drone‐strike‐policies/p29736?co¼C009601, 9 May 2013; “The Civilian Impactof Drones.” Behaviors that the CIA may interpret as probative of involvement with hostile forces includetraveling in convoys of vehicles that behave similarly to fleeing al Qaeda or Taliban; presence in areas thatseem to be terrorist training camps; and participating in what the CIA judges to be militant gatherings,perhaps because they are armed, and so forth. See Cora Currier, “HowDoes the U.S.Mark UnidentifiedMenin Pakistan and Yemen as Drone Targets?” ProPublica, 1 March 2013, accessed at http://www.propublica.org/article/how‐does‐the‐u.s.‐mark‐unidentified‐men‐in‐pakistan‐and‐yemen‐as‐drone‐targ, 9 May 2013.On the CIA targeting Pakistani Taliban members as well as al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban, see JonathanLanday, “Obama’s drone war kills ‘others,’ not just al Qaida leaders,”McClatchy.com, 9 April 2013, accessedat http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/04/09/188062/obamas‐drone‐war‐kills‐others.html#story-link¼cpy, 9 May 2013.6“The Civilian Impact of Drones,” 33.

7Entous, Gorman, and Barnes, “U.S. Tightens Drone Rules;” Cora Currier, “Everything We Know So FarAbout Drone Strikes,” Propublica.com, 5 February 2013, accessed at http://www.propublica.org/article/everything‐we‐know‐so‐far‐about‐drone‐strikes, 9 May 2013.

2 | POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY

killed two men whom he claimed were menacing him in Lahore.(Pakistan‐based journalists suspect that the two men were in the employof Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the ISI.) The ensuing row over Davis’sfate—the United States claimed that he had diplomatic immunity, whilePakistan insisted that he face trial for murder in Pakistan—spawnedprotests in Lahore and beyond and deepened Pakistanis’ belief that theUnited States is indifferent to the loss of Pakistani life.8 Just as Wash-ington and Islamabad were getting beyond the Davis‐related turbulence,the May 2011 raid on Osama bin Laden’s hideout in the Pakistanicantonment town of Abbottabad again rocked the relationship. Asboth countries struggled to overcome the resulting frost in relations,the November 2011U.S.–NATO attack on a Pakistani military outpostat Salala, which led to the deaths of 24 Pakistani soldiers, and the U.S.refusal to apologize once more brought the relationship to the breakingpoint. Pakistan’s civilian and military leaders face mounting pressure tocease active cooperation with United States, including on the droneprogram.9

Yet despite the many sources of strain in U.S.–Pakistan relations,drones are often depicted as the single most significant irritant. Thisview is buttressed by the belief—which has become a truism in Westernand even Pakistani media—that not only do most Pakistanis know aboutthe program, they overwhelmingly oppose it. Foes of the drone programalso suggest that the strikes help to create more terrorists than theyeliminate.10 But the conventional wisdom about Pakistanis’ universalopposition to the drones is not empirically buttressed. Polling data fromPew11 demonstrate that nearly two thirds of Pakistanis have never evenheard of the drone program, despite the media coverage it has received in

8OmarWaraich, “U.S. Diplomat Could Bring Down Pakistan Gov’t,” Time.com, 9 February 2011, accessed athttp://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2047149,00.html, 9May 2013; C. Christine Fair, “Spy fora spy: the CIA‐ISI showdown over Raymond Davis,” ForeignPolicy.com, 10 March 2011, accessed at http://afpak.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/03/10/spy_for_a_spy_the_cia_isi_showdown_over_raymond_davis,9 May 2013.9For a succinct but insightful overview of this, see Teresita C. Schaffer andHowardB. Schaffer,HowPakistanNegotiates with the United States: Riding the Roller Coaster (Washington, DC: United States Institute ofPeace, 2011).10International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic At Stanford Law School and Global JusticeClinic atNYUSchool Of Law, “LivingUnderDrones:Death, Injury, andTrauma to Civilians FromUSDronePractices in Pakistan,” 2012, accessed at http://livingunderdrones.org/wp‐content/uploads/2012/10/Stan-ford‐NYU‐LIVING‐UNDER‐DRONES.pdf, 9 May 2013; Chris Woods, “Drone War Exposed—the Com-plete Picture of CIA Strikes in Pakistan,” Bureau of Investigative Journalism, 10 August 2011, accessed athttp://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2011/08/10/most‐complete‐picture‐yet‐of‐cia‐drone‐strikes, 9May 2013.11Pew Research Global Attitudes Project, Spring 2010 Survey Data, accessed at http://www.pewglobal.org/2010/05/08/spring‐2010‐survey‐data/, 9 May 2013.

THE DRONE WAR | 3

Pakistan and beyond. Among the minority of respondents (35 percent)who had heard of the program, nearly one third said that drone strikes arenecessary to defend Pakistan from extremist groups. A slight majority(56 percent) of the one third who were familiar with drones said thatdrone strikes are not necessary to protect Pakistan, and nearly one in two(49 percent) Pakistanis who were familiar with the program believe thatthe strikes are being conducted without their government’s approval. Yetthis figure is not that much greater than the 33 percent who believethat their government has given its approval for these strikes.12 Clearly,Pakistani public opinion is less informed, and much less unanimous, thanis often presumed.

In this paper, we seek to explain why some Pakistanis oppose thedrone program while others support it. Because the vast majority of thesample indicated that they had not heard of the drone program, we mustalso determine the predictors of those who are unaware of this program,despite the enormous publicity it receives. To achieve the first goal, werely upon elite discourse analysis of Pakistani writings on this sensitivesubject. We examine arguments advanced by both Pakistani opponentsand proponents of the use of drones to put forth several testable hypoth-eses that may explain support for and opposition to the U.S. droneprogram in Pakistan. To test these hypotheses, we leverage recent Pak-istani survey data collected by Pew’s Global Attitudes Project. This data-set provides us with a dependent variable (support for the droneprogram), as well as several potential explanatory variables that caninstrument for our proposed hypotheses. Selection effects restrict thesize and composition of persons answering the question that comprisesour dependent variable. To contend with these selection effects, weemploy the Heckman selection model, which allows us to control forthe characteristics of those who are not familiar with the program as wellas for other explanatory variables that may predict attitudes about theprogram among those who were familiar with it and expressed anopinion about it.

We find that more highly educated males with higher levels of Internetuse are more likely than other groups to know about the program and thusto be included in our dataset. Among the minority of survey participantswho both had heard of the program and expressed an opinion about it,opposition could be traced principally to the elite media discourse on thedrone strikes. Media coverage of the strikes focuses on their human costs

12PewGlobal Attitudes Project, “Little Knowledge of Drone Strikes in Pakistan,” 12 August 2010, accessed athttp://pewresearch.org/databank/dailynumber/?NumberID¼1069, 9 May 2013.


and commonly expresses distrust of the United States. We show that less‐educated Pakistanis, women, and persons who view the United States as anenemy aremore likely to oppose the drone program, all else being equal.Wedo not find other potential explanations, such as support for political Islam,to be relevant.

The remainder of this article is organized as follows. In the next section,we present a brief overview of the drone program in Pakistan and thecontroversy surrounding it. We focus on the debate in Pakistan, which ismost germane to Pakistani opinion formation. Second, we draw severalhypotheses from these debates that we will test through our probit models.Third, we present the data that we will use in this analysis and detail themethodology employed for data handling and modeling. Fourth, we pres-ent the main findings of this effort. This article concludes with a consider-ation of the implications of our findings.

U.S. DRONE STRIKES: INDISCRIMINANT DEATH FROM ABOVE

OR THE LEAST-WORST OPTIONThe American use of UAVs against militants in Pakistan probably began in2004, with a strike in South Waziristan which targeted a militant com-mander named Nek Mohammad. Drone use remained sporadic for severalyears: between 2004 and 2007, there were only nine attacks. Yet the Bushadministration became increasingly convinced that drone attacks were aneffective way to defeat the militants in FATA, and in 2008, it launched 33strikes, a major increase over previous years. When Barack Obama becamePresident, he substantially increased the use of drone strikes, consistentwith his strategic objective of defeating al Qaeda. In 2009, there were 53drone strikes; in 2010, the “year of the drone,” there were 118 drone attacks;and in 2011, there were 70 drone attacks.13

Curiously, despite the attention on the drone program in internationalmedia, the program, which is conducted under the auspices of the U.S.Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), is still technically covert. Accurate in-formation about the program is thus very difficult to obtain, and evenaccounts in peer‐reviewed journals contain many errors.14 U.S. governmentofficials are generally prohibited from even acknowledging any particular

13Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann, The Year of the Drone: An Analysis of US Drone Strikes inPakistan, 2004–2010 (Washington, DC: NewAmerica Foundation, 2010); NewAmerica Foundation, “TheYear of the Drone.”14See, for example, Brian Glyn Williams, “The CIA’s Covert Predator Drone War in Pakistan, 2004–2010:The History of an Assassination Campaign,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 33: 871–892. Williams’saccount of the origins of the program is simply wrong in many places and is generally discordant with thehistory recounted to one of the authors by Richard Clarke and others.

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drone strike in Pakistan, despite the fact that drones are heavily reported inPakistani and international media.15 Author interviews with numerous U.S.and Pakistani officials since 2009, however, suggest that the program tookshape during the tenures of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf andPresident Bush. As a U.S. official explained to one of the authors in2009, PresidentMusharraf originally authorized the drone strikes, althoughhe restricted their use to FATA. In order to keep his authorization secret,however, Pakistan would “protest” such an ostensibly flagrant violation ofPakistan’s sovereignty.16 It remains contested to what degree Pakistan’sprevious government—or elements thereof—continued to cooperate withthe United States prior to its term ending in March 2013. While Americanofficials interviewed by the authors maintain that the Pakistanis cooperateon selecting some targets, Pakistani civilian and military officials insist thatthere is no cooperation and that the attacks violate Pakistani sovereignty.17

It remains to be seen how the newly elected Pakistani government, underPrime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his Pakistan Muslim League‐Nawaz(PML‐N), will contend with the drone program.

The Pakistani drone programmay not long remain under the auspices ofthe CIA. Increasing judicial and congressional frustration with the officialsecrecy surrounding the otherwise extremely visible program, as well asnagging questions about the degree to which drone strikes are covered bythe 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, have prompted Obamaofficials to consider shifting the program from the CIA to theDepartment ofDefense.18 The CIA‐conducted drone strikes are a covert action fallingunder Title 50. Should the Department of Defense assume control, the

15Acting U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan met with anti‐drone Code Pink activists in November 2011. Evendiscussing the existence of the program and the possible outcomes of the strikes caused Hoagland to remarkthat “I probably just, you know, got into big troublewithwhat I just said.” “ActingUS ambassador to Pakistanmet with Code Pink, discussed ‘classified’ drone casualty counts,” The Daily Caller, 5 November 2011,accessed at http://dailycaller.com/2012/11/05/acting‐us‐ambassador‐to‐pakistan‐met‐with‐code‐pink‐discussed‐classified‐drone‐casualty‐counts/#ixzz2EJ4GxBjr, 9 May 2013. However, in April 2013 the Ob-ama administration offered its first detailed justification of a program it had previously refused to discuss. SeeCharlie Savage, “Top U.S. Security Official Says ‘Rigorous Standards’ Are Used for Drone Strikes,” The NewYork Times, 30 April 2013, accessed at http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/01/world/obamas‐counterter-rorism‐aide‐defends‐drone‐strikes.html?_r¼0, 12 May 2013.16Jonathan Landay, “U.S. secret: CIA collaboratedwith Pakistan spy agency in dronewar,”McClatchy.com, 4April 2013, accessed at http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/04/09/188063/us‐secret‐cia‐collaborated‐with.html#storylink¼cpy, 9 May 2013.17Landay, “U.S. secret;”Mark Mazzetti, “A Secret Deal on Drones, Sealed in Blood,” The New York Times, 6April 2013, accessed at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/world/asia/origins‐of‐cias‐not‐so‐secret‐drone‐war‐in‐pakistan.html?ref¼markmazzetti&_r¼0&pagewanted¼all, 9 May 2013.18Greg Miller and Karen DeYoung, “Administration debates stretching 9/11 law to go after new al‐Qaedaoffshoots,” The Washington Post, 6 March 2013, accessed at http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013‐03‐06/world/37500569_1_qaeda‐drone‐strikes‐obama‐administration, 9 May 2013.


program would come under Title 10 and would be carried out as a clandes-tine activity. Although the two are often conflated, the distinction betweenclandestine and covert action is important. A covert action is one in whichthe involvement of the sponsoring government is meant to remain secret. Aclandestine activity, on the other hand, is intended to remain a secret, butshould it be revealed, it can be publicly acknowledged.19 Thus, if the droneprogram came under Title 10, U.S. officials could, in principle, discuss it. Butwhile theremay bemore transparency under Title 10, such activities actuallyreceive less oversight than those carried out under Title 50, which are underthe purview of the intelligence committees of both theHouse and the Senate.Thus, it remains unclear whether transferring the drone program to theDepartment of Defense will have a significant effect on the transparency ofthe program.20

The restriction of drone strikes within Pakistan to FATA, which com-prises seven tribal agencies and six frontier regions, is important for severaloften‐underappreciated reasons. First, and foremost, Pakistan’s constitu-tion does not apply to FATA. Instead, FATA is governed by a colonialgovernance instrument called the Frontier Crimes Regulation, or FCR. Asa consequence, foreign journalists are prohibited from travelling to FATAwithout the approval of the ministry of interior and/or an escort from themilitary and intelligence services. Even ordinary Pakistanis cannot legallyvisit the area unless they themselves have family ties there. Thus, it isextremely difficult to obtain accurate information fromwhat has long beensomething of an informational black hole. These restrictions serve thePakistani state’s interests because it has long used FATA to host a dizzyingarray of Islamist militant groups operating in Afghanistan, India, and evenPakistan itself.21 Thus, some of Pakistan’s most‐hardened Islamist mil-itants have found sanctuary in FATA.

Second, each agency is governed by a government representative knownas a “political agent.” The political agent works with tribal elders, calledmaliks, who collaborate, in part because of their desire to retain theirprivileged status and in part because of payments received from the

19Andru E. Wall, “Demystifying the Title 10‐Title 50 Debate: Distinguishing Military Operations, Intelli-gence Activities & Covert Action,” Harvard Law School National Security Journal 3 (December 2011):85–142.20Spencer Ackerman, “Little Will Change if the Military Takes Over CIA’s Drone Strikes,” Wired.com,20 March 2013, accessed at http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/03/military‐drones, 9 May 2013.21Hussain Haqqani, Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment forInternational Peace, 2005); Barnett R. Rubin, The Fragmentation of Afghanistan (New Haven, CT: YaleUniversity Press, 2002); RizwanHussain, Pakistan and the Emergence of IslamicMilitancy in Afghanistan(Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005); Praveen Swami, India, Pakistan and the Secret Jihad: The Covert War inKashmir, 1947–2004 (London: Routledge, 2007).

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government via the agent. The political agent is responsible for adminis-trative duties and ordinary law and order. At his discretion, he can refer acivil dispute to a council of maliks (jirga), which decides how the disputeshould be resolved. The jirga’s decree is final and binding and no appeal isavailable. Perhaps the most‐controversial aspect of the FCR is the wide‐scale coercive powers it affords the state for “controlling, blockading, andtaming a ‘hostile and unfriendly tribe.”’22 These coercive powers include“collective punishment,” under which the state is authorized to seize “wher-ever they may be found, all or any of the members of such tribe, and all andany property belonging to them or any of them” for any offense committedby one or more members of a tribe. The state can even banish or exile anindividual or group of individuals from an agency altogether.23 In effect,entire communities can be ousted from their homes, fined, and have theirrevenues and properties seized or even forfeited altogether, “simply becausea murder or culpable homicide was committed or attempted in theirarea.”24 Because “the application of collective punishment…disregards in-dividual culpability and identifies the innocent with the guilty” and violatesnumerous provisions of Pakistan’s own constitution, the applicable provi-sions have been struck down by Pakistan’s high courts, with no effect.25 TheFCR is also inconsistent with several international conventions to whichPakistan is a signatory, including the Universal Declaration of HumanRights, which affords everyone the right to an effective remedy by compe-tent national tribunals and protection from arbitrary arrest, detention, andexile.26

Despite the fact that Pakistan’s own high courts have demanded that theFCR be repealed, no government has ever done so. In fact, the state has longmade use of the coercive powers it provides. In 2004, the Pakistani Army,under the leadership of Army Chief and President Pervez Musharraf, usedcollective punishment to roust foreign Islamistmilitants inWaziristan. Theyused and threatened to use home demolition, the seizure of businesses, andthe forfeiture of other properties and assets to persuade locals to surrender

22Osama Siddique, “The Other Pakistan: Special Laws, Diminished Citizenship and the Gathering Storm,” 5December 2012, accessed at http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2185535, 9 May 2013.23Gulman S. Afridi, “FCR’s Collective Responsibility,” The Dawn, 2 January 2012, accessed at http://dawn.com/2012/01/02/fcrs‐collective‐responsibility, 9 May 2013.24Siddique, “The Other Pakistan,” 11.25Afridi, “FCR’s Collective Responsibility.”26Aamenah Yusafzai, “Bringing Justice to FATA,” Dawn.com, 23 November 2010, accessed at http://blog.dawn.com/2010/11/23/bringing‐justice‐to‐fata, 9 May 2013. Technically, aspects of the FCR have beenamended via a presidential order in August 2011. However, none of these have been implemented. G.M.Chaudhry, The Frontier Crimes Regulation, 1901–as amended on 27 August 2011: summary of 2011amendments (Islamabad: National Democratic Institute, 2013).


foreigners living amongst them. During Pakistan’s military operations inFATA, which began in 2002 and continue today, the army has deniedindividuals and specific tribes access to major roads that prevented themfrom escaping the conflict and reaching humanitarian aid.27

These aspects of FCR, which render Pakistanis who live in FATA “lessercitizens,” have enormous and nearly universally unacknowledged implica-tions for the U.S. use of armed drones in FATA. As noted above, under theFCR, an entire family or clan can be punished just because onemember hasgranted terrorists sanctuary in his home. This clause has been used to justifythe Pakistani air strikes and draconian army operations that have causedenormous civilian casualties and forced displacement. As of March 2013,the United Nations reported that there were still some 758,000 personswho had been internally displaced due to ongoing security operations inFATA as well as parts of Khyber‐Pakhtunkhwa.28 Part of the unrecognizedlegitimizing discourse surrounding the use of armed drones in FATA is theunfortunate fact that residents of FATA are second‐class citizens, and thelegal regime under which they are governed permits the state to ignoreindividual innocence and guilt. The United States exploits this predica-ment, but Pakistan perpetuates it by sustaining a legal regime that dis-criminates between the citizens of the so‐called “settled areas,” where theconstitution applies, and those lesser citizens under the rule of the FCR.

There is a third, equally unappreciated aspect of the tribal areas: becauseFATA is governed under the FCR, it has no police forces; instead, paramili-tary, military, and tribal militia forces keep order. Thus, the arrest ofmilitants, collection of evidence, and subsequent prosecution in Pakistan’scourts is not a viable option in FATA. (In contrast, high‐value targetscaptured in the rest of Pakistan are tried under Pakistani law or, in somecases, remanded to the United States.) Thus, while law‐and‐order ap-proaches may be infinitely preferable to the use of armed drones, successivePakistani governments have closed this route by choosing to defer bringingthe area and its people fully under Pakistan’s constitution.29 Thus, the onlyalternatives to doing nothing to combat the militants in FATA, who operate

27Yusafzai, “Bringing Justice to FATA;”AzmatHayatKhan, “FATA,” in Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema andMaqsudulHasan Nuri, eds., Tribal Areas of Pakistan: Challenges and Responses (Islamabad: Islamabad PolicyInstitute, 2005). Surprisingly the FCR was critically discussed in U.S. Department of State, Bureau ofDemocracy, Human Rights and Labor, “2004 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices–Pakistan,” 28February 2005, accessed at http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41743.htm, 9 May 2013.28United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, “Humanitarian Dashboard‐Pakistan,” March 2013, accessed at http://www.unocha.org/pakistan/reports‐media/ocha‐reports, 9May 2013.29Joshua T. White, “The Shape of Frontier Rule: Governance and Transition, from the Raj to the ModernPakistani Frontier,” Asian Security 4 (2008): 219–243.

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against international forces in Afghanistan and who are responsible forkilling some 43,000 Pakistanis since September 11, are devastating andindiscriminate Pakistani military operations or Special Forces raids intoPakistani territory by Afghanistan‐based troops.30

AmericanandPakistani officials understood that theFCRwould frustratethe ability of foreign and even Pakistani journalists to learn about the droneprogram,allowingboth states to cultivate confusionabout its origins. Indeed,in the early years, the Pakistan military actually took credit for the attacks,which they said were conducted with conventional attack aircraft (for exam-ple, F‐16s and attack helicopters).31 Daniel Markey, a member of the Secre-tary of State’s Policy Planning Staff from 2003 to 2007, has said that

Musharraf’s consent represented both that of the Pakistani military and itscivilian government. Not only did he grant his consent, but initially, thePakistani military tried to take credit for these kinds of attacks—claimingthat they weren’t the work of drones, but Pakistani air strikes. This wasn’t avery credible claim on Pakistan’s part, but it worked for a while because thestrikes were initially much less frequent than they are now. And the misdi-rection helped the Pakistani government weather the domestic backlash.32

Musharraf did not follow through on any of his public complaints, con-firming the mutual understanding that such protests were political dramafor domestic consumption. Markey explains that “one can only assume …

30Like many databases, the Pak Institute for Peace Studies is not always clear about what sorts of attacks ittallies andwhat criteria it uses to code different kinds of violence. These numbers are taken from their annualreports from 2008 and 2011. They reported that 7,107 Pakistanis had been killed in 2011; 10,003 in 2010;12,632 in 2009; 7,997 in 2008; 3,448 in 2007; 907 in 2006; and 216 in 2005, for a total of 42,310. PakInstitute for Peace Studies,Pakistan SecurityReport 2008 (Islamabad: PIPS, 2008); Pak Institute for PeaceStudies, PIPS Security Report 2009, accessed at http://san‐pips.com/index.php?action¼books&id¼main;Pak Institute for Peace Studies, Pakistan Security Report 2011 (Islamabad: PIPS, 2011); Pak Institute forPeace Studies, “Civilian Casualties in Armed Conflicts in Pakistan: Timeline 2012,” 2012, accessed at http://san‐pips.com/index.php?action¼reports&id¼tml2, 9 May 2013.31In March 2013, The New York Times reported that the United States had taken the unusual step ofdisavowing two drone strikes. Such a disavowal is odd, since the drone program is a covert action andthusU.S. officials cannot acknowledge its existence. Given that Pakistan has no armed drone capability, thereare a few possible explanations for the event. First, it is possible that the attack was a conventional strike,carried out by Pakistan, which the Pakistanis wanted to blame on the United States. Second, the strike mayhave been carried out by an American drone after all, and the officials cited in the story were simply wrong orseeking to engage in informationmanagement. Third, it may be that there was no drone strike to begin with.Because no Pakistani or U.S. official will discuss this incident with the authors, we are unable to evaluate themerits of the story. Declan Walsh, “U.S. Disavows 2 Drone Strikes Over Pakistan,” The New York Times, 4March 2013, accessed at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/05/world/asia/us‐disavows‐2‐drone‐strikes‐over‐pakistan.html?pagewanted¼all, 9 May 2013.32Daniel Markey comments transcribed in Ritika Singh, “Lawfare Podcast Episode #20: Daniel Markeyon U.S.–Pakistan Terrorism Cooperation and Pakistan’s Extremist Groups,” 27 September 2012, accessed athttp://www.lawfareblog.com/2012/09/daniel‐markey‐on‐u‐s‐pakistan‐terrorism‐cooperation‐and‐paki-stans‐extremist‐groups, 9 May 2013.


that the private messages from the Pakistani government were differentfrom their public messages.”33

As Markey makes clear, however, Pakistan was unable to sustain thepretense that its military was conducting the operations. Local residentsfound missile fragments with American markings, and Pakistani mediaeventually caught on to the story. Furthermore, the increasing U.S. use ofdrone attacks made the cover story increasingly untenable. Throughoutmuch of the Bush presidency, American drones were rarely employed inPakistan, and thus, Pakistan’s claims of responsibility were not robustlychallenged. This changed as drone strikes became increasingly commonunder the first Obama administration and as Pakistan transitioned from amilitary government led by President Musharraf to one that is nominallydemocratic.

From Washington’s point of view, it may be enough that the UnitedStates conduct drone operations in Pakistan with the continued support ofPakistan’s intelligence agency, the Interservices Intelligence Directorate(ISI), and the army, which oversees the ISI.34 But the drone program raisesmany questions for Pakistan’s citizens. For one thing, Pakistanis routinelyhear their politicians decrying the drones, yet the strikes continue. As thePew data indicate, many Pakistanis suspect that their government is col-luding with the United States, but so far, few Pakistanis have demandedthat their government make clear the extent to which it tolerates or evenactively facilitates U.S. drone operations. Politicians remain silent, even asmedia reports continue to reveal the degree to which the Pakistani civiliangovernment and military have been complicit in the program.35

In the wake of the November 2011 US–NATO attack on the Pakistanimilitary outpost at Salala, Pakistan civilian and military stakeholders cameunder increasing pressure from a restive population to decrease cooperationwith United States, including their facilitation of the drone program.Pakistanis, like Americans, are generally not privy to details about the

33Singh, “Lawfare Podcast Episode #20.”34For a graphic of all suspected U.S. drone bases in Pakistan, see The Bureau of Investigative Journalism,“CIA drones quit one Pakistan site – but US keeps access to other airbases,” 15 December 2011, accessed athttp://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2011/12/15/cia‐drones‐quit‐pakistan‐site‐but‐us‐keeps‐access‐to‐other‐airbases, 9 May 2013.35“Wikileaks: Kayani wanted more drone strikes in Pakistan,” Pakistan Express Tribune, 20 May 2011,

accessed at http://tribune.com.pk/story/172531/wikileaks‐kayani‐wanted‐more‐drone‐strikes/, 9May 2013; Rob Crilly, “Wikileaks: Pakistan privately approved drone strikes,” The Telegraph, 1 Decem-ber 2010, accessed at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8172922/Wikileaks‐Pakistan‐privately‐approved‐drone‐strikes.html, 9 May 2013; Jim Sciutto and Lee Ferran, “WikiLeaks:Pakistan Asked for More, Not Fewer Drones,” ABC News The Blotter, 20 May 2011, accessed at http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/wikileaks‐cable‐pakistan‐asked‐fewer‐drones/story?id¼13647893#.ULQtE-NewV8E, 9 May 2013; Landay, “U.S. secret;” Mark Mazzetti, “A Secret Deal on Drones.”

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degree to which the Pakistani security establishment collaborates with theUnited States on drone operations and, like American opponents of theprogram, often object to it as a violation of Pakistani sovereignty.36 In aneffort to publicly punish the United States and appease increasing publicoutcry over the Salala episode, while making few actual changes to thestatus quo, Pakistan’s Parliament forced the United States to cease oper-ations at the Shamsi airbase. Shamsi, however, was only one of the basesthat the United States used to stage drone strikes in Pakistan.

The ruckus over Shamsi exposed significant fissures in Pakistan’s civil–military relations. First, the declaration was political theatre in the firstdegree: no U.S. personnel were stationed at Shamsi at the time. Second, theUnited States continues to use other bases in Pakistan for drone flights.Third, U.S. government officials have told the authors that Pakistan’sintelligence agency continues to collaborate with the CIA on these strikes.(Pakistani officials deny that they are doing so.) Moreover, while politicalactors publicly question the army’s right to sell Pakistan’s sovereignty to theUnited States,37 U.S. State Department cables released, without authoriza-tion to Wikileaks, show that Pakistan’s current political elites are at mostindifferent to drone strikes, and that many, in fact, support the program.38

Thus, ordinary Pakistanis are left to question why drones are usedagainst citizens and foreigners alike in FATA and which (if any) Pakistaniauthority authorizes the strikes. The program also raises troubling ques-tions about civil–military relations in Pakistan: what—if any—powers docivilian leaders wield over the program, not to mention the Pakistanimilitary, which is supposed to be subordinate to civilian control? Equally,

36See Chris Rogers, “Legality of U.S. Drone Strikes in Pakistan,” Center for Research and Security Studies,Islamabad. N.d., accessed at http://crss.pk/downloads/Reports/Special‐Posts/Legality‐of‐US‐Drone‐Strikes‐in‐Pakistan.pdf, 9 May 2013; Joshua Foust and Ashley S. Boyle, “The Strategic Context of LethalDrones: A framework for discussion,” American Security Project, 16 August 2012, accessed at http://americansecurityproject.org/featured‐items/2012/the‐strategic‐context‐of‐lethal‐drones‐a‐framework‐for‐discussion/, 9 May 2013.37Inter alia, John Reed, “Pakistan Boots U.S. FromDrone Base,”Defensetech.com, 30 June 2011, accessed athttp://defensetech.org/2011/06/30/pakistan‐boots‐u‐s‐from‐drone‐base/, 9 May 2013; “US‐Pak intelli-gence cooperation continues,” The Dawn, 23 January 2012, accessed at http://dawn.com/2012/01/23/us‐pak‐intelligence‐cooperation‐continues/, 9 May 2013; Chris Woods, “CIA drones quit one Pakistansite — but US keeps access to other airbases,” The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, 15 December 2011,accessed at http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2011/12/15/cia‐drones‐quit‐pakistan‐site‐but‐us‐keeps‐access‐to‐other‐airbases/, 9 May 2013; “Pakistan Helps U.S. Drones Campaign: Reuters,” Huffing-tonPost.com, 22 January 2012, accessed at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/22/pakistan‐us‐drones‐campaign_n_1221774.html, 9 May 2013.38“US embassy cables: Pakistan backs US drone attacks on tribal areas,” The Guardian, 30 November 2010;

Jim Sciutto and Lee Ferran, “WikiLeaks: Pakistan Asked fore More, Not Fewer Drones,” ABCNews.com, 20May, 2011, accessed at “US embassy cables: Pakistan backs US drone attacks on tribal areas,” The Guardian,30 November 2010.


Pakistanis—and Americans—lack knowledge about basic aspects of theprogram: who is targeted and why, with what actual outcome, and withwhat eventual effect upon Pakistani or American security?

THE ARGUMENTPakistan’s Urdu‐language media (private television, radio, and print) isalmost universally anti‐drone, while Pakistan’s English‐language publica-tions, aimed at an elite readership, take a slightly more sympathetic atti-tude. Given unequal access to these debates across Pakistan (a function ofaccess to media, as well as of literacy in Urdu and English), we seek tounderstand how those Pakistanis who are aware of the drone program forman opinion about it. Since the average citizen of any country does not knowmuch about security policy issues, how does she form her views? Publicopinion researchers have argued that societal and political elites play a verylarge role in shaping what the public thinks about policy issues, particularlypolicy issues they do not understand very well. John Zaller,39 in a seminalbook on the origins of public attitudes, argues that elites play a large role inframing issues and shaping their presentation in themassmedia and publicdiscourse. The role of elites in shaping opinion is even greater in developingcountries with relatively low literacy rates, where the governing elite have ahigh control over information. Members of the mass public most oftenassume that elites have better information on issues than they themselvesdo, and take their cues on complex issues from those whom they considerknowledgeable.40 As Arthur Lupia argues,41 the more expert the elite isassumed to be on an issue, the more likely it is that citizens will follow elitecues on that issue.

Not only is the perceived expertise of the opinion maker important toshaping views on security issues, but so is the ability of the individual todiscern a strong argument from aweak one. People who are better educatedwill probably have access to a greater base of knowledge and to morechannels of information than those with a very basic level of educationor no education at all. Thus, the more‐educated have the tools to be morediscriminating about the information that media outlets provide on secu-rity issues.

How does the argument about elite discourse pertain to Pakistan and thedrone debate? The Pew data show that most Pakistanis are not aware of

39John Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).40Arthur Lupia, The Democratic Dilemma: Can Citizens Learn What They Need to Know? (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1998).41Ibid.

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the drone campaign; only about one third of the public is aware that dronesare being used to kill militants on Pakistan’s soil. Our Heckman selectionmodel analysis shows that those who do offer an opinion on the drones arethose who are more educated, male, and have access to the Internet. Thus,the data suggest that the Pakistani debate over drones is waged among elites,who nonetheless differ in key ways, such as level of education, literacy inEnglish, access to non‐Urdu media, and the like.

We contend that the information available to Pakistanis is central toforming their attitudes on the drone program. The less educated a Pakistaniis, the more likely it is that she will have access to limited sources ofinformation about the drone program, and that those sources of informationwill be in the vernacular and take a more‐nationalistic tone. Literate butmoderately‐educated Pakistanis will have access to Urdu newspapers and(for the minority who can afford it) Urdu television; the Urdu media isoverwhelmingly against the strikes.Highly educatedPakistanis, on the otherhand, have access to the more‐positive accounts of the drone programavailable through English‐language television (including foreign channels)and newspapers, and the Internet. Thus, less‐educated Pakistanis are lesslikely to be positive about the drone program than are the highly educated.

The highly educated population, most of which speaks English, has accessto a broader and more‐diverse media selection, such as newspapers like TheDawn,TheExpressTribune, and theDailyTimes, amongothers.Whilemostof the coverage of drones inPakistani English‐languagemedia is negative, theEnglish‐language media gives space to pro‐drone views that are completelyabsent from the Urdu language media. Thus, higher levels of educationprovide elite Pakistanis with a broader range of views on the desirability ofthe drone strikes.Most importantly, higher levels of education, and the abilityto read andunderstandEnglish, give a citizen access to pro‐drone arguments,which in Pakistan are only available in English‐language sources. We arguethat those Pakistanis who have positive attitudes toward the drone strikes arethe elite within the elite in Pakistani society.

The nature of the media coverage in Pakistan means that those who areexposed solely to Urdu‐language media are unlikely to hear any pro‐dronearguments. The less educated an individual is, themore likely it is that he orshe does not speak English and seeks only Urdu media, which is over-whelmingly anti‐drone. Thus, the less‐educated have narrower exposure toviews on the subject and are likely to be more opposed to the drones. Thisargument produces the following hypothesis:

H1: The lower the respondent’s level of education, the more likely therespondent is to oppose drone strikes in Pakistan.


There is an important gender component to this argument. Pakistanimen tend to be far better educated and better informed about politicalmatters than Pakistani women, and as a result, they have much greateraccess to different channels of information. The differences in educationbetween the genders in Pakistan are quite stark: amongmales above the ageof 10, 69 percent are considered “literate,” and 69 percent have had somekind of formal education. In contrast, among females above 10 years of age,only 45 percent are literate and 44 percent have had some kind of formaleducation.42 Thus, we surmise that women are more likely than men tooppose drone strikes because of their lower levels of education and access toinformation. This yields our second hypothesis:

H2: Women are more likely to oppose drone strikes than men.

To understand how elite discourse may shape opinion, it is necessary tofirst describe the lineaments of the drone debate in Pakistan.Whereas mostdiscussions of the drone program primarily concentrate on the argumentsof those who oppose it, we must also identify the reasoning put forth bythose who support drone use. These arguments—for and against—are laidout in the next section.

ANTI-DRONE ARGUMENTS IN PAKISTANPakistanis who oppose drone strikes offer numerous criticisms of theprogram. First and foremost is the issue of sovereignty. Pakistan’s ForeignMinister, Hina Rabbani Khar, among numerous other Pakistani leaders,denounced the strikes as “unlawful, against international law, and [a]violation of sovereignty.”43 It may be that the many Pakistanis who hearsuch cries of protest from their government officials become convinced thatthe drone strikes violate domestic and international legal norms and are notrepresentative of the wishes of their democratically elected government.Thus, some Pakistanis may conclude that the drone strikes are carried outin defiance of the wishes of Pakistan’s democratic government. This givesrise to an important testable hypothesis:

H3: Those who value democracy more in Pakistan will be more likely tooppose drone strikes.

42Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, “Percentage Distribution of Population by Age, Sex Litracy [sic] and Levelof Education‐2008‐09,” n.d., accessed at http://www.pbs.gov.pk/sites/default/files/Labour%20Force/publications/lfs2008_09/t03.pdf, 9 May 2013.43“Drones violate sovereignty, Pakistan tells UN,” PakTribune, 31 October 2012, accessed at http://

paktribune.com/news/Drones‐violate‐sovereignty‐Pakistan‐tells‐UN‐254545.html, 9 May 2013.

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A second important issue is the lack of information about who wastargeted in the drone strikes, with what cause, and with what outcomes.Various international and Pakistani organizations have attempted to in-vestigate civilian casualties resulting from the strikes. Prominent organiza-tions involved in this effort include the International Human Rights andConflict Resolution Clinic at Stanford Law School and the Global JusticeClinic at the NYU School of Law;44 the Bureau of Investigative Journalism(BIJ);45 and the New America Foundation (NAF).46

According to the BIJ, there have been 352 drone strikes in Pakistan, ofwhich 300 have taken place under the Obama administration. Together,these drone strikes have killed between 2,590 and 3,383 persons, ofwhom anywhere between 472 and 885 have been civilians, including176 children. In addition, the BIJ assesses that between 1,255 and1,408 persons have been injured by drones.47 NAF reaches somewhatsimilar figures (to be expected, as it uses essentially the same newsreports): “337 CIA drone strikes” since 2004, which have killed be-tween 1,932 to 3,176 people. Of those killed, between 1,487 and 2,595were reported to be militants, and between 257 and 310 civilians.48

Despite the uncertainty about the actual status of the victims of thestrikes, the attacks receive regular coverage in the Pakistani print media(such as the newspapers The Dawn in English and Jang in Urdu),as well as television and radio. The coverage focuses upon the allegedcollateral damage from drone strikes, including scenes of destroyedvehicles and houses, and the bodies of people supposedly killed in thestrikes.

A third interesting element of the Pakistani debate over drones is theinvolvement of Islamist militant leaders. One of the most important anti‐drone spokesmen from this group is Hafez Saeed, the leader of the inter-national terrorist organization Lashkar‐e‐Taiba (LeT, now operating underthe name Jamaat‐ud‐Dawa, JuD). (The United States Department of Statehas declared both LeT and its alias, JuD, to be foreign terrorist organiza-tions.) Saeed has petitioned the Punjab High Court to declare the strikes

44International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic At Stanford Law School and Global JusticeClinic at NYU School Of Law, “Living Under Drones.”45Bureau of Investigative Journalism, “The Covert Drone War,” accessed at http://www.thebureauinvesti-gates.com/category/projects/drones, 9 May 2013.46New America Foundation, “Year of the Drone.”47Bureau of Investigative Journalism, “Covert War on Terror—The Data,” accessed at http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/category/projects/drone‐data, 9 May 2013.48New America Foundation, “Year of the Drone.”


illegal,49 and his organization has led many protests against the droneprogram and other forms of cooperation with the United States. JuD alsotook the lead in organizing an alliance of Islamist political leaders andmilitant activists called the Difah‐e‐Pakistan Council (Defense of PakistanCouncil.)50 Given that the drone strikes target al Qaeda and the Pakistaniand Afghan Taliban, the allies of JuD and other jihadi groups, we maysurmise that those who do not fear the influence of such groups may bemore likely to oppose drone strikes. This gives rise to a fourth hypothesis:

H4: Those who do not believe that al Qaeda poses a serious threat toPakistan will be more likely to oppose drone strikes.

That said, mainstream Islamist political parties (often called Ulemaparties because of their involvement with the ulema, or religious scholars),and right‐of‐center politicians, such as Imran Khan and Nawaz Sharif, alsooppose drones.51 Opposition to drones overlaps significantly with supportof an increased role for Islam in governance: Nawaz Sharif made a highlypublicized effort to impose Islamic law in Pakistan and even tried to declarehimself the “Amir‐ul‐Momineen” (leader of the faithful) before he wasdeposed by General Musharraf in 1999.52 Imran Khan, a former cricketerand international lothario, has in recent years re‐invented himself as a piousPakistani and nationalist politician who has voiced vocal support forSharia.53 In some cases, furthermore, Islamist political actors are identicalwith, or have strong ties to, overtly militant leaders.54 This gives rise toanother testable hypothesis:

H5: Those who want to see Islam play a greater role in the state should bemore likely to oppose drone strikes.

49“JuD drone petition: LHC postpones hearing of case,” Pakistan Express Tribune, 2 November 2012,

accessed at http://tribune.com.pk/story/459621/jud‐drone‐petition‐lhc‐postpones‐hearing‐of‐case, 9May 2013.50See “Drone, NATO attacks,MFNdecision blasted,” TheNation, 23 January 2012, accessed at http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan‐news‐newspaper‐daily‐english‐online/national/23‐Jan‐2012/drone‐nato‐attacks‐mfn‐decision‐blasted, 9 May 2013.51“Imran Khan’s Pakistan anti‐drone drive halts for night,” BBC News.com, 6 October 2012, accessed at

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world‐asia‐19854297, 9 May 2013; “Nawaz demands end to drones,” TheNation, 30 August 2012, accessed at http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan‐news‐newspaper‐daily‐english‐online/lahore/30‐Aug‐2012/nawaz‐demands‐end‐to‐drones, 9 May 2013; “Jamaat e Islami callsto shoot down drones,” Lahore Times, 6 June 2012, accessed at http://www.lhrtimes.com/2012/06/06/jamaat‐e‐islami‐calls‐to‐shoot‐down‐drones/#ixzz2E0tqNWDM, 9 May 2013.52“PML(N)‐A Family Affair,” Pakistan Today, 6 March 2012, accessed at http://www.pakistantoday.com.

pk/2012/03/06/comment/editors‐mail/pmln‐a‐family‐affair, 9 May 2013.53See “Imran Khan demands the imposition of shariat in Pakistan,” Daily Express, 21 January 2009,accessed at http://letusbuildpakistan.blogspot.com/2009/01/imran‐khan‐demands‐imposition‐of.html,9 May 2013.54C. Christine Fair, “The Militant Challenge in Pakistan,” Asia Policy 11 (January 2011): 105–137.

THE DRONE WAR | 17

Finally, at the core of the drone debate is a deep suspicion about theUnited States and its intentions vis‐à‐vis Pakistan. Survey data now showthat Pakistanis view India, their traditional rival, more favorably than theydo theUnited States.Many Pakistanis believe that the Americans are at warnot with terrorists, but with Islam andMuslims.55 The Pakistani public hasa long and deeply held antipathy toward the United States. Table 1 showsthe pattern of anti‐American views among Pakistanis dating back to 2002,when Pew started asking about favorability toward the United States inPakistan.

As can be seen in the table, 69 percent of Pakistani respondents had anunfavorable view of the United States in 2002, and only 10 percent had afavorable view of the country. In 2010, 68 percent of Pakistanis had anunfavorable view of the United States, and only 17 percent had a favorableview of the country. Given that the drone strikes did not really start in asignificant way in Pakistan until 2008, we cannot logically surmise that thehigh degree of disfavor toward the United States, has been principallydriven by the drone strikes. Most Pakistanis were anti‐American beforethe drones became a subject of public discourse. The drone strikes definitelydid not help America’s image with most Pakistanis, but they are not theprimary cause of anti‐Americanism in the country.

Anti‐Americanism has deep roots in Pakistan. This legacy of negativeopinions of the United States comes from a sense that the United States has

TABLE 1Opinion Toward the United States

Favorable Unfavorable DK/Refused

Pakistan

Spring 2010 17 68 16

Spring 2009 16 68 16

Spring 2008 19 63 17

Spring 2007 15 68 16

Spring 2006 27 56 17

Spring 2005 23 60 17

Spring 2004 21 60 18

May 2003 13 81 6

Summer 2002 10 69 20

Source: Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project

55Pew Research Center, “Pakistani Public Opinion Ever More Critical of U.S: 74% Call America an Enemy,”27 June 2012, accessed at http://www.pewglobal.org/2012/06/27/pakistani‐public‐opinion‐ever‐more‐critical‐of‐u‐s/, 9May 2013;World Public Opinion.org; “Public Opinion in the IslamicWorld on Terrorism,al Qaeda, and US Policies,” 25 February 2009, accessed at http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/feb09/STARTII_Feb09_rpt.pdf, 9 May 2013; World Public Opinion.org, “Muslims Believe US Seeks toUndermine Islam,” 24 April 2007, accessed at http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/brmid-dleeastnafricara/346.php, 9 May 2013.


often wronged Pakistan over the decades. Many Pakistanis felt that theUnited States abandoned Pakistan after the Soviets withdrew fromAfghanistan in 1988, leaving Pakistan to deal with the resulting chaos.The United States also imposed harsh sanctions on Pakistan after it testednuclear weapons. Finally, the United States has historically been willing tosupport military dictators in Pakistan as long as those individuals wereviewed as pro‐American. The United States appears as an impediment tothe growth of a stable, functioning democracy in Pakistan, and themajorityof Pakistanis view it with distrust. This gives rise to a fourth testablehypothesis:

H6: Those who believe the United States is an enemy of Pakistan are morelikely to oppose drone strikes than those who do not see the United States asan enemy.

ARGUMENTS OF PAKISTANI DRONE PROPONENTSWhile the voices of Pakistan’s drone supporters are rarely heard, the Pewdata demonstrate that a sizeable number of Pakistanis who know about thedrones support their use. We can discern the bases of their support byreviewing the pro‐drone op‐eds written by Pakistanis in Pakistani andforeign newspapers. These writers argue that something must be done toeliminate the Islamist militants in the tribal areas and the threat they poseto Pakistanis. Pakistan’s military operations have not always been success-ful and they have often come at a high price: the Pakistani army’s spring2009 operation against the Pakistani Taliban in Swat displaced over 3million persons, over and above the 800,000 (or more) who had beendisplaced that year from the tribal areas due tomilitary operations.56 In latesummer 2009, a fact‐finding mission sent to Swat by Pakistan’s HumanRights Commission documented extrajudicial killings by the security forcesand even mass graves.57 U.S. State Department cables released throughWikileaks reveal that U.S. officials knew about the killings but kept themsecret.58 The United States did not act until October 2010, after a videosurfaced that appeared to show Pakistani troops shooting bound and

56Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, “Millions of IDPs and Returnees Face Continuing Crisis,” 2December 2009, accessed at http://www.internal‐displacement.org/8025708F004BE3B1/(httpInfoFiles)/9F1885E236952592C12576800057602F/$file/Pakistan_Overview_Dec09.pdf, 9 May 2013.57Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, “Serious concerns over mass graves, extrajudicial killings, IDPs’plight in Swat: HRCP,” 12 August 2009, accessed at http://hrcpblog.wordpress.com/2009/08/22/serious‐concerns‐over‐mass‐graves‐extrajudicial‐killings‐idps%E2%80%99‐plight‐in‐swat‐hrcp, 9 May 2013.58Declan Walsh, “US ‘kept Pakistani army Swat murders secret,”’ The Guardian, 30 November 2010,accessed at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/30/us‐pakistani‐army‐swat‐murders‐secret, 9May 2013.

THE DRONE WAR | 19

blindfolded young men. The United States invoked Leahy Amendmentsanctions, precluding U.S. military assistance to the units involved in theabuses.59 Pakistanis are also very familiar with the devastation associatedwith Pakistan’s use of combat aircraft in Swat, South Waziristan, andelsewhere. In October 2009, Pakistan deployed fighter‐bomber aircraftin the tribal areas, causing residents to flee when theirs homes weredestroyed.60

Given that the various displaced persons fled to major cities throughoutthe country, and also the vigorous media coverage of these unpopularmilitary operations, Pakistanis are fully aware that the alternative to thedrones may bemuchmore unpleasant. Thus, those who support the dronesdo so because they believe that the strikes are the least‐bad option, and alsothat doing nothing is not acceptable.61 As with the foregoing section, wereview these arguments in support of the drone program to generatetestable hypotheses.

Perhaps the most important reason some Pakistanis support the use ofdrones is that they believe that the drones are killing terrorists, whichPakistan either cannot or will not tackle on its own. Moreover, droneproponents will often note that the drones kill foreign and Pakistanimilitants whose very presence in Pakistan vitiates Pakistan’s claims ofsovereignty and endangers the state. As one editorial in The PakistanExpress Tribune recently opined, “The real threat to our nation comesfrom the heavily armed outfits marching across our northern areas, ratherthan the strikes made by unmanned planes.”62

Drone supporters may also weigh the potential loss of innocent life dueto drones against the much larger problem of terrorism in Pakistan.Mohammad Taqi’s critique of the Stanford–NYU Law School report ondrones for the English‐language Daily Times argues that the report is

59“‘Abusive’ Pakistani units lose aid,” Al Jazeera, 22 October 2010, accessed at http://www.aljazeera.com/

news/americas/2010/10/2010102271611937887.html, 9 May 2013. Unfortunately, this punitive measurewas undermined by the nearly simultaneous announcement of 2 billion dollars in military aid to Pakistan.Eric Schmitt andDavid E. Sanger, “U.S. Offers Pakistan Army $2 BillionAid Package,”TheNewYork Times,22 October 2010, accessed at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/23/world/asia/23policy.html?pagewanted¼all&_r¼0, 9 May 2013.60One of the authors visited South and North Waziristan with the Pakistan army in August 2010 andobserved first‐hand the massive devastation resulting from these strikes. See also, “Displaced tell of fear after100,000 flee army assault,”The Dawn, 19 October 2009, accessed at http://archives.dawn.com/archives/145043, 9 May 2013.61C. Christine Fair, “Pakistan’s Own War on Terror: What the Pakistani Public Thinks,” Journal ofInternational Affairs 63 (Fall/Winter 2009): 39–55.62“A question of Sovereignty,” The Pakistan Express Tribune, 13 December 2012, accessed at http://tribune.

com.pk/story/478880/a‐question‐of‐sovereignty/?fb_action_ids¼10151199413465003&fb_action_types¼og.likes&fb_source¼aggregation&fb_aggregation_id¼288381481237582, 9 May 2013.


methodologically flawed,63 but also points out that it is completely silentabout

the psychological effects of terrorist attacks on the general population allover Pakistan…. For example, compared to a total of roughly 350 droneattacks since 2004, there were well over 600 terrorist bombings and morethan 1,000 fatalities across Pakistan. In addition, over 35 targeted attackson the Shia and other minorities took place in 2011, causing over 500deaths. But apparently the idea of the study was to highlight only thealleged atrocities by the US, while glossing over the reign of terror un-leashed over Pakistanis at large by those holed up in FATA and theirhandlers in and cohorts in ‘mainland’ Pakistan.64

Thus, for Taqi, the costs of drones areworth paying if the strikes degrade theability of terrorist groups’ to attack Pakistanis. Taqi is essentially arguingthat the drones serve Pakistan’s interests while also advancing those of theUnited States.

MohammadZubair, a lawyer fromPeshawarwith family ties to the tribalareas, is a vocal supporter of drones. He recalls the revelations of Air ChiefMarshal (Retired) Rao Qamar Suleiman, who admitted in a 2011 DailyTimes article that Pakistan’s Air Force had flown “5,000 strike sorties anddropped 11,600 bombs on 4,600 targets in Pakistan’s troubled tribal areassince May 2008.”65 In contrast to what he calls the “media’s unverifiable

63This report did, in fact, have numerous methodological flaws. First and foremost, it relied upon interviewsconducted among a convenience sample of 130 persons. These interviews were conducted well outside of thetribal areas and were “arranged through local contacts in Pakistan….The majority of the [69] experientialvictims were arranged with the assistance of the Foundation for Fundamental Rights” (International HumanRights and Conflict Resolution Clinic At Stanford Law School and Global Justice Clinic at NYU School OfLaw, “LivingUnderDrones,”2–3). TheFoundation for FundamentalRights is the leading opponent of dronesin Pakistan and thus is a party to the debate rather than an impartial organization dedicated to an objectiveunderstanding of the issue.Much of the report’s evidence is thus derived from interviews fielded amonga smallsample that is deeply tainted by selection bias. The authorsmake no attempt to identify Pakistanis who evincesome support for drones, much less incorporate their views into the report. Equally dismaying, the authors ofthe report take all interview‐derived information as authoritative andmakeno effort to independently confirmoral statements by invoking forensic or munitions experts or other scientific means of validating witnessstatements. The authors do not disambiguate the various causes of similar outcomes. For example, they notethat Pakistani interlocutors described these “experiential victims” as exhibiting clinical signs of post‐traumaticstress disorder due to their experience (howsoever direct or indirect) of either drone strikes or dronesurveillance. Although the strikes are carried out in areas that are also tormented by enormous terroristviolence, restrictive and violent social regimes enforced by the local Taliban, extensive Pakistani military andparamilitary and intelligence presence, the authors simply assume that any such instances of depression can beattributed to drones alone. In short, the authors arrive at sweeping conclusions that are fundamentallyunsupported by the report’s thin and dubious empirical foundation.64Mohammad Taqi, “Shooting down drones with academic guns?” The Daily Times, 4 October 2012,accessed at http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page¼2012\10\04\story_4‐10‐2012_pg3_2, 9May 2013.65Muhammad Zubair, “Drone attacks: myth and reality,” The Daily Times, 4 June 2012, accessed at http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page¼2012\06\04\story_4‐6‐2012_pg3_4, 9 May 2013.

THE DRONE WAR | 21

reports” of innocent drone casualties, “the internally displaced persons ofSouth Waziristan and people of North Waziristan [from the bombingcampaign of the Pakistan Air Force] tell a different story about suchattacks, albeit in whispers, due to fear. The IDPs claim that drones didnot disrupt their social life or cause infrastructural damage or kill innocentcivilians because of the precise and targeted nature of their attacks.”66 Thus,Zubair’s arguments in support of drones derive from a reasoned compari-son of the other more‐damaging options to eliminate a threat that hebelieves is real and a menace to the state.

Zubair is not alone in voicing the view that the drones largely kill actualterrorists and are much preferable to the massive damage caused by the airforce’s bombing campaign, which displaced millions of Pakistanis anddestroyed whole villages. Nor is he alone in condemning the Pakistani statefor failing to exert itself over these areas to protect these vulnerable citi-zens.67 Farhat Taj, an outspoken Norway‐based researcher from the TribalAreas, has questioned many of the reports of high civilian casualties, basedon their failure to provide “verifiable evidence of civilian ‘casualties’…i.e.names of the people killed, names of their villages, dates and locations ofthe strikes,” as well as an “inadequate” collection methodology.68

Ali Arqam, writing in English on the Internet, presents a similar set ofarguments for drone attacks. He argues that whatever harm drones do, it isless than that done by Pakistan’s military actions and the “indiscriminatesuicide bombings and other terrorist attacks by the nexus of Jihadistgroups that have taken over” parts of the tribal areas.69 Arqam, likeTaqi, criticizes the recent Stanford–NYU Law School report for ignoringthe effect that terrorism has had on many Pakistanis. He observes that noone asked the “46,000 and counting victims of Jihadist terrorism inPakistan about the psychological effects of seeing their near and dearones obliterated in market places”; the authors did not ask Pakistan’sreligious minorities, who are the targets of sectarian terrorist groups,“about the psychological effects of seeing gruesome beheadings and ex-ecutions of pilgrims and laborers on the basis of their religious identity”;nor did the report address the concerns of “Pashtun families as well as PPP,ANP, JUIF and other political activists, leaders and even those Deobandiclerics who were massacred for opposing the Taliban and their

66Zubair, “Drone attacks: myth and reality.”67Ibid.68Farhat Taj, “Drone attacks: challenging some fabrications,” The Daily Times, 2 January 2010, accessed athttp://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page¼2010\01\02\story_2‐1‐2010_pg3_5, 9 May 2013.69Ali Arqam, “Questioning the veracity of FFR‐assisted Stanford report on drone attacks,” Let Us BuildPakistan, 5 October 2012, accessed at http://criticalppp.com/archives/229457, 9 May 2013.


methods?”70 For Arqam, doing nothing will ultimately result in a greaterloss of life, well beyond the tribal areas; drones are preferable to thealternative (military action) because they target terrorists more accuratelyand thus cause less loss of innocent life.71

These authors provide some insights into the factors that lead Pakistanisto support drones. Pakistani drone supporters recognize that the drones dokill innocent civilians. But they still support the strikes because they believethat FATA‐based terrorists do more harm than the drones, and thattargeted killings are the least‐bad option for dealing with Pakistan’s terror-ism problem. This reasoning is thrown into sharp relief by the fact thatmany of these drone supporters (including Taj, Taqi, Shah, and Zubair)have family ties to FATA. Thus, we suspect, along the lines of H4, that thosewho believe al Qaeda and other militant groups pose a serious threat toPakistan aremore likely to support drones and less likely to oppose them. Itis also worth noting that authors from FATA understand the implicationsof the FCR: families offering shelter or other assistance to “terrorists” puttheir household and extended families at risk. Thus, for those in FATA,“innocence” has a different legal and social connotation than it does in therest of Pakistan. Unfortunately, Pew did not survey FATA residents. Final-ly, conspicuously absent in these pro‐drone pieces is any expression of thebelief that theUnited States is at war with Pakistan. For these interlocutors,it is not that the Americans are trampling Pakistan’s sovereignty; rather,Pakistan has not bothered to exert it own sovereignty over FATA. Thus, weanticipate that, consistent with H6, those who do not believe that theUnited States is an enemy of Pakistan are less likely to oppose U.S. dronesin Pakistan.

DATA AND METHODSThe data used in this analysis came from the 2010 Pew Global Attitudessurvey, which included questions about drone strikes in Pakistan.72 Thesurvey was conducted in Pakistan’s four provinces: Punjab, Sind,

70Ibid.71There are numerous pro‐drone articles in the Pakistani media, most making the same arguments as thepieces discussed above. See, for example, Saroop Ijaz, “Game of Drones,” Pakistan Express Tribune, 6October 2012, accessed at http://tribune.com.pk/story/447920/game‐of‐drones/, 9 May 2013; Pir ZubairShah, “My Drone War,” Foreign Policy, 27 February 2012, accessed at http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/02/27/my_drone_war; Farhat Taj, “A Survey of Drone Attacks in Pakistan: What Do thePeople of FATA Think?” 5 March 2009, accessed at http://www.airra.org/newsandanalysis/droneattack-survey.php, 9 May 2013.72We employ 2010 data from the Pew Global Attitudes Project because that is the most‐recent survey toinclude a battery of questions about the drone program in Pakistan and for which full access to the dataset isavailable. The 2012 dataset was still embargoed at the time of writing.

THE DRONE WAR | 23

Northwest Frontier Province (now known as Khyber Paktunkhwa), andBalochistan. For security reasons, the survey was not fielded in FATA. Toget an idea of how much Pakistanis know about the drone strikes, respon-dents were asked: How much, if anything, have you heard about droneattacks that target leaders of extremist groups: a lot, little, or nothing at all?Of the responses, the largest category was nothing at all, with 43 percent.Don’t know/refused was the second largest response category with 22percent. Of those who responded that they knew something about thedrones, 21 percent said they knew a little and 14 percent said they knewa lot. Thus, in 2010, only 35 percent of the sample claimed that they knewsomething about the drone program, whereas 43 percent stated they knewnothing about it. It is clear from these responses that a minority of Pak-istanis are familiar with the drone strikes.

In order to gauge opposition to the drone strikes, the respondents wereasked: Please tell me whether you support or oppose the United Statesconducting drone attacks in conjunction with the Pakistani governmentagainst the leaders of extremist groups. The breakdown of response to thisquestion was that 23 percent support the drone strikes, 32 percent opposethe drone strikes, and 45 percent do not know or refuse to answer thequestion. Thus, a plurality of Pakistanis either does not know about thedrone strikes or refuses to answer the question. Table 2 shows a breakdownof Pakistani attitudes toward drone strikes among those respondents whoanswered the question.

As the table shows, the majority of respondents who knew about thedrone strikes or offered an opinion were opposed to them, with nearly 60percent opposed to 40 percent in favor. A minority, albeit a significantminority, views the drone strikes as positive.

The 2010 Pew survey allows us to examine some of the attitudes thatsurround the topic of drone strikes. The survey instrument includes a seriesof questions dealing with the necessity of the strikes, their toll on innocentcivilians, and the degree to which the Pakistani government is assenting tothe American drone strikes. Table 3 shows the results of answers to thesequestions, first across Pakistan and then by province.

TABLE 2Please tell me Whether you Support or Oppose the United States Conducting Drone Attacks

in Conjunction with the Pakistani Government Against Leaders of Extremist Groups

Pakistan

(n¼ 1,040)

Punjab

(n¼ 568)

Sind

(n¼ 273)

Balochistan

(n¼ 66)

Northwest Frontier

Province(NWFP)

(n¼ 133)

Support 40.2 percent 42.8 percent 35.9 percent 39.4 percent 38.3 percent

Oppose 59.8 percent 57.2 percent 64.1 percent 60.6 percent 61.7 percent


The first question to examine is:Howmuch, if anything, have you heardabout the drone attacks that target leaders of extremist groups—a lot, alittle, or nothing at all? This is the gateway question to the questions aboutthe merits and drawbacks of the drone strikes. If a respondent answersnothing at all, they are not asked the immediate subsequent questionsabout the drone strikes. If they answer, a lot or a little, they are asked whatthey think about the drone strikes. The responses to this question arediscussed above.

The first follow‐up question is: For each of the following statementsabout the drone attacks, please tell me whether you agree or disagree: Theyare necessary to defend Pakistan from extremist groups. Thirty‐sevenpercent of Pakistanis agreed with this statement and 63 percent disagreed.Thus, a pattern emerges that is very similar to the question about supportfor and opposition to drone strikes.

The next question in the series concerned collateral damage. It asks: Foreach of the following statements about the drone attacks, please tell mewhether you agree or disagree: They kill too many innocent people. Thisquestion elicited very strong responses. Ninety‐five percent of those sur-veyed agreed that the strikes killed toomany innocents, while only 5 percentbelieved that they did not.

The final question in the series asked: For each of the following state-ments about the drone attacks, please tell me whether you agree or disagree:

TABLE 3For each of the Following Statements about the Drone Attacks, Please Tell me Whether you

Agree or Disagree

They are necessary to defend Pakistan from extremist groups

Pakistan

(n¼ 629)

Punjab

(n¼ 320)

Sind

(n¼ 201)

Balochistan

(n¼ 8)

NFWP

(n¼ 100)

Agree 37.2 percent 33.4 percent 37.3 percent 50.0 percent 48.0 percent

Disagree 62.8 percent 66.6 percent 62.7 percent 50.0 percent 52.0 percent

They kill too many innocent people

Pakistan

(n¼ 689)

Punjab

(n¼ 339)

Sind

(n¼ 213)

Balochistan

(n¼ 23)

NFWP

(n¼ 114)



They are being done without the approval of the Pakistani government

Pakistan

(n¼ 586)

Punjab

(n¼ 312)

Sind

(n¼ 175)

Balochistan

(n¼ 14)

NFWP

(n¼ 85)



THE DRONE WAR | 25

They are being done without the approval of the Pakistani government.The responses to this question show that Pakistanis aremuch less united onthis point than on the question of civilian casualties. Fifty‐six percentagreed that the drone strikes are carried out without the approval of thePakistan government, and 44 percent disagree.

In summary, these questions show that more Pakistanis oppose thedrone strikes than favor them, that they think the strikes kill too manyinnocent people, and that they are slightly more likely to believe that theUnited States carries out the strikes without the consent of the Pakistanigovernment.

While the targets of the drone strikes are religiously motivated militants,religious beliefs are not at the root of opposition to drone strikes. This studyargues that the principal determinant of opposition to the drone strikes inPakistan is the degree to which a Pakistani has access to a range of differentopinions on the drone attacks. In other words, the less educated a citizen is,and the less access she has to information and commentary about the dronestrikes, the more likely she is to oppose the attacks.

MODELING OPPOSITION TO U.S. DRONE STRIKES IN

PAKISTANThis study uses a Heckman probit model to explain opposition to U.S.drone strikes in Pakistan. The model tests hypotheses related to respon-dents’ attitudes toward theUnited States, various Pakistani authorities, andmilitant groups, their religious beliefs, and their exposure to various types ofmedia. Because of the larger number of missing cases resulting from somequestions, wewould be left with a significantly smaller sample if we opted tonot employ an appropriate Heckman selection model. Why are there somany missing cases?

The literature on public opinion gives two general reasons why respon-dents choose not to answer survey questions. The first has to do with actualand perceived knowledge. Krosnick and Milburn argue that some individ-uals simply do not know enough about the subject of a question and choosenot to answer for fear of appearing foolish.73 Others perceive themselves asinsufficiently knowledgeable and also do not answer. Thus, one reason fornon‐response is a lack of objective knowledge of the subject matter, andanother reason is a lack of confidence that one is able to answer suchquestions. Krosnick and Milburn find that both the less‐knowledgeable

73Jon Krosnick and Michael Milburn, “Psychological Determinants of Political Opinionation,” SocialCognition 8 (1990): 49–68.


and women (no matter their level of knowledge) tend to have higher non‐response rates than males and the more‐knowledgeable.

Adam Berinsky argues that another reason individuals may choose notto answer some survey questions is social desirability effects.74 If a questioncomes up and the respondent does not want to give her sincere answer,which may be one that she believes to be socially undesirable, she maychoose to simply not answer the question and avoid the discomfort of eitherlying or stating her true beliefs.

Both types of reasons may be at play in the data utilized here. Pakistan isa highly unequal society when it comes to education. The illiteracy rate,particularly among women, is very high by international standards. Dronestrikes and terrorism are both highly controversial issues, and asking aboutthem can easily cause discomfort among respondents. Table 4 shows thecorrelations of the don’t know/no response with the independent variablesused in the study’s analysis.

As we can see from the correlations, the Pakistanis most likely to refuseto answer the drone question or to say they don’t know are the less‐educated, women, and less‐informed. These results make sense in lightof the political knowledge and social desirability effects discussed above.The less‐educated and women are likely to be less aware of the drones issueand are also less confident about their responses being based on correctinformation; therefore they chose not to respond.

We thus chose to utilize a Heckman selection model, which includes aselection function and a response function. In this case, the selectionfunction will be similar to a regular binary logistic model, analyzing the

TABLE 4Pearson Correlation Coefficients for Independent Variables and Don’t Know/No Response

Respondents

Variable Correlation

Education �.272��

Gender �.254��

Internet usage �.167��

Pro-democracy �.149��

United States is enemy �.136��

Islamic influence .059�

Income .049�

Al Qaeda is a threat .003

��Correlation significant at the .01 level (2-tailed)

74Adam Berinsky, “The Two Faces of Public Opinion,” American Journal of Political Science 43 (1999):1209–1230.

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factors that contribute to disapproval of drones. In this case, the dependentvariable in the second model is also dichotomous. Thus, we use the Heck-man probit model (as opposed to the standardHeckman selectionmodel inwhich the response function uses ordinary least squares). Specific problemsrelated to model specification are discussed below.

The dependent variable that we use in this analysis is a question thatasks:Now I’m going to ask you a list of things that the United States mightdo to combat extremist groups in Pakistan. For each one, please tell mewhether you would support or oppose it. The respondent is then offered:Conducting drone attacks in conjunction with the Pakistani governmentagainst leaders of extremist groups. The respondent is then offered thechoice of: support, oppose, don’t know, or refuse to answer.75

The independent variables are operationalized in the following manner.Education is operationalized with a question that asks the respondent thehighest level of education she has completed. The more educated one is, themore likely one is to oppose drone strikes. We also use gender as a proxy forlevel of information, as we know that men tend to be more informed aboutpolitical issues in Pakistan than women.

The anti‐Americanism argument is operationalized using a straightfor-ward question about favorability toward the United States: Overall, do youthink of the United States as more of a partner of Pakistan, more of anenemy of Pakistan, or neither? We predict that respondents who say thatthey view the United States as more of an enemy of Pakistan will be morelikely to oppose the drone strikes.

The argument about support for democratic norms is operationalizedusing the question: Democracy is preferable to any other kind of govern-ment. The respondent was given the option of agreeing or disagreeing withthat statement. We hypothesize that those who agree with the statementwill be less supportive of drones.

One of themajor arguments made in favor of drone strikes in Pakistan isthat they kill foreign terrorists such as al Qaeda. Thus, we hypothesized thatthose who fear al Qaeda would be more in favor of drone strikes. We usedthe following question to operationalize this: How serious a threat is alQaeda to our country? Is it a very serious threat, a somewhat serious threat,a minor threat, or not a threat at all? We predict that those who do not

75Given that many of the independent variables ask respondents questions that could pull on the sameunderlying values, it is important to ensure that multicollinearity is not an issue for our model. To do so, weobtained Variance Inflation Factor Scores. The mean VIF was 1.26, with the highest 1.64. All are well belowthe typical threshold of 10 for excessive collinearity.


think al Qaeda is a threat to Pakistan will be more opposed to the droneprogram.

The variable relating to a respondent’s view on the role Islam should playin Pakistan is operationalized by the question: How much of a role do youthink Islam plays in the political life of our country—a very large role, afairly large role, a fairly small role, or a very small role? If the respondentanswered the question, they were then asked: In your opinion, is this goodor bad for the country? If the respondent answered that Islamplayed a fairlysmall or very small role in the political life of the country and that this wasbad, signifying Islamist tendencies, we expect that he or she would be morelikely to oppose drone strikes. Likewise, if the respondent said that Islamplayed a fairly or very large role in the political life of the country and thatthis was good, we would expect him or her to bemore likely to oppose dronestrikes.

We do not use the survey questions about the necessity of drone strikes,whether too many innocents are killed, or whether they are done with orwithout the approval of the Pakistani government, because these questionshad too many missing cases and would not allow for analysis of thevariation in responses toward the dependent variable.

We add a control for income. This variable is added because it could haveeffects on the dependent variable, although we do not have theoreticalpriors about its causal relationship to the dependent variable.

ANALYSISThe data came from the 2010 Pew Global Attitudes Survey, which collectedthe views of 2000 Pakistanis on a range of issues. Because of missing casesresulting from some questions, we used a sample of 1,681 respondents.

Before proceeding, a brief discussion of theHeckmanmodel is necessary.Although the purpose and nature of the methodology is clear, there is somedisagreement about model specification and execution. Derek Briggs sug-gests that “it does not matter whether the covariates in the selectionfunction differ from those in the response schedule.”76 He goes on tonote that it is often suggested that the selection function contain at leastone variable not included in the outcome model or that the response modelcontain none of the variables included in the selection function. In a test ofthe Heckman model, Briggs found that selection functions containingslightly different model specifications can produce vastly different results.

76Derek C. Briggs, “Causal Inference and the Heckman Model,” Journal of Educational and BehavioralStatistics 29 (2004): 397–420, at 404.

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Furthermore, flawed model specification can produce inflated standarderror results due to multicollinearity.

The first model in Table 5 presents an analysis of which Pakistanis opt torespond to questions related to drones. While our previous analysis of thecorrelation between “don’t know” responses and our dependent variabledemonstrates which citizens are more or less likely to respond, the responsemodel allows us to use the Heckmanmodel to do so. We suggest that malesare more likely to respond, along with individuals who are more highlyeducated and better informed. Since we must include a variable in theresponse model that is not in the selection model, we choose to include avariable that asks respondents how often they use the Internet. We believethose who use the Internet more regularly will be more aware of andknowledgeable about the drone program, and consequently more likelyto respond. The same logic applies to Pakistanis who are more educated.Ultimately, we find evidence that beingmale, highly educated, and a regularInternet user makes respondents significantly more likely to respond to thequestion about drones that we use as our dependent variable in the responsemodel.

TABLE 5Heckman Logistic Regression Results

Dependent Variable-Oppose Drones

Independent Variables

Selection

Model

Coeff.

Standard

Error

Response

Model

Coeff.

Standard

Error

Marginal

Effects

Pro-democracy (high¼ agree) �.081 .070

Al Qaeda is a threat (high¼ very serious threat) .007 .030

Islamic influence (high¼ large and good) .020 .013

Education (high¼post-graduate) .273�� .030 .131�� .041 .038

Gender (high¼male) .713�� .065 .538�� .085 .157

United States is enemy

(high¼more of an enemy)

�.143�� .053 .042

Income (high¼more income) �.043 .032

Internet usage (high¼more usage) .419�� .135

Constant �1.130 .083 �1.296 .248

N 888 793

Wald X2 90.84

Prob>X2 .000

Log likelihood �1,539.18

LR test of independent equations 4.22

Prob>X2 .040

Note: Figures are unstandardized coefficients shown alongside standard errors.�p< .1; ��p< .05; ��p< .01.


The second model in Table 4 shows support for different hypothesesraised in this study. We will discuss each of our hypothesized categories ofexplanations presented in the response model. Beginning with the demo-cratic norms category, we find no statistically significant relationship be-tween attitudes toward democracy and attitudes toward drone strikes.

Looking at the support‐for‐militancy category, we do not find a signifi-cant relationship between Pakistani attitudes toward al Qaeda and supportfor drone attacks. Likewise, support for Islamism is not found to be asignificant predictor: the variable utilized in our analysis (which combinesquestions about the amount of influence Islam has in Pakistan along withwhether that influence is good or bad) does not have a clear relationshipwith citizen opinions of drones. Attitude toward the United States—asmeasured through a question asking if the United States is an enemy ofPakistan—is found to be a significant predictor of opinion about drones atthe .01 level. Individuals who believe theUnited States is an enemy aremorelikely to oppose drone strikes.

Turning to our hypothesis regarding access to information, both pre-dictors are statistically significant at the .01 level. Individuals with moreeducation and males are both more likely to support the use of drones inPakistan than other categories of respondents. Our sole control variable—income—does not emerge as a significant predictor in our response model.

Because we use the Heckman probit, the coefficients we present inTable 4 do not portray the marginal effects of the independent variableson the dependent variable. To help present a fuller picture, we report themarginal effects of our significant variables in Table 4 as well. Themarginaleffects measure the probability of a respondent opposing drones when allindependent variables are held at their mean except for the variable ofinterest, which is moved from itsminimum to its maximum value. Thus, weare able to assess the substantive effect of each independent variable toexplain variation in the dependent variable. When we examine our model,the most substantively significant variable appears to be gender, with a firstdifference of .157. Thismeans that solely bymoving the variable from femaleto male, while holding all other variables at their mean or median, we see a15.7 percent increase in the likelihood that a respondent will oppose dronestrikes. Perceptions of the United States as an enemy (4.2 percent) andeducation (3.8 percent), all have smaller substantive effects.

CONCLUSIONSThis analysis sought to understand the landscape of Pakistani publicopinion about American drone strikes in FATA. We used a Pew GlobalAttitudes Project survey from 2010 that has one of the best available

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question sets on Pakistani attitudes toward drone strikes. Our overview ofPakistani attitudes toward drone strikes shows that most Pakistanis (atleast 43 percent) are unaware of the drone strikes in FATA. Those who areaware of the strikes and have an opinion oppose them by a margin of 20percent.

The next goal of the studywas to explain the variationwe see in Pakistanipublic opinion toward the drone strikes: why do some Pakistanis opposethe drone strikes while others do not? We hypothesized that the primarydriver of opposition to the drone strikes was the anti‐drone discourse in thepopular media. Since most Pakistanis’ only source of information on thedrone program is the Urdu‐language media, they are exposed to a steadystream of negative stories about the drone strikes. We expected that themost‐educated Pakistanis would bemore likely to support the drone strikesbecause they tend to have access to more‐varied sources of information(some of them inEnglish) and thus are exposed to the pro‐drone argumentspresented in more‐sophisticated Pakistani media sources, as well as inforeign media.

The results of the analysis bear out our argument. Pakistanis who havelittle education are most likely to be opposed to the drone strikes. Pakistaniwomen, who are generally poorly educated and excluded from politicaldiscussions, tend to be more negative about the drones than men, as weexpected.

We also found, as we expected, that views on the United States predictrespondent views on drone strikes. The more negative the respondent wasabout the United States in general, the more likely he or she was to opposedrone strikes.

Interestingly, our prediction that a respondents’ views on political Islamwould influence her attitude toward the drone strikes was not borne out bythe data. Respondents with Islamist tendencies did not seem more likelyeither to oppose or favor the strikes. This result illustrates the breadth anddiversity of the Islamist spectrum in Pakistan; most Islamists do notsupport the militants who are the targets of the strikes.

Fear of or support for al Qaeda also does not seem to havemuch effect onPakistanis’ thinking about drones. This may be because Pakistanis think ofthe Pakistani Taliban as the main target of drone strikes. The PakistaniTaliban poses a much greater threat to Pakistan than al Qaeda does.

What do these results tell us about where public opinion in Pakistan isheaded? We know that Pakistani public opinion matters when it comes tothis issue. The media reacts to it, as does the government and even themilitary. Public opinion does not drive policy on this issue, but it constrainsthe range of options available to U.S. and Pakistani authorities. The United


States is trying to reduce the negative consequences of drone strikes, inFATA in particular, in order to minimize the chances of enflaming publicsentiment. This effort includes the use of new, more‐accurate weapons, butalso a reduction in strikes. The United States is even giving Pakistanunarmed surveillance drones so that the drone war will no longer be solelyan American effort. The drone war is not just a war against militants; it isalso a fight to win over the Pakistani public.

This analysis makes a case that the U.S. government should be moreassertive and transparent about its use of armed drones in Pakistan, andalso that it should try to reach the large percentage of the population thatdoes not know about the program in order to shape opinion in favor of thedrone strikes. This outreach may involve radio, non‐cable TV (such asPakistan TV), or even local media, such as SMS texting in Urdu. Thefact that so few Pakistanis have fixed attitudes about the program showsthat there is, in fact, room for a genuine struggle over Pakistani publicopinion. But the U.S. government, which has refused to discuss the pro-gram in Pakistan or even the United States, has not even entered the fray.

THE DRONE WAR | 33

Did History End? Assessing theFukuyama Thesis

JOHN MUELLER

IN A 1989 ESSAY, FRANCIS FUKUYAMA ADVANCED the notion that,with the death of communism, history had come to an end.1 This somewhatfanciful, and presumably intentionally provocative, formulation was de-rived from Hegel, and it has generally been misinterpreted. He did notmean that things would stop happening—obviously a preposterous pro-posal.2 Rather, he contended that there had been a profound ideologicaldevelopment. With the demise of communism, its chief remaining chal-lenger after the extinguishment earlier in the century of monarchy andFascism, liberalism—democracy and market capitalism—had triumphedover all other governmental and economic systems or sets of orderingprinciples. Looking for future challenges to this triumph, he examinedthe potential rise of destructive forms of nationalism and of fundamentalist

JOHN MUELLER is a political scientist at Ohio State University and a Senior Fellow at theCato Institute. His most recent books are War and Ideas and (with Mark Stewart) Terror,Security, and Money: Balancing the Benefits, Risks, and Costs of Homeland Security.

1See also Francis Fukuyama, “A Reply to My Critics,” National Interest 16 (Winter 1989/90): 22.2Francis Fukuyama, “The End of History?” National Interest (Summer 1989): 3–18. In discussing his essay24 years after its publication, Fukuyama suggested the appeal of the approach lies in the fact that declaring anend “conveys a kind of apocalyptic sense that there is a big transition underfoot….You perceive there issomething going on—saying it is the end of something gives you that aha moment.” The idea seems to havecaught on. Since 1989, there have been books and articles prominently declaring the ends of nature (1989),faith (2004), poverty (2006), reason (2008), lawyers (2008), white America (2009), the free market (2010),the future (2011), leadership (2012), money (2012), illness (2012), men (2012), war (2012), courtship(2013), power (2013), and sex (2013). Carlos Lozada, “The end of everything,” washingtonpost.com,5 April 2013.


religion, but found them unlikely to prevail. Thus, the triumph of liberalismwas likely to be permanent.

This article evaluates developments over the subsequent quarter centuryand argues that Fukuyama seems to have had it fundamentally right.Beginning with the countries of Eastern Europe, democracy continuedits progress after 1989. Moreover, capitalism increasingly came to be ac-cepted, so that when the world plunged into widespread economic crisisafter 2007, proposed remedies variously recommended tinkering with thesystem, not abandoning it.

In themeantime, violent forms of nationalism that surged in some placesin the last decade of the old century scarcely proved to be much of achallenge to these trends, and the same seems likely to hold for violentforms of fundamentalist religion that surged in some places in the firstdecade of the new one. In fact, the significance of both of these illiberaldevelopments seems to have been much exaggerated.

In addition, there was a striking decline of civil warfare during the decadeafter 1989 to low levels that have held now throughout the new century.

Fukuyama’s prediction that the end of history would be characterized by“boredom” has, perhaps unfortunately, proven to be savagely mistaken.However, his notion that there is “an emptiness at the core” of liberalismcontinues to be apt: the success of the ideology seems to have generated littlesatisfaction in its advocates, probably because they were expecting toomuch. Moreover, his celebration of the “autonomous power of ideas” seemsjustified.

The central policy implication of this experience is to suggest that iftrends are on one’s side (that is to say, coming into fashion), it may well bebest not to work too strenuously to move them along: efforts to imposethem are likely to be unnecessary and can be costly and evencounterproductive.

THE RISE OF DEMOCRACYSince 1989, democracy has continued to progress even in somehighly unlikelycorners of the world. Overall, according to Freedom House measures, thepercentage of countries that are electoral democracies rose from 41 whenFukuyama’s article was published in 1989 to 61 in 2012, while the percentagedeemed fully free (a high bar) rose less impressively from 37 to 46.3

Democracy’s rise has, it seems, essentially been the result of a 200‐yearcompetition of ideas, rather than the necessary or incidental consequence of

3FreedomHouse, Freedom in theWorld 2013: Democratic Breakthroughs in the Balance (Washington, DC:Freedom House, 2013).


grander changes in social, cultural, economic, or historic patterns. It hastriumphed because the idea that democracy is a superior form of govern-ment, ably executed and skillfully promoted—or marketed—at one point inthe world’s history, has increasingly managed to catch on.

By 1945, modern democracy had been suitably tested, refined, andpackaged to increase its appeal. It had rebounded from such potentiallydiscrediting calamities as the Reign of Terror in France, the Civil War inAmerica, and the Great Depression of the 1930s, and it had seen itscomparative appeal and credibility enhanced as it survived two wars inwhich two of its major competitors—monarchy and Fascism—were sub-stantially destroyed.

Democracy was successfully urged upon the losers of WorldWar II, whowillingly accepted it, and there were notable additional advances, particu-larly after 1975, when the three remaining non‐democracies in Europeoutside the communist bloc—Greece, Portugal, and Spain—also converted.This was followed by similar developments in Latin America and inmuch ofEast and Southeast Asia.4 The promoters improved neither the product northe packaging. What changed was the receptivity of the customers: democ-racy caught on, at least among political elites, as an idea whose time hadcome. In particular, military leaders, particularly in Latin America, seemto have become convinced that the military dictatorship was a thing ofthe past.5

After 1989, democracy replaced communism in much of Eastern Eu-rope and the splintered USSR as it had replaced monarchy and Fascismearlier. In Africa, there was also notable democratic progress in quite a fewplaces. The most spectacular, of course, was South Africa. But there hasalso been democratic development in Tanzania, Botswana, Malawi, Na-mibia,Mozambique, Ghana, Benin, Kenya, Zambia,Madagascar, Gambia,and Senegal. Also impressive was the way in which the world’s mostpopulous Muslim country, Indonesia, successfully navigated its way todemocracy after 1997. Though far freer than in their communist past, bothChina and, to a lesser extent, Russia remain substantially recalcitrant,however.

Democracy has yet to penetrate deeply into the Islamic countries in theMiddle East. However, where leaders have allowed elections, as in Algeria

4Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman, OK:University of Oklahoma Press, 1991). John Mueller, Capitalism, Democracy, and Ralph’s Pretty GoodGrocery (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), chap. 8.5On elite transformations, see John Higley and Richard Gunther, eds., Elites and Democratic ConsolidationinLatin America and SouthernEurope (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1992); Francis Fukuyama,The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992), 18–22.

DID HISTORY END? | 37

and Iran in 1997 (and then again in Iran in 2001 and 2013), the votersdisplayed considerable ability to differentiate and express their interest eventhough the choice of candidates and the freedom of speechwas limited. Andsome Muslim states in the area, such as Turkey, Pakistan, and Qatar, havecertainly been able to move substantially, if sometimes erratically, towarddemocracy. The popular revolutions waged throughout the Middle Eastbeginning in 2011 suggest that further progress may be in the offing.However, things remain shaky, even in Tunisia and Libya, and a militarycoup in Egypt in 2013 that overthrew an elected government was, although,popularly supported, hardly an exercise in the purest democracy, of course.But it may be relevant to note that the coup leaders found it necessary toinsist that they did not intend to run the government themselves, but wouldturn in over to a civilian transition government pending later elections.Whether that will happen remains to be seen.

Democracy is a governmental form, generally compatible with a vigorousand productive society, that functions rather well when people manage, onaverage, to be no better than they actually are or are ever likely to be: flawed,grasping, self‐centered, prejudiced, and easily distracted. That is, democ-racy does not require a great deal from people; they do not need to beparticularly good or noble, but merely to calculate their own best interestsor, if they wish, interests that they take to reflect those of the collectivity,and, if so moved, to peacefully express them. There are, however, noguarantees that anyone will listen.

It follows from this perspective that contrary to the precepts of a largeliterature, no set of elaborate prerequisites or cultural preparations isnecessary for democracy to emerge, and that an agonizing process of“democratization” is not necessarily required. That is, when not obstructedby armed authoritarians, democracy is often easy to establish andmaintainbecause it is essentially based on giving people the freedom to complain—and, importantly, the freedom peacefully to organize with other com-plainers—to attempt to topple or favorably influence the government.Complaining comes easily to most.6

The popular notion that various attitudinal, cultural, economic, andatmospheric developments are necessary before a country can becomedemocratic has inspired a considerable pessimism about the prospectsfor the expansion of democracy.7 Thus, in 1984, in the midst of what hewas later to label the “third wave” of democratization, Samuel

6For a development of this perspective, see Mueller, Capitalism, Democracy, and Ralph’s Pretty GoodGrocery, chaps. 6–8.7On the pessimism issue, see also Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, chap. 1.


Huntington looked to the future and essentially concluded that democ-racy could only emerge as a consequence of very substantial economicgrowth or through force.8 Neither development took place, but democ-racy progressed anyway, and often in countries that clearly lacked thesupposed requisites, such as Paraguay. Indeed, over the period, mostcountries in Latin America probably became worse off in many materialways—the rise of democracy there was carried out during a very sub-stantial debt crisis.9

It seems, then, that a country can becomedemocratic—fully democratic—without any special historical preparation andwhatever the state of its socialor economic development if elites and political activists generally come tobelieve that democracy is the way things ought to be done and if they aren’tphysically intimidated or held in check by force and if they refrain fromusing it themselves. For example, it is likely that about the only thing thatkept isolated, backward, impoverished, prerequisite‐free Burma from be-coming democratic after its free election of 1988was forceful intervention bythe military.10

THE RISE OF CAPITALISMCapitalism has been counted out quite a few times. For example, in 1950,Joseph Schumpeter famously and repeatedly declared “centralist socialism”

to be the “heir apparent” to capitalism.11 Things have changed markedlysince then. As economist Robert Heilbroner, not usually known as anardent free‐marketeer, noted in 1993:

There is today widespread agreement, including among most socialisteconomists, that whatever form advanced societies may take in the twenty‐first century, a market system of some kind will constitute their principalmeans of coordination. That is a remarkable turnabout from the situa-tion only a generation ago, when the majority of economists believedthat the future of economic coordination lay in a diminution of the scopeof the market, and an increase in some form of centralized planning.12

8Samuel P. Huntington, “Will More Countries Become Democratic?” Political Science Quarterly 99 (Sum-mer 1984): 218.9See Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, The Commanding Heights: The Battle Between Government andthe Marketplace That Is Remaking the Modern World (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998), chap. 9.10Compare Francis Fukuyama, “The Future of History,” Foreign Affairs 91 (January/February 2012): 58.11Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 3d ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1950),417. See also Yergin and Stanislaw, The Commanding Heights, 22.12Robert Heilbroner, 21st Century Capitalism (New York: Norton, 1993), 97. On this issue, see George J.Stigler, “The Politics of Political Economists,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 73 (November 1959): 522–532; R.M. Hartwell, A History of the Mont Pelerin Society (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1995), 191;Yergin and Stanislaw,TheCommandingHeights;Mueller,Capitalism,Democracy, andRalph’s PrettyGoodGrocery, chap. 5.


In many respects the economic consensus that Heilbroner notes bur-geoned only recently, particularly after the abject and pathetic collapse ofcommand and heavily planned economies in the late 1980s and early 1990sthat seems to have substantially triggered Fukuyama’s essay. As a topIndian economist put it, “Between the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, I felt as though I wereawakening from a thirty‐five‐year dream. Everything I had believed abouteconomic systems and tried to implement was wrong.”13

Inpractice, all capitalist, ormarket capitalist statesmaynot endup lookinga great deal like each other—anymore than all democracies do. There may becontroversy, for example, over the desirable trade‐offs between growth andthe distribution of wealth, or over whether it is better to go for maximumgrowth or to sacrifice some growth in order to reduce the amplitude of theboom and bust cycles around an upward growth path, or over how large agovernment’s deficit can rise without stifling economic growth, or over thedegree to which a regulation will hurtmore than it will help, or over what rateof inflation ismost desirable. But, substantially and increasingly, the debate islikely to be more nearly a matter of degree than of fundamental principles.

Most important, when the world plunged into widespread economiccrisis in the late 1990s and then again after 2007, proposed remediesvariously recommended tinkering with the system—not, as in the 1930s,abandoning it. As Angus Burgin observed in 2012, “Radical alternatives tocapitalist modes of social organization found little traction” while “the holdof market advocacy on the popular imagination has remained far strongerthan in the early 1930s….Capitalism may be in crisis, but the horizon ofalternatives has narrowed.”14

Notably, international trade was not substantially cut back,15 and therewere nowidespread calls for trade protectionism, for the imposition of wageand price controls, or for confiscatory taxes on the rich. And when someenterprises were deemed too big to fail, there were sometimes efforts tosubsidize their recovery and to increase regulation, but not to nationalizethem or to permanently take them over. Governments also sought to reducetheir debt and balance their budgets. Although there was severe economicpain in some countries, there was little call for anti‐capitalist revolution.Extremist parties have gained little voting share in Europe, where the

13Yergin and Stanislaw,The CommandingHeights, 138. See also Fukuyama,TheEnd ofHistory and the LastMan, 41–42.14Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free Markets Since the Great Depression (Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 216.15Daniel Drezner, The System Worked: How the World Stopped Another Great Depression (New York:Oxford University Press, 2014), chap. 2.


response of the newly unemployed has been remarkably restrained andwhere calls to abandon the Euro have sought not to undermine the eco-nomic system but to make it work better. Meanwhile, the Occupy WallStreet movement in the United States was notable mainly for its impotenceand ideological incoherence.16

THE CHALLENGE OF NATIONALISMIn the 1990s, particularly after civil warfare broke out in Yugoslavia, manyobservers held a rise in nationalism, or ultra‐nationalism, to be a potentialrival to liberalism and therefore a vital challenge to the Fukuyama thesis—or even a devastating refutation of it. The “breakdown of restraints” inYugoslavia was said to be part of “a global trend.”17

In Yugoslavia, it was contended that elemental and ancient ethnichatreds had only temporarily and superficially been kept in check bycommunism and that with its demise, murderous nationalism haderupted.18 At times, this approach was extravagantly expanded to suggestthat whole civilizations were clashing.19

However, this perspective proved to be unfounded. In Yugoslavia, “na-tionalist” and “ethnic” conflicts were spawned not somuch by the convulsivesurging of ancient hatreds or by frenzies whipped up by demagogic poli-ticians and the media as by the vicious ministrations of small—sometimesvery small—bands of opportunistic predators. These were either recruitedfor the purpose from prisons and elsewhere by political leaders and oper-ating under their general guidance, or else they were formed from essen-tially criminal and bandit gangs. Their participation was required becausethe Yugoslav Army, despite years of supposedly influential nationalistpropaganda and centuries of supposedly pent‐up ethnic hatreds, substan-tially disintegrated early in thewar and refused to fight; professing that they

16See also Fukuyama, “The Future of History,” 53, 59–60.17Cvijeto Job, “Yugoslavia’s Ethnic Furies,” Foreign Policy (Fall 1993): 71. See also Daniel PatrickMoynihan,Pandaemonium: Ethnicity in International Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); David A.Hamburg, Preventing Contemporary Intergroup Violence (New York: Carnegie Corporation of New York,1993); Zbigniew Brzezinski, Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the 21st Century (New York:Scribner’s, 1993).18See especially Robert D. Kaplan, “A Reader’s Guide to the Balkans,” New York Times Book Review, 18April 1993: 1, 30–32. See also Fukuyama,End ofHistory and the LastMan, 272. For a devastating critique ofthe argument, see Noel Malcolm, “Seeing Ghosts,”National Interest (Summer 1993): 83–88. For additionalcritiques: V.P. Gagnon, Jr. “Ethnic Nationalism and International Conflict: The Case of Serbia,” Interna-tional Security 19 (Winter 1994/95): 133–134; Brian Hall, “Rebecca West’s War,” The New Yorker, 15April 1996, 74–83; Russell Hardin, One for All: The Logic of Group Conflict (Princeton, NJ: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1995), chap. 6; Yahya Sadowski, The Myth of Global Chaos (Washington, DC: Brookings,1998); JohnMueller,The Remnants ofWar (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004), 145–146, 174–175.19Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order (New York:Touchstone, 1996).


did not knowwhy they were fighting, soldiers oftenmutinied or deserted enmasse.20 In other places, particularly in Africa, groups whose memberswere often addicted to alcohol, drugs, and Rambo movies engaged incriminal predation in a permissive atmosphere in which the central gov-ernment had essentially failed.

Rather than reflecting deep, historic passions and hatreds, then, a greatdeal of the “nationalist” and “ethnic” violence of the 1990s seems, rather, tohave been the result of a situation in which common, opportunistic, sadistic,and often distinctly non‐ideological marauders were recruited and permit-ted free rein by political authorities or emerged from bandit gangs tochallenge a weak government.21 It was less a clash of civilizations than aclash of thugs, in which ethnicity or nationalism became something of anordering or sorting device that allowed people to determine which gangswere more or less on their side and which ones were out to get them.

It was commonly anticipated when the civil war ended in Bosnia in 1995that violence would soon return.22 After all, that republic of the formerYugoslavia rested on a key “fault line” between clashing civilizations, ac-cording to Samuel Huntington.23 But there has been an almost completeabsence of violence betweenMuslims, Croats, and Serbs in Bosnia since thearmed conflict ended. They may continue to live in a degree of distrust andsometimes at a wary distance. However, if their hatreds are so ancient andelemental, why has the killing stopped so completely? Even more remark-able is the substantial absence of violence between Tutsis andHutus withinRwanda since the genocide of 1994. In this case, any real physical separa-tion is essentially impossible. Yet the two groups have gone back to livingside by side—uncomfortably but peacefully, at least thus far.

Actually, far from destroying what might be called the “Fukuyamaprocess,” nationalism has proved to be a constructive force in many places.It aided the difficult and painful process of unification in Germany forexample, and it probably helped strengthen Poland’s remarkable politicaland economic development of the 1990s. At any rate, far from providing anideological challenge to democracy and capitalism, nationalism has morecommonly embraced them.

20For sources and a discussion, see Mueller, Remnants of War, 88–89. As a Serbian General put it,modification of the military plans was made necessary by “the lack of success in mobilisation and thedesertion rate.” Marcus Tanner, Croatia: A Nation Forged in War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.1997), 269. See also Susan L. Woodward, Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution After the Cold War(Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1995), 239, 249, 265.21For a discussion of the process in detail, see Mueller, Remnants of War, chap. 6.22See, for example, the confident predictions by General Lewis McKenzie and Colonel Bob Stewart on 60Minutes, CBS Television, 19 November 1995. See also Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations, 291, 294.23Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations, 159.


THE CHALLENGE OF FUNDAMENTALIST RELIGIONOn September 11, 2001, a tiny group of deluded men—members of alQaeda, a fringe group of a fringe group with grandiose visions of its ownimportance—managed, largely because of luck, to pull off a risky, if cleverand carefully planned, terrorist act that became by far the most destructivein history. There has been great reluctance to maintain that such a monu-mental event—however counterproductive to al Qaeda’s purpose—couldhave been carried out by a fundamentally trivial group, and there has been aconsequent tendency to inflate al Qaeda’s importance and effectiveness. Atthe extreme, the remnants of this tiny group have even been held to presentan “existential” threat not only to the survival of theUnited States but also tothe ascendancy of the modern state or to civilization itself.24

As the apparent rise of violent nationalism and ethnic conflict had beentaken to be a refutation of Fukuyama’s thesis in the last decade of thetwentieth century, the apparent rise of violent religious fundamentalismwas taken to be a refutation in the first decade of the twenty‐first.

However, far from supplying a fundamental challenge, it is unclearwhether al Qaeda central, a tiny group of 100 or so, has done much ofanything since September 11 except serving as something of an inspirationto some Muslim extremists, doing some training, contributing a bit to theTaliban’s far larger insurgency in Afghanistan, participating in a few ter-rorist acts in Pakistan, and issuing videos filled with empty and self‐infatuated threats.25

In all, extremist Islamist terrorism—whether associatedwith al Qaeda ornot—has claimed 200 to 400 lives yearly worldwide outside war zones.26

Terrorist groups variously connected to al Qaeda may be able to do inter-mittent mischief in war zones in the Middle East and in Africa, but likelynothing that is very sustained or focused. Moreover, the groups seems, for

24On such assertions, see John Mueller, Overblown (New York: Free Press, 2006), 45–47. See also JohnMueller andMarkG. Stewart, “The TerrorismDelusion: America’s Overwrought Response to September 11,”International Security 37 (Summer 2012): 81–110.25See also Marc Sageman, Leaderless Jihad (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008). For anarray of unfulfilled threats, see JohnMueller andMark G. Stewart, Terror, Security, andMoney: Balancingthe Risks, Benefits, and Costs of Homeland Security (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 36.26Anthony H. Cordesman tallies “major attacks by Islamists” outside Iraq: 830 fatalities from April 2002through July 2005. The Challenge of Biological Weapons (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic andInternational Studies, 2005), 29–31. Brian Michael Jenkins tallies “major terrorist attacks worldwide” by“jihadist extremists” outside Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Algeria, Russia, and Kashmir: 1,129 fatali-ties from October 2001 through April 2006. Unconquerable Nation: Knowing Our Enemy and Strength-ening Ourselves (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2006), 179–184. IntelCenter tallies “mostsignificant attacks executed by core al‐Qaeda, regional arms and affiliate groups excluding operations ininsurgency theaters”: 1,632 fatalities from January 2002 through July 2007. IntelCenter, “Jihadi Attack KillStatistics,” 17 August 2007, 11, http://www.intelcenter.com/JAKS‐PUB‐v1‐8.pdf.


now at least, to be overwhelmingly focused on local issues, not on interna-tional projection or on civilizational challenge.27

With the September 11 attacks and subsequent activity, such extremists,far from igniting a global surge of violent religious fundamentalism, mainlysucceeded in uniting the world, including its huge Muslim population,against their violent jihad.28 Thus, a terrorist bombing in Bali in 2002galvanized the Indonesian government into action and intomaking extensivearrests and obtaining convictions. When terrorists attacked Saudis in SaudiArabia in 2003, the government became considerably more serious aboutdealingwith internal terrorism, including a clampdown on radical clerics andpreachers. The main result of al Qaeda–linked suicide terrorism in Jordan in2005was to outrage Jordanians and other Arabs against the perpetrators. Inpolls conducted in 35 predominantly Muslim countries by 2008, more than90 percent condemned bin Laden’s terrorism on religious grounds.29 AlQaeda activities have also turned many radical Islamists against them,including some of the most‐prominent and respected.30 And the mindlessbrutalities of al Qaeda–affiliated combatants in Iraq—staging beheadings atmosques, bombing playgrounds, taking over hospitals, executing ordinarycitizens, performing forced marriages—eventually turned the Iraqis againstthem, including many of those who had previously been fighting the U.S.occupation either on their own or in connection with the group.31

Throughout “Al‐Qaeda is its own worst enemy,” notes Robert Grenier, aformer top CIA counterterrorism official. “Where they have succeededinitially, they very quickly discredit themselves.”32 Grenier’s improbable

27Peter Berger, “Hyping the Terror Threat,” 3 December 2013, accessed on cnn.com.28Joby Warrick, “U.S. Cites Big Gains Against Al‐Qaeda,” Washington Post, 30 May 2008. See also FawazGerges, The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), chap. 5;The Rise and Fall of Al–Qaeda (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).29For Indonesia, see Marc Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks (Philadelphia: University of Penn-sylvania Press, 2004), 53, 142, 173. For Saudi Arabia, see Gerges, Far Enemy, 249; George Tenet, At theCenter of the Storm (New York: Harper Collins, 2007), 229–32, 247–50. Sageman, Understanding TerrorNetworks, 53, 144. For Jordan, see Pew Global Attitudes Project, “The Great Divide: How Westerners andMuslims View Each Other,” 22 June 2006, Pew Research Center; Marc Lynch, “Al‐Qaeda’s Media Strate-gies,” National Interest (Spring 2006): 54–55. For the 2008 polls, see Fawaz Gerges, “Word on the Street,”Democracyjournal.org, Summer 2008, 75.30Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank, “The Unraveling: The Jihadist Revolt Against Bin Laden,” NewRepublic, 11 June 2008. Lawrence Wright, “The Rebellion Within,” The New Yorker, 2 June 2008. Gerges,The Rise and Fall of Al‐Qaeda.31BobWoodward, “WhyDid Violence Plummet? ItWasn’t Just the Surge,”Washington Post, 8 September 2008.FredericWehrey, “The IraqWar: StrategicOverreachbyAmerica—andalsobyalQaeda” inTheLongShadowof9/11: America’s Response to Terrorism, Brian Michael Jenkins and John Paul Godges, eds., (Santa Monica, CA:RAND, 2011), 47–55. Peter R. Mansoor, Surge (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013), chap. 5.32Quoted inWarrick, “U.S. Cites Big Gains Against Al‐Qaeda.” See also Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank,“Self‐Fulfilling Prophecy,” Mother Jones, November/December 2007; and Gerges, The Rise and Fall of Al‐Qaeda. Relevant also may be the massive protests against Islamist leaders that erupted in Egypt in 2013.


company in this observation is Osama bin Laden, who was so concernedabout al Qaeda’s alienation of most Muslims that he argued from hishideout that the organization should take on a new name.33

THE DECLINE OF WARWriting in 1989, Fukuyama envisioned a decline in what he called “large‐scale conflict,” and a few months earlier I had published a book examiningwhat appeared to be the obsolescence of major war—war among developedstates.34 In an essay later in the year, Samuel Huntington disapprovinglylabeled us “endists” and “intellectual faddists” and called our conclusionsillusionary, complacent, dangerous, and subversive. He accused us of ig-noring “the weakness and irrationality of human nature,” noting that,although “human beings are at times rational, generous, creative, andwise,” they are also often “stupid, selfish, cruel, and sinful.”35

Whatever the frailty of human nature, it is now routinely recognizedthat a standard, indeed classic, variety of war—war among developedcountries—has become so rare and unlikely that it could well be consideredto be obsolescent, if not obsolete.36 And, not only has there been no waramong developed states in two thirds of a century, quite shattering allhistorical precedent, but international war even outside the developed

33David Ignatius, “The Bin Laden Plot to Kill President Obama,” Washington Post, 16 March 2012.34Fukuyama, “The End of History?” 18; The End of History and the Last Man, 311. John Mueller, Retreatfrom Doomsday: The Obsolescence of Major War (New York: Basic Books, 1989).35Samuel P. Huntington, “No Exit: The Errors of Endism,” National Interest (Fall 1989): 4, 10.36Evan Luard, War in International Society (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986). MichaelHoward, The Lessons of History (NewHaven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991), 176. John Keegan,AHistoryofWarfare (New York: Knopf, 1993), 59. Robert Jervis, “Theories ofWar in an Era of Leading‐Power Peace,”American Political Science Review 96 (March 2002): 1. Jeffrey Record, “Collapsed Countries, CasualtyDread, and the New American Way of War,” Parameters (Summer 2002): 6. Andrew Mack, “Civil War:Academic Research and the Policy Community,” Journal of Peace Research 39 (September 2002): 523.Michael Mandelbaum, The Ideas That Conquered the World: Peace, Democracy, and Free Markets in theTwenty‐First Century (New York: Public Affairs, 2002). John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History(New York: Penguin, 2005), 262. Andrew Mack, Human Security Report 2005 (New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 2005), 523. Nils Petter Gleditsch, “The Liberal Moment Fifteen Years On,” InternationalStudies Quarterly 52 (December 2008): 691–712. Christopher J. Fettweis, Dangerous Times? The Interna-tional Politics of Great Power Peace (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2010). Richard NedLebow,WhyNations Fight: Past andFutureMotives forWar (Cambridge, UK:CambridgeUniversity Press,2010). Joshua S. Goldstein,Winning theWar onWar: TheDecline of Armed ConflictWorldwide (NewYork:Dutton, 2011). Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (New York:Viking, 2011); John Horgan, The End of War (San Francisco: McSweeney’s, 2012); Azar Gat, “Is WarDeclining—and Why?” Journal of Peace Research 50 (2012): 149–157; John Mueller, Retreat from Dooms-day; “War Has Almost Ceased to Exist: An Assessment,” Political Science Quarterly 124 (Summer 2009):297–321;War and Ideas: Selected Essays (London andNewYork: Routledge, 2011). For a contrary view, seeColin S. Gray, Another Bloody Century: Future Warfare (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005).


world has become quite a rarity as Figure 1 documents.37 Indeed, there hasbeen only onewar since 1989 that fits cleanly into the classicmodel in whichtwo countries have it out over some issue of mutual dispute, in this caseterritory: the 1998–2000 conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea.38

Fukuyama does not discuss civil war, which, as Figure 1 vividly demon-strates, has been by far the most common type of war since World War II,

FIGURE 1Number of Ongoing Wars by Year 1946–2012

The data are for “wars,” violent armed conflicts which result in at least 1,000 military and civilian battle-

related deaths in the year indicated.Sources: UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset, Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Universityof Uppsala, www.pcr.uu.se/research/ucdp/datasets/ucdp_prio_armed_conflict_dataset/ and Kristian

Skrede Gleditsch, “A Revised List of Wars Between and Within Independent States, 1816–2002,”International Interactions 30 (July–September 2004): 231–262, plus additional correspondence with

Gleditsch.

37According to the definitions used by the data compilers, the fighting in Afghanistan is considered a civilwar, and conflicts involving Israel in the last decade are between a government and sub‐state groups, notbetween two governments. Initially they registered the conflict in Iraq as an international one, but have nowcoded only the war in 2003 as being international in character with the armed conflict in the following yearsconsidered to be a civil one.38In addition, developed countries have engaged in a number of what might be called “policing wars” since1989, engaging inmilitary interventions in Panama in 1989, in Kuwait and Iraq in 1991, in Somalia in 1992–93, in Haiti in 1994, in Bosnia in 1995, in Kosovo and East Timor in 1999, in Sierra Leone in 2000, inAfghanistan in 2001, in Ivory Coast in 2002, in Iraq in 2003, in Libya in 2011, and in Mali and the CentralAfrican Republic in 2013. A few of these ventures have been sufficiently costly in battle deaths to tally asinternational wars in Figure 1. However, despite a degree of success, the post‐Cold War phenomenon ofpolicing wars, rather tentative at best, seems more likely to wane than to grow. There are several reasons forthis, among them a lack of clear national interest, an extremely low tolerance for casualties in militarymissions that are essentially humanitarian, and an aversion to long‐term policing. The experience of thewars in Afghanistan (after initial success) and Iraq are likely to further magnify this process. Mueller,The Remnants of War, chaps. 7–8; Mueller, War and Ideas, chaps. 2, 9.


reaching something of a peak around 1989 when his essay was published.However, there has been a remarkable decline in the number of civil warssince then.

Although it may be tempting to characterize (or dismiss) this decline as a“blip,” perhaps the “blip” is in the rise in the number of such wars that tookplace from the 1960s to the early 1990s. To a very substantial degree, muchcivil warfare is essentially the result of inadequate government. Civil warsare least likely to occur in stable democracies and in stable autocracies—thatis, in countries with effective governments and policing forces.39 They aremost common (almost by definition) in what has come to be called “failedstates.”Much of the rise in the frequency of civil wars beginning in the 1960sseems to have come from rapid decolonization, which led to the creation of ahost of countries that were ill‐governed and therefore prime candidates tobecome civil war arenas. If that is the case, it is the increase of civil war thatis the historical peculiarity, and it is one substantially based on a phenome-non—decolonization—that cannot be repeated.

However,many civil wars have exhausted themselves since 1989, andnewones have failed to arise in sufficient numbers to arrest the decline in thetotal. It is too early to be certain, but it could be that civil war, following thepattern found with international war in the developed world, is going out ofstyle. One keymay have been in the rise of competent governments that haveincreasingly been able to police domestic conflicts rather than exacerbatingthem, as frequently happened in the past.40 The “failed state” phenomenonremains a problem. However, even taking recent problems in the MiddleEast into account, it is a far less‐common one than it was before 1989.

BOREDOMAt the end of his 1989 essay, Fukuyama declares that “the end of history willbe a very sad time,” andhe bemoans the fact that “thewillingness to risk one’slife for a purely abstract goal,” an enterprise that called for “daring, courage,

39Havard Hegre, Tanja Ellingsen, Scott Gates, and Nils Petter Gleditsch, “Toward a Democratic Civil Peace?Democracy, Political Change, and Civil War, 1816–1992,” American Political Science Review 95(March 2001): 33–48. On this point, see also Bruce M. Russett and John R. Oneal, Triangulating Peace:Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations (New York: Norton, 2001), 70; Monty G.Marshall and Ted Robert Gurr, Peace and Conflict, 2003: A Global Survey of Armed Conflicts, Self‐Determination Movements, and Democracy (College Park, MD: Center for International Developmentand ConflictManagement, University ofMaryland, 2003), 19–20, 25; JamesD. Fearon andDavidD. Laitin,“Neotrusteeship and the Problem of Weak States,” International Security 28 (Spring 2004): 20–21;Michael W. Doyle and Nicholas Sambanis, Making War and Building Peace: United Nations PeaceOperations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), 19, 35. On the importance of effectivegovernment more generally, see Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, Why Nations Fail: The Originsof Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (New York: Crown, 2012).40For an extended development of this point, see Mueller, Remnants of War, chap. 9.


imagination, and idealism,” will now be replaced by “economic calculation,the endless solving of technical problems, environmental concerns, and thesatisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands.” There will be no art, nophilosophy, and “centuries of boredom at the end of history.”41

There may be a few people out there who can contain their enthusiasmfor dying for abstractions and who wouldn’t mind becoming the butt of aprocess devoted to fulfilling their every “sophisticated” demand. And formost, boredom would be considerably preferable to having to pay attentionto such dramatic disasters as genocide in Rwanda, terrorist destruction inNew York, tsunamis in Japan, and chemical warfare in Syria.

Nonetheless, Fukuyama’s somewhat bizarre concluding commentshould be evaluated. Liberal ideology may have won out in the sensethat it is the only one left standing. And it does not seem to have anideological challenger on, or even over, the horizon: postmodernism?deep environmentalism? the China half‐way model? rule by Mullahs?But its triumph, if that is what it is, does not seem to have come accompa-nied by any sense of exhilaration or even ofmuch satisfaction. There seem tobe several reasons for this.

Fukuyama notes that democracy and capitalism both have a kind of“emptiness at the core.”42 It can be difficult to get excited about a political oreconomic system whose chief, and perhaps only, rallying cry is that it is atleast marginally superior to other alternatives that have been tried fromtime to time. This quality can be unpleasantly unsatisfying, at least topeople who aspire to grander goals and who have higher visions.

What Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw say about capitalism can besaid about democracy as well: “a system that takes the pursuit of self‐interest and profit as its guiding light does not necessarily satisfy theyearning in the human soul for belief and some higher meaning beyondmaterialism.”43 And much of what the Polish writer, Adam Michnik, saysabout democracy can also be said about capitalism. He suggests that wecolor it gray and characterizes it as “eternal imperfection” as well as “amixture of sinfulness, saintliness, and monkey business” and “a continuousarticulation of particular interests, a diligent search for compromise amongthem, a marketplace for passions, emotions, hatreds, and hope” that fre-quently “chooses banality over excellence, shrewdness over nobility, emptypromise over true competence.”44

41Fukuyama, “The End of History?” 18.42Ibid., 14. See also Fukuyama, “A Reply to My Critics,” 28.43Yergin and Stanislaw, The Commanding Heights, 389.44AdamMichnik, “Gray Is Beautiful: Thoughts onDemocracy in Central Europe,”Dissent (Spring 1997): 18.


In both systems, compromise is far more common than glorious victory,messiness than crisp decisiveness, and perpetual squabbling than edifyingclarity. And both utterly lack any sort of snappy answer to such great philo-sophical issues as what is truth? what is good? and what is themeaning of life?

Both systems also inevitably cause—indeed, exacerbate—an inequality ofresult. While both leave people (equally) free to speak their minds and tocome up with products others may happen to find worth buying, somepeople will do better with the opportunity than others due to what Fu-kuyama calls “natural differences in talent and character” as well, it must beadded, to luck.45 The effect can be vividly seen in historical statistics ininternational disparities in wealth. In 1750, the richest countries were, on aper capita basis, around 1.6 times wealthier than the poorest. All countriesbecame at least somewhat wealthier over time. However, due to differentgrowth rates, the richest countries by the end of the twentieth century weresome 30 times wealthier per capita than the poorest.46

In addition, even when capitalism and democracy do deliver, theiraccomplishments generally go unappreciated. When things get better, wequickly come to take the improvements for granted after a brief period ofoften wary assimilation. Moreover, many improvements of the humancondition are quite gradual and therefore difficult to notice. Milton Rosen-berg and L.E. Birdzell observe that the remarkable transformation of theWest from a condition in which 90 percent lived in poverty to one in whichonly a small fraction did so took a very long time: “Over a year, or even over adecade, the economic gains, after allowing for the rise in population, were solittle noticeable that it was widely believed that the gains were experiencedonly by the rich, and not by the poor.”47 And the oldest punch line indemocracy’s joke book is about the constituent’s demand to the electedoffice holder: “Yes, but what have you done for me lately?”

THE IMPORTANCE OF IDEASExcept for boredom, which is a condition, all the central issues discussed inthis article and arrayed in its lengthy subtitle, are ideas. Fukuyama arguesthat there is a great deal to the “autonomous power of ideas,” suggesting

45Fukuyama, “The Future of History,” 58. On the importance of luck, see Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fastand Slow (NewYork: Farrar, Straus andGiroux, 2012), 9, 176–179, 204–208, 215–216;Mueller,Capitalism,Democracy, and Ralph’s Pretty Good Grocery, 49–52.46Paul Bairoch, “The Main Trends in National Economic Disparities since the Industrial Revolution” inDisparities in Economic Development since the Industrial Revolution, Paul Bairoch and M. Levy‐Leboyer,eds. (London: Macmillan, 1981), 3, 8. See also Angus Deaton, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and theOrigins of Inequality (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013).47Nathan Rosenberg and L.E. Birdzell, How the West Grew Rich: The Economic Transformation of theIndustrial World (New York: Basic Books, 1986), 6, also 265.


that it is important, as Robert Dahl has put it, to treat “beliefs and ideas” as“a major independent variable.”48

The remarkable rise of liberalism—democracy and market capitalism—

and of war aversion over the last two centuries appears to be not so muchthe result of wider forces but rather, substantially, the result of efforts byidea entrepreneurs who eventually found takers around the world for theconcepts they actively sought to promote—or market.

Many observers find this line of thinking to be unsatisfying. They areuncomfortable with the notion that capitalism, democracy, and war aver-sion are merely ideas that happen to have caught on for various reasons,rather in the way that the bustle was taken up a century or so ago or sliced‐up jeans today. Thus, Steven Pinker understandably yearns for “a causalstory with more explanatory muscle than ‘Developed countries stoppedwarring because they got less warlike.”’49

After the fact, it is sometimes possible to come up with explanations forwhy an idea came to be accepted, but these explanations often appear to bead hoc as well as essentially arbitrary in their willful efforts to ignore luckand consumer caprice. At base, the process may be as mysterious as thatattending the acceptance of new commercial products. Thousands of pat-ents have been issued for mousetraps since the invention of the modern onein 1899, and, while at least some of these must have been objectivelysuperior, few have made any money, a phenomenon that is difficult toexplain.50 Something like 90 percent of all new products fail despitededicated marketing efforts by their hopeful hawkers. For high‐tech start-ups, the figure appears to bemore like 95 percent, and it may be even higherfor restaurants.51 The acceptance rate for ideas may well be similar.

Fukuyama seems to have been right about the essential appeal and the(perhaps modest) superiority of democracy and capitalism to the knownalternatives, and there does seem to be a general, perhaps even natural,migration toward them. For now at least, it certainly seems true that, asFukuyama observes, “We cannot picture to ourselves a world that is funda-mentally different from the present one, and at the same time better.”52 It is

48Fukuyama, “The End of History?” 6. Robert A. Dahl, Polyarchy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,1971), 188.49Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature, 278.50John H. Lienhard, Inventing Modern: Growing up with X‐rays, Skyscrapers, and Tailfins (Oxford andNew York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 204.51Kevin J. Clancy and Robert S. Shulman,Marketing Myths That Are Killing Business: The Cure for DeathWish Marketing (New York: McGraw–Hill 1994), 8, 140; Robert X. Cringeley, Accidental Empires: Howthe Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition, and Still Can’t Get A Date(Reading, MA: Addison–Wesley, 1992), 232.52Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, 44. Emphasis in the original.


not that ideology has come to an end, but that liberalism has become the“default ideology.”53

However, it took millennia for them to become fashionable. And even ifthey are superior, there is no physical reason, since they are merely ideas,why they can’t capriciously be rejected for an alternative that suddenlygains, or returns to, favor. For millennia, people found appeal in authori-tarian orderliness and in price controls, and they could again. On the otherhand, some ideas do seem to die out completely: formal slavery, a majorhuman institution that was, like formal dueling, summarily hounded out ofexistence in the nineteenth century, shows little sign of making a comeback.

If ideas can in some important respects be autonomous from proposedcauses and correlates, they may often be essentially autonomous from eachother as well. For the most part, it may in general be best to see each ideamovement as an independent phenomenon rather than contingent onanother idea stream. Capitalism can exist without democracy and democ-racy can exist without capitalism.54

One potential connection may be of special interest, however. Warless-ness, or peace, may help advance the Fukuyama process. Peace may not“cause” liberalism, democracy, and market capitalism to take hold, but it islikely to facilitate their growth and wider acceptance.55

Thus, peace may furnish countries with security and space in which toexplore and develop democracy, and democracy (or democratic idea entre-preneurs) are more likely to flourish when the trials, distortions, and disrup-tions of war—whether international or civil—are absent. Countries oftenrestrict or even abandon democracy when domestic instability or externalmilitary threat seems to loom; as JamesMadison put it in a letter in 1795, “Of

53Fukuyama, “The Future of History,” 53. In this article, Fukuyama explores potential ideological rivals fromthe perspective of 2012. He finds the “China model” of an authoritarian government coupled with a partiallymarketized economy to be an unlikely competitor because it is too “culturally specific,” unlikely to besustainable, and faces a “great moral vulnerability” because it is generating a “dramatic and growinginequality.” However, he is uneasy himself about inequality which, although caused by “natural differencesin talent and character,” is, he feels, being exacerbated by globalization and by technological advance.Although noting that “no plausible rival ideology looms,” he holds out hope that an “alternative narrative”can perhaps be fabricated by “somehow” redesigning the public sector so that it “forthrightly” redistributeswealth and ends “interest groups’ domination of politics,” and by “a serious and sustained critique” ofmodernneoclassical economics to recognize that the “natural distribution of talents is not necessarily fair.”Were thatto happen, history, in his terms, would advance, it appears, at least one notch beyond its putative end. (Thereis no indication in this article that he has become bored.) For the argument that organized interest groupactivity is absolutely crucial to democracy—indeed, its whole point—see Mueller Capitalism, Democracy,and Ralph’s Pretty Good Grocery, 9, 152–153, 180, 248. For a contrasting perspective, see Kay LehmanSchlozman, Sidney Verba, and Henry E. Brady, The Unheavenly Chorus: Unequal Political Voice and theBroken Promise of Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012).54For a discussion, see Mueller, Capitalism, Democracy, and Ralph’s Pretty Good Grocery, chap. 9.55John Mueller, “Capitalism, Peace, and the Historical Movement of Ideas,” International Interactions 36(April–June 2010): 169–184.


all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded,because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.”56 By the sametoken, when people are comfortably at peace, they may come to realize thatthey no longer require a strongman to provide order and can afford to embracethe benefits of democracy even if thosemight comewith somewhat heighteneduncertainty and possibly with the potential for less‐reliable leadership.

International tensions and the prospect of international war also have astrong dampening effect on trade because each threatened nation has anincentive to cut itself off from the rest of the world economically in order toensure that it can survive if international exchange is severed by militaryconflict. By contrast, if a couple of countries that have previously enjoyed aconflictual relationship lapse into a comfortable peace and become ex-tremely unlikely to get into war, businesses in both places are likely toexplore the possibilities for mutually beneficial exchange.

The same process may hold for the rise of international institutions andnorms. They often stress peace but, like expanded trade flows, they are not somuch the cause of peace as its result. Many of the institutions that have beenfabricated inEurope—particularly ones like the coal and steel community thatwere so carefully forged between France and Germany in the years followingWorld War II—have been specifically designed to reduce the danger of warbetween erstwhile enemies. However, since it appears that no German orFrenchman in anywalk of life at any time since 1945 has ever advocated awarbetween the two countries, it is difficult to see why the institutions should getthe credit for the peace that has flourished between those two countries for thelast two thirds of a century.57 They are among the consequences of the peacethat has enveloped Western Europe since 1945, not its cause.

The central policy implication of the experience with the remarkable riseof democracy and capitalism is to suggest that, if trends are on one’s side, itmaywell be best not towork too strenuously tomove them along. Seeking toimprove the workings of democracy and of market capitalism in the Westmakes sense for many reasons including, of course, self‐interested ones.However, efforts to impose them are likely to be unnecessary and can becostly and even counterproductive.

56Quoted, Christopher Preble,The Power Problem:HowAmericanMilitaryDominanceMakesUs Less Safe,Less Prosperous, and Less Free (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009), 80.57As in Russett and Oneal, Triangulating Peace, 158; G. John Ikenberry, After Victory: Institutions,Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UniversityPress, 2001), chap. 6. For the argument that effective business‐regulating institutions tend to be put intoplace when the behavior they seek to impose has already become fairly common, see Mueller, Capitalism,Democracy, and Ralph’s Pretty Good Grocery, 95–98.


For a century and a half the United States repeatedly and often evan-gelically urged democracy upon its neighbors to the South, and it was oftenquite prepared to use money (and sometimes military force) to gild thephilosophic pill. These policies seem rarely to have made much lastingdifference. For example, in 1913, President Woodrow Wilson dramaticallydeclared the United States to be the “champion” of democracy in theAmericas, and, to show that he meant business, he sent U.S. troops toNicaragua, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic to establish long‐termmilitary governments to aid in the democratic process there. All threecountries subsequently lapsed into extended dictatorships.58 The eventualdemocratization of Latin America after 1975 had little to do with forcefulevangelism from the North.

These lessons seem to apply as well to other important developmentsduring what Fukuyama would call “history.” The Cold War, as NikitaKhrushchev proclaimed in the early 1960s was about “goulash”—thatsystem was best that could best provide for the well‐being of its citizens.Although it did not turn out the way he expected, it was the comparativefailure of the communist system to service such fundamental desires thatimportantly led to the system’s demise. Strenuous and costly efforts focusedon nuclear metaphysics were irrelevant to the process because majorwar appears never really to have been in the cards; there was, in the end,actually nothing to deter.59 And strenuous and costly efforts to contain

58LaurenceWhitehead, “International Aspects ofDemocratization” inTransitions fromAuthoritarianRule:Comparative Perspectives, Guillermo O’Donnell, Philippe C.Schmitter, and Laurence Whitehead, eds(Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 6. See also Mueller, Capitalism, Democracy,and Ralph’s Pretty Good Grocery, 216–18.59Both sides had reason to abhor any experience that might lead to anything like the Second World War.Moreover, Soviet ideology never envisioned direct Hitler‐style warfare, whether nuclear or not, as a sensiblemethod for pursuing the process of world revolution, insofar as it embraced violence, focused instead on classwarfare, revolutionary upheaval, and subversion. As Robert Jervis notes, “The Soviet archives have yet toreveal any serious plans for unprovoked aggression against Western Europe, not to mention a first strikeagainst the United States.” “Was the ColdWar a Security Dilemma?” Journal of ColdWar Studies 3 (Winter2001), 59. And Vojtech Mastny concludes that “the strategy of nuclear deterrence [was] irrelevant todeterring a major war that the enemy did not wish to launch in the first place.” “Introduction,” in VojtechMastny, Sven G. Holtsmark, and Andreas Wenger, eds., War Plans and Alliances in the Cold War: ThreatPerceptions in the East andWest (London andNewYork: Routledge, 2006), 3. See also StephenE. Ambrose,“Secrets of the ColdWar,”TheNewYork Times, 27December 1990. AsRobertH. Johnson puts it, the processof what he calls “nuclear metaphysics” involved “making the most pessimistic assumptions possible aboutSoviet intentions and capabilities” and then assuming that the capabilities (which turned out almost alwaysto have been substantially exaggerated) would be used “to the adversary’s maximum possible advantage.”Improbable Dangers: U.S. Conceptions of Threat in the Cold War and After (New York: St. Martin’s, 1994),29, 78. For an extended discussion, see JohnMueller,Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism fromHiroshimato Al‐Qaeda (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), chap. 3. For the argument that war was only a verydistant possibility during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, see Max Frankel, High Noon in the Cold War:Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: Ballantine, 2004); Mueller, AtomicObsession, 39–40, 248n33.


revolutionary advance, especially as seen in Vietnam, proved to be not onlyunnecessary, but unwise.

In the wake of the ColdWar, there was great alarm in theWest about thechallenges presented by extreme nationalism in the 1990s and by violentreligious fundamentalism in the subsequent decade. In retrospect, it seemsclear that these concerns were overwrought and that vigorous efforts todefeat themwere unnecessary. For themost part, the “threats,” if that’s whattheywere, substantially self‐destructed. Thus, the disaster in Bosnia—posterchild for the clash of civilizations—hardly served as an appealing role model,and terrorism in the name of extreme religion has mostly proved to becounterproductive, both in the Middle East (including Iraq) and elsewhere.

The same holds for the decline of civil war. Although Bosnia and othercivil wars have inspired a great deal of hand‐wringing from outsiders, thiswas mostly ineffectual in ending them—and in some cases may haveexacerbated the violence. Syria may be providing a contemporary example.The wars chiefly had to burn themselves out. In their wake, exhaustion withconflict and a strong general desire for peace and order rendered post‐conflict societies receptive to change—at which point aid from the outsidehas the greatest chance to be effective.60

The West may have helped nudge the Fukuyama trends along in someways over the last quarter century—particularly with its cooperative workwith local forces to deal with terrorism and with its efforts to stabilize shakypeace when civil war combatants have become exhausted. Its most impor-tant contribution, however, has been to provide an attractive role, or fashion,model, something that proved especially notable for the remarkable, evenmiraculous, transition in eastern Europe.61 People do not seem to need a lotof persuasion to find appeal in shining cities on hills that are stable,productive, and open even if some of the luster wears off as they get closer.

�

60Virginia Page Fortna,Does PeacekeepingWork? Shaping Belligerents’Choices After CivilWars (Princeton,NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008). See also Goldstein,Winning the War on War; Doyle and Sambanis,Making War and Building Peace; Fearon and Laitin, “Neotrusteeship and the Problem of Weak States;”Mack, Human Security Report 2005.61On a possible alternative, see Fukuyama, “AReply toMy Critics,” 26. There seem to have been two previous“European miracles.” One, enshrined in the book by that title arises from its amazing economic growth overthe last two or three centuries. E.L. Jones,The EuropeanMiracle: Environments, Economies, andGeopoliticsin the History of Europe and Asia, 2nd ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987); see also Gat,“IsWarDeclining—andWhy?”The second is the way it abandoned international (and for themost part civil)war after 1945 as a method for resolving differences on the continent.�Earlier versions of this article were presented at the conference “Nationalism and Conflict” at the Institute ofPhilosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland, 12 December 2012, and at theAnnualMeeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, Il., 1 September 2013.My thanks forvaluable comments by the anonymous reviewers for Political Science Quarterly.


Contesting the U.S. Constitutionthrough State Amendments:The 2011 and 2012 Elections

SEAN BEIENBURG

IN MARCH OF 2013, REPUBLICAN LEGISLATORS in North Dakotaagreed to challengeRoe v.Wade by forwarding a “personhood” amendmentto voters that will appear on the 2014 ballot. Such an amendmentwould change the state’s legal definition of personhood to include unbornfetuses—a move that backers have explicitly discussed as part of a challengeto a Supreme Court decision they view as having been wrongly decided.1

The Court may pronounce itself the final arbiter of the Constitution, butAmericans outside of Washington, DC do not necessarily agree.2

Such efforts by state actors to take the Constitution away from the courtsmirror a recent shift in political‐legal scholarship, in which court‐centeredaccounts of constitutional interpretation and construction have been right-ly condemned.3 Scholars have turned instead toward a renewed emphasis

SEAN BEIENBURG is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of politics at PrincetonUniversity. He is currently writing about constitutional resistance by state level actors sinceReconstruction.

1Michael Winter, “N.D. Lawmakers Define Start of Life, Outlaw Abortion,” USA Today, 22 March 2013,accessed at http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/03/22/north‐dakota‐conception‐abor-tion/2010747/, 7 June 2013; Cheryl Wetzstein, “Abortion Bills at State Level Reveal Pro‐Life Split,”Washington Times, 1 April 2013, accessed at http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/apr/1/abor-tion‐bills‐at‐state‐level‐reveal‐pro‐life‐spli/, 7 June 2013.2Cooper v. Aaron, 358United States Reports 1 (1958); City of Boerne v. Flores 521United States Reports 507(1997).3Mark Tushnet, Taking the Constitution Away from the Courts (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,2000).


on the political contestation of non‐judicial actors in enforcing theConstitution.4

As John Dinan has observed, state constitutional amendments havebecome a part of that conversation about the U.S. Constitution.5 This isnot, of course, the first time in which federal and state constitutionalismhave been in sustained conversation; in the 1980s, for example, the so‐called “New Federalist”movement, based on a seminal address by SupremeCourt Justice William Brennan, attempted to overcome the judicial con-servatism of the Rehnquist Court by turning to state constitutions formore‐expansive rights claims.6 State constitutions do more than offer suchadvantages to out‐party judges, as their greater flexibility makes themmore democratic, accountable, and more protective of positive rights.7

There are, of course, reasons to be concerned about the democratic qualityof the initiative process, easily captured by interest groups and the wealthy.8

4Walter F. Murphy, “Who Shall Interpret? The Quest for an Ultimate Constitutional Interpreter.” Reviewof Politics 48 (Summer 1986): 401–423; George Thomas, The Madisonian Constitution (Baltimore, MD:Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008); Neil Devins and Louis Fisher, The Democratic Constitution(New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); Keith Whittington, Political Foundations of JudicialSupremacy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007); Robert Nagel, Implosion of AmericanFederalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); Julie Novkov, “Bringing the States Back In:Understanding Legal Subordination and Identity through Political Development.” Polity 40 (Janu-ary 2008): 24–48; Barry Friedman, The Will of the People: How Public Opinion Has Influenced theSupreme Court and Shaped the Meaning of the Constitution (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux,2009); Charles Cameron and Jee‐Kwang Park, “Going Public When Opinion is Contested: Evidence fromPresidents’ Campaigns for Supreme Court Nominees, 1930–2009,” Presidential Studies Quarterly41 (September 2011): 442–470.5John Dinan, “State Constitutional Amendment Processes and the Safeguards of American Federalism,”Penn State Law Review 115 (Winter 2012): 1007–1034.This is in addition to looking to state constitutionalpolitics to understand American constitutional thought more broadly (for example on separation of powers,bicameralism, etc.) See John Dinan, The American State Constitutional Tradition (Lawrence: UniversityPress of Kansas, 2006); G. Alan Tarr, Understanding State Constitutions (Princeton, NJ: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1998); Christian G. Fritz, “The American Constitutional Tradition Revisited: PreliminaryObservations on State Constitution‐Making in the Nineteenth‐Century West,” Rutgers Law Journal 25(Summer 1994): 946–998; AmyBridges, “Managing the Periphery in theGildedAges:WritingConstitutionsfor Western States.” SAPD 22 (Spring 2008): 32–58; Emily Zackin, Looking for Rights in All the WrongPlaces: Why State Constitutions Contain America’s Positive Rights (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UniversityPress, 2013).6William Brennan, Jr. “The Bill of Rights and the States: The Revival of State Constitutions as Guardians ofIndividual Rights,” NYU Law Review 61 (October 1986): 535–553; Hans Linde, “First Things First:Rediscovering the States’ Bills of Rights,” University of Baltimore Law Review 9 (Spring 1980): 379–394. For a historical overview of the “new federalism” movement and its consequences, see James Gardner,Interpreting State Constitutions (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 23–52.7Sanford Levinson, Framed: America’s 51 Constitutions and the Crisis of Government (New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 2012); Zackin, Looking for Rights. Such democratic flexibility, however, may end upimpinging on rights, as we are reminded by Kenneth Miller’s account of conflicts between direct democracyand courts. Kenneth Miller, Direct Democracy and the Courts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,2009).8Richard J. Ellis, Democratic Delusions: The Initiative Process in America (Lawrence: University Press ofKansas, 2002).


However, the public conversation about these high‐salience, national con-stitutional issues assuages this fear somewhat, or at least as much asanything arguably can in American democracy. Moreover, the specificityof their amendment process arguably sends a clearer signal of popularunderstanding than do representative elections and other instrumentsfavored by popular constitutionalists.9 Finally, to the extent that we viewan active and well‐informed citizenry as closer to the deliberative ideal ofconstitutional self‐government, public campaigns on salient initiatives mayhelp produce a better‐informed body politic.10

Such developments would make James Madison smile. The FederalistPapers offer, as part of their effort to ensure a decentralized politics in spiteof a stronger federal government, the reminder that states should and willhelp cabin Washington within its proper constitutional boundaries. Inaddition to the famous Papers 10 and 51 discussing the general competitionbetween jealous officers on behalf of liberty, on several occasions, Publiusspecifically calls for states to police federal expansion.11 In order to appeasemoderate “anti‐Federalists”—who did want a stronger government thanthe one set up under the Articles, but who nonetheless retained primaryallegiance to their states—Publius’s Federalist allies recirculated thesearguments in the ratifying conventions as well.12 Thus, a vibrant constitu-tional debate in the states would be precisely in line across the spectrumof Founding‐era thinkers. Moreover, the variety of state constitu-tions helps create a system of competitive federalism on behalf ofliberty, as well as multiple sites in which to work through constitutional

9Larry Kramer,The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review (New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 2005); Tushnet, Taking the Constitution Away; Bruce Ackerman, We the People: Foun-dations (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1991). For critiques of popular constitu-tionalism based on representative elections, see William Leuchtenberg, “When the People Spoke, What DidThey Say? The Election of 1936 and the Ackerman Thesis,” Yale Law Journal 108 (June 1999): 2077–2114;Barry Cushman, “Mr. Dooley and Mr. Gallup: Public Opinion and Constitutional Change in the 1930s,”Buffalo Law Review 50 (Winter 2002): 7–102; Keith Whittington, Political Foundations of JudicialSupremacy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 48; Thomas, Madisonian Constitution,158, 237.10Daniel A. Smith and Caroline J. Tolbert, Educated by Initiative: The Effects of Direct Democracy onCitizens and Political Organizations in the American States (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,2004);Martin Gilens, James Glaser, and Tali Mendelberg, “Having a Say: Political Efficacy in the Context ofDirect Democracy,” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association,San Francisco, 30 August–2 September 2001.11This is most prominently explained in The Federalist 46, but also 17 and 44. Other allusions occur in 16, 31,55, and 84. (Hamilton even goes so far as to suggest potential armed conflict in #28). See also Kramer, ThePeople Themselves, 47–48.12PaulineMaier,Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution 1787–88 (New York: Simon and Schuster,2011), 463–466. “Anti‐Federalists” are in scare quotes because, as Maier’s book takes great pains to explain,most of themwere not just obstinate naysayers as caricatured, but diverse people who agreed on the necessityof a stronger federal government but had specific, good‐faith reservations.

CONSTITUTION AND STATE AMENDMENTS | 57

principles.13 Howevermoribund such federal–state debate was inmidcenturyAmerica,14 it is clear that Madisonian contestation—especially outside thecourts, inside the states—is back, as this year’s election continued to show.

This article draws on the last two election cycles—in 2011 and 2012—toargue for the increasingly central role of state constitutions within ourbattles about the U.S. Constitution. In so doing, it will survey the debatein state constitutional politics that took place in these quasi‐federal stateamendments.15 The breadth of national issues considered suggests thatstate constitutions are not the battleground of an isolated interest or twobut have been embraced as sites of contestation by a wide variety of activistsand legislators. Thus, in considering changes to their own state constitu-tions, Americans explored concurrent federal constitutional controversieson abortion, race and voting, firearms, gay marriage, eminent domain,health care mandates, separation of church and state, campaign finance,and marijuana. Pro‐life North Dakotans, then, are not alone.

More importantly, I make three observations about the contours of thesedebates that will help us understand their direction going forward—and, asthe planned vote in North Dakota shows us, they will go forward.

First, while not directly challenging judicial supremacy, state actors dobelieve they should contribute to national constitutional discourse insteadof leaving the field to the courts alone; the resulting constitutional consid-eration seems more substantive than the anemic debates on Capitol Hill.Whether due to greater fluency among candidates or political responsive-ness in thewake of constituent pressure, elected officials and platforms haveincreasingly mobilized around constitutional dialogue.16 However, mem-bers of Congress seem less keen on that constitutionalism once actuallyelected;Mitchell Pickerill’s recent study shows that national legislators tend

13James Gardner, although often a critic of the deliberative quality and fundamental values of stateconstitutions, nonetheless uses the logic of The Federalist to develop an interpretive theory of competitiveliberty between states and the federal government. James Gardner, Interpreting State Constitutions; JamesGardner, “TheFailedDiscourse of State Constitutions,”MichiganLawReview 90 (February 1991): 762–837.14Gardner, “Failed Discourse”; Phillip Kurland, “The Impotence of Reticence” Duke Law Journal 4 (Au-gust 1968): 619–620; Edward L. Rubin and Malcolm Feeley, “Federalism: Some Notes on a NationalNeurosis,” UCLA Law Review 41 (April 1994): 903–952.15APSR, as part of its effort to remain engaged with the public sphere, used to publish occasional updates onstate constitutions until the 1940s, when academic interest in state constitutions sensibly waned as a result oftheir political neglect and irrelevance in governance. Part of my reason for writing this is to reinvigorate thatconversation now that state constitutions have resumed their importance. See, for example, Charles Kettle-borough, “Amendments to State Constitutions,” American Political Science Review 13 (August 1919): 429–447; F.H. Guild, “Amendments to State Constitutions 1923–24,” American Political Science Review 19(August 1925): 541–544; Charles Aikin, “State Constitutional Law in 1939–1940,” American PoliticalScience Review 34 (August 1940): 700–718.16Andrew Busch, The Constitution on the Campaign Trail: The Surprising Political Career of America’sFounding Document (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007).


to rank constitutional considerations quite low among their priorities.17

The ongoing struggle over the health care law suggests the problems arisingwhen such a constitutionally activated public sees Congress neglect itsduties. As Neil Devins laments, the Affordable Care Act seems to be anissue where constitutional debate followed the vote to pass legislation,rather than serving as an antecedent to it.18

Second, while some of these initiatives are home‐grown, national interestgroups are key backers ofmost quasi‐federal state amendments, using statesas platforms to support positions on the federal Constitution. Recent schol-arship has emphasized the key influence of legal networks in constitutionalpolitics, especially since the civil rights revolution.19 By extending thoseinsights to the fieldof state constitutionalpolitics,wecan see thepermeabilityofnational and state constitutionalism—indeed,paradoxically, in somecasesthe vindication of state prerogative is achieved by nationalized networks, asthe early Jeffersonians and their successors hoped todowith theVirginia andKentucky Resolutions and the early Democratic Party itself.20

Third, conservatives appear more comfortable or eager to engage in thisconstitutional debate (and especially to frame it as opposition to the federalgovernment), although liberals also use the means and occasionally lan-guage of constitutional pushback in their own quasi‐federal state constitu-tional amendments. Commitment to federalism is most publicly associatedwith conservatives and libertarians, and conservative groups and politiciansoften prominently voice support for pushback on Washington.21 That the

17Constitutional Deliberation in Congress (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004); KeithWhittington,“James Madison Has Left the Building: A Review of J. Mitchell Pickerill, Constitutional Deliberation inCongress,” University of Chicago Law Review 72 (Summer 2005): 1137–1158.18Neil Devins, “Why Congress Did Not Think About the Constitution When Enacting the Affordable CareAct,” Northwestern University Law Review Colloquy 261 (2012), accessed at http://colloquy.law.north-western.edu/main/2012/03/why‐congress‐did‐not‐think‐about‐the‐constitution‐when‐enacting‐the‐af-fordable‐care‐act.html, 7 June 2013; Pickerill, Constitutional Deliberation, 67.19StevenM. Teles, The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,2010); Charles Epp, The Rights Revolution: Lawyers, Activists, and Supreme Courts in ComparativePerspective (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 26–71; Amanda Hollis‐Brusky, “SupportStructures and Constitutional Change: Teles, Southworth, and the Conservative Legal Movement,” Lawand Social Inquiry 36 (Spring 2011): 516–536.20Christian Fritz, American Sovereigns: The People and America’s Constitutional Tradition Before the CivilWar (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Sidney Milkis, Political Parties and ConstitutionalGovernment (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999); Gerald Leonard, The Invention ofParty Politics: Federalism Popular Sovereignty, and Constitutional Development in Jacksonian Illinois(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002).21Rick Perry,FedUp! Our Fight to Save America fromWashington (NewYork: Little,Brown, and Company,2010); David Weigel, “The States That Can Say No” (discussing the efforts of Randy Barnett) Slate, 6December 2010, accessed at http://www.slate.com/id/2276913/, 7 June 2013; Nick Dranias, “FederalismDo‐It‐Yourself,” Goldwater Institute, 1 June 2011, accessed at http://goldwaterinstitute.org/article/federal-ism‐diy‐10‐ways‐states‐check‐and‐balance‐washington‐0, 7 June 2013.


majority of these amendments come from the political right, as broadlyconstrued, should not be terribly surprising. Perhapsmore surprising is thatscholars and actors on the political left are also rediscovering federalism’svirtues, albeit in more moderate forms than occasionally circulate on theother end of the spectrum.22While less common, liberal state amendmentsdid appear in 2011 and 2012. In fact, during that period, the left providedwhat was arguably the most specifically counter‐interpretive effort (theattack on Citizens United) as well as the most significant in its policyconsequence (decriminalizing marijuana). Its hands forced by state initia-tives, the Barack Obama administration now finds itself in an unenviableposition in deciding to prosecute federal drug laws in unfriendly states. As aresult, a group of predominantly Democratic cosponsors proposed a billthat would end federal preemption of such states’marijuana laws, calling itthe “Respect States’ and Citizens’ Rights Act of 2012.”23 The response—albeit still tepid—of Washington to those statewide votes reminds us of thepermeability of constitutional politics between Denver and DC, on bothright and left.

ABORTIONAbortion again proved a site of attempted resistance to the Supreme Courtwithin states’ constitutions, continuing activists’ longtime efforts to evadeand undermine the holdings inRoe v. Wade andDoe v. Bolton.24 Relativelyfew anti‐abortion efforts have succeeded in passing, and the earliest suc-cessful amendment actually codified a Court decision holding that the rightto an abortion did not entail a right to abortion funding.25 Until veryrecently, voters approved only four abortion initiatives—either statutoryor constitutional—since Roe: two in Colorado, Arkansas’s Amendment 68in 1990, and a Washington initiative reinforcing and funding abortionrights in 1991.26 Nonetheless, such efforts continue, and anti‐abortionactivists’ proposals in the last few years represent all the elements of atypical quasi‐federal state amendment: first, insistence on the authority to

22Heather K. Gerken. “A New Progressive Federalism,” Democracy: A Journal of Ideas 24 (Spring 2012),accessed at http://www.democracyjournal.org/24/a‐new‐progressive‐federalism.php?page¼all, 7June 2013; Richard B. Freeman and Joel Rogers, “The Promise of Progressive Federalism” in RemakingAmerica: Democracy and Public Policy in an Age of Inequality, Joe Soss, Jacob Hacker, and SuzanneMettler, eds. (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2010).23H.R. 6066, 112th Cong., 2d Sess.24Roe v.Wade 410United StatesReports 156 (1973);Doe v. Bolton 410United StatesReports 179 (1973). Fora discussion of such efforts, see Bradley C. Canon and Charles A. Johnson, Judicial Policies: Implementationand Impact, 2d ed. (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 1999), 1–12.25CO Constitution 5.50 (amended in 1984); Harris v. McRae, 448 United States Reports 297 (1980).26Miller, Direct Democracy, 153–154.


offer a correct interpretation of the Constitution in spite of what theSupreme Court has pronounced; second, mobilization by groups beyondthe states’ borders; and third, a conservative orientation couched in explic-itly constitutional language.

Activists brought two abortion amendments to voters in the last twoyears, with many others falling short of the ballot. In 2011, with muchfanfare, Mississippians voted on Proposition 26, the so‐called “person-hood” amendment. This amendment would have modified the Missis-sippi constitution to define rights‐bearing personhood to “include everyhuman being from the moment of fertilization, cloning, or the functionalequivalent thereof.” The personhood amendment’s authors, an extremeanti‐abortion group of the same name based not in Mississippi but inColorado, explicitly offered this as a direct challenge to Roe—a challengethat the justices themselves had discussed when considering the caseoriginally. As both the oral arguments and Harry Blackmun’s analysisin the written opinion observed, a legal finding of “personhood” wouldhave made the court’s eventual holding impossible. Personhood USAtried to make this abundantly clear: one of their online clips featuresaudio excerpts from Roe’s oral argument in which Justice Potter Stewartagreed that accepting a personhood argument would effectively end thecase.27

An equivalent proposal by the amendment’s authors had alreadyfailed by a lopsided 30‐70 margin in the group’s Colorado backyardin 2010, and it did so again by a 42‐58 vote, even in the extremely pro‐life state of Mississippi.28 The amendment failed in spite of the 2011 voterepresenting one of the best chances to ratify a personhood effort—inperhaps the most extremely socially conservative state, during an off‐yearelection.29

Nonetheless, Personhood USA had helped generate a conversation thatremained a live constitutional discussion at the presidential level. During aSouth Carolina Republican presidential primary debate, conservativePrinceton professor Robert George pointedly asked the candidates whether

27“Roe v. Wade,” Personhood USA, 15 September 2011, accessed at http://www.personhoodusa.com/video/

key‐defeating‐roe‐v‐wade‐personhood and http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature¼player_embed-ded&v¼81NrWq3p5Ag, 7 June 2013; Roe, 156–159.28Nina Burleigh, 2011. “Mississippi’s Choice: Personhood and the Rights of Zygotes,”Time, 20October 2011,accessed at http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2097340,00.html, 7 June 2013; ElectaDraper,”‘Personhood’ Amendment Fails by 3‐1 Vote,” Denver Post, 3 November 2010, accessed at http://www.denverpost.com/election2010/ci_16506253, 7 June 2013.29Sarah F. Anzia, “Election Timing and the Electoral Influence of Interest Groups” Journal of Politics 73(April 2011): 412–427.


they believed Congress could use its enforcement powers in Section 5 of the14th Amendment to so define personhood in a way that would threatenRoe.30 However, it seems that personhood is a constitutional conversationits backers are on the losing end of—at least for now. Even in an idealMississippi climate, “personhood”mustered only 42 percent of the vote, andPersonhood USA has struggled to get it on other ballots.

Although the group continued with its efforts after Mississippi, noother “personhood” ballot initiative actually reached the voters in 2012.Oklahoma’s Supreme Court cited controlling Supreme Court precedent toblock an amendment from that state’s ballot, while Alaska’s AttorneyGeneral and Lieutenant Governor—both Republicans—did the same toan initiated statute the year before.31 Efforts to gather signatures in Ohio,Montana, and Nevada failed in 2012. 32 Thus, it appears that even manypro‐life Americans agree with Justice Antonin Scalia in refusing to find aconstitutional ban on abortion based on individual rights of personhood,rather than believing that textual silence empowers states to ban or allowthe procedure as they see fit.33 Political actors and activists continue tocontest whether the Constitution allows states the power to restrictabortion, but, for now, the constitutional dialogue on personhoodamendments, across a diverse swath of states, suggests something closeto a consensus.

In 2012, only one abortion amendment actually reached the ballot, alargely in‐house effort tomore closely attach Florida state law to federal law.The first of its two prongs would again codify the Hyde Amendment andHarris v. McRae in preventing the use of state funds for abortions except inthe cases of rape, incest, and to save the life of a mother.34 (The resultingpolicy change of the amendment would limit state employees’ insuranceaccess to abortion services, but otherwise, the status quo would remain.)35

The other prong of the amendment held that “[t]his constitution may not

30Robert P. George, “HowWouldRepublicanCandidates FightRoe v.Wade?”Deseret News, 9 October 2011,accessed at http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700186053/How‐would‐Republican‐candidates‐fight‐Roe‐v‐Wade.html?pg¼all, 7 June 2013.31Sam Favate,”Oklahoma Supreme Court Strikes ‘Personhood’ Amendment,” Wall Street Journal1 May 2012, accessed at http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/05/01/oklahoma‐supreme‐court‐strikes‐person-hood‐amendment/; Pat Forgey, “State Rejects Anti‐Abortion Ballot Measure.” Juneau Empire,12 January 2011, accessed at http://juneauempire.com/stories/011211/loc_768878153.shtml, 7 June 2013.32Abigail Pesta, “War of the Wombs: the Battle for Personhood Heats Up,” Newsweek, 9 July 2012. DavidEggert, “DeWine Approves ’Personhood’ Wording,” Columbus Dispatch, 31 December 2011.33Planned Parenthood v. Casey. 505 United States Reports 833 (1992), 979.34See note 21.35Dara Kam, “Abortion Issue Raises Privacy Concerns in Florida,” Palm Beach Post, 8 October 2012,accessed at http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/news/state‐regional‐govt‐politics/of‐2‐anti‐health‐law‐measures‐on‐ballot‐one‐genera/nSXQY/, 7 June 2013.


be interpreted to create broader rights to an abortion than those containedin the United States Constitution.”36 The latter section sought to overrideFlorida courts’ more expansive interpretation of their own constitution byhitching state jurisprudence to a federal standard, a fairly well‐documentedpractice.37 As noted earlier, liberals behind the “New Federalism” move-ment had pressed for divergence between state and federal constitutionallaw in the 1980s, and Florida’s strong privacy amendment made suchexpansive abortion jurisprudence particularly easy to implement.38 Closingthat divergence had also been conservatives’ objective in 2004, when thestate’s voters amended their constitution to allow parental notifications—again, explicitly attached to federal, not state, constitutional privacy—byalmost a 2‐to‐1 margin.39

By a roughly 45‐55 margin (Florida’s amendments require 60 percentapproval), the state’s voters rejected the amendment and kept their abor-tion law somewhat decoupled from federal standards.

Florida’s abortion politics thus remain something of a draw—especiallyconsidering an electorate’s particularly foul mood that rejected 8 of 11amendments—but Mississippi clearly did not turn into the personhoodvanguard its supporters wanted either.40 However, Personhood USA didmanage to generate a widely covered debate, though citizens simply did notshare its interpretation. Personhood USA already has plans to try again inFlorida in 2014, but the next two conflicts are already lined up.41 As notedin the introduction, North Dakota will see a personhood provision thatyear, and Tennessee voters are scheduled to vote on an amendment tooverride the state supreme court’s wide‐reaching interpretation of abortionrights.42 Personhood may be a losing proposition, for now, but its sponsorsstill believe the best way to go after Roe is through state constitutionalpolitics.

36FloridaHouse Joint Resolution #1179, 2011, accessed at http://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2011/1179/?StartTab¼BillText#BillText, 7 June 2013.37John Dinan. “Court‐Constraining Amendments and the State Constitutional Tradition,” Rutgers LawJournal 38 (Summer 2007): 983–1039.38FLConstitution 1.23; See footnote 5 onNewFederalism, RebeccaMae Salokar, “Constitutional Revision inFlorida: Planning, Politics, Policy and Publicity” in State Constitutions for the Twenty‐First Century, vol. 1,G. Alan Tarr and Robert F. Williams, eds. (Albany: University Press of New York, 2006), 19–57; Miller,Direct Democracy, 160–170.39FL Constitution 10.22.40Dara Kam, “Why Florida Voters Rejected Amendments This YearWhen They Usually Don’t,” Palm BeachPost, 12 November 2012, accessed at http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/news/state‐regional‐govt‐pol-itics/why‐florida‐voters‐rejected‐amendments‐this‐year‐w/nS4hd/, 7 June 2013.41Pesta, “War of the Wombs,” Newsweek, 9 July 2012.42Andy Sher, “Abortion Issue on 2014 Ballot,” Chattanooga Times Free Press, 21 May 2011.


RACE AND VOTINGIn 2011 and 2012, citizens in four states—Oklahoma, Alabama,Mississippi,and Minnesota—cast ballots on race and voting issues that were swirlingmore broadly in the national constitutional discourse. Three of these(blocking affirmative action, and a split on voter ID) represented effortsby right‐wing groups to steer the impact of Court decisions, while thefourth, more‐symbolic endeavor resulted from a conservative state legis-lator’s unsuccessful elimination of dormant language that had once resistedthe civil rights movement.

November’s electionwas only themost‐recent effort by activist and formerUniversity of California regent Ward Connerly and his organization to putsimilar amendments on state ballots, which they have done since Californiavoters first restricted affirmative action in 1996 with Proposition 209. TheSupreme Court’s guarded imprimatur of affirmative action in Grutter v.Bollinger in 2003 generated perhaps the most‐prominent of these “CivilRights Initiatives,” namely, the 2006 vote to block the Court’s decision inMichigan.43 The 6th Circuit, in turn, recently invalidated that amendment,and three weeks before the November 2012 election, the Supreme Courtitself heard oral arguments to reconsider Grutter in the case of Fisher v.University of Texas.44 Thus, this remains very much a live issue, and as inMichigan, the national conservative group placed a “Civil Rights Initiative”on the Oklahoma ballot to interject a quasi‐federal state amendment into alive constitutional controversy. As a result, Oklahoma citizens became thefifth to constitutionally forbid such preferences, which may have somespecial relevance to the Court’s decision making—Sandra Day O’Connor’sprecedential Grutter opinion itself explicitly observes the importance ofsocial trends in considering affirmative action jurisprudence.45

At the same time that Oklahoma voters were considering preferences, aproposed Alabama amendment dealt with the intersection of race andeducation, though it was less a part of contemporary constitutional dis-course and more a refusal to engage it. In November, voters in Alabamaconsidered Amendment 4, which would have struck language guaranteeingsegregated schools, a poll tax, and other obsolete language from theirconstitution. All of this is dead language—inert in light of Supreme Court

43MI Constitution, Declaration of Rights Article 26.44Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action et al v. Regents of the University of Michigan et al, No. 08‐1387(6th Cir. 2012).45Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 United States Reports 306 (2003), 343, 351; Paul Frymer and JohnD. Skrentny,“The Rise of Instrumental Affirmative Action: Law and the New Significance of Race in America,”Connecticut Law Review 36 (Spring 2004): 677–724. In addition to CA (Constitution 1.31, in 1996),and MI (DoR 26, 2006), the other states are NE (1.30, 2008) and AZ (2.36, 2010).


holdings and congressional legislation—but it continues to remind citizensof the wretched legacy of Alabama’s 1901 constitution. That infamousdocument—noteworthy for its comical length of 800 amendments, aswell as its fundamentally racist origins—has been the subject of other recentefforts to prune its white supremacist beginnings.46 In 2000, Amendment667 revoked a miscegenation ban, but a 2004 effort to eliminate much ofthe same segregationist language failed.47

Somewhat surprisingly, organized opposition to Alabama’s 2012amendment appeared predominantly from the left, as education groupsfeared the modified language would drop the constitutional obligation tomaintain public schools. Thus, a combination of racial conservatism andvoucher politics totaled 61 percent opposition to the amendment, andAlabama voters refused to ratify Brown v. Board of Education in themost notorious constitution in America.48

State constitutions have recently become battlegrounds, as courts grap-ple with the constitutionality of voter identification laws, which supporterscontendmaintain the integrity of the ballot and critics claim serve primarilypartisan ends achieved through voter suppression.49 In 2008, Justice JohnPaul Stevens joined the Court’s conservatives and authored an opinionapproving Indiana’s voter identification law in Crawford v.Marion CountyElection Board. Stevens’s opinion held that maintaining the integrity ofelections was a satisfactory end and that registration schemes that offeredlow‐cost or free identification did not impose an intolerable financialburden on the right to vote.50

46William Stewart, The Alabama State Constitution (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2011); BaileyThomson, ed., A Century of Controversy: Constitutional Reform in Alabama (Tuscaloosa: University ofAlabama Press, 2002); Dinan, American State Constitutional Tradition, 21–22.47In a similar, though uncontroversial, bit of 2012 housekeeping that ratified long‐ago federal constitutionaldevelopment, Washington eliminated an obsolete provision that instituted a lower residence requirement tovote for president or vice president thanwas required to vote for other offices. Once common, such provisionswere made obsolete by a 1970 amendment to the Voting Rights Act and Supreme Court decisions strikingdown residence requirements in the early 1970s. Oregon v. Mitchell, 400 United States Reports 112 (1970);Dunn v. Blumstein 394 United States Reports 405, United States Reports 330 (1972); Alexander Keyssar,The Right to Vote: The ContestedHistory of Democracy in the United States (New York: Basic Books, 2009),276.48Bob Johnson, “Amendment to Remove Racist Language Easily Defeated,” Tuscaloosa News, 7 Novem-ber 2012; http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/20121107/NEWS/121109799.49J. KennethBlackwell andKennethKlukowski, “TheOther VotingRight: Protecting Every Citizen’s Vote bySafeguarding the Integrity of the Ballot Box,” Yale Law and Policy Review 28 (Fall 2009): 107–123; RichardHasen, The Voting Wars: From Florida 2000 to the Next Election Meltdown (New Haven, CT: YaleUniversity Press, 2012); Symposium on voting in a recent PS 42 (January 2009): 27–130; StephenAnsolabehere and Nathaniel Persily, “Vote Fraud in the Eye of the Beholder: The Role of Public Opinionin the Challenge to Voter Identification Requirements,”Harvard Law Review 121 (May 2008): 1737–1774;Keyssar, Right to Vote.50553 United States Reports 181 (2008).


While state constitutions often contain fairly detailed discussions ofvoting procedures—for example, who may cast an absentee ballot—and amajority of states have voter ID laws, no state amended its constitution toinclude them until 2011—this is very much a post‐Crawford phenomenon.During the same off‐year election in which Mississippi voters consideredthe “personhood” amendment, approximately 62 percent of Mississippivoters approved a voter ID amendment, becoming the first such state toratify Crawford and constitutionalize this policy. In November 2012, amajority of Minnesotans voted against becoming the second, as initiallyfavorable polling evaporated closer to election day.51

Although voter ID was approved in principle in Crawford, an appellatecourt recently distinguished the Texas photo identification law from theoriginal case, claiming a pattern of suppression in the Lone Star State.52

Should Texas v. Holder reignite a constitutional debate about voter identi-fication, voter ID may join absentee voting as a common element of manystate constitutions. The decision in Fisher punting Grutter will very possi-bly do the same for affirmative action.

EMINENT DOMAINOne of the major controversies working through both federal and stateconstitutional politics in recent years has been eminent domain, in the longwake of Kelo v. New London.53 Post‐Kelo amendments have resulted froma combination of local policy entrepreneurship and external pressure fromnational conservative groups—with a particularly celebratory tone empha-sizing the error of the Court’s ways and the righteousness of overridingKelo.

Kelo generated a massive response, notable both for its wide scope andfor the intensity of its anti‐Court opposition. In addition to the states thatalready had stronger property protections, as well as those that imposedthem by statute after Kelo, eight states modified their constitutions tominimize the decision’s effect within their borders between 2006 and2010.54 The response, then, was quite broad.

51Doug Belden, “Minnesota Voter ID Amendment Defeated,” Pioneer Press, 7 November 2012, accessedat http://www.twincities.com/elections/ci_21946038/minnesota‐voter‐id‐amendment‐trailing‐60‐precincts‐tallied, 7 June 2013.52Charlie Savage, andManny Fernandez, “Court Blocks Texas Voter ID Law, Citing Racial Impact,”The NewYork Times, 30 August 2012, accessed at http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/31/us/court‐blocks‐tough‐voter‐id‐law‐in‐texas.html?_r¼0, 7 June 2013.53545 United States Reports 469 (2005)54FL (2006, 10.6), MI (2006 10.2), NH (2006 1.12a), ND (2006, 1.16), SC (2007 1.13), CA (2008 1.19), andNV (2008 1.22), TX (2009 1.17).


It was also rather contentious, perhaps needlessly so. In the majorityopinion, John Paul Stevens offered a capacious interpretation of “publicuse” in which increased tax revenue could justify government takings. Theopinion actually invited states to add more protections with a more‐stringent definition, insisting that the justices were merely taking ahands‐off, states’ rights position.55 Officials and property rights groupsscrambled to appease an angry populist backlash demanding the protec-tion of property rights against a Supreme Court that evidently would not.56

Indeed, one observes that Kelo critics framed the addition of strongerproperty protections as “rejecting”Kelowhen, in fact, Stevens had explicitlyinvited states to do so and simply denied a federal claim. For example, theInstitute for Justice, the national libertarian property rights group whoseCastle Coalition project helped spearhead activity in this area, claimed thatMississippi’s vote made it “the 44th state to reject the Kelo v. New Londonruling.”57 Interest groups have obvious advantages in mobilization andmaintenance when rallying around, or against, a legal decision, but Kelo isstriking in the extent to which conservative actors pitched their activities asanti‐Court.58

This constitutional dialogue continued, with two more states addingsuch protections since 2010: Mississippi ratified one in 2011, whereasVirginia voters approved a 2012 amendment championed by AttorneyGeneral and gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli.59 It is possible thatsuch amendmentsmight continue, especially in themany states that passedclarifying statutes in response toKelo, but, unlike personhood, this appearsto be a successfully concluded constitutional campaign. When countingclarifying statutes, the many states with pre‐existing constitutional clauses,and now ten post‐Kelo amendments rejecting eminent domain transfers tomost private businesses and individuals, there may be little room forexpansion on this front. In short, conservative groups appear to have

55Kelo v. City of New London 545 United States Reports 469 (2005), 48856Elaine B. Sharp and Donald Haider‐Markel, “At the Invitation of the Court: Eminent Domain Reform inState Legislatures in the Wake of the Kelo Decision,” Publius 38 (March 2008): 565–575; Dinan, “StateConstitutional Amendment Processes,” 1015.57“Mississippi Becomes the 44th State to Reject Kelo v. New London,” Institute for Justice Castle Coalition

Project, 9 November 2011, accessed at http://castlecoalition.org/about/3524, 7 June 2013.58MichaelW.McCann,Rights atWork: Pay Equity Reform and the Politics of LegalMobilization (Chicago,IL: University of Chicago Press, 1994); Gerald Rosenberg, The HollowHope: Can Courts Bring About SocialChange? 2nd ed. (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 150–153.59MI Constitution Sections 17, 110, 190, 233; Jillian Nolin, “Cucinelli Campaigns for Eminent DomainAmendment,” Virginia‐Pilot, 7 September 2012, accessed at http://hamptonroads.com/2012/09/cucci-nelli‐campaigns‐eminent‐domain‐amendment, 7 June 2013.


used state constitutions to successfully wrest the meaning of “public use”to the Kelo dissenters’ position.

GUNSBecause many states have gradually liberalized the gun provisions in theirconstitutions over the last 40 years, relatively little activity on firearms hasoccurred recently. Indeed,DC v. Heller andMcDonald v. Chicago, althoughcouched in originalist reasoning, are arguably the culmination, not thebeginning, of this conversation.60 As a result, only one such amendmentwas voted on in the last two elections, with Louisiana modifying Article I,Section 11 of its constitution in 2012. Going beyond pre‐existing statelanguage already guaranteeing individuals the right to keep and beararms, the new,muchmore expansive text asserted that the right to “acquire,keep, possess, transport, carry, transfer, and use arms for defense of life andliberty, and for all other legitimate purposes is fundamental and shall not bedenied or infringed, and any restriction on this right shall be subject to strictscrutiny.”While the amendment expanded the categories of gun rights, thetext’s final words are its most important part. McDonald and Heller re-mained somewhat cagey in specifying the jurisprudential standard withwhich courts should interpret infringements. By adopting the extremelyrestrictive strict scrutiny standard, Louisiana seems to be charting the wayin the hope that the Heller majority does the same.

In addition, four states—Idaho, Kentucky, Nebraska, and Wyoming—voted on hunting rights provisions endorsed by the National Rifle Associ-ation’s (NRA’s) legislative wing and which critics see as potential backdoorgun rights protections.61 Such amendments have been appearing sinceAlabama’s Amendment 597 in 1996, with four also appearing on the ballotin 2010. (Arizona rejected its amendment, while Arkansas, South Carolina,and Tennessee passed them with massive 80 percent plus supermajorities.)However, these appear to be preemptive and plausibly movement building,rather than speaking to any current or even prospective controversy aroundthe Constitution. Like Kelo, guns are an area where national conservativegroups largely succeeded in using quasi‐federal state amendments to

60554 United States Reports 570 (2008); 561 United States Reports 3025 (2010)61“Kentucky: Vote Yes on the Constitutional Right to Hunt and Fish,” NRA‐ILA 2012, accessed at http://

www.nrapvf.org/RightToHuntKY, 7 June 2013. Jillian Rayfeld, “NRA Pushes ‘Right to Hunt and Fish’Amendments,” Salon, 27 October 2012, accessed at http://www.salon.com/2012/10/27/nra_pushes_right_to_hunt_and_fish_amendments/, 7 June 2013 ; Craig Fehrman, “Right to Hunt: How the NRA isLarding State Constitutionswith Frivolous, RedundantAmendments,” Slate, 20December 2012, accessed athttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2012/12/right_to_hunt_how_the_nra_is_larding_state_constitutions_with_frivolous.html, 7 June 2013.


reinterpret the U.S. Constitution. As a result, in most states, they havereached a point of diminishing returns such that non‐controversial, largelyredundant hunting rights are all that is left to pass.

GAY MARRIAGEAs California’s Proposition 8 and the federal Defense of Marriage Act madetheir way through the judiciary—with the Supreme Court consideringHollingsworth v. Perry and United States v. Windsor—citizens in severalstates again considered whether to include (or extend) same‐sex marriageas a fundamental constitutional right.62

Strictly speaking, most of these amendments have not been in responseto federal judicial activity on behalf of gay marriage but in response to statecourts, thus making them somewhat different than some of the other issueareas considered here.63 Although not yet pitched as correcting the U.S.Supreme Court due to its hesitation, this issue nonetheless looks similar tothe mobilization of other quasi‐federal amendments, with assistance fromoutside state groups and a willingness to push back on judicial decisionmaking. Indeed, anti‐gaymarriage amendments to state constitutions haveled to claims, most notably by Gerald Rosenberg, that judicial activity in thefield has on the whole been counterproductive to the movement for same‐sex marriage equality.64 That relationship remains contested, but what isclear is that state judicial decisions have clearly bled into a conversation onfederal constitutionalism and equal protection, as DOMA in 1996, thediscussion of a “federal marriage amendment” in 2004, and the recentcases attest. Assistance from and mobilization by out‐of‐state groups gen-erated a good deal of controversy in each of those political battles. More-over, as Thomas Keck argues in resisting Rosenberg’s backlash account, anoverly narrow focus on gay marriage neglects the broader constitutionalconversations—including the Supreme Court’s sodomy decision in 2003—which suggests that a judicially involved dialogue on equality has been a netwinner for lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender individuals.65 In short, the

62Notably, neither decision found a substantive right to marriage, althoughWindsor clearly gestures in thatdirection. Hollingsworth v. Perry, 570 United States Reports __ (2013); United States v. Windsor 570United States Reports __ (2013).63For example,HI’sBaehr v. Lewin, 852 P.2d 44 (Haw. 1993);MA’sGoodridge v. Dept. of PublicHealth, 798N.E.2d 941 (Mass. 2003), and CA’s In re Marriage Cases, 43 Cal. 4th 757 (Calif. Sup. Ct. 2008).64Rosenberg, Hollow Hope.65Lawrence v. Texas, 539United StatesReports 558 (2003); ThomasKeck, “BeyondBacklash: Assessing theImpact of Judicial Decisions on LGBTRights,”Lawand Society Review 43 (March 2009): 151–195; StephenM. Engel, “Organizational Identity as a Constraint on Strategic Action: A Comparative Analysis of Gay andLesbian Interest Groups,” SAPD 21 (March 2007): 66–91.


state constitutional battle over marriage has been a prospective effort (likeguns), blurring state and federal constitutionalism.

The year 2012 marked a potential turning point in the popular consti-tutionalism of gay marriage, arguably the most significant since 2004. Inseparate elections last year, two states, North Carolina and Minnesota,considered constitutional proposals to block gay marriage. Although somespeculated that North Carolina’s narrow vote for Barack Obama in 2008suggested a realignment toward a more progressive politics, its voters easilyapproved the measure in a May special election. Minnesota’s narrow defeatof a gay marriage ban, however, made it the first state to block one.66 Threeother states (Maine, Maryland, and Washington) also voted on initiativesand referenda to extend or confirm statutory approval of same‐sex mar-riage; all three passed. While it is possible that the recent court decisionswill intensify conservative backlash, as Rosenberg would predict, for now itseems the electorate’s heretofore solid consensus against applying equalrights logic to gay marriage may be dissipating.

HEALTH CAREAlthough Chief Justice John Roberts’s decision to uphold the PatientProtection and Affordable Care Act seemed to foreclose further judicialchallenge, voters in several states remained unmoved by the Court’s pro-nouncement and proceeded to ratify constitutional protests against it none-theless.67 Continuing a trend begun shortly after the bill’s passage, whenArizona and Oklahoma passed amendments protesting health insurancemandates, in the last two elections, four other states considered changingtheir state’s fundamental law to go on the record against the Affordable CareAct (ACA).68 Even though the Supremacy Clause in Article VI of the U.S.Constitutionmakes such amendments and declarations functionally useless,supporters still have insisted on ratifying them to protest what they see asusurpation of federal authority beyond its enumerated powers.

In 2011, Ohio voters debated whether to change Article 1, Section 21 ofthe state’s constitution to include a clause holding that “No federal, state, orlocal law or rule shall compel, directly or indirectly, any person, employer, or

66Technically, AZ was the first state to block a gay marriage ban, narrowly rejecting one in 2006. However,the AZ amendment was extremely broad and somewhat complicated, drawn up in such a way as topotentially proscribe common‐law marriage as well. (Even then, it came within a handful of points ofpassing). A more precisely worded amendment easily passed in 2008.67NFIB v. Sebelius, 567 U. S. ____ (2012); Keith Whittington, “‘Our Own Limited Role in Policing ThoseBoundaries’: Taking Small Steps on Health Care,” Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law 38(April 2013): 273–282.68AZ Constitution 27.2, OK Constitution 2.37.


health care provider to participate in a health care system.” Backers, includ-ing Attorney General Mike DeWine, conceded that it would be symbolicrather than functional in challenging President Obama’s recent health carebill, but they insisted it was important to go on the record anyway.While thecase worked its way up federal dockets, Ohio’s voters made their statement,approving the amendment by an almost two to one margin.69

Even after the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA)received a judicial imprimatur (at least on tax grounds), legislators inthree other states wanted their constituencies to similarly assert theirconstitutional interpretation. As in Ohio, backers in these other statesconceded the essentially symbolic nature of the protests, but they insistedthat the importance of attacking Obamacare by any means possible madeit worth doing.70 Citizens in Wyoming and Alabama concurred, withstrong majorities in both voting to ratify their protest months afterNFIB v. Sebelius. Florida voters, however, added the health care amend-ment to the state’s 2012 amendment graveyard, killing eight of theireleven proposed amendments, including the three discussed in this piece.By a 48‐52 margin (requiring a supermajority of 60 percent to pass),Floridians became the first to refuse ratification of a constitutional protestagainst the PPACA.71

Even after Sebelius, state constitutional wrangling and recriminationsover the Affordable Care Act will probably continue. In addition to the threeamendments above (as well as an analogousMontana statute put to voters),the 2012 election saw voters in Missouri cast ballots in the next ACAbattleground: state exchanges. With that statute, Missouri joined the

69Catherine Candisky, “Issue 3 Claims Go Too Far, Foes Say,” Columbus Dispatch, 5 November 2011,accessed at http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2011/11/05/issue‐3‐claims‐go‐too‐far‐foes‐say.html, 7 June 2013; “Issues 1, 3: Voters SayNo toHealth Care Intrusion,Older Judges,”ColumbusDispatch, 9November 2011, accessed at http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2011/11/08/1‐issue1‐issue3.html, 7 June 2013.70For statements almost exactly mirroring Mike Dewine’s comments, see, for example, Alabama SenatorMichael Ball; Florida State Senate President Mike Haridopolos; Leslie Nutting, the Wyoming Senatorsponsoring that state’s equivalent, and Montana State Senator Art Wittich saying the same of his state’sidentical statutory protest. Daniella Perrallon, “Breaking Down the Ballot: Amendment 6,” WHNT, 25October 2012, accessed at http://whnt.com/2012/10/25/breaking‐down‐the‐ballot‐amendment‐6; TrevorBrown, “WyomingVotersWill Get a Say onObamacareMandate,”WyomingTribuneEagle, 6October 2012,accessed at http://www.wyomingnews.com/articles/2012/10/07/news/19local_10‐07‐12.prt; Eric Giunta,“Florida Health Care Amendment Gives Voters Chance to Speak Out on Insurance Mandates,” SunshineState News, 19 September 2012, accessed at http://www.sunshinestatenews.com/story/florida‐health‐care‐amendment‐gives‐voters‐chance‐speak‐out‐insurance‐mandates; Marnee Banks, “Montana Campaign Is-sues: LR‐122 Healthcare,” KTVQ, 23 October 2012, accessed at http://www.ktvq.com/news/montana‐campaign‐issues‐lr‐122, 7 June 2013.71Aaron Deslatte, “Florida Constitutional Amendments: Eight Constitutional Amendments Fail,” OrlandoSentinel, 7 November 2012, accessed at http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2012‐11‐07/news/os‐amend-ments‐florida‐constitution‐20121107_1_amendment‐merit‐retention‐ban‐on‐public‐funds, 7 June 2013.


many Republican‐governed states refusing to set up health care exchangesas part of the effort to resist and ultimately cripple President Obama’ssignature legislation.72 AsDevins noted, thismajor legislation received littleconstitutional debate in Congress.73 State legislators consequently seemmore than willing to assert constitutional checks where they think theirnational counterparts failed to do so—and where they think constituentswill reward them for picking up the slack.

RELIGIONThree states grappled with amendments advanced by the religious right,amendments that would weaken the separation of church and state in twocases and drastically expand freedomof conscience claims in the third. All ofthese, however, were largely the product of local politicians rather than out‐of‐state groups.

In Florida, voters considered a century‐long debate on the constitutionalseparation of church and state, as controversy over the “Blaine Amend-ment” reignited 137 years after Senator JamesG. Blaine’s first effort to crushfinancial support for religious, and specifically Catholic, institutions. (TheACLU argues that whatever anti‐Catholic bigotry underlay the originalBlaine amendment, Florida’s 1885 clause did not have similarly Protestantsupremacist roots.) While Blaine failed in enacting a federal amendment,most states nonetheless implemented such clauses in their own constitu-tions, often at the behest of Congress, which required territories to forbidfunding to sectarian schools.74 Thus, the text of most state constitutionsactually enacts a much stronger barrier between church and state than eventhe most separationist Supreme Court precedents have required. For ex-ample, in 2002, the Supreme Court held that the use of school vouchers atreligious schools did not violate the establishment clause of the Constitu-tion.75 Those who agreed with the four dissenters consequently have to turnto state constitutions, while those pleased by the federal decision nonethe-less have their hands bound by the so‐called “baby Blaine” amendments.

72NoahM. Levey, “MoreGOPGovernors Decline to CreateHealth Insurance Exchanges,”Los Angeles Times,16 November 2012, accessed at http://articles.latimes.com/2012/nov/16/nation/la‐na‐health‐care‐20121117, 7 June 2013.73Devins, “Why Congress Did Not Think.”74Steven K. Green, The Bible, The School, and the Constitution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012),230–232; Luke A. Lantta, “The Post Zelman Battleground: Where to Turn After Federal Challenges toBlaine Amendments Fail,”LawandContemporary Problems 67 (Summer 2004): 213–242; ACLUProgramon Freedom of Religion and Belief, “Exposing the Myth of Anti‐Catholic Bias: The Fabrication of History toRepeal the Florida Constitution’s No‐Aid Provision,” 2011, accessed at www.aclu.org/files/assets/aclu‐exposingthemythofanticatholicbias.pdf, 7 June 2013.75Zelman v. Simmons Harris, 536 United States Reports 639 (2002)


Florida’s Amendment 8, dubbed the Religious Freedom Act by itssponsors, would have eliminated the state’s no‐aid provision had it passedin 2012. The amendment’s senate sponsor argued that the primary moti-vation was to protect prison ministries, soup kitchens, and other church‐based social services in the face of an ongoing state legal challenge, but heconceded that strengthening the legal case for educational choice was also apossible benefit.76

Although much of the discussion of Amendment 8 involved the questionof vouchers—with teachers’ unions opposing the measure as a backdoorschool privatization plan—it is unclear whether the removal of the BlaineAmendment would actually help the case for school vouchers at all, orwhether it accidentally became a “proxy campaign” obscuring a broaderdiscussion of church and state.While the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty,one of the key sponsors behind Amendment 8, has argued elsewhere thatBlaine Amendments block vouchers to religious schools (and hence shouldbe repealed), the organization insisted that voucher politics were not at issuein this amendment.77 Florida court cases would seem to bear this out: whilethe Florida Supreme Court did strike down Governor Jeb Bush’s Opportu-nity Scholarship Program, it did so on grounds that the programviolated theuniform school requirement in Article IX, Section 1 of the state’s constitu-tion and not the no‐aid‐to‐religion provision. (A lower court had overturnedthe program on no‐aid grounds, but Florida’s justices explicitly disavowedthat ruling and relied entirely on the uniformity provision.)78

Whether necessary to vouchers or not, Florida’s Amendment 8 failed,like nearly all of the constitutional amendments on the state’s ballot in2012. If the cases challenging Florida prisonministries go forward and raisethe salience of this issue, a more‐precise discussion of the separation ofchurch and state—instead of a scattered, orthogonal conversation onvouchers—may occur. Nonetheless, this amendment is better understandas operating within a long‐established, though now largely inert legacy offederal constitutionalism rather than an ongoing battle.

That is not necessarily the case with other special elections earlier in theyear, where voters in Missouri and North Dakota considered the other side

76ACLU2011; Jon East, “Stray Attack on School Vouchers Coming to a Ballot Near You,”Tampa Bay Times,20 September 2012, accessed at http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/columns/stray‐attack‐on‐school‐vouchers‐coming‐to‐a‐ballot‐near‐you/1252364, 7 June 2013.77East, “Stray Attack”; Leslie Postal, “Amendment 8 Pits Religious Groups Against Backers of Church‐StateSeparation,” Orlando Sentinel, 3 October 2012, accessed at http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2012‐10‐03/features/os‐amendment‐8‐vouchers‐religion‐20121003_1_religious‐groups‐religious‐freedom‐

religious‐liberty, 7 June 2013.78Bush v. Holmes 919 So. 2d 392 (Fla. 2006), 18, 35.


of the First Amendment’s religious protections, namely free exercise. By ahuge, 60 percent margin, Missourians passed an amendment that, inaddition to requiring the posting of the Bill of Rights in schools, guaranteesthe right of adults and state employees to pray onpublic grounds, of studentsto pray in schools, and, perhaps most controversially, guarantee that stu-dents do not have to “perform or participate in academic assignments oreducational presentations that violate his or her religious beliefs.”79 Critics ofthe amendment argued that most of its principles were already present inboth state and federal free exercise clauses and jurisprudence. Where ex-panded, critics charged, the amendment would functionally lead to consti-tutional conflicts on establishment grounds (due to officials’ prayers), to saynothing of the logistical nightmares from students demanding immunityand exemption from disagreeable information and coursework.80 It is nowthe law of the land inMissouri; whether it generates the prophesied conflictsbetween free exercise and establishment remains to be seen.

North Dakota voters continued to grapple with the problem of religious-ly neutral laws burdening religious beliefs and practices, siding with Con-gress in a long battle with the Supreme Court. In 1990, the justices took afairly constrained view of free exercise rights, with Employment Division v.Smith holding that free exercise offered no shield against laws written forgeneral applicability and without religious animus.81 Three years later,Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), whichraised the threshold needed to justify incursions into religious practice—ineffect, blocking Smith. The Court then struck down the RFRA, contendingthat Congress had exceeded its authority to implement the FourteenthAmendment against the states (but not against the federal governmentitself).82 Sixteen states then passed their ownRFRAs, which usually requirea compelling government interest and narrowly tailored policies in order tojustify substantial burdens on religious practice.83

North Dakota’s proposal however, was far more expansive. Unlike con-ventional RFRAs, North Dakota’s proposed amendment would not have

79MO Constitution, 1.5.80Tim Townsend, “Missouri’s Proposed Amendment 2 on Prayer Gets Mixed Reviews,” St. Louis Post‐Dispatch, 30 July 2012, accessed at http://www.stltoday.com/lifestyles/faith‐and‐values/missouri‐s‐pro-posed‐amendment‐on‐prayer‐gets‐mixed‐reviews/article_8b188463‐9973‐532c‐92d9‐223235cad84a.html, 7 June 2013.Lee v. Weisman, 505 United States Reports 577 (1992); Santa Fe Independent SchoolDistrict v. Doe, 530 United States Reports 290 (2000).81Employment Division v. Smith 494 United States Reports 872 (1990).82City of Boerne v. Flores 521 United States Reports 507 (1997); Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita BeneficenteUDV, 546 United States Reports 418 (2006).83David Bridge, “Religious Freedom or Libertarianism: What Explains State Enactments of ReligiousFreedom Restoration Act Laws,” Journal of Church and State (forthcoming).


been confined to stopping “substantial burdens” against free exercise butmerely incidental burdens. The amendment’s text also clarified that “aburden includes indirect burdens such as withholding benefits, assessingpenalties, or an exclusion from programs or access to facilities.” Arguably,private religious schools could potentially marshal such expansive languageto demand funding earmarked for public schools as well. In short, as MarciHamilton, the law professor who successfully contested the federal RFRAbefore the Supreme Court in Boerne, observed, North Dakota’s amendmentwould “unilaterally adjust public policy to fit each religious individual’s andorganization’s worldview.”84

North Dakota voters agreed with Hamilton’s assessment, and over-whelmingly rejected the amendment by a roughly 2‐1 margin. Thus, aswith personhood amendments, super RFRAsmay advance claims even veryconservative electorates find uncomfortably beyond the meaning of currentjurisprudence or an appropriate reading of the Constitution’s text.

CAMPAIGN FUNDINGThe SupremeCourt’s decision inCitizensUnited v. FEC, upholding the rightof corporations and unions to air political advertisements, has triggered aconstitutional discussion on corporate personhood reaching back to 1886and forward to 2012.85 Other than its origins from the political left, cam-paign finance is indistinguishable from more‐typical quasi‐federal amend-ments: backed by a national movement and explicitly couched inconstitutional language, with a strong anti‐Supreme Court pitch. Servingthe analogous role of the NRA or Personhood USA, the interest groupCommon Cause pushed several ballot initiatives aimed at eventually over-turning Citizens United, succeeding in getting Amendment 65 on Colora-do’s ballot in addition to a host of advisory questions on other local ballots.86

In overwhelmingly adopting Amendment 65, Colorado voters revisedboth their constitution and their statutes to serve as gestures against money

84Marci A. Hamilton, “North Dakota’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) Signals ReligiousLobbyists’ New and Disturbing Approach to Statute‐based Free Exercise Rights,” Verdict, 3 May 2012,accessed at http://verdict.justia.com/2012/05/03/north‐dakotas‐religious‐freedom‐restoration‐act‐rfra‐signals‐religious‐lobbyists‐new‐and‐disturbing‐approach‐to‐statute‐based‐free‐exercise‐rights.85Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co. 118 United States Reports 394 (1886). Santa ClaraCounty initially observed, in its syllabus, that the justices acknowledged corporations to be persons forpurposes of the Fourteenth Amendment.86Rachel Leven, “FederalWatchdog Launches Campaign to Nix CitizensUnited,” TheHill, 17 January 2012,accessed at http://thehill.com/business‐a‐lobbying/204595‐watchdog‐launches‐amend‐2012‐campaign‐to‐nix‐citizens‐united‐decision, 7 June 2013. For the list of local advisory questions, see “November 2012Roundup,” Move to Amend, 2012, accessed at https://movetoamend.org/november‐2012‐ballot‐measure‐roundup, 7 June 2013.


in politics. Article XVIII, Section 1 of their constitution, which had calledfor voluntary campaign spending limits, now seeks the establishment ofmandatory caps, along with statutory instructions to “the Colorado con-gressional delegation to propose and support, and the Colorado statelegislature to ratify, an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that allowsCongress and states to limit campaign contributions and spending.”87 Inincorporating instructions into Colorado’s constitution, Common Causeand the anti‐Citizens United forces followed the strategy of Term LimitsUSA, whichwaged amulti‐stage conflict with the federal government in the1990s by embedding a series of amendments, each replacing the last struckdown by courts.88

In Montana, Democratic Governor Brian Schweitzer and RepublicanLieutenant Governor John Bohlinger joined Common Cause in backingthe state’s equivalent anti‐Citizens United effort, initiative I‐166.89 Earlierin the year, Montana’s Supreme Court nominally distinguished CitizensUnited in rejecting its applicability for state election laws. Excited journal-ists contended that Montana’s justices had “defied” the orders from theMarble Palace in so preserving Montana’s strict 1912 law.90 The Supreme

87CO Revised Statutes, 1‐45‐103.7.9a.88CO Constitution 18.9a, (adding term limits, requesting a constitutional amendment if overturned, 1990);Article 18.12 (instruction Colorado’s congressmembers to push for an amendment, requires ballots to listcandidates’ views on term limits, 1996), 18.12a (requesting candidates offer their views on term limits andrequiring the secretary of state to print them, 1998). SeeMiller 2009, 161–171. For a discussion of the interestgroup behind the movement, see, John David Rasuch Jr., “The Politics of Term Limitations,” in Constitu-tional Politics in the States, G. Alan Tarr, ed. (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996), 98–127.For thosefinding instruction (and the Seventeenth Amendment) largely impotent and irrelevant due to factorsincluding the so‐called Oregon Plan, see Christopher Terranova, “The Constitutional Life of LegislativeInstructions in America,”NYULawReview 84 (June 2009): 1331–1373;WilliamH. Riker, “The Senate andAmerican Federalism,” APSR 49 (February 1955): 452–469; Richard B. Bernstein, and Jerome Agel,AmendingAmerica: IfWeLove the Constitution SoMuch,WhyDoWeKeepTrying to Change It? (Lawrence:University of Kansas Press, 1995), 126–128. For those seeing the seventeenth amendment as particularlydamaging for federalism by separating senators from their state’s legislators and therefore their state’sinterests, see Ralph Rossum, Federalism, the Supreme Court, and the Seventeenth Amendment (Lanham:Lexington Books, 2001); C.H. Hoebeke, The Road toMass Democracy: Original Intent and the SeventeenthAmendment (New Brunswick: Transaction Press, 1995); Todd Zywicki, “Beyond the Shell and Husk ofHistory: The History of the Seventeenth Amendment and its Implications for Current Reform Proposals,”Cleveland State Law Review 45 (Spring 1997): 165–234.89Sam Favate, “Montana Governor Signals Support for Overturning Citizens United,”Wall Street Journal, 4May 2012, accessed at http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/05/04/montana‐governor‐signals‐support‐for‐over-turning‐citizens‐united/, 7 June 2013.90See, for example, Dahlia Lithwick, “InMontana, Corporations Aren’t People: CanMontanaGet AwaywithDefying the Supreme Court on Citizens United?” Slate, 4 January 2012, accessed at http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2012/01/montana_supreme_court_citizens_united_can_montana_get_away_with_defying_the_supreme_court_.html, 7 June 2013; Sam Favate, “MontanaSupreme Court Defies Citizens United Decision.” Wall Street Journal, 3 January 2012, accessed athttp://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/01/03/montana‐supreme‐court‐defies‐citizens‐united‐decision‐upholds‐state‐ban/, 7 June 2013.


Court agreed, rejecting Montana’s justices with a terse, single paragraphobserving that “Montana’s arguments…were already rejected….or fail tomeaningfully distinguish that case.”91 The state’s voters, however, contin-ued to press back, not only approving the initiative by a huge margin butchoosing as their next governor Steve Bullock, the attorney general whohad vigorously defended the state’s campaign laws against CitizensUnited.92

MARIJUANAPerhaps the most widely covered constitutional clash in 2012 was theongoing assault on the criminalization of marijuana. It also representsperhaps the most abnormal case: while almost exclusively funded by anoutside, national lobbying group (the DC‐based Marijuana Policy Projectcontributed 60 percent of the lobbying dollars in Colorado, compared to amere 10 percent raised in‐state), the marijuana amendment was pushedprimarily by those on the political left and scrupulously avoided explicitconstitutional dialogue and language.93

In November, Colorado, which already had a 2000 constitutionalamendment enabling a medical marijuana program, legalized the posses-sion of small amounts of marijuana and instituted a legal regime akin toalcohol regulations.94 This was in addition to two successful initiatives—asimilar decriminalizing statutory initiative in Washington and a more‐limited medical marijuana initiative in Massachusetts. (A medical mari-juana initiative failed in Arkansas.) Such efforts continued a slow processfirst begun in 1996, when California implemented the first medical mari-juana programby ballot initiative. Between 1996 and 2010, 13 states passedsimilar legislation or initiatives, while Nevada joined Colorado in embed-ding medical marijuana in its constitution.95

Of course, marijuana continues to be illegal under federal law, with theObama Department of Justice additionally relying on support from arelatively recent court case. In 2005, Gonzales v. Raich upheld the powerof the federal government to bring drug possession charges against indi-viduals holding California medicinal permits. Anthony Kennedy and

91American Tradition Partnership v. Bullock, 567 United States Reports ___ (2012).92David Wise, “Montana, Not California, Shows the Way on Citizens United,” San Jose Mercury News25 January 2013, accessed at http://search.proquest.com/docview/1281838819?accountid¼13314, 7 June2013.93“Amendment 64: Marijuana Legalization,” accessed at http://votersedge.org/colorado/ballot‐measures/

2012/november/amendment‐64/funding, 7 June 2013.94CO Constitution 18.16.95Dinan, “State Constitutional Amendment Processes,” 1025–1026.


Antonin Scalia abandoned their usual federalist allies and agreed with theCourt’s left in vindicating federal power on a 6‐3 vote, with Chief JusticeWilliam Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and ClarenceThomas backing the states’ rights challenge to the law.96 When Californiavoters considered decriminalizing marijuana in 2010, the Obama admin-istration reminded them of Raich’s lesson: state legalization did not im-munize against federal law.97

Marijuana activists continued their efforts despite the federal pressureapplied in California, though they shied away from advancing states’ rightslanguage in the face of Raich. Some effort was nonetheless made to appealto libertarian‐leaning Republicans on states’ rights grounds, with formerRepublican Representative and presidential candidate Tom Tancredo themost prominent backer in Colorado, but the text itself makes no referencewhatsoever to the federal government. Instead, the amendment invokes thelanguage of fiscal prudence, efficient law enforcement, and a passingreference to individual freedom. To some extent, this may be a functionof most marijuana activists being political liberals, in this case concernedmorewith a single issue than amore‐abstracted discussion on the allocationof powers—where most would presumably favor a strong centralgovernment.98

Strictly speaking, such legalization merely refuses to employ state offi-cials to duplicate and concurrently enforce federal policy, and thus does notrise to the traditional standard of nullification in which state officialsproactively resist federal activity.99 One could easily argue that such apolicy constitutes a de facto nullification against the spirit of federal laws—a position advanced in the 1920s and 1930s by some Republicans(even anti‐prohibition but nonetheless law‐and‐order ones) who blockedsimilar repeal of alcohol prohibition laws.100 Even so, the situation isindeed closer to benign neglect than the interjection of state power asconceived in classical nullification theory, nearly implemented in 1832

96Scaliawrote a lone special concurrence, while JohnPaul Stevens’s opinion,whichKennedy joined, relied onthe 1942 case of Wickard v. Filburn. 317 United States Reports 111 (1942); Gonzales v. Raich 545 UnitedStates Reports 1 (2005).97Matt Pearce, “Unlikely Allies Behind Marijuana Votes in Washington, Colorado,” Los Angeles Times, 11November 2012, accessed at http://articles.latimes.com/2012/nov/11/nation/la‐na‐marijuana‐20121111, 7June 2013.98CO Constitution16.1.a; Kristen Wyatt, “Marijuana Backers Courting Conservatives,” Colorado SpringsGazette, 16 October 2012.99Dinan, “State Amendment Processes,” 101, 104; James H. Read and Neal Allen, “Living, Dead, andUndead: Nullification Past and Present,” American Political Thought 1 (Fall 2012): 266.100See, for example, Arthur J. Weaver, “Inaugural Address,” 3 January 1929, printed in the Journal of theHouse of Representatives of Nebraska 1929, 111; Louis Emmerson, “Veto Message of SB1,” 14 April 1931,printed in the Journal of the House of Representatives of Illinois 1931, 427–429.


South Carolina with the tariff, and currently advocated by hardlinelibertarians.101

Although the amendment was not primarily waged on states’ rightsgrounds, Coloradans, including conservatives ambivalent about the meritsof marijuana legalization, are more strongly embracing such claims afterthe fact. As noted earlier, Colorado Democrats Diana DeGette and JaredPolis joined eight other Democrats and two Republicans in sponsoring the“Respect States’ and Citizens’ Rights Act of 2012” to terminate federalenforcement in states that accept marijuana.102 In addition to the libertar-ian‐leaning Ron Paul, the other Republican to back the bill was ColoradoRepresentative Mike Coffman, who had opposed Colorado’s amendmentbut backed his constituents’ right to do so.103 Right‐wing hostility inColorado Springs and other bastions of traditionalism may not all betransferring into support, but long‐time opponents largely remained onthe sidelines.104

Although federalism was, at best, a second‐order question in the recent2012 marijuana vote, it is still joining with a broader popular constitution-alist conversation about the extent of federal interstate commerce powers.The Obama administration’s response has been decidedly mixed; the Pres-ident has suggested that enforcing the Controlled Substances Act in de-criminalizing states is “not a priority” but observed that he has to enforce alaw until Congress modifies it. Federal attorneys have continued to enforceit, althoughWashington’s governor claims to havemade fruitful progress indiscussions with Attorney General Holder.105 National polls since the 2012election have started to detect a tension between substantive views onmarijuana and beliefs about federalism, with voters opposed to its legaliza-tion as a policymatter nonetheless uncomfortable with federal enforcement

101Richard E. Ellis, The Union at Risk: Jacksonian Democracy, States’ Rights, and the Nullification Crisis(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987); Thomas E. Woods, Jr., Nullification: How to Resist FederalTyranny in the 21st Century (Washington: Regnery, 2010); Sean Wilentz, “States of Anarchy: America’sLong, Sordid Affair with Nullification,” The New Republic, 29 April 2010.102See note 23.103Kurtis Lee, “DeGette Files Bill to Require Feds to Respect Marijuana Law,” Denver Post, 16 Novem-ber 2012, accessed at http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_22011789/colorado‐democrats‐urge‐u‐s‐attorney‐general‐marijuana, 7 June 2013.104

“OurView: LeaveMarijuanaRegulation to States,”Colorado SpringsGazette, 18December 2012, accessedat http://gazette.com/article/148672, 7 June 2013; Clint Rainey, “Colorado’s Pro‐Pot Vote Shows the Fadingof Evangelical Fervor,” Slate, 4 January 2013, accessed at http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/01/colorado_drug_legalization_and_evangelicals_why_didn_t_religious_right_fight.html, 7 June 2013.105Jerry Cornfield, “Inslee Reports Progress with Feds Over Pot,” The Herald, 23 January, 2013; AdamNagourney, “In California, It’s United States v. State over Marijuana,” The New York Times, 14 January2013.


in decriminalizing states.106 Some influential Republicans show an interestin capitalizing on this trend. Outgoing Republican GovernorMitch Danielsof Indiana offered similar sentiments and, though achieving little success,Gary Johnson, the former Republican Governor of NewMexico running onthe Libertarian ticket, attempted to rally behind precisely this issue in 2012.Perhaps most significantly, Republican Senator Rand Paul, who has ex-pressed interest in a 2016 presidential run, suggests incorporating a states’rights position on marijuana as part of his broader Republican attack onfederal power.107 Other states will probably follow suit in coming elections,keeping the question of marijuana, and federalism more broadly, circulat-ing in public discourse. Indeed, the development of a broader discussion ofconstitutional powers has developed independently of marijuana backers’wishes. The outgrowth of Colorado’s experience reminds us of the basicMadisonian wisdom of low ambition working to advance more‐abstractprinciples;thus, we should understand selective opportunism as a plausiblemeans to ensure that particular interests strongly vindicate the constitu-tional order.108

CONCLUSIONElections during the last two years confirm political scientists’ intuitionsthat state actors can be both comfortable with, and sometimes insistent on,a role in national constitutional politics. As scholars have begun to note,state constitutions in general, and state amendments more specifically,serve as sites in which to debate the core principles of the U.S. Constitution.Popular constitutionalists and others who would see extra‐judicial politicsas a key part of their interpretive dialogue ought to take particular interestin these single‐issue expositions of constitutional thought.

If not exactly a mythically intense instance of dualist democracy (like theFounding, the Civil War, or the New Deal),109 this interplay between stateand federal politics nonetheless offers what is arguably the most realisticand substantive site of constitutional discourse short of these Olympianmoments. To be clear: these are not distilled moments of pure and refined

106Micah Cohen, “Marijuana Legalization and States Rights,” The New York Times, 8 December 2012,accessed at http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/08/marijuana‐legalization‐and‐states‐rights/, 7 June 2013.107ManuRaju, “Welcome to the Rand Paul Evolution,” Politico, 13 November 2012, accessed at http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1112/83737.html, 7 June 2013; Betsy Woodruff, “Rolling Stone and Mitch Dan-iels Agree: Obama is a Narc,” National Review, 10 December 2012, accessed at http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/335240/irolling‐stonei‐and‐mitch‐daniels‐concur‐obama‐narc‐betsy‐woodruff#, 7 June 2013.108KeithWhittington, “Extrajudicial Constitutional Interpretation: ThreeObjections andResponses,”NorthCarolina Law Review 80 (April 2002): 818–823.109Ackerman, We the People.


discourse. Florida’s Baby Blaine discussion had sidetracks in voucher poli-tics, for example. The deliberations on federalism, whether in Arizona’sstate sovereignty amendment or Colorado’s marijuana legalization, wouldnever be mistaken for the Webster–Hayne–Livingston debates.110 Howev-er, neither are they the timid, unhappy discourse of congressional politics,in which senators admit to considering “policy issues first, [then getting]…a consensus to pass the bill, six other things, then constitutionality.”111 Thepersonhood amendment triggered a debate that looked more like theSupreme Court’s grapplings with Roe than Congress’s largely perfunctorystamping of “affects interstate commerce” in the preface of the Guns‐FreeSchool Zone Act after Lopez.112

Of course only a small minority of state constitutional amendments doinvolve federal controversy. As Table 1 shows, of the 144 constitutionalamendments that appeared on state ballots in 2011 and 2012, roughly onesixth (23) involved federal constitutional questions.113 The vast majority ofthe remainder are confined within a small set of fairly technical andadministrative issues: taxes and bonds, school boards, governmental

110Ellis, Union at Risk, 12.111Pickerill, Constitutional Deliberation in Congress, 134.112Pickerill, Constitutional Deliberation in Congress.113This total does not include the four hunting rights protections, which, for reasons noted above, seem onlydimly connected to national constitutional politics. It does include the two other amendments seeking toresist federal supremacy that appeared on the ballots in November 2012, which are not treated at length inthis article. In the first, Arizonans declined to amend their constitution to assert the state’s claims to“unappropriated and ungranted public lands lying within the boundaries thereof.” The amendment was,in effect a demand that AZ be treated equally with eastern states (which have little to no such federal land).Earlier efforts by those other states, however, were issued as petitions to Congress to dispose of the land; thisamendment’s unilateral assertions of authority would arguably comprise nullification. AZ voters declinedthis particular tangle with the federal government; in addition an initiative amendment to invest formalpowers of nullification both in the state’s legislature and initiative process failed to gather sufficient validsignatures. For now, it seems, even in often‐surly AZ, Calhoun’s nullification doctrines remain beyond thepale of acceptable constitutional politics. E.J. Perkins, “Proposition 120 State Sovereignty Act: Understand-ing Arizona’s Propositions,”Morrison Institute for Public Policy, 2012, accessed at http://morrisoninstitute.asu.edu/2012‐understanding‐arizonas‐propositions/2012‐prop‐120‐state‐sovereignty‐act, 7 June 2013;Alyson Zepeda, “‘Checks and Balances’ Initiative Appears Doomed,” Arizona Capitol Times, 8 August 2012,accessed at http://azcapitoltimes.com/news/2012/08/08/checks‐and‐balances‐initiative‐appears‐doomed/, 7 June 2013. The other quasi‐federal amendment occurred in Alabama, where voters approvedamendment 7. This holds that “the right of individuals to vote for public office, public votes on referenda, orvotes of employee representation by secret ballot is fundamental.” By interjecting AL into the so‐called “cardcheck” debate about union organization, AL joined the four states that responded to congressional consid-eration by passing amendments guaranteeing secret ballots for unionization decisions. Although thelegislation failed, the National Labor Relations Board nonetheless is suing for encroachment on federalpower, settling on cases against SD and AZ. AZ Constitution 2.37, SC Constitution 2.12, SD Constitution6.28, UT Constitution 4.8; Phillip Rawls, “Alabama Voters to Decide Union Organizing Issue,” TuscaloosaNews, 18 October 2012; accessed at http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/20121018/NEWS/121019763,7 June 2013; Steven Greenhouse, “United States Reports Plans to Sue 4 States Over Laws Requiring SecretBallots for Unionizing,” The New York Times, 15 January 2011; “Labor Board Plans to Sue 2 States OverUnion Rules,” The New York Times, 26 April 2011.


TABLE 1Quasi-Federal State Amendments Appearing on State Ballots in 2011 and 2012

State

Total

Number of

Amendments

Appearing on

State Ballots

That Year

Category of Amendment

Related to Federal

Constitutionalism Content of Amendment Passed?

2012

AL 12 Health Care PPACA Protest Yes

Civil Rights and Voting Remove Segregationist Language No

Miscellaneous “Card Check” Ban Yes

AZ 8 Miscellaneous Strike acceptance of federal

dominion over federally owned

land within state

No

CO 2 Marijuana Decriminalize marijuana use Yes

Campaign Finance Citizens United protest Yes

FL 12 Health Care PPACA Protest No

Abortion Ratify state equivalent to Hyde

Amendment restricting state

funding to abortion; tie state

abortion jurisprudence to

federal rulings

No

Religion Eliminate provision blocking aid to

religious institutions

No

LA 9 Guns Strengthen individual right by

clarifying its scope and insisting

on strict scrutiny

Yes

MN 2 Gay Marriage Ban on gay marriage No

Race and Voting Require photo ID for voting No

MO 3 Religion Guarantee ability to pray in public Yes

NC 1 Gay Marriage Ban on gay marriage Yes

ND 6 Religion Super RFRA; prohibit government

from burdening religious belief

and practice

No

OK 6 Race and Voting Ban on Affirmative Action Yes

VA 2 Eminent Domain Restrict ability of governments to

transfer property to private

individuals (Kelo counter)

Yes

WY 3 Health Care PPACA Protest Yes

2011

MS 3 Abortion Personhood Amendment No

Eminent Domain Restrict ability of governments to

transfer property to private

individuals (Kelo counter)

Yes

Race and Voting Require photo ID for voting Yes

OH 2 Health Care PPACA Protest Yes

WA 2 Race and Voting Eliminate obsolete residence

provision instituting lower

residence requirement to vote

for president and vice president

than for other offices

Yes

Source: Assembled from 2011 and 2012 State Ballots and newspaper articles.


organization, and gambling. State constitutions thus remain documents ofessentially local governance.

However, as this discussion has shown, national interest groups haverealized that state amendments can influence thinking about the U.S.Constitution. Interest groups and state legislators have not advanced ag-gressively anti‐Court theories of nullification or a state analog of depart-mentalism. They do, however insist on responding to the Court instrategically useful ways, indicating that subscribing to basic assumptionsof judicial supremacy does not entail judicial fetishism. Stated another way,political actors insist that courts can be challenged, within reason, and fromstatehouses as well as Congress.114

Quasi‐federal state amendments serve both agenda‐setting roles (as withthe personhood amendments) or as potential signals to courts andCongress(as with the health care protests). Critics of these initiatives might suggestthat the effect is primarily to drum up electoral support and turn out thebase, especially in swing states.115 That is no doubt true, but, with Floridaand its 11 amendments a marked exception, many, if not the majority, ofthese amendments were in states out of reach for the 2012 election andweresponsored by interest groups far from the good graces of party leaders andstrategists. Mississippi Republicans did not exactly need personhood on theballot to win an off‐year election in 2011—nor did they want it.

Instead, state legislative input, while obviously related to position‐tak-ing, may also be a long overdue response to institutional change.116 In the1930s and 1940s, members of the New Deal court effectively ceased en-forcing federalism claims, a change most prominently defended by legalscholar Herbert Wechsler.117 Wechsler instead argued that the politicalprocesses would and should remain the primary guarantors of federalismand the implementation of states’ interests.118 With the Supreme Court stillfunctionally endorsing the bulk of Wechsler’s controversial thesis, it should

114Stephen Engel, American Politicians Confront the Court: Opposition Politics and Changing Responses toJudicial Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).115For an example of such an effort paying off, see David E. Campbell and J. Quin Monson, “The ReligionCard: Gay Marriage and the 2004 Presidential Election,” Public Opinion Quarterly 72 (Fall 2008): 399–419.116David Mayhew, Congress: The Electoral Connection (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1975), 54.117United States Reports v. Darby, 312 United States Reports 100 (1941); Wickard v. Filburn 317 UnitedStates Reports 111 (1942).118Herbert Wechsler, “The Political Safeguards of Federalism: The Role of the States in the Composition andSelection of the National Government,” Columbia Law Review 54 (April 1954): 543–560; Larry Kramer,“Putting the Politics Back into the Political Safeguards of Federalism” Columbia Law Review 100 (Janu-ary 2000): 215–293. For a critical view of Wechsler’s thesis, see Paul Frymer and Albert Yoon, “PoliticalParties, Representation, and Federal Safeguards,” Northwestern University Law Review 96 (Spring 2002):977–1026.


not be surprising that non‐judicial actors—especially those who may seetheir interests and ideology most ignored—would eventually forward pro-test amendments to their constituents.119 The much‐heralded politicalprocesses seem to have answered the call implicit in judicial non‐interven-tion. This does not, of course, mean that state protest is an equally effectiveway to vindicate state interests, but it is a response that Wechsler’s logicwould seem to suggest.

One lesson that the state constitutional literature has taught is thatefforts to draw up a strict conceptual dichotomy between state and federalconstitutional discourse, especially on individual and negative rights, is adifficult, if not largely impossible, task. America’s liberal heritage andfondness for “rights talk” ensure as much, and thus the discourse fromthe one often easily bleeds into the other; this is particularly true of issuesthat achieve the salience of popular constitutionalism.120 (The conceptualdifference between federal enumerated powers and plenary state policepowers minimizes blurring among positive rights, but even that gap isnot impassable. For example, in the 1920s, positive rights provisions atthe state level led to wider conversations about whether the federal Consti-tution did or ought to include such protections.)121 Instead of a stark divide,the relationship between state and federal constitutionalism is arguablysomething closer to a spectrum, especially in rights conflicts, with thetightness of the relationship conditional on developments in both.

By this standard, Obamacare protests are closer to the purely federalside, clearly temporally responsive to developments inWashington, DC andwithout any discernible controlling effect on internal state politics. Others,especially those seeking to overturn state judicial decisions decided whollywithin the confines of the state’s constitution, more closely resemble regulardomestic affairs like bond issues. Most rights amendments, however, are inthe middle—which, though conceptually muddled, actually follows thelogic of American constitutionalism; as Madison says of the Constitution’shybrid amendment and ratification processes in The Federalist 39, “Wefind it neither wholly national nor wholly federal.” In this middle groundwould be efforts to resurrect seemingly dormant spheres of constitutional

119Garcia v. San Antonio Metro Transit, 469 United States Reports 528 (1985).120Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Harvey Mansfield and Delba Winthrop, eds. (Chicago, IL:University of Chicago Press, [1840] 2000); Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America (New York:Harcourt Brace, 1955); Mary Ann Glendon, Rights Talk (New York: Free Press, 1993).121Milkis and Lowi, among others, argue that the party system and much of the political order wasreconstituted as a result of such constitutional blurring and the transfer of positive obligations to the federalgovernment in the New Deal. See Theodore Lowi, End of Liberalism (New York: W.W. Norton, 1979) andSidney Milkis, The President and the Parties (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).


law that would determine policy within states but also serve as potentialagenda setting for the federal sphere. (The “super RFRA” amendmentproposal is an example of such an agenda‐setting amendment trying toreignite an issue in which the current Supreme Court has shown littleinterest.)

Like the “New Federalists” a generation before, scholars dissatisfied withthe direction of national politics have suggested a turn toward state politicsand constitutions.122 The recent history of state amendments, however,suggests a theoretical wrinkle resulting from such an approach. Paradoxi-cally, many of these critiques of national governing institutions or states’rights claims that are being embedded in state constitutions are pushed byinterstate groups. Thus, in some ways these resemble yet another manifes-tation of the legal networks centralizing constitutional discourse ratherthan demonstrations of localist power.123

Though arguably the two most significant types of amendment (mari-juana and Citizens United) came from political liberals during the periodunder consideration, the majority were conservative. Indeed, some, likeNorth Dakota’s super RFRA or Mississippi’s personhood amendment,advanced constitutional positions that Antonin Scalia would not defend.124

Unsurprisingly, considering the movement’s current professed devotion toconstitutional principles, conservatives appear more comfortable with con-stitutional language framed as explicitly rejecting federal developments—though, again, Citizens United suggests at least some convergence. And,with interest groups and legislators already lining up several such skir-mishes for elections in 2014, this dialogue is poised to continue.�

122Levinson,Framed; Gerken, “ANewProgressive Federalism.”Less‐jaded scholars have simply reminded usof the good that states can and have done. Zackin, Looking for Rights; William J. Novak, The People’sWelfare: Law and Regulation in Nineteenth Century America (Chapel Hill: University of North CarolinaPress, 1996).123Teles, “Southworth, and the Conservative Legal Movement”; Epp, Rights Revolution.124Planned Parenthood v. Casey 979;Employment Division v. Smith 494United States Reports 872 (1990).�I thank Paul Frymer, Dirk Hartog, Keith Whittington, John Dinan, Herschel Nachlis, Marko Radenovic,and Amy Hondo, as well as the two anonymous reviewers, for helpful comments and conversation aboutvarious parts and incarnations of this project. Errors are my own.


Democracy beyond the State:Insights from the European Union

ACHIM HURRELMANN

MODERN DEMOCRACY IS, ABOVE ALL ELSE, a procedural ideal. Tobe sure, high substantive hopes are often placed in democracy. Yet theessence of democracy lies not in the specific outcomes that it may (or maynot) help reach, but in a set of procedures that ensure, in the words ofPhilippe Schmitter and Terry Karl, that “rulers are held accountable fortheir actions in the public realm by citizens,”who act primarily “through thecompetition and cooperation of their elected representatives.”1 Historically,the main political arena in which democratic procedures have been im-plemented, and the main reference point for democratic theory, has beenthe state. According to a well‐established argument, the democratization ofnon‐state entities—such as international and supranational organizationsor transnational networks with various degrees of institutionalization—istherefore faced with significant conceptual and practical challenges.2 Thisarticle seeks to assess the severity of these challenges: Can democraticprocedures be transferred to political entities “beyond the state,” or isdemocracy doomed to failure in non‐state contexts?

ACHIM HURRELMANN is an associate professor of political science at Carleton University.His research focuses on democracy and legitimacy in multilevel political systems, especiallythe European Union. Since 2013, he has led a five‐year research project that examines theimpact of the Eurozone financial crisis on the politicization of European integration.

1Philippe C. Schmitter and Terry Lynn Karl, “What Democracy Is … And Is Not,” Journal of Democracy 2(Summer 1991): 75–88, at 76.2Joseph H. H. Weiler, “The Geology of International Law: Governance, Democracy, and Legitimacy,”Zeitschrift für ausländisches öffentliches Recht und Verwaltungsrecht 64 (Summer 2004): 547–562;Gráinne de Búrca, “Developing Democracy beyond the State,” Columbia Journal of Transnational Law46 (2008): 221–278.


The European Union (EU) is perhaps the most important test case toanswer this question.3 The EU, according to most accounts, is not a state—nor does it claim to be one. It has, on the other hand, been embroiled indebates about democratization for at least the past two decades. Given thegrowth of its policy responsibilities, the old argument that democracy is notneeded in the EU has lost its persuasiveness. This argument relied on theassumption that EU decisions concern only issues about which citizens carevery little,4not leastbecause thesedecisionsaremainly regulatory inkindanddo not have any distributive impact.5 Both claims no longer hold. This isdramatically illustrated by the EU’s response to theEurozone financial crisis,during which EU leaders authorized significant financial transfers betweenmember states while forcing the recipients of bailout funds to adopt far‐reaching austerity measures, often with painful impact on the citizens.

The growing consequentiality of EU decisions has, over the past decades,motivated a number of reforms to the EU treaties that aimed explicitly atdemocratization. The EU now possesses more mechanisms of democraticinput than any other global governance institution. These reforms have notbeen enough, however, to lay to rest concerns about the EU’s “democraticdeficit.” The reason for these concerns is that the crucial democratic princi-ple of accountability is still insufficiently realized. Neither the making ofpublic policy nor the selection of leadership personnel in the EU is subject toopen political competition in the public realm, and the decisions taken onthese issues are not visibly affected by citizens’ political participation.6 As aresult, it is unclear who deserves praise or blame for EU decisions, and whatcan be done if one wants to “throw the rascals out.”

This article discusses whether the EU’s non‐state character lies at theroot of these difficulties in democratization. The article proceeds in threesteps. First, it canvasses the main arguments used to claim that democracycannot easily be detached from the state and transferred to the EU level.Second, it shows that these arguments take insufficient account of themultilevel character of the EU, which implies that state‐based democratic

3Michael T. Greven and Louis W. Pauly, eds.,Democracy beyond the State: The European Dilemma and theEmerging Global Order (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000); Michael Zürn, “Democratic Governancebeyond the Nation‐State: The EU andOther International Institutions,” European Journal of InternationalRelations 6 (June 2000): 183–221.4AndrewMoravcsik, “In Defence of theDemocratic Deficit: Reassessing Legitimacy in the EuropeanUnion,”Journal of Common Market Studies 40 (November 2002): 603–624.5GiandomenicoMajone, “Europe’s ‘DemocraticDeficit’: TheQuestion of Standards,”EuropeanLawJournal4 (March 1998): 5–28.6Andreas Føllesdal and Simon Hix, “Why There Is a Democratic Deficit in the EU: A Response to Majoneand Moravcsik,” Journal of CommonMarket Studies 44 (May 2006): 533–562; Simon Hix,What’s Wrongwith the European Union and How to Fix It (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008).


ideas and practices can be used to support the EU’s democratic legitima-tion. The core problem of democratization in the EU is therefore not due tothe fact that the EU is not a state; the emphasis that some authors put on itsnon‐state character as an obstacle to democratization is misplaced. Rather,as the third section shows, the “democratic deficit” of the EU is rooted in thepeculiar institutional design of itsmultilevel system. The concluding sectiondevelops some thoughts about the lessons that these findings hold for othernon‐state entities in world politics.

TRANSFERRING DEMOCRACY TO NON-STATE ENTITIESWhat Is the Problem?Themodernstatecanbedefinedbythreebundlesofcharacteristics.7Firstandforemost, it is a system of governing institutions designed to generate andimplementbindingcollectivedecisions for a specific territoryandpopulation.This implies that states possess a developed decision‐making and adminis-trative apparatus, regulatedby law, andgenerally funded through taxation.Asecond bundle of characteristics focuses on the state’s internal and externalsovereignty. This means that the state’s powers are not dependent on anyother authority, that the state exercises a monopoly of force within itsterritory, and that it can regulate its affairs without outside interference.Finally, a third bundle of characteristics focuses on the state’s internal andexternal recognition. Internally, this refers to the state’s legitimacy in the eyesof the population, most importantly to the fact that the citizens considerthemselvesmembersof thestateandrespect itsmonopolyof force.Externally,itmeans that a state’s existence, character, and sovereignty are acknowledgedby other international actors (states and international organizations).

As Table 1 shows, the EU possesses many state‐like features, but fallsshort of statehood in the full sense of the term. Its governing institutionscan only operate through the member states, which implement theirrules, finance their activities, and define the EU’s territory and population.Furthermore, the EU’s sovereignty and recognition are problematic, in bothcases primarily in the internal rather than in the external sense: Withrespect to sovereignty, it is important that the EU cannot determine itsown competences—it lacks what German jurisprudence calls Kompetenz‐Kompetenz—and that it does not have institutions that directly interact on

7Arthur Benz, Der moderne Staat: Grundlagen der politologischen Analyse, 2d ed. (Munich: Oldenbourg,2008); Christopher Pierson, The Modern State, 3d ed. (London: Routledge, 2011). In contrast to theseauthors, my definition excludes the aspects of democracy and constitutionalism, which are often consideredcore elements of the normative idea of modern statehood, but whose absence generally does not leadobservers to question an entity’s state character.

DEMOCRACY AND THE EUROPEAN UNION | 89

a regular basis with the citizens, let alone exercise a monopoly of force. Withrespect to recognition, the crucial problem is that the citizens’ sense ofbelonging to the EU, and to a European political community, remains weak.

Can we make a case, then, that the EU would need to acquire thesemissing state features to become fully democratic? In the literature on theEU’s democratization, three versions of this argument can be identified.The first of these positions focuses on sovereignty, especially the EU’s lack ofKompetenz‐Kompetenz. This position has been brought forward in con-tributions by legal scholars—most prominently Dieter Grimm8

—in discus-sions of the EU’s constitutional project that ultimately failed in 2005.Regarding the relationship between democracy and the state, it makesthe following claims:

Democracy means popular sovereignty; it requires that citizens exercisecollective self‐rule in regard to all aspects of political life. This includesdecision making about the constitutional structure of—and allocation ofpowers to—various governing institutions.

TABLE 1State and Non-State Features of the EU

Definition of the State Characteristics of the EU

System of governing institutions EU makes binding rules, but these generally have to be implemented

by member states

EU has clear legal and administrative structure, but its bureaucracy is

relatively small and its finances rely on member-state contributions

EU territory and population are derivative on member-state territory

and population

Internal and external sovereignty EU competences depend on explicit delegation from the member

states, who are “masters of the treaties”

EU usually does not interact directly with the citizens and has no

institutions to claim the monopoly of force, which is exercised by

the member states

EU faces no external interference when exercising its competencies

Internal and external recognition EU faces no overt challenges to its legitimacy, but citizens

overwhelmingly view member states as primary political entities,

have weak sense of belonging to the EU

EU is recognized, within its realm of competences, as player in

international affairs

8Dieter Grimm, “Does Europe Need a Constitution?” European Law Journal 1 (November 1995): 282–302;Dieter Grimm, “Constitutionalism beyond the Nation State” in Stefan Voigt andHans JürgenWagener, eds.,Constitutions,Markets and Law: Recent Experiences in Transition Economies (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar,2002): 317–323. See also Olaf Asbach, “Verfassung und Demokratie in der Europäischen Union: Zur Kritikder Debatte um eine Konstitutionalisierung Europas,” Leviathan 30 (June 2002): 267–297; Carsten A.Günther, “Der Verfassungsvertrag: Ein Modell für die Europäische Union?” Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfra-gen 33 (June 2002): 347–360.


For the EU, full‐scale democratization would hence imply that EU citizens,and not member states, have the power to decide about the EU’s constitu-tion, and the competences the EU is granted therein. This means that thepower to decide about EU competences would be exercised at the EU level(by the people of the EU, rather than the peoples of the member states). Inother words, the EU would gain Kompetenz‐Kompetenz.

If the EU possessedKompetenz‐Kompetenz, this would enable it to acquirethe other missing institutional elements of sovereign statehood as well. AsGrimmargues, an EUwith a constitution legitimated by the citizens “wouldin principle also have the power within the constitution to decide… on itsendowment with resources, including taxation, instead of being dependenton transfers from the Member States. These features are not those of anassociation of States. They typify the State.”9

In this line of reasoning, full‐scale democratization would automaticallymake the EU a sovereign state—and only a sovereign state can be fullydemocratic. The prospect of an EU state, however, is generally seen asundesirable by authors arguing for this position. One reason is that thecitizens do not seem ready to accept it. A second reason is that it would havenegative implications for the member states. After all, the traditionaldoctrine of German constitutional law treats sovereignty as indivisible.10

In this view, if Kompetenz‐Kompetenz—the crucial element ofsovereignty—were acquired by the EU, the member states would lose it.Hence, their statehood, and by implication their democracy, would beundermined.11 The only feasible solution to the EU’s democratic deficit,therefore, is less European integration, not more European democracy.

The second argument that is commonly used to establish a link betweenEuropean democracy and statehood focuses on another aspect in which theEU currently diverges from the statemodel, namely its precarious legitimacyin the population. This position can be associated with a republican concep-tion in democratic theory. Authors applying this conception, such as ClausOffe or StefanoBartolini,12 blame the difficulties in democratizing the EUonthe weakness of European identities and the resulting fragmentation ofEurope’s public sphere. We can summarize this argument as follows:

9Grimm, “Does Europe Need a Constitution?” 299.10Georg Jellinek, Allgemeine Staatslehre, 3d ed. (Berlin: Häring Verlag, 1912), 496–504.11Asbach, “Verfassung und Demokratie”; Günther, “Der Verfassungsvertrag.”12Claus Offe, “Is There, Or Can There Be, a ‘European Society”’ in Ines Katenhusen and Wolfram Lamping,eds.,Demokratien in Europa:Der Einfluss der Europäischen Integration auf Institutionenwandel und neueKonturen des demokratischen Verfassungsstaates (Opladen: LeskeþBudrich, 2003), 71–89; Stefano Bar-tolini, Restructuring Europe: Centre Formation, System Building, and Political Structuring between theNation State and the European Union (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).


Democracy requires a demos—a community of citizens who identify withthe polity and all of its members, are willing to become engaged for it, andaccept personal concessions for the polity’s greater good. This is necessaryto enable political deliberation in a common public sphere, to aid theemergence of intermediary political structures such as parties and interestgroups, and to foster a sense of solidarity in the population that canlegitimate majority decisions and redistributive policies.

At the state level, such a demos developed in the interrelated processes ofdemocratization and nation building. Democratic nation states groundtheir demos in the nation, which constitutes the most important sourceof citizen solidarity and identity.

While a demos based on transnational foundations is not inconceivable,there is as of now little evidence that strong forms of solidarity and identityhave developed, or even can develop, beyond the state. As Offe argues withrespect to the EU, the core reason is that it “lacks the capacities which haveplayed a crucial role in the formation of the societies of nation states,namely the capacity to impose military conscription and action, to imposeeducational standards and curricular powers, and to directly extract taxesfrom (what only then would be) a ‘European people.”’13

We should note that in contrast to the first argument, the connectionbetween democracy and the state that is posited here is historical and notconceptual. This is why the second argument is independent of the first:Most proponents of the first argument have no problems accepting thesecond argument as well, but the reverse is not true. In fact, there areoptimistic versions of the republican position, by authors such as JürgenHabermas,14 which claim that if the EU acquired additional institutionalfeatures of statehood, such as fiscal autonomy and powers to implementsocial programs with immediate relevance for the citizens, it would becomemore visible in the population and a transnational demos and public spherewould develop. Still, the first and second arguments converge in concludingthat an EU with the existing non‐state features—little direct interactionbetween EU institutions and citizens, no popular legitimation of the EUconstitution and its division of competences, little grounding of EU in-stitutions in imagined communities—cannot be democratic in the full senseof the term.

In contrast to the first two arguments, the third argument used toestablish a linkage between democracy and the state relies not on a specificsubstantive understanding of democracy, but on the idea that democracy

13Offe, “European Society,” 73–74.14Jürgen Habermas, Time of Transitions (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006), 89–110.


has, over time, come to be associated with certain state‐based ideas andinstitutions. The problem, then, is not that non‐state entities cannot con-ceivably be democratized, but that their democratization would require achange in entrenched conceptions of democracy. Variants of this argumenthave been presented by authors such as Philippe Schmitter and MichaelGoodhart.15 Their reasoning is as follows:

The EU is a non‐state entity; in Schmitter’s language, it can best bedescribed as a “consortio” (an entity in which there is amultitude of distinctfunctional authorities, differing fromone policy domain to the next) or evena “condominio” (an entity in which not only functional, but also territorialconstituencies vary depending on the policy domain in question).

In such an entity, conceptions of democracy that assume a unified people,territory, and polity demarcated by the borders of the state are no longerappropriate. In order to democratize itself, the EU would have to come upwith new types of democratic citizen rights and decision‐making rules,which diverge from mechanisms used at the state level.

Existing theories of democracy have been devised for the state. Likewise, thecitizens’ democratic socialization has occurred in state contexts. This hasled to the dominance of state‐based understandings of democracy. Theseunderstandings of democracy, however, are at odds with the institutionsthat would work for democratizing the EU. In other words, mechanismsthat would be functionally appropriate to the EU risk not being recognizedas “democratic” by citizens and academic observers alike.

The relationship that this argument establishes between democracy andthe state is one of ideational path dependence. The EU, in Goodhart’swords, “is not the kind of thing that can be democratic on modern accountsof democracy.”16 Again, optimistic versions of the argument exist, mostprominently in contributions to deliberative democratic theory,17 whichinsist that new understandings of democracy can develop over time. Buteven these positions agree that unless conceptions of democracy change, orthe EU becomes a state, the idea of EU democracy is fraught with seriousinternal contradictions.

15Philippe C. Schmitter, How to Democratize the European Union … And Why Bother? (Lanham, MD:Rowman & Littlefield, 1999), especially 10–19; Michael Goodhart, “Europe’s Democratic Deficits throughthe Looking Glass: The European Union as a Challenge for Democracy,” Perspectives on Politics 5 (Septem-ber 2007): 567–584.16Goodhart, “Europe’s Democratic Deficits,” 575.17Erik O. Eriksen and John Erik Fossum, eds., Democracy in the European Union: Integration throughDeliberation? (London: Routledge, 2000); Erik O. Erikson, The Unfinished Democratization of Europe(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).


EU DEMOCRACY AND THE MEMBER STATESWhat the State‐centered Arguments MissAll of the arguments surveyed in the preceding section come to the conclu-sion that the non‐state character of the EU is a fundamental obstacle to itsdemocratization. Their weakness, however, is that they all fall victim towhat Kalypso Nicolaïdis has called the “tyranny of dichotomies” in debatesover European integration.18 In their ownway, each of the above argumentssets up a very clear‐cut distinction between state and EU (read: non‐state)contexts that overlooks how profoundly these are interwoven in the Euro-pean multilevel system.

For the first line of reasoning, the crucial dichotomy is between sovereignentities with Kompetenz‐Kompetenz (that is, states) and non‐sovereignentities without it (non‐states). This distinction is exaggerated in twoways.19 First, the argument mistakenly assumes that polities in whichthe democratic criterion of popular sovereignty is fully realized—meaningthat the citizens have legitimated the basic constitutional structure—are bynecessity also sovereign in the sense of possessing unlimited Kompetenz‐Kompetenz within the resulting constitutional system. This assumption isat the basis of the claim that the activation of EU citizens as democraticconstitution makers, for instance by requiring that a democratic constitu-tion of the EU be ratified in an EU‐wide referendum, would automaticallyput the EU on the slippery slope toward sovereign statehood. Yet even if weagree that in an EU democracy, EU citizens would have to act as pouvoirsconstituants, deciding about the initial division of powers between the EUand its member states, this tells us nothing about the pouvoirs constituésthat control shifts of powers within the resulting constitutional system. Inother words, an EU constitution passed by the citizens could well establishthe EUas a systemwith limited competences, whereKompetenz‐Kompetenzrests with the citizens of the member states, so that their democraticallyelected parliaments or governments would have to agree to any extension ofEU powers.

From the perspective of the sovereignty‐based argument, it might beobjected that what matters here is not so much the outcome of the consti-tutionalization process, but rather its agent: Even if democratic constitu-tionalizationmerely ratifies the existing division of powers, the fact that EUcitizens have acted in the processmeans that the role of pouvoir constituant

18Kalypso Nicolaïdis, “The New Constitution as European ‘Demoi‐cracy’?” Critical Review of InternationalSocial and Political Philosophy 7 (Spring 2004): 76–93.19Vivien Schmidt, Democracy in Europe: The EU and National Polities (Oxford: Oxford University Press,2006), 8–29.


has shifted to the European level, and ultimate sovereignty resides there.This line of reasoning, however, only accentuates a second problemwith theargument: its conception of omnipresent and indivisible sovereignty, whichassumes that in multilevel systems, one political level—and its citizenry—must ultimately reign supreme. One only needs to look to federal systems torealize that this is not the case. Within a federal constitution, Kompetenz‐Kompetenz is explicitly shared between the federation and its subunits, andunilateral changes in the allocation of powers between these levels are ruledout.20 Interpreted from the vantage point of democratic theory, we can saythat in such a system, the citizens of the federation and the citizens of thesubunits exercise sovereignty jointly, and this might entail activities both aspouvoir constituant and pouvoir constitué. Even Carl Schmitt, an authorwho surely cannot be accused of underestimating sovereignty and itspolitical and constitutional importance, acknowledged that in a federation,attempts to unequivocally place sovereignty at one political level are inap-propriate. “It is part of the character of a federation,” he wrote, “that thequestion of sovereignty between the federation and the subunits alwaysremains open, as long as the federation as such exists alongside the subunitsas such.”21 There is no reason why federal‐type arrangements should not bepossible in the interaction between the EU and its member states. If this isacknowledged as a possibility, the argument that democratization of theEU, which would give EU citizens a stronger constitutional role at theEuropean level, would somehow endanger democracy at the member‐statelevel can no longer be upheld.

A similar kind of dichotomous thinking is evident in the second line ofargument, which draws a distinction between entities that possess a demos(which have historically only been states), and entities that do not possessone (non‐states). There are two problems here: First, it is difficult—if notimpossible—to define precisely how strong a population’s common identi-ties and feelings of solidarity must be in order to turn it into a demos. Thisdoes not undermine the general idea that democracy presupposes somesense of belonging on the part of citizens. However, the no‐demos thesisprovides no measurable standards with which to assess whether the formsof belonging that have developed in the EU are really too weak to makedemocracy work. Empirical research shows that many EU citizens doidentify with Europe, even though national identities remain stronger

20In the EU, some first steps toward such a division of sovereignty have already been taken:Once thememberstates have delegated decision‐making powers to the EU, they have lost full Kompetenz‐Kompetenz, sinceclawing back the delegated powers would require unanimous agreement of all member states.21Carl Schmitt, Verfassungslehre (Munich: Duncker & Humblot, 1928), 373. Translation by the author.


and are more widely shared, and that a European public sphere is slowlydeveloping through linkages between national institutions and publics.22

The social infrastructure on which democracy relies is therefore notcompletely absent in the EU.

Whether this emergent EU demos is strong enough to sustain a form ofdemocracy that operates exclusively at the EU level is a moot point. Afterall, and this is the second issue that is overlooked in theno‐demos argument,the form of democracy that is taking shape in the EU is defined by the factthat it is operating at multiple levels. In this system, supranational demo-cratic procedures, which can be said to require a European demos, are onlyone of three core channels of democratic input.23 In addition to thischannel, citizen participation also occurs through domestic democraticprocesses in the member states, which rely on the national demoi andinfluence the EU’s intergovernmental procedures, and through transna-tional mechanisms such as interest group consultations, in which func-tionally defined sectoral demoi (for example, business owners, farmers,trade union members, environmentalists, etc.) can become active. It isdifficult to imagine a workable strategy for further democratization thatwould not build on the continued existence of these multiple democraticchannels. This structure implies, however, that EU democracy finds itssocial basis not in one demos, but in multiple demoi. The EU might hencebe more adequately described as a “demoi‐cracy” that is, in the words ofNicolaïdis, “predicated on the mutual recognition, confrontation, and evermore demanding sharing of our respective and separate identities—not ontheir merger.”24 This implies that there is no prospect for an EU state, butalso no need for the EU to become one, since its democracy will (have to) bebased on amuchweaker andmore heterogeneous conception of demos thanthat which developed at the nation‐state level.

This reasoning could be read as supporting the third position summari-zed above, which argues that the main problem in democratizing non‐stateentities lies in the fact that this democratization requires non‐standardinstitutional mechanisms which are difficult to legitimate based on

22Thomas Risse, A Community of Europeans? Transnational Identities and Public Spheres (Ithaca, NY:Cornell University Press, 2010).23Achim Hurrelmann and Joan DeBardeleben, “Democratic Dilemmas in EU Multilevel Governance:Untangling the Gordian Knot,” European Political Science Review 1 (July 2009): 229–247.24Nicolaïdis, “The New Constitution,” 84. On the concept of demoi‐cracy, see also Samantha Besson,“Deliberative Demoi‐cracy in the European Union: Towards the Deterritorialization of Democracy” inSamantha Besson and José Luis Martí, eds., Deliberative Democracy and its Discontents (Aldershot:Ashgate, 2006): 181–214; James Bohman, Democracy across Borders: From Dêmos to Dêmoi (Cambridge:MIT Press, 2007); Francis Cheneval and Frank Schimmelfennig, “The Case for Demoicracy in the EuropeanUnion” Journal of Common Market Studies 51 (March 2013): 334–350.


established democratic models. However, not one of the three existingdemocratic channels in the EU, if viewed by itself, consists of mechanismsthat are fundamentally at odds with state‐based democratic politics, and isunfamiliar to citizens socialized in this context. The same is true for almostall proposals that have beenmade for the EU’s further democratization. Thethird argument hence exaggerates the differences between state‐baseddemocratic mechanisms and those realized in, or appropriate for, the EUas a non‐state entity. It overlooks that, to a very significant extent, it is thestate that provides the conceptual basis—and legitimacy—for EU institu-tions and procedures.

This is most obvious in the intergovernmental channel of EU democracy.This channel, which operates through domestic democratic processes andthe cooperation of member‐state governments at the EU level, especially inthe Council, seeks to explicitly transfer the legitimacy of the member‐statesto the EU. We can call this a logic of derivation: The EU is democraticbecause—and as long as—it exercises its competences under the control ofnational democratic representatives; EU institutions hence derive theirlegitimacy from the democratic legitimacy of the member states. In thesupranational channel of EU democracy, a different type of legitimacyrelationship between the EU and the state is established. This one reliesnot on procedural derivation, but on a logic of analogy. The legitimacy ofsupranational democratic institutions, such as the European Parliament, isjustified by pointing out that they are structurally similar—or at leastfunctionally equivalent—to state‐level institutions. Here, it is preciselythe state‐like character of some EU institutions that is at the core of itslegitimacy, both as an anchor of existing public support and as a founda-tion‐stone to build on in making the EU more democratic. (This explainswhy proponents of a more supranational EU have sought to equip the EUwith additional state‐like imagery—flags, anthems, holidays, and the like.)

Neither the logic of derivation nor the logic of analogy necessarily resultsin positive assessments of the EU. First, both logics can be applied inarguments that see legitimacy deficits at the state level spill over into theEU realm, so that in effect the EU’s legitimacy is undermined. Second, thereis also the possibility of applying the logics in a negative way, criticizing thatrelationships of derivation or analogy between the EU and the memberstates are all too strong. This is evident, for example, in Eurosceptic warn-ings of an EU “superstate,” which are grounded in the impression that theEU has become excessively state‐like. For our purposes, it is not importantprecisely which legitimacy relationships between the EU and its memberstates are constructed in any particular context; what matters is that suchrelationships are regularly established when the EU’s legitimacy is at issue


in political or academic debates. This indicates that EU institutions can beevaluated from an explicitly state‐based reference point; the EU’s intergov-ernmental and supranational features are hence by no means unintelligiblefor observers accustomed to state‐based politics.

The same is true for the EU’s nascent institutions of transnationaldemocracy, which at present consist mainly of procedures for systematicconsultation with organized civil society in the process of drawing uplegislative initiatives.25 While these consultations, carried out primarilyby the European Commission, have been described as more systematicand more institutionalized than similar procedures at the member‐statelevel, the idea of lobbying by—and consultation of—major stakeholders isnothing that the citizens of the member states are unfamiliar with. Thesame can be said for proposals that have been made to further invigoratetransnational democracy, such as an extension and radicalization of thenew European Citizens’ Initiative.26 While mechanisms of direct democra-cy are used to various extents in different member states, their popularityhas grown significantly in recent decades, and it would be an exaggerationto argue that they are fundamentally at odds with established, state‐basedunderstandings of democracy.

This analysis casts doubt on the claim that state‐based criteria of de-mocracy are by their very nature “inadequate and inappropriate” for theEU,27 and/or that the democratization of the EU requires the invention ofnew institutions that differ from those used at the state level. What is more,even proposals that do suggest innovative institutions are sometimes justi-fied with reference to state‐based politics. The clearest evidence of this isprovided by Schmitter’s own ideas for making the EU more democratic,which include holding separate elections for the length of a representative’sterm of office, grantingmultiple votes to child‐rearing parents, or providingtax funding to semi‐public interest groups based on “citizen vouchers.” Theunderlying logic of these proposals, according to Schmitter, is that demo-cratic procedures at the EU level should be “as different as possible fromnational ones,”28 so that citizens perceive some democratic “value added”provided by the EU. This reasoning can be described as a logic of

25Justin Greenwood, Interest Representation in the European Union (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan,2007); Beate Kohler‐Koch and Christine Quittkat, De‐Mystification of Participatory Democracy: EUGovernance and Civil Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).26Yannis Papadopoulos, “Implementing (andRadicalizing) Art. I‐47.4 of the Constitution: Is the Addition ofSome (Semi‐)Direct Democracy to the Nascent Consociational European Federation just Swiss Folklore?”Journal of European Public Policy 12 (July 2005): 448–467.27Goodhart, “Europe’s Democratic Deficits,” 578.28Schmitter, How to Democratize the European Union, 42.


complementarity in which the EU is legitimate precisely because ithas political features, or achieves political results, that are absent in themember states. Like the logics of derivation and analogy, this logicgrounds the legitimacy of EU institutions in an explicit comparison withinstitutions at the state level. Despite his concerns that democratic proce-dures diverging from the state model would not be seen as legitimate,Schmitter’s own democratization strategy thus banks on the opposite effect,namely, that citizens would view unconventional procedures at the EU levelas a useful addition to the more conventional ones established in themember states.

Two conclusions can be drawn from these considerations. First, there isno convincing evidence that the EU’s non‐state character presents insur-mountable obstacles to its democratization. None of the arguments thatcan be constructed to claim that only states can be fully democratic with-stands scrutiny, at least when applied to the EU. One reason for this—andthis is the second conclusion—is that the EU is not usefully described asa case of “democracy beyond the state” in the first place. The EU andits member states are so intimately interwoven that the EU is betterdescribed as an emerging and incomplete “democracy with the state,” anentity that, while not itself a state, draws extensively on the state in itsconstitutional structure and democratic institutions, as well as legitimationpractices.

DEMOCRATIZING EU GOVERNANCEWhere the Real Challenge LiesThese conclusions bring up two further questions, pointing in differentanalytical directions. The first is of interest primarily to students of the EU:If it is not its non‐state character, what is the reason for the difficulties thatthe EU has experienced in its democratization? The second questionfocuses on the applicability of the above arguments beyond the EU: Arethey more restricted to the EU, or can they be applied to other casesconventionally discussed as “democracy beyond the state” as well? Thissection will focus on answering the first question, while the second questionwill be addressed in the concluding paragraphs.

As the preceding section has shown, the difficulties in democratizingthe EU are not due to the lack of channels for democratic input. TheEU presently has three main democratic channels—supranational, inter-governmental, and transnational—and all of them can, in principle, influ-ence the outcome of EU decision making. This multichannel structurereflects realities in European society, in which political problems (and theensuing policy responses) affect different subgroups of the population—all


Europeans, the citizens of specific member states, or functional subgroupsof the EU population—and in which the citizens possess variegated alle-giances to demoi of different encompassingness and at multiple politicallevels.

Why, then, does this system not currently provide the desired level ofdemocratic accountability? Two factors are of central importance here: thefirst has to do with the EU’s institutional design, the other with the peculiarways in which European integration has become politicized among EUcitizens. With respect to institutional design, the crucial problem lies in theinterconnection—or “coupling”—between the three channels of democraticinput.29 Such coupling is a regular feature in multilevel systems; it is oftenimpossible to determine in which channel of political input a problemshould be dealt with, either because a problem concerns multiple constit-uencies (or demoi) at the same time, or because there is an incongruencebetween the constituency affected by the problem and the demos thatcommands citizens’ loyalty, solidarity, and engagement. (The latter prob-lem has been evident in the Eurozone financial crisis. The crisis has shownthat while financial imbalances within and between the Euro states haveeffects on all Europeans, as well as on sectoral communities such as banks,most EU citizens consider fiscal policy an area that is appropriately decidedat the member‐state level, whereas the influence of the EU and sectoralpolicy communities is resented. In other words, the real‐world communityaffected by a problem and the imagined community that the citizens view asan appropriate decision maker are not identical.)

Whenever a political problem concerns more than one demos, demo-cratic multilevel systems have to make decisions in a way that engagesmultiple democratic channels, and then combines their input into one finaldecision. The democratic problems of the EU derive to a significant extentfrom the specific system it has devised to provide for such inter‐channellinkage. This system has been described as “loose coupling”;30 it is charac-terized by an informal and flexible cascade of consensus‐oriented negotia-tions between member‐state and EU politicians and bureaucrats.Contentious political issues in the EU go through multiple rounds ofbilateral and multilateral consultations between member states as well as“trilogues” involving representatives from the European Parliament, theCouncil, and the European Commission, in which mutually acceptable

29Hurrelmann and DeBardeleben, “Democratic Dilemmas,” 238–240.30Arthur Benz, “The European Union as a Loosely Coupled Multi‐level System” in Henrik Enderlein, SonjaWälti, and Michael Zürn, eds., Handbook on Multi‐level Governance (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2011),214–226.


solutions are hammered out. In contrast to systems of “tight coupling” inmany federations, which are characterized by more formalized conciliationprocedures (for instance between two legislative chambers), this systemprovides for relatively efficient policymaking. Its downside, however, lies inits elite‐centeredness and lack of transparency.31 It is precisely the infor-mality of the EU’s “loose coupling” that makes it difficult for the citizens tofollow what is going on, to participate in a meaningful way by exertingoutside pressure on the negotiations, and to hold decision makers toaccount after an agreement has been reached.

In other words, while the challenge of coupling of various democraticchannels exists in all multilevel systems,32 the problem with the institu-tional solution found in the EU is that it one‐sidedly privileges efficiencyover accountability, and elite negotiation over citizen participation. As aresult, the citizens’ democratic input—be it in the form of electoral partici-pation (at the European and national level) or through civil society—nevertranslates directly into specific political outputs. This problem is not rootedin the EU’s non‐state character; it could in principle be addressed institu-tionally by reforming the mechanisms of inter‐channel coupling. Proposalsfor such reforms have been widely discussed in the academic literature;most of them do not diverge radically from institutions of state‐baseddemocracy. They include disentangling, as far as this is possible, the com-petences of various EU institutions and political levels to reduce the needfor coupling in the first place,33 increasing the transparency of intergov-ernmental and inter‐institutional negotiations and providing formore parliamentary oversight,34 as well as introducing mechanismsof direct democracy as additional participation and accountabilitydevices.35

It is clear that all of these democratization measures would come at aprice of reduced effectiveness. This is why they tend to be viewed skepticallyby many politicians. It is less obvious, however, why there has not been amore pronounced “democracy movement” in the European citizenry

31Arthur Benz, “Compounded Representation in EU Multi‐Level Governance” in Beate Kohler‐Koch, ed.,Linking EU and National Governance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 82–110; Arthur Benz,“Policy‐Making andAccountability in EUMultilevel Governance” in Arthur Benz and Yannis Papadopoulos,eds., Governance and Democracy: Comparing National, European and Transnational Experiences (Lon-don: Routledge, 2006), 99–114.32Jennifer Smith, “Federalism and Democratic Accountability” in Joan DeBardeleben and Achim Hurrel-mann, eds.,Democratic Dilemmas of Multilevel Governance: Legitimacy, Representation and Accountabil-ity in the European Union (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 38–58.33Benz, “Policy‐Making and Accountability.”34Hix, What’s Wrong with the European Union.35Heidrun Abromeit, Democracy in Europe: Legitimising Politics in a Non‐State Polity (New York:Berghahn, 1998); Papadopoulos, “Implementing (and Radicalizing) Art. I‐47.4”.


pushing for such reforms. To understand this lack of societal pressure forinstitutional reform, we must examine the ways in which citizens engagepolitically with the EU. Research has shown that over the past decades, aremarkable “politicization” of European integration has occurred, meaningthat the EU has gained saliency in citizens’ political opinions and dis-courses.36 However, this politicization is shaped by the fact that citizens’knowledge about EU institutions and processes remains fragmentary.Citizen opinion and discourses about the EU are still relatively vagueand ill‐informed; they concern general issues such as the benefits and costsof membership or questions of enlargement much more than the EU’s day‐to‐day activities.

This pattern of “uninformed politicization” also influences how citizensdiscuss the question of democracy in the EU. In a series of focus groups thatmy research team recently conducted in four EU member states, themajority of participants complained quite vocally about a lack of democracyin the EU.37 However, they did not define this “democratic deficit” ininstitutional terms; what was expressed was rather a much more diffuse,yet also much more fundamental feeling of disenfranchisement, a sense ofbeing ruled by an organization about which one knows far too little andwhich appears remote and inaccessible. In this framing, it is by no meansself‐evident that institutional reform is a solution to the EU’s democraticproblems. In our focus groups, many of the participants who complainedabout the lack of democracy were also highly skeptical of proposals tobring about democratization, inasmuch as these proposals rely largely ontampering with the very same EU institutions that they viewed withsuspicion.

The result is a vicious circle: The perception of the EU as inaccessiblediscourages citizens from becoming more engaged, which in turn encour-ages EU‐level decision makers to stick to existing practices of “loose cou-pling,” which make the EU appear so inaccessible in the first place. Thedemocratic deficit of the EU, in other words, is institutionally derived, butits persistence can be explained by the attitudes and perceptions of Euro-pean citizens. This combination of problems is not rooted in the non‐statecharacter of the EU. The institutional sources of the democratic deficit lie inthe EU’s peculiar system of “loose coupling” between various democratic

36Liesbeth Hooghe and GaryMarks, “A Postfunctionalist Theory of European Integration: From PermissiveConsensus to Constraining Dissensus,” British Journal of Political Science 39 (January 2009): 1–23; Pieterde Wilde and Michael Zürn, “Can the Politicization of European Integration be Reversed?” Journal ofCommon Market Studies 50, Supplement S1 (March 2012): 137–153.37Achim Hurrelmann, Anna Gora, and Andrea Wagner, “The Politicization of European Integration: Morethan an Elite Affair?” Political Studies, Early View Publication, DOI: 10.1111/1467‐9248.12090 (2013).


channels; they are not an unavoidable consequence of the EU’s nature as asystem of divided sovereignty. The lack of citizen pressure for institutionaldemocratization reflects a lack of knowledge about the EU; it does notindicate that citizens do not consider the EU politically salient, do not formopinions about European affairs, or do not treat “Europe” as a meaningfulidentity category. Citizens’ lack of knowledge about European affairs,finally, is probably best explained as a legacy of neofunctionalist integrationstrategies, which for decades sought to actively demobilize citizens;38 it doesnot derive from the fact that the EU’s complex institutional system neces-sarily exceeds the cognitive capacities of citizens socialized in state‐baseddemocratic contexts.

Viewed in this light, democratization of the EU is not a matter ofturning a non‐state entity into a state, but ultimately one of institutionaldesign, coupled with explicit attempts at politically educating andmobilizing the citizens. It requires activities not only by EU institutions,but also by the member states, whose communication channels and edu-cational institutions are indispensable if Europeans are to become morecompetent multilevel citizens. This is of course much easier said thandone, especially given the fact that political leaders and elites at the EUand member‐state levels have a limited desire for more active andinformed citizen participation in EU politics. Still, we can conclude thatthe EU’s non‐state character implies no insurmountable obstacles todemocratization; more democracy in the EU is ultimately a question ofpolitical will.

DEMOCRACY AND THE STATEWhere Do We Go From Here?Based on the considerations presented so far, it is clear that there is nonecessary connection between the EU’s lack of statehood and its deficit indemocracy. While the EU has experienced significant problems in itsdemocratization, these problems can in principle be overcome withoutturning the EU into a state. The question that remains is whether thesefindings are peculiar to the EU as a system of (incomplete and/or emerging)“democracywith the state,” orwhether they can be generalized to other non‐state constellations, such as international organizations more generally,transnational networks, or perhaps even private actors such as multina-tional business corporations.

38Giandomenico Majone, Dilemmas of European Integration: The Ambiguities and Pitfalls of Integrationby Stealth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).


Two arguments are relevant for answering this question. On the onehand, the peculiarities of the EU construction, if compared to other in-stitutions involved in global governance, should not be underestimated. Anumber of specific features of the EU system make it an unusually fertileground for the transfer of hitherto state‐based democratic ideas and in-stitutions. These features include the strong role of the member states andtheir democratic institutions in governance at the EU level, the sophisti-cated—and in many respects state‐like—supranational architecture of theEU, the (gradual) emergence of European identities in the population, aswell as the density of transnational connections across member states. Allthese features make it particularly likely that legitimacy relationships be-tween EU governance and democratic practices at themember‐state level—constructed according to the logics of derivation, analogy, and possiblycomplementarity—can be established.

On the other hand, at least some of the arguments made in this articledo not apply to the EU alone. Most importantly, the insights thatdemocracy is not conceptually tied to polities that possess unlimitedsovereignty and that it can, with appropriate institutional design, alsobe realized in entities whose demos is less cohesive than that of the nation,are certainly valuable for other non‐state entities in global politics. Thesame is true for the observation that political institutions and practices inentities seemingly “beyond the state” are often neither completely dis-joined from the state nor unintelligible for citizens accustomed to state‐based politics. Even outside of the EU, internationalization processesinvolve mostly a “diffusion” of governance responsibilities rather than anoutright shift of responsibilities away from the state.39 As a result, manyactivities that used to be monopolized by the state are now exercisedjointly by the state and various international actors, but states retain acrucial role in the process, and often shape the policies of internationalactors from the inside. There are, in other words, fewer instances ofgovernance that is truly “beyond the state” than is often assumed. Theanalysis above demonstrates that this reduces the conceptual and practi-cal difficulties of transferring democratic institutions first established atthe state level.

All of this does not imply that the democratization of world politics iseasy. Even in the EU, with its relatively favorable context, the level ofdemocratization that could thus far be achieved remains insufficient. Theexperience of the EU suggests that the democratization of global governance

39Achim Hurrelmann, Stephan Leibfried, Kerstin Martens, and Peter Mayer, eds., Transforming theGolden‐Age Nation State (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).


presupposes not only the right kind of institutional design—onethat combines the unavoidable elite negotiations with explicitaccountability devices—but also requires the education and mobilizationof the citizens. This is an ambitious objective. The claim that democracypresupposes a state, however, erects artificial barriers that make a difficulttask appear impossible.


Managing Group Interests in China

YONGSHUN CAI

MONOPOLISTIC INDUSTRIES IN CHINA have been criticized heavilyin recent years for their unrestrained pursuit of interests at the expense ofthe public or other parties.1 Such criticisms are not unfounded, as exempli-fied by the Chinese oil industry. In China, the China National PetroleumCorporation and the China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation, togetherwith the China National Offshore Oil Corporation, have monopolized theoil supply in the country.2 In 2006, China had approximately 660 privatelyowned oil wholesale enterprises and 45,060 privately owned gas stations.However, by early 2008, two thirds of the wholesale enterprises and onethird of the gas stations were closed, and another 10,000 gas stations lostmoney. This situationwas a result of amonopoly of the oil industry by state‐owned companies. When oil prices were high, the China National Petro-leum Corporation and China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation refusedto provide oil to privately owned companies. The national governmentagencies repeatedly urged the two companies to provide oil to privatebusinesses. The premier and vice premiers also gave 14 instructions torequire them to provide oil. But all of these were largely ignored by thetwo companies.3

YONGSHUN CAI is professor of social science in the Division of Social Science at the HongKong University of Science and Technology. He is the author of Collective Resistance inChina: Why Popular Protests Succeed or Fail.

1See, for example, Li Yiping, “Woguo de longduan hangye yijing xingcheng le yige shixi de liyiqunti”(Monopolistic industries in our country have become hereditary interest groups), Jingji cankao bao,18 August 2010.2China National Offshore Oil Cooperation has a relatively small share in the retail market.3Luo Yi, “Liangnian daobi sanfen zhi’er, minying youqi quyi paihuai” (Two thirds were closed within twoyears; privately‐owned oil companies are uncertain about their operation), Ershiyi shiji jingji baodao,13 October 2008.


This incident is not an isolated one. Pei has documented the similarbehavior of other industries that enjoy market monopoly in China. Theexistence of monopolistic industries can be attributed to the fact that “theintroduction of new entrants, even state‐affiliated, would likely producean organizational shock to the existing patronage system and threatenthe CCP’s ability to allocate critical resources.”4 In post‐communistcountries, some temporary winners of the reform are found to be animportant force in resisting further reforms. “Instead of forming aconstituency in support of advancing reforms, short‐term winnershave often sought to stall the economy in a partial reform equilibrium[italics original] that generates concentrated rents for themselves, whileimposing high costs on the rest of the society.”5 Similarly, monopolisticindustries and their patrons are at least partly responsible for “China’strapped transition.”6

The practices of these powerful groups in China seem to suggest that theregime is not different from other non‐democracies that can be “simply therule of the rich.”7 But this is only part of the story, because the Chinesegovernment has also accommodated the interests of weak groups, such asfarmers and workers. In 2004, the Chinese central government decided toabolish the agricultural tax within five years to alleviate farmers’ financialburdens. This goal was achieved earlier than anticipated, in 2006, bringingan end to land‐based taxation in rural China that had been in place forthousands of years. In the long history of China, rulers or emperors wouldoccasionally grant temporary tax breaks to farmers, but taxes would beeventually re‐instituted. The 2004move of the central government was nota temporary measure; the abolition was legalized by the National People’sCongress.

An examination of the political rationale behind the state’s efforts inaccommodating the interests of the weak is important to understandingstate–citizen relations and the resilience of China’s regime.8 China appearsto be a puzzling case. Despite its many problems, including rampantcorruption, rising inequality, and the slow pace or lack of substantialpolitical reform, the regime still enjoys a rather high level of political trust

4Minxin Pei, China’s Trapped Transition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 121.5Joel Hellman, “Winners Take All: The Politics of Partial Reform in Post‐communist Transitions,” WorldPolitics 50 (January 1998): 203–234.6Pei, China’s Trapped Transition, 96–131.7Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (New York:Cambridge University Press, 2006), 119.8See, for example, Andrew Nathan, “Authoritarian Resilience,” Journal of Democracy 14 (January 2003):6–17; Minxin Pei, “Is CCP Rule Fragile or Resilient,” Journal of Democracy 23 (January 2012): 27–41.


among its population.9 Such trust implies that the people still see theregime as acceptable. One reason is that some people have benefitedfrom the system while others believe that the system accommodates theirbasic needs.10 Moreover, if the system allows the people to pursue theirinterests, they may accept the system and tolerate some of the problems.MartinWhyte finds that inequality does not seem to have bred strong angeramong the Chinese population. He concludes that “convincing Chinesecitizens that the current social order is fair may depend more on suchmeasures as improving the legal system and giving ordinary citizens op-portunities to influence the people and policies that govern their lives thanit does on government redistributions from the rich to the poor or reductionof the national Gini coefficient”11 [i.e. income gap].

This article explains how the political system creates political space forpolitical participation by focusing on the ways in which social groups,whether organized or not, pursue interests in China. With resourceful orpowerful groups better positioned to pursue their interests, how can weakgroups have their problems addressed? Or, what determines the power of agroup in pursuing group‐specific interests? This article shows that bothpowerful and weak groups are able to pursue their interests in Chinabecause they have access to different sources of power or leverage. Theability of social groups to pursue group‐specific interests is determined notonly by their connections to the policymaking body but also by their non‐institutionalized power and, more importantly, by the state’s policy priori-ties. The presence of different sources of power expands the space forpolitical participation in China. When disadvantaged groups have oppor-tunities to pursue their interests, the regime’s legitimacy, and consequentlyits resilience, can be enhanced.12

9TeresaWright, Accepting Authoritarianism: State‐Society Relations in China’s Reform Era (Stanford, CA:Stanford University Press, 2010), 13–19; Zhengxu Wang, Russell Dalton, and Doh Chull Shin, “PoliticalTrust, Political Performance, and Support for Democracy” in Russell Dalton and Doh Chull Shin, eds.,Citizens, Democracy, and Markets around the Pacific Rim: Congruence Theory and Political Culture (NewYork: Oxford University Press, 2006), 135–155; Wengfang Tang, Public Opinion and Political Trust inChina (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005), 55–78; Zhengxu Wang, “Before the Emergence ofCritical Citizens: Economic and Political Trust in China,” International Review of Sociology 15 (March2005): 155–171; Jie Chen, Popular Political Support in Urban China (Stanford, CA: Stanford UniversityPress, 2004), 21–53.10Wright, Accepting Authoritarianism, 162–164.11Martin Whyte, Myth of the Social Volcano: Perceptions of Inequality and Distributive Injustice inContemporary China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010), 198.12David Easton, A Systems Analysis of Political Life (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1979),281–288.

GROUP INTERESTS IN CHINA | 109

SEEKING GROUP INTERESTS IN NON-DEMOCRACIESIn democracies like the United States, the political structure enables po-tential interest groups to come forward and represent interests. The essenceof politics lies in the controversy and conflict derived from activities ofinterest groups. Thus, diversity of interests is recognized and accommodat-ed in policymaking. Decision making sometimes involves competitionamong different groups. Pluralism due to interest groups’ representationserves as the “balance wheel” in the political system.13 Problems of theinterest group approach notwithstanding (for example, the pluralist–elitistdebate), the “group basis of politics” remains a useful tool in analyzing thepolitical process.14

Authoritarian regimes are also subjected to conflicting interests of thedifferent organized and unorganized groups. For example, a number ofstudies suggest that communist regimes are not monolithic. Instead, com-munist regimes are a “conglomeration of interests,”15 and groups are con-sidered inevitable in communist regimes. Each group has its own values andinterests, as well as its own sharp internal differences, and all are undeni-ably involved in conflict with other groups. Therefore, “[t]here can be nodoubt that Communist society, in spite of itsmonolithic appearance and theclaims of homogeneity made by its supporters, is, in fact, as complex andstratified as any other.”16

In the former Soviet Union, for instance, the Party was regarded as anarena in which various elites made their demands known to one another,articulated their special interests, and imposed theirdesires as theunifiedwillof the entire society. Hence, Ploss suggests in his discussion of policymakingin the former Soviet Union that there is “a genuinely oligarchic procedure forpolicymaking and its most outstanding feature is conflict.”17 As VernonAspaturianalsowrites, “Thedecisionmakersmust give greater considerationin the calculation of policy to factors affecting the internal stability of theregime. They will show greater sensitivity to the effects of decisions on thevested interests of the various elites in [the] Soviet Union.”18

13See, for example, David Truman,Governmental Process: Political Interests and Public Opinion (Westport,CT: Greenwood Press, 1981), 322–355.14Daniel Tichenor and Richard Harris, “The Development of Interest Group Politics in America: Beyond theConceits of Modern Times,” Annual Review of Political Science 8 (June 2005): 251–270.15See Gordon Skilling, “Interest Groups and Communist Politics,” World Politics 18 (October 1966): 435–451.16Ibid., 443.17Sidney Bloss, Conflict and Decision‐Making in Soviet Russia: A Case Study of Agricultural Policy(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965), 283.18Vernon Aspaturian, “Soviet Politics” in Roy Macridis, ed., Modern Political Systems: Europe (EnglewoodCliffs, NJ: Prentice‐Hall, Inc., 1987, 6th ed.): 373–460.


As far as the power of the groups in authoritarian regimes is concerned,much discussion has been focused on the mutual dependence relationshipbetween the government and a particular group. Such mutual dependenceinvolves an exchange relationship that has elements of patrimonialism. Theessential feature of patrimonial regimes is that key figures in the govern-ment and certain actors in society exchange resources in return for eco-nomic or political support.19 This relationship affects government behavior.According to Thomas Pepinsky, in authoritarian regimes, supporters aregroups that benefit from existing policies, favor the reproduction of thepolitical and allocation regime, and voluntarily bestow upon political lead-ers financial, coercive, and/or ideological resources. The support coalitionsof authoritarian regimes have a direct and significant influence on thegovernment’s policy choices.20

Similarly, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson stress that non‐de-mocracy can be “simply the rule of the rich” generally because the rich havemore recourse and political clout in rule making, thus forming “a closeassociation between what nondemocratic regimes do and what the richwant.”21 Resourceful groups seem to be powerful in most societies. JeffryFrieden finds that the inability of dictatorships in Brazil and Argentina tomeet the demands from powerful groups in the business communitybecame a crucial catalyst that led to these countries’ downfall.22 In theformer Soviet Union, the Party was also more supportive of certain groups:“The social groups in soviet society perceive their interests differently andthe communist party articulates the will and interests of the people inaccordance with rigid hierarchical priorities, with the power elite and eliteintelligentsia at the top and the collective–farm peasantry at the bottom.”23

Mutual dependence or an exchange relationship can explain why aparticular resourceful group may receive strong support or protectionfrom the government. However, approaches based on an exchange rela-tionship cannot explain why some groups that lack political and economicresources are able to successfully pursue their interests or obtain policybenefits. Explanations stressing the exchange relationship do not pay ade-quate attention to the state’s autonomy. An autonomous state has an

19Robin Theobald, “Patrimonialism,” World Politics 34 (July 1982): 548–559.20Thomas Pepinsky, “Capital Mobility and Coalitional Politics: Authoritarian Regimes and EconomicAdjustment in Southeast Asia,” World Politics 60 (April 2008): 438–474.21Acemoglu and Robinson, Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, 119.22Jeffry Frieden, Debt, Development, and Democracy: Modern Political Economy and Latin America,1965–1985 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 255.23Aspaturian, “Soviet Politics,” 446.


independent agenda consisting of policy priorities that are not controlled bypowerful groups.

GROUP POWER IN CHINAIn China, conflicting interests among different groups have become com-mon, although some groups may be unorganized. Terms such as “interestgroups” or “special interest groups” have been used frequently to describehow certain powerful groups pursue their interests at the expense of otherparties or the public.24 The media’s use of the terms “interest groups” and“special interest groups” often explicitly or implicitly distinguishes the saidgroups from other groups that lack organizational networks, politicalconnections, and resources. Group interest is a useful analytical tool inunderstanding Chinese politics because government policies influencepeople as a group. For instance, agricultural policies tend to influencefarmers as a whole. Social groups in China can be based on occupation (forexample, occupational groups), type of business, or shared concerns orinterests.25

As elsewhere, the power of a social group in China is determined by itsinfluence in policymaking. Despite the non‐democratic system in China,consensus building remains an important characteristic in decision mak-ing. Earlier research suggests that “fragmented authoritarianism” is animportant mode of decision making in China, which means pertinentparties are involved in the process, and bargaining and compromise becomenormal.26 But “fragmented authoritarianism” has not captured the impactof new social changes on the decision‐making process. New social changesin China require an understanding of the policy‐making process by exam-ining the interactive dynamics between decisionmakers and external actorsin areas that directly affect the latter’s interests.

In a new social environment, the political process in China has becomemore inclusive and flexible, although the inclusiveness and flexibility re-main conditional and contingent on issues. As Andrew Mertha suggests,

24Yang Fan and Lu Zhoulai, “Zhongguo de ‘teshu liyijituan’ ruhe yingxiang difang zhengfu juece: yifangdichan liyi jituan weili” (How China’s special interest groups influence the decision making of localgovernments: The case of the group of housing developers), Guanli shijie (The Field of Management) 6(December 2010): 65–73.25Pei, China’s Trapped Transition; Scott Kennedy, The Business of Lobbying in China (Cambridge, MA:HarvardUniversity Press, 2005);DavidGoodman, ed.,Groups andPolitics in the People’s Republic of China(Armonk, NY: M.E Sharpe, 1984).26Kenneth Lieberthal and Michel Oksenberg, Policy Making in China: Leaders, Structures, and Processes(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), 4; For a critique, see Andrew Mertha, “‘FragmentedAuthoritarianism 2.0’: Political Pluralization in the Chinese Policy Process,” China Quarterly 200 (Decem-ber 2009): 995–1012.


in China, the political process “has become somewhat less authoritarian: ithas seen the sphere of political conflict increase, allowing actors hithertorelegated to being passive recipients of policy outputs to become influentialplayers within the policy process.”27 Therefore, new social changes havebrought new actors into the decision‐making process, as exemplified by thelobbying activities of businesses.28 Specifically, social demands have be-come important sources not only of policy input but also of pressure on stateauthorities or policymakers.29 However, not all groups benefit equally fromthe opening of political space or inclusiveness, and some groups are betterpositioned than others in terms of interaction with state authorities.

On the other hand, although the state authority feels the need or pressureto make the decision‐making process inclusive and flexible, it still assumessignificant autonomy. An autonomous state has its own policy agenda andpriorities. The state’s policy priorities dictate its propensity to accept orreject certain proposals. Its policy priorities also explain why even non‐political changes are sometimes difficult to introduce and why certainactors feel powerless in seeking policy adjustment. But policy prioritiesalso help explain why the state sometimes grants policy benefits to politi-cally weak groups. The state’s autonomy implies that the degree of inclu-siveness in policymaking varies across issues, with some decisions moreexclusively made than others. Hence, the state’s inclusiveness and flexibilityin policymaking are not flabby, but conditional.

Based on these considerations, this article suggests three sets of factorsthat significantly influence group power: the group’s connections withthe decision‐making body, its ability to generate non‐institutionalizedpressure on the state authority, and the state’s policy priorities. A group’sconnections with policy‐making authorities indicate its institutionalizedaccess to the state authority. The non‐institutionalized power of a groupis manifested through the external pressure that it wields when pursuingits interests. This article pays more attention to the state’s policy priori-ties because these priorities determine the cost of policy adjustment. Bystressing the state’s policy priorities, this approach can help in under-standing why certain powerful groups fail to protect their privileges andwhy other weak and unorganized groups may successfully pursue theirinterests.

27Andrew Mertha, China’s Water Warriors: Citizen Action and Policy Change (Ithaca, NY: CornellUniversity Press, 2008), 5–6.28Guosheng Deng and Scott Kennedy, “Big Business and Industry Association Lobbying in China: TheParadox of Contrasting Styles,” China Journal 63 (January 2010): 101–125.29Mertha, China’s Water Warriors, 1–26.


Connections with the Decision‐making BodyThemost effective way to protect the interests of a group is tomove its issuesinto the agenda and draft policies favorable to this group, or to excludecertain issues from the agenda and prevent the making of unfavorablepolicies. In China and elsewhere, having patrons, representatives, or agentsin the decision‐making body helps a group influence policymaking.Agenda‐setting and policy content can be directly influenced by the pres-ence of such supporters. Some groups have strong links to decision‐makingbodies because they are historically well‐connected to state authorities orbecause they control strategically important resources, thus gaining patronsin the government.

Not many groups have such patrons or representatives in decision‐making bodies. However, a groupmay still have a relatively strong influenceif it has allies or sympathetic supporters in the policymaking body. Ifdecision makers share the same policy preferences or hold interests thatare aligned with a certain group, then there can be a coalition between thedecisionmakers and that group.30Decisionmakersmay also be sympatheticto a group’s demands and lend support to these, especially when doing sowill not harm the decision makers’ interests. A group’s influence is affectednot only by the number of its supporters in the decision‐making body butalso by the preference of the players who assume key positions in the body.

It is now common for groups to influence policymaking through existingor newly established connections with the decision‐making authority. Forexample, lobbying has become common in China, especially in the businesssector. As regulations and laws have become determinants of industry, “alltypes of companies—state‐owned and private, Chinese and foreign—havebecome active in every stage of the policy process, from setting the agenda toidentifying policy options and shaping regulatory implementation.”31How-ever,without pre‐existing connectionswith thedecision‐makingbody, thesecompanies or groupsmay encounter serious difficulty. Scott Kennedy showsthat Chinese decision‐making authorities prefer to accommodate the inter-ests of large businesses over small ones: “While small firms are occasionallyaided by associations, one economic factor, in particular, size, has decisivelyshaped companies’ relative ability to influence public policy.”32 In otherwords, small firms face more difficulties than do large firms in pursuingtheir interests, despite their associations with the policymaking body.

30Tianjian Shi, “Village Committee Elections in China: Institutionalist Tactics for Democracy,” WorldPolitics 51 (April 1999): 385–412.31Deng and Kennedy, “Big Business and Industry Association Lobbying in China,” 101.32Kennedy, The Business of Lobbying in China, 173–174.


Non‐institutionalized PowerA second factor affecting a group’s ability to pursue its interests is the non‐institutionalized pressure it can exert on the government. Strong non‐institutionalized pressure can move a group’s issue into the government’sagenda or render this as an ad hoc priority requiring urgent action. Thestrength of this pressure depends on the group’s ability to disrupt social,economic, or even political order in the society. Frances Piven and RichardCloward suggest that the power of the poor lies in their ability to createinstitutional disruptions that threaten social or economic operations.33

Strikes, noncooperation, and social protests or social movements can gen-erate such pressure. Social movements are “an important source of counter-vailing group power” in democracies “when movement espouses goals thatattract large segments of the middle class.”34 Social protests can also causenon‐negligible pressure on authoritarian governments. Acemoglu andRobinson suggest that non‐democracies face “revolution constraints”:“an important issue in nondemocracies is to ensure that no group isunhappy enough to attempt to overthrow the regime or take other politicalor economic actions detrimental to the utility of the group in power.”35 InChina, popular contention has contributed to policy implementation andpolicy adjustment,36 also leading the party‐state to view “building a har-monious society” as a top priority.

Another form of non‐institutionalized pressure is public opinion. Evenan authoritarian state needs to pay attention to public opinion in order toprotect its legitimacy and to have a better chance of surviving crises.37

Strong support from the public strengthens a group’s bargaining power. Inother communist systems, the development of public opinion favorable to“the general interest” is considered the major safeguard of a correct distinc-tion between “lawful” and “selfish” group interests.38 The proliferation ofmedia agencies and the availability of new information technologies havecreated unprecedented opportunities for Chinese citizens to receive

33Frances Piven and Richard Cloward, Poor People’s Movement: Why They Succeed, How They Fail (NewYork: Vintage Books, 1977), 91.34AndrewMcFarland, “Interest Groups and the Policy Making Process: Sources of Countervailing Power inAmerica,” in Mark Petracca, ed., The Politics of Interests: Interest Groups Transformed (Boulder, CO:Westview Press, 1992): 58–79.35Acemoglu and Robinson, Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, 118.36Kevin O’Brien and Lianjiang Li, Rightful Resistance in Rural China (New York: Cambridge UniversityPress, 2006), 99–102; Yongshun Cai, Collective Resistance in China: Why popular protests succeed or fail(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010), 155–183.37Steven Saxonberg, The Fall: A Comparative Study of the End of Communism in Czechoslovakia, EastGermany, Hungary and Poland (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic, 2001), 147.38Skilling, “Interest Groups and Communist Politics,” 444.


information and exchange views.Media is perhaps themost powerful socialforce in China today.39

Group Interests in Relation to Policy PrioritiesAs Theda Skocpol suggests, the state is not merely an arena in whichconflicts over social and economic interests are battled. Instead, the statecan be considered an autonomous structure, that is, “a structure with logicand interests of its own that are not necessarily equivalent to, or fused with,the interests of the dominant class in society or the full set of membergroups in the polity.”40 Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyn Stephens, and JohnStephens also suggest that the structure, strength, and autonomy of thestate apparatus and its interrelations with civil society, as well as the effectof transnational power relations, can influence both the balance of classpower and state–society relations.41

An important implication of the state’s autonomy is that the stateauthority has its own agenda or policy priorities that can be differentfrom the needs of powerful groups or free from the control of any socialgroup. The state’s policy priorities have a significant effect on a group’spursuit of its interests. The lack of changes in policy priorities may benefitcertain groups that have enjoyed the status quo. However, when policypriorities are challenged or when new priorities arise, changes in thegovernment’s issue agenda will occur. Thus, opportunities may arise forgroups that have been disadvantaged by former policies. If the demands ofdisadvantaged groups are positively connected to the new agenda or tonew policy priorities, their interests are likely to be accommodated. Thestate’s autonomy also indicates that if powerful groups threaten thepolitical or economic foundations of the state, the choice for the statebecomes easy: to prevent the threat from occurring and to curb theinfluence of these groups.

The state’s policy priorities are especially important in understandinghow weak actors pursue their interests in nondemocracies, in which theylack institutionalized channels, such as elections, to voice their grouppreferences. Moreover, these groups are politically weak precisely becausethey often lack strong supporters or allies in the decision‐making circle.

39Guobin Yang, The Power of the Internet in China (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 28–46;Yongnian Zheng, Technological Empowerment: The Internet, State, and Society in China (Stanford, CA:Stanford University Press, 2008), 135–165.40Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 27.41Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyn Stephens, and John Stephens, Capitalist Development and Democracy(Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 5.


Therefore, a shift in the state’s policy priorities may create opportunities forthese groups.

Given their varied connections with the state authority responsible forpolicymaking, groups exhibit different behavioral patterns. Groups that arebetter connected to state authorities tend to use and expand their con-nections to move their issues into the government’s agenda and influencepolicymaking. These groups may also strengthen their influence by advo-cating their policy preferences through the media. Such examples includehousing developers using the media to justify high housing prices. Butdisruptive action is normally not their choice. In contrast, groups that arenot well connected to the state authority will need to establish connectionsor resort to non‐institutionalized power. Disorganized groups have to relymore on non‐institutionalized power. Both weak and powerful groups canincrease their bargaining power if their issues are connected to statepriorities in a positive way, and vice versa.

These different sources of power shed light on the politics of policy-making and group activities in China. The privileges of certain groups,such as in monopolized industries, can be retained for a long timebecause of their strong links to policymakers. Vetoing proposals thatthreaten these privileges is relatively easy for their patrons or theirsupporters in policymaking bodies. Precisely because of the veto pointsin consensus building, weak groups face difficulties in competing againstpowerful groups. When weak groups do obtain favorable policies, it isoften because their needs happen to match the state’s policy priorities,sometimes in addition to having the support of their allies in the gov-ernment and in society.

GROUP POWER AND GROUP INTERESTS: EMPIRICAL CASESThis section presents two cases to demonstrate how groups of differentinstitutionalized power pursue interests in China. The first case is theNational Grid Company’s manipulation of the national policy. This caseshows how a well‐positioned group may abuse its power in the decision‐making body, creating policies at the expense of other groups that lackdirect influence. An explanation for choosing this case is necessary. Groups’pursuit of interests does not necessarily result in zero‐sum games betweenthese groups and other parties. In some democracies like the United States,the competition among interest groups can aid policymaking.42 In China,the lobbying of social groups may bring positive benefits to both

42See, for example, McFarland, “Interest Groups and the Policymaking Process.”.


policymaking and public interests.43 However, addressing how group ac-tivities may improve policymaking is not the aim of this article. Instead, ittries to examine how resourceful groups and weak groups pursue theirgroup‐specific interests. This state company is selected because it illustrateshow groups with strong connections exercise their influence in policymak-ing. In addition, a policy change that benefits the general public (forexample, revision of certain laws) may result from the joint efforts ofdifferent parties, and assessing the role played by a particular group maybe difficult. Hence, examining a group’s pursuit of its group‐specific inter-ests can better reveal its influence on the policymaking process.

The second case concerns the abolition of peasants’ financial burdens,revealing the difficulties and the opportunities faced by a weak group inpursuing its interests. Existing reports and research have shown the im-portance of non‐institutionalized power, such as media coverage and pop-ular contention, in helpingweak groups pursue their interests in China. Theabolition of the custody and repatriation system in cities had much to dowith the media’s intensive coverage of the death of Sun Zhigang.44 Simi-larly, the central government’s revision of the housing demolition policy inthe early 2000s was partly caused by the widespread grievances and resis-tance of homeowners and the media’s wide coverage of several suicide casesof homeowners. The government’s efforts to hasten the establishment ofwelfare schemes in urban areas from the late 1990s to the early 2000 aredirectly linked to the widespread protests by laid‐off workers and unpaidretirees.45 But how weak groups without sufficient non‐institutionalizedpower are able to pursue their interests remains to be explored. Thus, thiscase is selected to show how the combination of conditions is sometimesrequired by these groups to advance their interests.

In the Name of the Government: The Case of the National Grid CompanyThe case of theNational Electricity Corporation (NEC) achievingmonopolyindicates the degree to which certain powerful groups can gain advantagesthrough their connections with the decision‐making body. Before 1998,there were two grid systems that provided electricity to the Chinese coun-tryside. One was managed by the NEC, which was reorganized in 2002,and the other was built andmanaged by local governments. By 1998, China

43Deng and Kennedy, “Big Business and Industry Association Lobbying in China,” 123.44Meng Bo, “Liu wen shourong zhidu” (Six questions about the refugee camp system), Nanfang dushi bao,27 May 2003; Min Jiaqiao, “Yi gongmin de zitai tingshen erchu” (To fight as citizens), Nanfang zhoumo,22 May 2003.45Cai, Collective Resistance in China, 158–170.


had over 2,400 county‐level electricity bureaus or firms responsible forproviding electricity to the countryside. In one third of these counties, thecentral government mainly owned the properties of the electricity enter-prises. In the remaining two thirds, local governments and other localparties owned the properties. However, as acknowledged by a senior spe-cialist involved in the subsequent remodeling project, the coexistence of thetwo systems was not what the NEC wanted. Rather, it wanted amonopoly.46

In June 1998, the central government began to remodel the rural gridto provide electricity to most peasants in the country. However, remodel-ing the rural grid was a process in which the NEC achieved monopoly bysacrificing the interests of local governments, local firms, and other localparties. During the 1990s, the NEC lobbied the central governmentagencies and central leaders to launch this remodeling project by arguingthat it would bring many benefits to the country and its rural residents.The NEC’s lobbying was considered to contribute to the central govern-ment’s decision to start the project. More importantly, the leader of theNEC became one of the leaders of the national leading group of the gridremodeling project.

The NEC leader who was part of the decision‐making body played animportant role in shaping policy content. Membership in the leadershipgroup enabled the company to pursue its interests in the name of accom-plishing the central government’s policy goal. An important policy thatallowed the NEC to overcome resistant local governments was the so‐called“one province, one debtor,” indicating that in a province where the NECprovided the bulk of the electricity, only the NEC provincial branch couldlegally obtain bank loans for the remodeling project. Owing to the strongopposition and the appeal made by several provinces and cities, an excep-tion to the policy was allowed in certain provinces. Thus, in provinces wheretwo systems coexisted, both the NEC branch and the provincial‐level gridcompany could obtain bank loans.

However, this policy amendment did not sufficiently counteract theNEC’s ambitious plan. With so many bank loans under its control, theNEC proposed a “reform of ownership first, remodeling second” policymeant to strip assets from local governments. Given that the remodelingproject was a political responsibility for local governments, most localgovernments hoped to obtain loans from the NEC and finish the

46Cheng Bizhong, “Guozihao gongsi de yangmou yu hongli” (The strategy and extra dividends of a state‐owned enterprise), Nanfengchuang (South reviews) 1 (January 2006): 40–43.


remodeling to fulfill this responsibility. Against this background, the NECbranches took advantage of the local governments’weak position and beganto control local property through various means, including undervaluation,fake investment, accumulation of shares of local property, andmanagementof local property on behalf of local governments.

In 2002, the NEC was broken up into five power‐generation groupcompanies and two grid companies: the State Grid Corporation of Chinaand the China Southern Power Grid. The China Southern Power Grid’sbusiness district covered five provinces,47 and the rest of China was allottedto the State Grid Corporation of China. By 2003, the remodeling of therural grid was almost complete, with the two national companies gainingcontrol over local enterprises at the great expense of local governments andother local parties.

By 2006, approximately 1,200 of about 3,210 county‐ or city‐levelelectricity supply companies (37 percent) belonged either to the StateGrid Corporation of China or the China Southern Power Grid, and 1,353(or 42 percent) were either directly managed by these two companies orcontrolled through shareholding. Only 20.6 percent remained under thecontrol of local governments or other local parties.48 Therefore, the gridremodeling project enabled these two companies to expand their controlfrom one third to about 80 percent of the local electricity enterprises. Notsurprisingly, local governments and local companies suffered tremendouslosses.49 Some local electricity plants became unprofitable after losing theirlocal grid system and being forced to use the grid system of—and submit tothe pricing dictated by—the two companies.

To some extent, the remodeling project hijacked the central government.Investment in the project eventually exceeded 300 billion yuan, despite theinitial budget being set to 190 billion. Across the country, employees of thetwo companies benefited from the project. Their welfare improved dramat-ically, and many held property shares, some of which were obtained fromlocal governments.50 Misappropriation, retention of allocated funds, re-porting of fake projects, and corruption were later uncovered.

This case demonstrates the degree to which certain groups in the deci-sion‐making body may take advantage of their power. These national gridcompanies not only participated in the central government’s decision

47They are Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, Hainan, and Yunnan.48Li Qiyan, “Diangai xunqiu nongdian tupo” (Seeking a breakthrough in the reform of rural grid), Caijing(Finance and economics), 6 August 2007, 106–107.49Yang Min, “Diangai yi lin longduan de nizhao” (The reform of the electricity sector is trapped bymonopolizing enterprises), Nanfeng chuang (South reviews) 1 (January 2006): 46–48.50Cheng, “Guozihao gongsi de yangmou yu hongli.”


making, but also assumed the responsibility of carrying out the project.Their advantage lay in the fact that they could present fait accompli, whichmade it difficult or costly for the central government to enact changes oncethe policy had been enforced.

The central government grants a monopoly or tolerates the monopoly ofcertain state‐owned businesses for varying reasons. Some industries, suchas oil, are considered strategically important to the regime, whereas others,such as telecommunications, are politically important. Pei points out thepolitical rationale behind state support for monopolies in telecommunica-tions and other industries. One reason is the telecommunications industry’sdirect effect on the regime’s ability to control society. The other reason isthat “the telecom sector is itself a huge patronage machine and a source ofrent generation because it employs a large number of employees, investsmassive capital, and collects monopoly rents. Direct control of this sectorprovides the regime the ability to reward and keep its supporters.”51

At the same time, these groups also have a strong incentive to protecttheir privileges by strengthening their political connections. This feature isnot unique to China. Frieden explains why some Latin American businessesare eager to establish and strengthen connections with the government.These businesses are in sectors whose profitability depends on existinggovernment policies, and the specificity of those assets depends directlyon government actions. Hence, “sectors with more specific assets—higherentry barriers, less‐diversified portfolios—exert more pressure on policy-makers and obtain more favorable policies.”52

Nevertheless, despite cases such as the grid remodeling project, under-estimating the China state’s autonomy would be inaccurate. The NEC wasable to carry out the project because the central government believed itwould benefit rural residents, although it did not anticipate the conflictbetween the company and local actors. In other words, the NEC’s interestshappened to match the central government’s policy of addressing ruralresidents’ lack of electricity. By the same token, when certain groups clearlythreaten political or economic foundations, the choice of the party‐statebecomes easy: curb the influence of these groups.

One recent example is the central government’s policy on real estatedevelopment. Local governments, housing developers, and banks are allpowerful actors in China that have benefited tremendously from housingdevelopment and high housing prices. However, they are constrained by

51Pei, China’s Trapped Transition, 108.52Frieden, Debt, Development, and Democracy, 33.


central government policies. On the other hand, the complaints and resent-ment of the weaker group—low‐income residents who cannot afford to buyhomes—do not bear enough political weight to influence government poli-cies, either. The central government’s housing development policy is dictatedby its attempts to balance economic development and economic bubbles.

The worry over economic bubbles prompted the central government toenactmeasures tocooldownthehousingmarket in2008.Asa result, housingprices began to decline. However, because of the financial crisis that ensued,the central government became worried about economic growth and there-fore relaxed its fiscal policy in 2009, resulting in a sharp increase in housingprices as well as provoking resentment in society. However, frommid‐2010,the government adopted a tightened fiscal policy and limited the number ofapartmentsahousehold couldbuy inmajor citiesbecauseof itsworryover theeconomic bubble. This action stabilized the market and housing prices.53

Some influential developers admitted in 2011 that, in the past, centralgovernment agencies would meet with developers to seek their opinions onthe housing market, but this practice had ceased some time ago.54

Weak Groups’ Leverage: Tax Reform and Tax Abolition in Rural ChinaUnlike the above case, the abolition of the agricultural tax represents adifferent way through which weak and unorganized groups can receive apositive policy response. From the early 1990s to the early 2000s, peasants’financial burdens, including taxes and various unauthorized fees, wereamong the major sources of widespread grievance and resistance in ruralChina.55 Between 1992 and 1996, at least 64 peasants died in confronta-tions during tax and fee collections.56 Although the central authorityseemed aware that these financial burdens threatened social stability anddamaged the legitimacy of its regime, reforms did not go smoothly. Theinitiation of local‐level reforms was opposed by some higher‐level authori-ties. At the central level, a lack of consensus amongmajor leaders prolongedthe acceptance of reforms initiated by local governments. Only in 2000 didthe Chinese government formally endorse the tax‐for‐fee reform, which wasinitiated in Anhui province eight years previously.

53For the change in housing price, see the Website of the National Statistical Bureau, http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj.54Interviews with research scholars, Beijing, 2011.55Thomas Bernstein andXiaobo Lu, Taxation without Representation in Contemporary Rural China (NewYork: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 116–165.56This figure does not include the number of deaths in 1993 because that number is not available. LiMaolan,Zhongguo nongmin fudan wenti yanjiu (Research on peasants’ financial burdens in China) (Taiyuan:Shanxi jingji chubanshe, 1996), 127.


In Chinese agricultural areas, local cadres under heavy pressure to raiserevenue had abused their power by collecting extra fees in addition toagricultural taxes, placing heavy financial burdens on the peasants. Oneway of reducing these financial burdens was to introduce the tax‐for‐feereform. This reform limits the discretion of local officials in tax collection byallowing them to collect only an adjusted and unified tax, and not any extrafees.57

In 1992, a township in Anhui province started a tax‐for‐fee reform byunifying the tax rate into a flat fee (specifically, 30 yuan permu of land) andoutlawing the collection of any additional fees. This reformwas undertakendespite opposition from the provincial People’s Congress.58 The effect of thereform was immediate. Typically, organizing work teams was commonamong local governments to forcibly collect taxes and fees from reluctantpeasant households. However, in the year the tax‐for‐fee reform wasadopted, the township government took only 10 days to collect the tax,without the need for intervention by the militia or the police. However,because of political considerations, both township and county officials triedto maintain a low profile for the reform to avoid any risks.

Taihe County, another county in the same district, adopted a saferapproach to tax reform by submitting a reform plan to the provincialgovernment for approval in 1993. When the provincial government agen-cies and the county leaders convened a meeting to discuss the plan, theywere opposed by the provincial financial bureau that feared that the reformwould decrease the revenue. Despite this opposition, the county partysecretary and county magistrate both supported the reform, and the revisedplan was eventually approved by the provincial government. The reformplan, which set a fixed amount for taxes to be paid by peasants, wasimplemented in 1994. However, the provincial governor intervened andordered the reform to be stopped, perhaps because it contradicted theexisting tax regulations. At this point, the provincial Party secretary inter-vened, and the reform continued. The effects were again immediate. It onlytook five days to collect all the taxes from 353,500 peasant households inthe county, an impossible achievement under the old system. More

57Ray Yep, “Can ‘Tax‐for‐Fee’ Reform Reduce Rural Tension in China? The Process, Progress and Limi-tations,” China Quarterly 177 (May 2004): 42–70.58For a description of the reformprocess, see ChenGuidi andChunTao,Zhongguonongmindiaocha (Surveyof Chinese peasants) (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 2003); Liu Jianfeng and DuDengbin, “Nongcunshuifei gaige jiushi zheyang ‘feifa’ gaochulai de” (The rural tax reformwas tried in this illegal way), Zhongguojingji shibao, 24 February 2001; “You yici ‘touzhegan”’ (Doing it secretly for another time), Tianjin ribao,1 November 2003; Si Fan, “Shuifei gaige: buzai ba nongmin dang ‘qukuanji”’(The tax‐for‐fee reform:peasants are no longer treated as cash machines), Zhongguo jingying bao, 12 December 2004.


importantly, the peasants’ financial burdens were reduced by half. The yearbefore the reform, about 500 peasants from Taihe county submitted 93petitions regarding their financial burdens to the Party committees atdifferent levels. In 1994, after the tax reform, not a single petition wassubmitted.59

Consensus Building within the Central Authority. Whereas the initiationof the reform encountered opposition, the lack of consensus among majorcentral leaders delayed the central endorsement and thus the promotion ofthe reform. Despite this delay, Taihe’s success had a positive effect on someneighboring counties. The reformwas extended tomore than 20 counties inAnhui and adopted in more than 50 counties in other provinces, includingHebei, Henan, Hunan, Guizhou, Shanxi, and Gansu.

In 1995, a national conference on the experience of the tax‐for‐fee reformwas held in the district to which Taihe belonged. Scholars and officials fromcentral government agencies attended the conference, with all expressingsupport for the reform except for the officials from the Ministry of Finance.A report based on the meeting was then submitted to the central govern-ment. After reading the report, Jiang Chunyun, then vice premier, sup-ported the reform and proposed a meeting to discuss the experiences withthe reform. However, Zhu Rongji, another vice premier in charge of eco-nomic affairs, was more cautious and did not support convening themeeting. Despite widespread suffering among the peasants, the drivingforce for reform was not yet strong at the central level.60

Li Lanqing, another vice premier, went to inspect Henan province in1996 and felt that local cadres had too much discretion in fee collection.Upon learning of a reform that combined fees and taxes and its popularityamong peasants, he decided to visit Anhui. Li then became a supporter ofthe reform and, upon returning to Beijing, sent a letter and an investigationreport to Premier Li Peng and all other vice premiers. The report, entitled“Suggestions on Alleviating Peasants’ Financial Burdens,” was written bymembers of the National Political Consultative Conference, who had earlierconducted in‐depth investigations in Anhui and Hebei. Li Lanqing’s letterwas said to have been an important reason that tax reform received seriousattention.61

Soon after Li’s letter and the investigation report were disseminated, thecentral Rural Work Leadership Group put together an investigative team

59Chen and Chun, Zhongguo nongmin diaocha, 312–313.60Ibid.61Talk by He Kaiyin, Hong Kong, 4 November 2004.


consisting of members from seven central government and party agenciesand went to Hebei to conduct investigations. Still, there was a lack of strongconsensus among the central leaders. Jiang Zemin then sent his secretary toAnhui. In December 1996, the central government issued a directive enti-tled “Decisions on Alleviating Peasants’ Financial Burdens,” which listsmeasures to reduce peasants’ burdens and states that exploration of thetax‐for‐fee reform could continue. This directive marked the first time thatthe central authority explicitly supported tax reform. However, the centralauthority remained cautious, deciding that it was still not the right time topromote tax reform. Some leaders were worried that the reform wouldaffect too many fundamental economic and political issues, such as grainprocurement and the entire financial system.

When Zhu Rongji became the premier in March 1998, the State Councilissued a directive entitled “Regulations on Grain Procurement.” This direc-tive stipulated a series of measures intended to regulate the grain market,some of which contradicted the tax‐for‐fee reformmeasures carried out in anumber of places. In particular, the directive suggested that grain procure-ment could only be carried out by the state grain system and not by non‐state agencies. However, many of the areas that adopted the tax‐for‐feereform had abolished the grain procurement quota, implying that peasantscould choose to sell grain to other parties as long as they paid their taxes.62

When local governments in these areas received this directive, they werepuzzled and disappointed. Hebei’s provincial leaders instructed the en-forcement of the directive, and the tax reform was stopped in 37 of itscounties and in over 60 counties in seven other provinces. However, inAnhui, the reform was not entirely stopped. The province’s new governorsent a report to the State Council requesting that the reform be continued inits district of origin. Owing to his efforts, the tax‐for‐fee reform continued insome parts of Anhui.63

“Regulations on Grain Procurement,” which was questioned by somepro‐reform people, was a setback in the tax reform process. Because of thelack of consensus at the central level, Jiang Zemin intervened.64 In 1998,Jiang went to Anhui for an inspection and announced that the governmentshould “reform and regulate the fee and tax system in rural China andexplore the fundamental ways of alleviating peasants’ financial burdens.”65

62For the problems, see TheMinistry of Agriculture, Zhongguo nongcun yanjiu baogao (Research report onrural China) (Beijing: Zhongguo caizheng jingji chubanshe, 1999): 215–228.63Chen and Chun, Zhongguo nongmin diaocha, 340–347.64Talk by He Kaiyin, Hong Kong, 4 November 2004.65Chen and Chun, Zhongguo nongmin diaocha, 353.


To some extent, Jiang’s speech gave the final push for the tax‐for‐feereform.66 The central government eventually decided to try the reform inAnhui province in 2000, extending it to 20 provinces in 2002 and thenlater to the whole country. Under the new tax scheme, peasants wereexpected to pay 8.4 percent of their income of the previous year as taxand were exempted from any other tax responsibility. After the tax reform,peasants’ financial burdens across different provinces decreased by 24percent to 60 percent.67

Abolition of the Agricultural Tax. In 2004, the central government furtherdecided to abolish the agricultural tax within five years. If the tax‐for‐feereform was indeed successful in reducing the tax burden of the peasants,then why did the central government have to eventually abolish the agri-cultural tax? The reason is that the tax reform had serious limitations.Indeed, it had been long proposed that the government should abolish theagricultural tax. An official of the State Council reported in an interviewthat a prominent research officer of the State Council proposed abolishingrural taxes in the late 1990s to the central leaders, but it was not accepted.68

One reason for its rejection is the difficulty of gaining the central govern-ment’s attention. From the late 1990s, central leaders spent much of theirtime on industrial restructuring and resolving the issue of laid‐off workers.

Amore important factor is theworry over thedecrease in fiscal revenue. Intheory, revenue from agricultural taxes only accounted for a small portion ofthe total amount of taxes collected. In 1996, it reached its highest level since1991 at 5.35 percent of the total tax revenue, and in 2000 it accounted foronly 3.7 percent of the total revenue.69 Therefore, the abolition of agricul-tural taxes should not have significantly affected the tax revenue of thegovernment. However, this was only a part of the whole story. If all taxesand fees were abolished,many grassroots governments that relied on legal orillegal fees collected from peasants would not be able to sustain operations.Without subsidies, the economic foundation of rural governments would bedestroyed. This consideration is an important reason for the central govern-ment’s hesitation to reform the tax structure in rural China.70

66Talk by He Kaiyin, Hong Kong, 4 November 2004.67Zhao Yang, “Guanyu 2002 nian nongcun shuifei gaige shidian de chengxiao, wenti, ji jianyi” (About theachievements of, problems with, and suggestions on the rural tax reform in 2002), Zhongguo jingji shibao,31 February 2003.68Interview with a government official, Beijing, 2006.69The National Statistical Bureau, Xinzhongguo wushiwu nian tongji ziliao huibian (China Statistics:1949–2004) (Beijing: Zhongguo tongji chubanshe, 2005), 20.70Interview with a government official, Beijing, 2006.


Against this background, the central authority did not even have aconsensus on whether the tax‐for‐fee reform should be carried out, notto mention tax abolition itself. The central government’s eventual decisionto abolish the tax stemmed from the limitations of the tax‐for‐fee reformthat threatened several important national policy goals.

One limitation of the reform was that it failed to alleviate the financialburdens of those farm households upon whom the government relied mostfor grain output. The tax‐for‐fee reform put families that relied on farmingformost of their income at a disadvantage, at least relatively. Under the tax‐for‐fee system, tax was collected based on the amount of farmland a peasanthousehold contracted as opposed to their family size. Therefore, peasanthouseholds withmore land owedmore taxes than those with less. Themoreland a household had, the poorer it could be if the grain price was low andthe household did not have extra sources of income. For this reason,peasants in agricultural areas felt that they did not benefit much fromthe reform. According to a 2003 survey of about 2,100 peasant householdsin six provinces (Anhui, Hunan, Sichuan, Heilongjiang, Fujian, andZhejiang), the average amount of taxes paid by peasant households inAnhui (312 yuan), Heilongjiang (483 yuan), Hunan (261 yuan), andSichuan (237 yuan) after the tax‐for‐fee reform was still larger than thatpaid by their counterparts in Zhejiang province (130 yuan) or Fujianprovince (210 yuan), where the reform had not been introduced. Amongthe 319 households surveyed in Hunan province, 67 percent reported thattheir tax burden remained heavy even after the tax‐for‐fee reform.71

Another limitation of the tax reform is that it did not fully address thesocial grievances and conflicts in rural China. Deadly confrontations be-tween peasants and local cadres continued despite the tax reform, with atleast 30 peasants dying in tax collection–related violence between 2002 and2003. Therefore, the threat to social stability remained. A close look into theplaces where deadly confrontations or suicides occurred reveals that amajority of these incidents took place in agricultural areas, includingSichuan, Hunan, Hubei, Henan, Anhui, and northern Jiangsu. Accordingto the 2003 survey of 2,100 peasant households, households with morefarmland tended to report that the tension between peasants and ruralcadres did not decrease, and in some cases, was even heightened after thetax‐for‐fee reform. Out of the 319 households surveyed in Hunan province,23 percent reported that the relationship between cadres and peasantsimproved after the reform, and 76 percent reported no change or worsened

71Unpublished survey by the Rural Development Research Center of the State Council, February 2003.


relations.72 Indeed, in several agricultural provinces (that is, Jiangxi,Shaanxi, and Henan), the deaths continued into 2004. The persistenceof peasant resistance directly contradicted the government’s goal of build-ing a harmonious society.

Moreover, the farming households benefiting poorly from the reformhighlighted the increase in the urban–rural income gap. In 1997, the percapita income of urban residents was 2.47 times greater than that of ruralresidents; in 2003 it was 3.23 times greater.73 As agricultural income wasalready limited, additional taxes further reduced peasants’ income. All theselimitations were connected with the issue of peasants’ incentives to farm.Consequently, China’s grain output began to decline in 1999, despite thetax‐for‐fee reform.

To strengthen peasants’ incentives to farm, the central governmentbegan to subsidize peasant households, especially those in areas that pro-duced themost grain. A directive issued by the central Party committee andthe government in 2004 expanded efforts to help and subsidize farminghouseholds. This announcement marked the first time in the history ofCommunist China that the Party‐state issued a directive with the goal ofincreasing peasant income in the name of the central Party committee andthe State Council. In 2004, the decline of grain output stopped. A memberof the central Party committee’s Financial and Economic Leadership Groupadmitted that the directive was “crucial to the increase in grain output andpeasant income.”74 Once the central government became willing to subsi-dize the farming households most heavily taxed under the tax‐for‐feesystem, the abolition of the agricultural tax would be politically and eco-nomically rewarding. With more sympathetic leaders like Wen Jiabaocoming to power, the abolition of the agricultural tax was accomplished.

The cases of tax reform and tax abolition point to both the difficultiesand the possibilities of making policies that favor weak groups in China.Despite their vast number, peasants are a weak group in China. In the caseof tax reform, their demands were overshadowed by worries over fiscalrevenue on the part of certain central leaders and the financial departmentuntil a combination of factors eventually led the government to address thepeasants’ problems. The peasants did have some non‐institutionalizedpower, in the sense that they staged persistent resistance and receivedsupport from the media. Peasants also had sympathetic supporters in

72Ibid.73The National Statistical Bureau, Xinzhongguo wushiwu nian tongji ziliao huibian, 34.74Jiang Xia, “Yinglai nongcun fazhan de dahao chuntian” (It is the great opportunity for rural development),Renmin ribao, 25 February 2005; Interview, Beijing, 2006.


the decision‐making body, such as the vice premiers previously mentioned.However, in the end, the tax reform only became a reality through thesupport of Jiang Zemin. The eventual abolition of the agricultural tax waslargely due to limitations in tax reform that threatened several importantpolicy goals of the central government, particularly those of grainproduction.

CONCLUSIONThe presence of social groups with conflicting interests is common in anysociety, regardless of political system. In China, both the government andthe public openly acknowledge conflicting group interests. By focusing onthe factors affecting a group’s ability, this article explains why both re-sourceful groups and weak groups in China have been able to pursue theirrespective interests. It finds that social groups may have access to differentleverages or sources of power. A groups’ ability is shaped by its connectionswith policymakers, its non‐institutionalized power, and the extent to whichthe group’s demands align with state priorities. Depending on their accessto these sources of power, weak groups can sometimes receive positivepolicy responses from the government.

These factors that affect a group’s pursuit of interests have importantimplications for understanding state–society interaction and political de-velopment in China. The state’s independent policy agenda determines thatchanges in certain areas are understandably slow. Moreover, groups thatare well‐connected to the decision‐making body are historically more likelyto enjoy long‐term privileges because their political connections cannot beeasily eliminated. In China, these groups are usually state‐owned businessesenjoying a market monopoly granted by state policies. These businesses arebetter organized because they are few in number. As elsewhere, better‐organized economic sectors tend to have more success in obtaining favor-able policies.75 This is the major reason that the reform of some economicsectors (for example, telecommunication and banking) has been slow orabsent. The persistence of certain groups can be detrimental to a country’ssocioeconomic development.76

Nevertheless, because of the rise of social forces, both the government andpowerful groups in China increasingly face pressure when pursuing theirinterests at the expense of the public or other parties. Non‐institutionalizedpressure generated by the media, new information technologies, and/or

75Frieden, Debt, Development, and Democracy, 255.76Mancur Olson, The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982), 233.


popular contention has become an important force that the governmentcannot afford to ignore. Issues generating severe non‐institutionalizedpressure are often very pressing and require the government to take actionwith little delay. Timely response can avoid or reduce the undesirableconsequences of the issue in question.

An even conditionally responsive state may shore up legitimacy. Legiti-macy indicates how much trust the people have in the system or the rulers.Regimes with high levels of political trust tend to receive more politicalsupport and enjoy political stability. Therefore, legitimacy helps maintainstability. As David Easton suggests, “A belief in legitimacy is necessary forthemaintenance of support, at least for political systems that persist for anyappreciable length of time,” because legitimacy is a “belief in the right ofauthorities to rule and members to obey.”77 William Gamson also writesthat “the existing trust orientation toward authorities… affects themeans ofinfluence a group will use.”78 Thus, people who believe in a regime’slegitimacy are less likely to take dramatic modes of action to overthrowit. In China, the government’s responsiveness to social grievances is aneffort of legitimacy building. By creating political space for the large num-bers of weak people to pursue their legitimate interests, the regime can haveits “revolutionary constraints” alleviated.79

Hence, as long as the Party‐state’s concern about legitimacy remains,there is a possibility for the weak to successfully pursue their interests. Thisoffers insight into the regime resilience in China. The longevity of China’sCommunist regime has given rise to a debate on the reasons for its resil-ience. For example, Andrew Nathan points out that the CCP has adopted anumber of measures, including the establishment of institutions for politi-cal participation, to increase the degree of institutionalization within theCCP, which in turn enhances its resilience and ensures its political surviv-al.80 However, opinions may differ. According to Pei, institutionalization isnot the major reason behind the regime’s resilience. “Instead, the principalreasons for the CCP’s survival since Tiananmen have been robust economicperformance and consistent political repression. Although it is true that theCCP may have improved its political tactics, its survival for the last twodecades would have been unthinkable without these two critical factors.”81

77Easton, A Systems Analysis of Political Life, 281.78William Gamson, Power and Discontent (Homewood: Dosey Press, 1968), 180.79Acemoglu and Robinson, Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, 118.80Andrew Nathan, “Authoritarian Resilience,” 6–7.81Pei, “Is CCP Rule Fragile or Resilient,” 39.


Proving counterfactual propositions is always difficult, if not impossible.Indeed, economic development enables the Party‐state to use resources toaddress many social and economic problems. It may also be true thatrepression continues to be crucial to the CCP’s regime survival. However,the findings of this article suggest that in state–citizen interaction, theregime may enhance its resilience and chances of political survival throughlegitimacy building. Legitimacy can be achieved through economic devel-opment,82 and it can also be achieved if the state becomes more responsiveto social demands that do not threaten the regime. The state’s responsive-ness is an effective method of legitimacy building, especially when it doesnot involve high political or economic costs.

82Wang, “Before the Emergence of Critical citizens,” 156–157.


Book Reviews

TheNexus of Economics, Security, and International Relations inEast Asia edited by Avery Goldstein and Edward D. Mansfield.Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 2012. 288 pp. Paper,$27.95.

East Asia looms as an economically dynamic butmilitarily volatile corner of theglobe. Coming to grips with the challenges that the region presents to the worldrequires a solid grasp of the nexus of economics, security, and major powerrelations. This edited volume of high‐quality contributions from Chinese andAmerican scholars of international relations offers valuable insights, especiallyregarding the impact of China’s rise in East Asia. An introduction by editorsAveryGoldstein andEdwardMansfield provides an erudite and comprehensiveoverview.

The chapters by the Chinese contributors to the volume are particularlyuseful in understanding Beijing’s perspectives on regional issues and the role ofthe United States. Yuan Peng, a leading analyst at a prominent Beijing thinktank associated with the security apparatus, stresses that China and the UnitedStates share common interests in Northeast Asia. Consequently, he makes acase for great‐power cooperation. While Yuan recognizes the complexities ofthe security problems of Northeast Asia, he seems unduly optimistic about theprospects for U.S.–China cooperation. He sensibly argues that improved coor-dination over area issues is essential if ties betweenWashington and Beijing areto improve. Yet, his chapter also highlights the wide gulf in perceptionsseparating China and the United States. According to Yuan, the United Statesis an interloper in Northeast Asia without “core interests” there, whereas, heasserts, that for China, this is amost critical and sensitive area (p. 245).Many inBeijing—including Yuan—do not seem to grasp that many in Washington dothink that theUnited States has a critical stake inNortheast Asia and as a resultare unlikely to readily accept a diminished U.S. role in the area. Meanwhile,many inWashington fail to appreciate Beijing’s extreme sensitivity to trends inNortheast Asia.

Two chronic issues in East Asia are maritime territorial disputes andenduring concerns over energy insecurity, and each one receives thoughtfulanalysis by the contributors. A chapter by Zhang Tuosheng, a respected analyst


from a Beijing research institute affiliated with China’s military, offers avaluable Chinese perspective on the range of disputes in the East Asian littoral,including the South China Sea. In Zhang’s view—onewidely held in China—theUnited States is a troublesome meddler. Another chapter by U.S. academicsDanielle Cohen and Jonathan Kirshner challenges widely held suppositionsabout energy security. Using an array of data, they make a persuasive case thattwo interrelated assumptions about energy are dangerous myths: first, thatthere is a global shortage of energy; and second, that state action can remedy theproblem. Together, these myths—which the authors collectively dub a “cult ofenergy insecurity”—raise interstate tensions and exacerbate existing problems.

There are a number of other fine chapters on an array of topics, including afascinating one by Taylor Fravel that seeks to explain the Chinese military’srecent interest in non‐combat operations. Another chapter, by Michael Hor-owitz, examines the security impact of regional economic integration. Thefindings of these two scholars will probably surprise many readers.

This volume deserves wide distribution and should be required reading forall scholars and practitioners who focus on international relations in East Asia.Moreover, the book is very appropriate and most timely as a text for graduateand advanced undergraduate courses on East Asian security.

ANDREW SCOBELLRAND Corporation

Presidential Leadership and the Creation of the American Era byJoseph S. Nye, Jr. Princeton, NJ, PrincetonUniversity Press, 2013.200 pp. $27.95.

Having elsewhere assessed the structural forces that shaped America’s rise toglobal power, Joseph Nye now turns to the personal elements. What role, heasks, did individuals, in particular presidents, play in the twentieth‐centuryemergence of the United States as the arbiter of world affairs? Nye findswanting the existing literature on presidential leadership as overemphasizing“transformational” presidents and blurring the line between presidential ethicsand presidential efficacy.

Nye focuses on eight presidents. Theodore Roosevelt, WilliamHoward Taft,and Woodrow Wilson presided over the early growth of American power;Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Dwight Eisenhower consolidatedAmerican power; Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush completed theconquest of Soviet communism and established theUnited States as the world’ssole superpower. While conceding the difficulty of his task, Nye attempts totease out the contribution each president made to the development and


maintenance of American power, distinct from the contributions of otherindividuals and contextual forces. The basic question in each case is: Whatdid this president accomplish that a different individual in the White House atthis time would not have accomplished?

Nye gives less credit to Theodore Roosevelt than TR usually gets; in Nye’sview, context and structure explainmost of what happened inAmerican foreignpolicy in the first decade of the twentieth century. Taft didn’t matter much,either. Wilson’s personal impact was large, though, in the short term, in theopposite direction from that which he intended. The reaction against Wilson’sinternationalist vision produced the isolationism of the interwar years; onlyafter the failure of isolationism did Wilson’s vision take hold. Franklin Roo-sevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower each made a difference beyond what thestructure of forces would have predicted, Nye says. By contrast, most ofwhat Reagan and the first Bush accomplished would have been achieved byalmost anyone who was president during the 1980s and early 1990s; the end ofthe Cold War resulted primarily from developments within the Soviet Union.

Nye proposes a new framework for assessing presidents. In place of thetransformational/transactional dyad, he proposes four categories: transforma-tional objectives with inspirational style, transformational objectives withtransactional style, incremental objectives with inspirational style, and incre-mental objectives with transactional style. The categories are more easilyillustrated than explained. Wilson is the model of the first, Truman of thesecond, Eisenhower of the third, Bill Clinton of the fourth.

Nye’s taxonomy is helpful up to a point. He himself admits the obvious: themodel is simply a model, no president fits any of the categories precisely. Evenso, many readers will skip some of the categorizing in favor of the insightfulcapsule summaries of his presidents’ foreign policies.

Nye devotes his longest chapter to the ethics of foreign policy leadership.Here he lays out six categories, crossing ethics and efficacy on one axis,with goals, means, and consequences on the other. He scores each of hiseight presidents, with Theodore Roosevelt rating poorly on means (toleratingatrocities in the Philippine war, wresting Panama from Colombia), FranklinRoosevelt favorably on goals and consequences (defeating fascism), and Trumanand H.W. Bush best of all (Truman for designing and implementing contain-ment, Bush for completing it).

Nye’s book originated in a course he has taught, and it bears the thought‐provoking marks of a stimulating advanced class. Readers will have to bringtheir own knowledge of his presidents if they are to get the most out of hisobservations; the modest length of the book precludes significant detail.

At the end, Nye extrapolates from the past to offer guidance to presidents inthe future. His counsel is unsurprising, the gist being that as the rest of the

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world catches up with the United States, presidents will be less able to imposeAmerica’s will unilaterally. The ability to communicate one’s vision beyondAmerican shores will be an important asset for any president. Like the rest ofthe book, the advice is measured and sound.

H.W. BRANDSUniversity of Texas at Austin

The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change theAmerican Way of War by Fred Kaplan. New York, Simon &Schuster, 2013. 432 pp. $28.00.

In this journalist’s history of the second golden age of counterinsurgency, FredKaplan recounts the struggles of counterinsurgency advocates to convince askeptical military and civilian leadership of their ability to restore order in Iraqand Afghanistan. He is a faithful chronicler of interested parties, an heir to thetradition of Polybius and Josephus. As in any work of this kind, he is a prisonerof his sources. The result is a story that is clearer than truth, a fitting but largelyuncritical summary of the “COINdinistas” ’ case.

This reliance on the testimony of his subjects obscures the Machiavelliangenius of the advocates, first among them General David Petraeus. He and hisdisciples convincedmany of their fellowwarriors of theHippocratic imperativeof counterinsurgency: first, do no harm. But Petraeus’s true genius lay in hisability to co‐opt skeptics inside and outside the military. His courtship ofacademics, non‐governmental organizations, and pundits bought him lever-age in the bureaucratic battles inside the military and preempted or at leastpostponed the criticisms of academia. His sense of timing contributedmore directly to the dramatic turn in Iraq; there, his willingness to ignorehis own doctrine and push money and weapons to the turned insurgentsof the Awakening was in keeping with his audacity and mastery of closedpolitics.

While the book traces the development of the new doctrine, it does little toassess its validity. In both wars, there was at best a loose relationshipbetween U.S. efforts to improve security, governance, and development andthe process of state consolidation. Protecting the population and hunting downthe “irreconcilables” undoubtedly suppressed violence in Iraq and areas ofAfghanistan. The problems with the strategy were its cost and the absenceof a terminationmechanism. Removing U.S. troops or reducing U.S. paymentsto local self‐defense forces rekindled violent competition for power. Unpaidproxies sought new employers while host governments shied away from fund-ing irregular forces that might challenge their authority. In the end, U.S. forces


provedmore effective at erecting the scaffolding of new states than at removingit safely.

The contributions of governance and development to stabilization provedeven more problematic. The doctrine held that some combination of apoliticaladministration and economic aid would satisfy grievances and connect com-munities to the central government. While bureaucratic mentorship, institu-tional design, and philanthropy were deeply gratifying, the relationshipbetween these initiatives and the violent contest for power was more imaginedthan real. The leaders who emerged seldom matched the desired model of thevirtuous, disinterested administrator: the most‐successful combined personalambition, the selective application of violence, and a keen sense for the weak-nesses of their countrymen and patrons. American distribution of public goodsand services seldom produced lasting political goodwill or loyalty. Instead, suchgenerosity often contributed as much to envy and corruption as it did to theattitudes of the populace.

What Kaplan’s account indirectly reveals is the intellectual shallowness ofthe doctrine. The “insurgents” were autodidacts, and their analysis of civil warand insurgency was predictably incomplete. The doctrine rested on pockethistories and theories of Algeria, Malaya, and Vietnam leavened with personalexperiences in contemporary peacekeeping. If good scholarship is propelled byskepticism and measured in depth, the autodidacts were more inclined tocollect ideas than to examine or test them. As Stathis Kalyvas has noted, thecounterinsurgency renaissance relied on a grievance explanation for civil warsand ignored contradictory work by Samuel Huntington, Nathan Leites, andothers that underscored the centrality of control. The search for genuineregional expertise was equally cursory. Nowhere was this more evident thanin the “find/replace” application of the formulas of Iraq to Afghanistan.Whether in the study of civil wars or the specific understanding of countriesor regions, the autodidacts’ order of search was soldiers first, salesmen second,and scholars a distant third.

At its best, this volume is a revealing, second‐hand autobiography of theauthors of the doctrine. The book is at its weakest in connecting these ideas withoutcomes. It dodges the two puzzles of Iraq: why did violence decline and whatwere the long‐term effects of counterinsurgency? Scholars have debated threerival explanations for the 2007 turn: the Anbar Awakening, the troop surge,and ethnic cleansing. Kaplan sidesteps this debate, suggesting that the doc-trine’s ideas exerted an indirect influence on the U.S. sponsors of an IraqiAwakening that preceded the field manual’s publication and the surge. Kaplanis largely silent on the impact of the U.S. campaign on contemporary Iraqipolitics. Did the United States, to borrow Liddell Hart’s phrase, forge a betterpeace, if only from its own point of view? Did Iran win the war? Kaplan

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highlights the challenges of exporting the doctrine to Afghanistan but does littleto clarify the sources of its failure there.

Establishing the fit between ideas and outcomes is central in such a book.Here Kaplan is unsatisfying, veering away from the big questions, pointinginstead to difficult circumstances, unreliable and corrupt clients, etc. If theseideas matter, then we are obliged to demonstrate how, why, and in whatmeasure they contributed to the outcomes. The risk is that some future genera-tion will treat these ideas with greater reverence than they are due, withpotentially tragic results.

COLIN F. JACKSONU.S. Naval War College

An Argument for Same-Sex Marriage: Religious Freedom,Sexual Freedom, and Public Expressions of Civic Equality byEmily R. Gill. Washington, DC, Georgetown University Press,2012. 288 pp. Paper, $29.95.

This timely book, as its straightforward title announces, provides an argumentfor same‐sex marriage based on the author’s reading of the contemporary legaland social landscape, with a particular eye to understanding the prohibition ofsame‐sex marriage as a public expression of civic inequality. As the preface laysout, Emily R. Gill began thinking about same‐sex marriage within the contextof United States Supreme Court decisions in the wake of the endorsement testthat Sandra Day O’Connor proposed in Lynch v. Donnelly. If the governmentought not classify some citizens as outsiders because of a policy that seems toendorse certain religious beliefs over others, why should the government playthe role of creating insiders (those who can) and outsiders (those who cannot)when it comes to marriage? For Gill, the answer is simple: it should not.Throughout this book, Gill stresses the similarity between religion andsexuality.

While the pairing of religious freedom and the freedom to marry might situneasily for some readers, in Gill’s adept hands the analogy is successful. Theconcept of neutrality and the government’s role in maintaining it is at the coreof Gill’s argument. In her hands, the seemingly straightforward notion ofneutrality is a complicated and nuanced one, so much so that the book’s secondchapter is devoted to “The impossibility of neutrality.” This key chapter lays outthe premise that advocates for same‐sex marriage and, more broadly, for sexualminorities in general, should use the comparison between religion and sexualityto argue for the acceptance of a variation of sexual orientation based on theprecedence of the acceptance of a variation of religious belief.


One of the great strengths of this book is the clarity and sensitivity withwhich Gill treats a wide range of views on this subject. She identifies fourpositions on same‐sex marriage (traditional opponents of same‐sex marriage;traditionalist proponents of same‐sex marriage; skeptics about marriage; andliberal rights advocates of same‐sex marriage) and sketches out the core argu-ments within each category. Ultimately, she aligns her own thinking with thefinal category. In so doing, Gill prioritizes the value of autonomy as “the correctgrounding for the rights of consenting adults to intimate lives of their ownchoosing” (p. 98). From the autonomy argument flows her contention thatfreely chosen emotional and sexual relationships are deserving of respect, thatcitizens in a liberal democratic polity have the right to decide what intimaterelationships they wish to participate in, and that laws that abridge autonomyalso serve to stigmatize and stereotype individuals in the targeted group.

With all the space devoted to various philosophies concerning equality,neutrality, the establishment clause, and same‐sex marriage, Gill stakes outher own position with authority. When she analogizes the free exercise ofreligion to the ability of same‐sex couples to marry (which she does throughoutthe book but especially in chapter 5), she directly addresses and refutes possibleobjections to her employment of the analogy. While she surely will not pleasethose who maintain a religious objection to same‐sex marriage, her carefulattempt to acknowledge and engage with potential critics is effective indeed.

This book has a broad potential audience, due to its subject matter and thewide range of subtopics that Gill touches on under the rubric of advocating forsame‐sex marriage. For political philosophers, her reliance on John StuartMill’s On Liberty will prove rewarding. For those more concerned with thecontemporary cultural climate, her concluding chapter highlighting the culturewars will be particularly apt. Gill’s close readings of Supreme Court decisionssuch as Thomas v. Review Board and Romer v. Evans will intrigue legalscholars. And for the general reader energized by the recent rulings inHollings-worth v. Perry and United States v. Windsor, Gill offers a clear, succinct, andreasoned argument in support of same‐sex marriage.

SUSAN McDONOUGHThe University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Early Start: Preschool Politics in the United States by AndrewKarch. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2013. 288 pp.$60.00.

In 1971, Senator Walter Mondale introduced an ambitious ComprehensiveChild Development Act that passed both houses of Congress. It was promptly

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vetoed by President Richard Nixon, who denounced it as an endorsement of“communal approaches to child rearing” (p. 82). Andrew Karch believes thatthis “watershed”moment had profound, lasting effects on preschool politics inthe United States.

Using a political development perspective, Karch chronicles the evolution ofpreschool policies during the twentieth century and beyond, citing other books,congressional hearings, and archived oral interviews. Three key concepts propelhis narrative: critical junctures, venue shopping, and policy feedback.

Karch asserts that the failure of children’s advocates to enact comprehensivepreschool legislation in 1971 (a critical juncture) led advocates to shift theirfocus to state governments (forum shopping). As the states responded withinitiatives of their own, a motley assortment of stakeholder groups emergedthat preferred incremental, piecemeal reform over a comprehensive approach(policy feedback). The result, in Karch’s words, is a “fragmented amalgamationof programs and services” (p. 2).

It is always a pleasure to read a public policy book that takes multiple levelsof government seriously. This book also has the virtue of introducing an analyticframework early on and sticking to it. Chapter 3, an in‐depth case study of theill‐fated Comprehensive Child Development Act, is great reading, with lots ofrevealing quotes from the participants. And the central argument that thepreschool advocacy community is splintered and fragmented seems both accu-rate and disturbing.

Still, I have two concerns. First, Karch’s key concepts could benefit fromcrisper definitions and a fuller discussion of cases that deviate from his storyline. For example, the creation of two federally funded child care programs in1990 might well be considered a critical juncture and a success for children’sadvocates, including the Children’s Defense Fund, which spearheaded theearlier unsuccessful fight for reform. These new programs provided childcare for many disadvantaged mothers with young children. Sometimes non‐incremental reform is possible in this policy domain, even inWashington, D.C.

Second, Karch’s evidence in support of some key assertions is slim. Heportrays the 1970s as an era of strong state activism on early childhoodeducation. Yet much of what happened then involved the creation of officesof child development. Some observers would regard this as symbolic politics(much later, the states did indeed promote preschool successfully and aggres-sively). Also, the causal connection between assorted interest groups and thefailure to adopt various congressional bills during the 1980s and the 1990s isnot firmly established (Karch does a better job of demonstrating that HeadStart supporters helped to discourage pre‐K growth at the state level).

If we fast forward to preschool politics today, let us consider the future ofPresident Barack Obama’s universal preschool initiative, which builds on


successful programs in Georgia, Oklahoma, and other states. As Karch wouldpredict, the proposal faces tough sledding onCapitolHill. Yet it is difficult to laythe blame for this on a fragmented preschool advocacy community. Instead,divided government, intense partisanship, a crowded agenda, prolonged inat-tention to our national debt, and weak political leadership seem much betterexplanations for stasis on this issue.

On the bright side, state governments, which doubled their enrollments offour‐year‐olds in state‐funded pre‐K between 2002 and 2012, are once againstrengthening these programs, as they emerge from the Great Recession. Thestates are at times a better forum for policy innovation than the federalgovernment.

WILLIAM T. GORMLEY, JR.Georgetown University

Principled Negotiation and Mediation in the InternationalArena: Talking with Evil by Paul J. Zwier. New York,Cambridge University Press, 2013. 472 pp. $120.00.

The topic of how states should and do deal with actors like terrorists, murder-ous dictators, and leaders of lawless guerrilla movements who are usuallyconsidered beyond the pale is important for both scholars and policymakers.The same is true for the role of mediators in a range of conflicts. These subjectsare not only ethically challenging, but pose analytical and methodologicalchallenges. Unfortunately, the book under review does not rise to them. Al-though the histories of some of the cases are useful, the book is rambling,analytically weak, thinly researched, and filled with errors. The first sign thatthe book is superficial comes in the preface when the author asserts that thebreakdown of the cease‐fire in Gaza at the end of 2008 “could have beenprevented if the United States had been open to dialogue with the enemyand willing to facilitate communication between the parties” (pp. xi–xii).Neither there nor in the rest of the book does Paul J. Zwier go beyond theassertions to provide evidence or a serious argument. It is not as though therewere no communication between Israel and Hamas. What, exactly, was anymediator supposed to do? What would be the role of various forms of power inany such effort? The literature has at least discussed these questions, if notanswered them. Zwier does not seem to realize that they need to be addressed.

To the extent that the book has a theme, it is thatmediation, especially by theUnited States, can be very valuable if it is based on a principled pragmaticapproach. The problems here are very great, however. To start with, Zwier neverexplains why it should be the United States that serves as a mediator in many

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conflicts. The United States is, of course, very powerful, but what needsdiscussion is whether and when this makes it a valuable mediator.

The rest of the discussion is similarly superficial. At times Zwier talks abouta neutral mediator and at times about a principled one. Are these the same?What would it mean to be a neutral mediator in dealing with amass murderer?The principles that Zwier thinks that a mediator should serve include “PeaceFirst, Lowest Cost, Easiest to Execute…” and finally, “Most Sustainable (legiti-mate and just) Result” (p. 50). These indeed do have an element of pragmatism,but have real problems that the author never faces. Most obviously, there areconflicts among these. Achieving peace quickly may require the sacrifice ofmany other values, most obviously justice. It would also be nice to believe, asZwier does, that “resistance to peace… exposes whether someone is acting in arepresentative capacity or simply out of self‐interest” (p. 55), but this easy wayout of a hard problem is possible only because the author assumes that theresult of conflict resolution should or needs to be democratic rule. Most of uswould like all countries to be democratic, butmaking this part ofmediation is asdangerous a prescription as it has been as a basis for American foreign policy.The readermight want to suspend judgment about the utility of this frameworkto see how it is applied in the cases. But it appears only sporadically. It issymptomatic that although the book is long, the concluding chapter is onlyseven pages.

The book also is filledwith errors: The readerwill learn, for example, that theJapanese Emperor committed suicide afterWorldWar II (p. 8), that theUnitedStates mediated the dispute between North and South Korea (p. 46), that“North Korea was born out of a war with the United States” (p. 145), and thatKim Il‐sung was Kim Jong‐en’s father (p. 153).

I am surprised to see this book published by Cambridge University Press. Atleast the damage to its reputation will be limited by the fact that, at the price of$120, readership is likely to be limited.

ROBERT JERVISColumbia University

Spying in America: Espionage from the RevolutionaryWar to theDawn of the Cold War by Michael Sulick. Washington, DC,Georgetown University Press, 2012. 288 pp. $26.95.

This book is the first of a planned two‐volume set covering espionage againstthe United States from the Revolutionary period up through today. The author,Michael Sulick, had a lengthy and illustrious career as an intelligence officer atthe Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that culminated in three years at the head


of the National Clandestine Service. His book draws almost entirely on sec-ondary sources. (One may imagine that the second volume will also draw, ifonly implicitly, on his personal knowledge as a counterintelligence practition-er.) The book covers little if any new scholarly ground. However, the author’smessage seems to be aimed more at the general public than at scholars.

In the introduction, Sulick offers the thesis that Americans historically havebeen disinclined to believe that fellow citizens could be spying for foreignpowers and also that they have been consistently suspicious of governmentcounterespionage efforts, seeing them as intrusive and even as forms of perse-cution. Sadly, Sulick’s argument is not wholly persuasive. Certainly, the bookdoes contain sufficient evidence to support a prima facie case. For instance, theauthor points to the case of Benedict Arnold during the Revolutionary War.“Americans from the commander in chief down,” he writes, “simply refused tobelieve that a general of Arnold’s caliber and achievements could betray thecause” (p. 3). The controversy surrounding the conviction and execution ofJulius and Ethel Rosenberg on charges of atomic espionage also supportsSulick’s thesis.

On the other hand, the book describes several episodes during whichAmericans were excessively willing to believe that spies were among them.Among these are the indiscriminate actions of Lafayette Baker’s NationalDetective Police during the Civil War; the rampant domestic surveillanceduring World War I, notably including the activities of the non‐governmentalAmerican Protective League; the Palmer Raids that took place during a periodof “spy mania” (p. 124) in 1919 and 1920; and the demagoguery of SenatorJosephMcCarthy that “inflamed America’s fears of Soviet subversion” (p. 232).The overall result is a somewhat mixed and confusingmessage. Sulick attemptsto synthesize these contradictions in the conclusion, where he writes that these“messianic hunt[s] for subversives ultimately backfired and, paradoxically,exacerbated the threat of foreign espionage by discrediting counterespionage”efforts (p. 271). However, a better thesis might have been that the United Stateshas lurched back and forth between naiveté and paranoia about the espionagethreat.

Nevertheless, the book has substantial positive points. Sulick was motivatedto write it when he found during a stint as head of counterintelligence for theCIA that there was no good compendium of historical cases on which he coulddrawwhen preparing presentations for government audiences. In this book, heprovides useful short sketches of most of the famous and important espionagecases during the period in question. He highlights the six common threads of allthese cases: motivations, access and the secrets actually betrayed, tradecraft,exposure, punishment, and damage. He also covers, though less comprehen-sively, important American spy hunters and counterespionage operations,

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ranging from John Jay’s Revolutionary‐era Committee on Detecting and De-feating Conspiracies through the Cold War’s VENONA project.

Sulick has provided an accessible book that is not only an entertaining readbut which also can be a useful reference. Though the surface details vary fromcase to case and will doubtless continue to evolve in the future, he has success-fully illuminated the enduring essence of espionage andmade a strong case thatthe United States needs always to be on guard.

MARK STOUTJohns Hopkins University

The President’s Legislative Policy Agenda, 1789–2002 by JeffreyE. Cohen. New York, Cambridge University Press, 2012. 260pp. $29.99.

Article II of the United States Constitution gives to the President the powerto recommend to the consideration of Congress “such measures as he shalljudge necessary and expedient.” From George Washington on, presidentshave used that provision to propose a legislative policy agenda for Congress.In The President’s Legislative Policy Agenda, 1789–2002, Fordham politicalscientist Jeffrey E. Cohen offers an exhaustive examination and analysis of theevolution and dynamics of the President’s legislative agenda.

Cohen is particularly interested in the calculations that go into the Presi-dent’s decisions about whether and how to promote a piece of legislation that hewants to recommend. Why, Cohen asks, does the President seemingly so oftenpropose bills that have little chance of enactment? What have trends been overtime? Does the type of issue matter? And what sort of difference does dividedgovernment and partisan polarization make to the President’s agenda?

Many previous studies have examined presidential success on roll call votesin terms of position‐taking—how often does the President’s position prevailwhen he makes it known? This book looks instead at the important subset ofbills that the President himself has positively proposed—the President’s legis-lative policy agenda or, since 1949, the “President’s program.”

Cohen’s analysis illuminates a number of results. In some cases, those resultsshould not surprise, although they are important in confirming tendencies thathave long been suspected. For example, Cohen concludes that there is strongsupporting evidence for the “two presidencies” thesis—the President’s foreignpolicy program does have greater success in Congress than does his domesticprogram. At the same time, it is the President’s domestic program, particularlyin the social welfare policy area, that has been responsible for the vast bulk ofthe expanded size of the President’s overall agenda sinceWorldWar II. Indeed,


Cohen remarks that “To a degree, modern presidents are social welfare pres-idents” (pp. 185–186).

Other conclusions will be more surprising to some readers. A strongerpresidency since Franklin Roosevelt has translated into (among other things)greater success with Congress by modern presidents than by traditional pres-idents. Concerns about gridlock may have been valid at junctures since 1945,but the predominant picture is one thatmightmore easily lead to a concern thatthe President has grown too strong and Congress too pliant. As well, the maineffect of divided government is to reduce the size of the President’s agenda andto moderate that agenda; he still gets a significant proportion of what he asksfor, but he asks for fewer, and different, things.

The theoretical centerpiece of The President’s Legislative Policy Agenda isCohen’s “theory of congressional anticipations.” According to this theory, pres-idents “read the congressional environment for clues concerning the likely actionthat Congress will take on their legislative proposals” (p. 256). They then adjusttheir plans accordingly, shelving some proposals, modifying others, and acquir-ing more resources to continue pushing still others when prospects for congres-sional success seem to dim. Again, this is not a radically‐unexpected result, but itis a confirmation of presidential strategic thinking and a useful link betweenelements of the literature on presidential agendas and congressional action.

One shortcoming is that the book takes as a starting point that the proposalpower “breached the strict wall of separation between the president andCongress,” transforming the chief executive into a “participant in the legislativeprocess” (p. 13). In reality, the veto is at least as important in those terms, andthe Framers never desired an absolute separation between the branches (asMadison explains in The Federalist 51). Nevertheless, Cohen has done aconsiderable service to the study of presidential‐congressional relations.

ANDREW E. BUSCHClaremont McKenna College

The Poor Among Us: A History of Family Poverty and Home-lessness in New York City by Ralph da Costa Nunez and Ethan G.Sribnick. New York, White Tiger Press, 2013. 317 pp. $15.95.

When in the late 1970s New Yorkers en route to work came face to face withthousands of men and women sleeping and begging on the streets and in traintunnels and bus stations, the government of the City of New York, facing courtorder, opened emergency shelters for the homeless. Less visible were the 5,000families with children who were sheltered in commercial hotels and by non‐profit service organizations. This surge in need had not been seen since the

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Great Depression, and the City government said it was temporary. But manyfamilies could find no safe place to go, and more came in, and years after thesheltered families with children pushed up to 10,000. Almost 40 years later,the shelter beds for single adult men and women have now decreased, but thefamilies have multiplied.

The authors of this study have taken stock of this experience and haveconfronted the question, “Why, after all this time, are there still families unableto afford basic humannecessities, including housing?” (p. 2). Their query reachesas far back as the firstDutch outpost of a thousandpeople in the 1620s and tracesthe families across every era through 2012. This analytical narrative gives usdistinctive pictures of the economic conditions of each period and how theeconomic realities of daily life impinged on particular families who had toenter the shelters of the time. Through lucid documentation, we see how a storyabout family homelessness that is unusually comprehensive in scope comestogether.

The central conclusion of this study is that homelessness among families is aproblem of poverty. In essence, their answer combines an understanding of thenation’s sources of economic growth, and the realities of economic life offamilies with children. Some heads of households, they found, were morevulnerable than others.Most at risk over the centuries have been singlemotherswith small children. In times of plummeting economic conditions, the motherswith lowest resources could lose what little they had been able to marshal, sothat their recovery was likely to lag far longer. A loss of precarious family ties,itinerant work, the lowest wages, and limited options for wages could push amother further into extreme poverty and cause the loss of the family’s housing.

For every era, the authors give basic markers of the macroeconomic con-ditions within which poormothers lived day to day. They note a series of boom‐

and‐bust cycles in the U.S. economy, suggesting that, seen longitudinally, themost precarious among poor mothers were recurrently thrown into extremecircumstances. The recurrence of threats included depressions, panics, reces-sions; variations in supply of labor and jobs, and shifts in sources of trade andwealth, as well as disasters from the weather and mass disease and the violenceof domestic war and riots. Each could leave economic repercussions fromwhichmany poor and vulnerable familiesmight not have been insulated and thereforecould not readily recover the resources they needed to retain personal housingfor their children.

This study also examines in detail the nature of the responses that peoplehave mounted to protect poor mothers and children when they have lost theirhousing. Most importantly, these protections came from both public andprivate sources. The first municipal almshouse was constructed in 1736, andthe third was Bellevue, which opened on the East River in 1816. Charitable


organizations, also, used a variety of methods attempting to aid poor families,and they urged New York State and City governments to legislate, finance, andoperate a variety of social protective programs. Government support for per-manent housing came in 1879 and led to the Tenement House Act of 1901 tocounter poor sanitation and overcrowding. The limitation on all efforts was theenormous number of poor families in need in every era and the slow pace ofpolitical agreement on how to move forward. The last chapter makes this clearthrough original research on policies concerning poor homeless families inrecent decades. This is where today’s story starts. Using documentary realismand historical detail, this study is a strong foundation.

DONNA KIRCHHEIMERLehman College, CUNY

Neoconservative Politics and the Supreme Court: Law, Power,and Democracy by Stephen M. Feldman. New York, New YorkUniversity Press, 2012. 235 pp. $45.00.

In this concise and clearly written book, Stephen M. Feldman argues that theconservative ascendance in the United States since the presidency of RonaldReagan can be understood as an effort to reestablish the legal and politicalorder that existed prior to the New Deal. He labels this pre‐New Deal order“republican democracy,” distinct from the “pluralist democracy” that character-izes our politics since 1937. The heart of the book is the analysis of the SupremeCourt and how its conservative majority has pushed this agenda. But to getthere, Feldman must establish the broad historical‐political‐legal context. Forthe book is as much a political argument as it is legal analysis.

Indeed, Feldman suggests, the conservative ascendance is actually the tri-umph of neoconservatism, with its characteristic distrust of government’sability to get things done, embrace of the “moral clarity” of virtue and thecommon good (no relativism here) and American exceptionalism. Unlike othermanifestations of American conservatism, such as traditionalism, country‐clubRepublicanism, and libertarianism, neoconservatism has many fewer qualmsabout utilizing the power of the state—so long as the state’s actions are of theright kind. And the right kind are actions that would restore republicandemocracy. Here, the influence of the political philosopher Leo Strauss isimportant, and Feldman devotes many pages to Strauss’s critique of liberalismand pluralist democracy. Pluralist democracy rests on the shallow principle ofself‐interest, resulting in interest‐group liberalism and ultimately in politicalpolarization and sclerosis. It is amoral. Strauss and his neoconservative fol-lowers demand a return to moral clarity and the common good.

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But republican democracy faded in the 1930s for good reason, Feldmansuggests. It was a political order that embodied a largely agrarian, relativelyhomogeneous white Protestant dominance. That dominance eroded as a con-sequence of the large forces of industrialization, urbanization, immigration,and the ethnic and religious diversity they brought. By the 1930s, such diversityundermined any possibility of themoral clarity of an agreed‐upon notion of thecommon good.

Such is our world since then, and for this very reason, the neoconservativeeffort to restore republican democracy is ultimately doomed, in Feldman’s view.In themeantime, however, the effort has produced stunning changes in the law.It is through the lens of republican democracy that we can best understand theessential nature of the conservative thrust at the Supreme Court over the lastthree decades. Here, Feldman underscores the duplicity of the claims thatjudicial restraint and hewing to constitutional originalism are apolitical andthe only interpretive strategy that maintains the necessary distinction betweenlaw and politics. Because the decisions under originalism seem uncannily toproduce results consistent with the Republican agenda. Thus, even as theneoconservative Court majority champions judicial restraint in favor of thepeople making decisions through legislation, that majority pares back Con-gress’s use of the Commerce Clause (as in United States v. Lopez, which heldthat Congress had exceeded its commerce power when it enacted the Gun‐FreeSchool Zones Act), and applies strict scrutiny in affirmative action issues, even ifthe government acts with benign intent (as in Parents Involved in CommunitySchools v. Seattle School District). And far from judicial restraint, the WilliamRehnquist and John Roberts courts have toppled precedents in many areas ofthe law, in sometimes radical fashion, as in the campaign finance case, CitizensUnited v. Federal Election Commission.

One can quibble with Feldman’s history of how the New Deal was won andhis underplaying of the religious dimension to the Reagan revolution, and onecan be skeptical of the intellectual consistency he ascribes to neoconservatism.But this is a provocative and compelling argument.

ROBERT B. HORWITZUniversity of California, San Diego

Staten Island: Conservative Bastion in a Liberal City by Daniel C.Kramer and RichardM. Flanagan. Lanham,MD, University Pressof America, 2012. 244 pp. Paper, $32.99.

The concept of borough identity has been embedded in New York City’spolitical history since the consolidation of the city at the turn of the last century.


The 1989 charter revision that abolished the Board of Estimate significantlyweakened borough representation in city government. This decline in boroughpower has been exacerbated further by the decline in strong borough‐basedparty organizations, changing borough demographics, the “Manhattanization”of some of the outer boroughs, and 20 years of mayors who have paid littleattention to borough political identity. This recent decline, however, should notnecessarily be viewed as the death of the boroughs and their place in the politicsand governance of New York City.

If a case can be made for the continuance of strong borough recognitionand representation in New York City, Staten Island may very well provide thebest argument. Daniel C. Kramer and Richard M. Flanagan’s book attemptsto provide the evidence. Their work provides a political history of theborough from the Depression to the present. The authors suggest that thereader look at Staten Island as a small city deprived of its ability to engage indemocratic self‐governance because it has been incorporated into a larger andquite different political jurisdiction. The authors mention the suburbancharacter, white ethnic base, and geographic/topographic proximity toNew Jersey as characteristics that separate this borough from the otherfour. But their strongest argument, and major theme of the book, is thatStaten Island has a history of intense two‐party competition that the otherboroughs lack. The book’s greatest strength is the documentation, primarilyvia anecdotes and brief political biographies, of the party competition, andintra‐party factionalism, that the borough has experienced over the pastseveral decades.

While the book is subtitled “Conservative Bastion in a Liberal City,” theauthors correctly note that while Staten Island Republicans, and Democrats,may be more conservative than their counterparts in the other boroughs, thereclearly is a disconnect between Staten Island Republican conservatism andthe current extreme brand of conservatism dominating national RepublicanParty politics. The authors attribute this in part to the borough being popu-lated by many city employees who depend on a healthy public sector; andRepublican Party success depends on these voters. Similarly, the authors statethat the island’s conservatism, reflected in both Democratic as well as Repub-lican Party agendas, has frequently been contradicted by demands emanatingfrom both parties for greater governmental intervention in controlling Islandgrowth as well as demands for assistance from the state and city in promotingeconomic development, rather than relying solely on the market to achievethese ends.

But if the authors’ goal was to make a comprehensive case for Staten Island“exceptionalism,” they could have gone much further. Their work fails topresent any systematic comparison between Staten Island and the other

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boroughs. They could have provided tables comparing the boroughs on housingdensity, changing racial/ethnic composition, and partisan politics. This wouldhave strengthened, or weakened, their argument. In addition, while the authorsaddress the major issues facing Staten Islanders, including growth manage-ment, infrastructure needs, and the closing of the Freshkills Landfill, theirtreatment of these issues is always as an artifact of partisan politics, falling shorton substance. But if the authors’ goal was to present a history of partisan politicsin New York City’s most Republican, yet most competitive, borough, they haveproduced a most readable and well‐documented work.

BRUCE BERGFordham University

FDR and the Jews by Richard Breitman and Allan J. Lichtman.Cambridge, MA, Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2013. 464pp. $29.95.

My parents cried at their wedding.Their tears were not of joy, but of sadness. Their wedding took place on 12

April 1945, the saddest day of the twentieth century for American Jews.Franklin D. Roosevelt died that day. My parents, like many American Jews,believed that they had lost their protector.

Revisionist history was to be less kind to FDR. He was portrayed as an anti‐Semite who could have done much more to save European Jews from the Nazideath camps.Hewas a patricianwho could not–andwould not–relate to peopleof a different background.

Richard Breitman and Allan J. Lichtman, two historians at AmericanUniversity, challenge this view. Roosevelt may not have been the savior ofAmerican Jews, as my parents viewed him. But he was “neither a hero of theJews nor a bystander to the Nazis’ persecution and then annihilation of Jews….He had to make difficult and painful trade‐offs…. Roosevelt reacted moredecisively to Nazi crimes against Jews than did any other world leader of histime” (p. 315).

Their research is exhaustive and their conclusion is compelling. Breitmanand Lichtman agree that Roosevelt “did little to assist Jews in Germany” in hisfirst term (p. 315). But he became farmore proactive after winning reelection bya landslide in 1936.

Roosevelt faced strong opposition virtually everywhere he looked. Anti‐Semitism was rife throughout the world, among our Western allies and withinthe country. Our British allies had strong links to the Arab world and were thusunwilling to do much to aid the Jews, especially if this meant immigration to


Palestine. The State Department was filled with anti‐Semites. Not until 1944did national Republicans support Jewish emigration to Palestine, and oftenmade common ground with prominent anti‐Semites. African Americans andlabor union leaders, who might be expected to be more sympathetic, worriedabout the effect of mass immigration of Jews to America. Not here, not toPalestine. Where could the Jews go? Alaska was a possibility, memorialized inMichael Chabon’s 2007 novel, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. Almost every-where in Latin America was suggested: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Cuba,the Dominican Republic, and Mexico.

No one wanted large‐scale Jewish immigration–and many people did notwant any. As Tom Lehrer sang in “National Brotherhood Week” (http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/National‐Brotherhood‐Week‐lyrics‐Tom‐

Lehrer/625DBDA1F04F231148256A7D0025A2FC):

Oh the Protestants hate the Catholics,And the Catholics hate the Protestants,And the Hindus hate the Muslims,And everybody hates the Jews.

This is the lesson that Breitman and Lichtman tell and the story is well told,if lengthy.

Organized Jewry was disorganized and thus incapable of putting muchpressure on FDR or anyone else.

I am not a historian, so I take the many positive reviews of their book tojudge their work as an important corrective to the critique of Roosevelt’shesitation to take stronger action to save European Jews. As a political scientist,I do have some issues with their presentation. The reader never knows thatthere is a controversy about FDRuntil the last chapter. The book is historywiththe emphasis on story. I wish that the larger theme had been introduced at theoutset and that the authors had looked more at the Jews, not just at FDR.Jewish support of the Democratic Party did not begin with Roosevelt. Jewsvoted heavily for Woodrow Wilson in 1916 and for Al Smith in 1928 (seeHerbert Weisberg, “Reconsidering Jewish Voting Statistics,” ContemporaryJewry, 32 [2012]: 215–236).

But FDR was special. Breitman and Lichtman do not tell us anything aboutwhymy parents and somany othermembers of their generationwere so devotedto Roosevelt—or what other Americans thought about Jews. There is littlesurvey data on attitudes toward the Jews or Palestine before 1944, but the Ipolldata base shows 10 surveys of Americans in 1944 and 1945 on these issues. It is agreat story as history, but it could have been even better as social science.

ERIC M. USLANERUniversity of Maryland, College Park

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The Religious Beliefs of America’s Founders: Reason, Revelation,and Revolution by Gregg L. Frazer. Lawrence, University Press ofKansas, 2012. 296 pp. $34.95.

In his new book, Gregg Frazer presents an original and persuasive treatment ofthe religious beliefs of America’s Founders. According to Frazer, the mostinfluential American Founders were neither Christians nor deists but ratherwhat he calls “theistic rationalists,” and the Founders sought to establish arepublic that was neither secular nor Christian but rather one based upontheistic rationalism.

Frazer defines “theistic rationalism” as “a hybrid belief system mixing ele-ments of natural religion, Christianity, and rationalism, with rationalism as thepredominant element” (p. 14). This “belief system” was not deistic, because incontrast to deism, it posited that God was providentially involved in the eventsof the world, that at least some of the Bible was inspired by God, and that JesusChrist was a good moral figure. Neither was this belief system Christianity,however, because it rejected the divinity of Jesus, the plenary inspiration of theScriptures, and other key Christian doctrines such as the Trinity, the necessityof belief in Jesus for salvation by grace alone, and substitutionary atonement—doctrines that theistic rationalists regard as being the result of a corruption ofthe teachings of Jesus by St. Paul and later leaders of the church.

With persistent and skillful appeal to the public writings and private corre-spondence of the Founders, Frazer shows persuasively that some Foundersoften regarded by scholars as deists, such as Thomas Jefferson, BenjaminFranklin, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton, were not deists. On theother hand, Frazier shows irrefutably that Founders sometimes thought byscholars to be Christians, such as GeorgeWashington, John Adams, and JamesMadison, were not Christians; the fairness of the author’s treatment of thesemen is seen in Frazer’s willingness to acknowledge Christian belief where itactually existed, as seen, for example, in Frazer’s treatment of Hamilton’sconversion to Christianity at the end of his life (pp. 193–196). In his treatmentof the theistic rationalism of leading ministers of the period, Frazer arguespersuasively that there exists an incompatibility between orthodox Christianityand Lockean ideas such as the right of resistance (pp. 102–105). This importanttheme of the incompatibility of Christianity and Enlightenment political ideasis one that appears throughout the book and leads Frazer to refer to theisticrationalism as the “contradictory nature of the hybrid religion of the period”(p. 87).

In spite of the strength of Frazer’s arguments, some will criticize him forminor weaknesses. For example, Frazer omitted discussion of some Founderswho were orthodox Christians. For example, Mark Hall’s recent book, Roger


Sherman and the Creation of the American Republic, shows Sherman’s sincereCalvinist convictions that influenced his political thinking. Similarly, Frazer’streatment of influential ministers is persuasive in showing the incompatibilityof Lockean and Christian political thinking and yet omits any significanttreatment of those ministers of the period, such as Timothy Dwight or Jona-than Edwards, Jr., whose beliefs and political opinions were entirely within theorthodox Christian tradition. In addition, one wonders if “Unitarian”may havebeen a better way to describe the Founders than “theistic rationalist,” since they(pp. 121, 155, 185, 221), and those who influenced them (pp. 33–35, 38, 50, 62,73), were often called Unitarians by Frazer.

This book is a necessary read for any serious scholar who studies the place ofreligion at the American Founding, and it is a fascinating challenge to thegeneral reader who is willing to see the Founders as establishing neither aChristian nor a secular republic.

BILL REDDINGERRegent University

Freedom from Harm: The Lasting Legacy of the Laissez FaireRevival by Thomas O. McGarity. New Haven, CT, Yale UniversityPress, 2013. 408 pp. $45.00.

The central claim of this book is that between 1975 and 2005 three broadassaults on the nation’s regulatory infrastructure substantially weakened thereforms of the Progressive Era, the New Deal, and the Public Interest Era. Asecondary claim is that these assaults were driven by laissez‐faire ideologuesworking from within various think tanks, the media, and, eventually, the hallsof government.

The first claim is impossible to dispute, and Thomas O. McGarity providesample evidence for it. The second is quite plausible, although, becauseMcGarity isnot interested in measuring the effect that ideologues had on the assaults, theextent to which they “drove” them is not clear. Ideologues pushed for change,and change happened; the tone is moremono‐causal than conspiratorial, but itmay frustrate social scientists seeking a testable social theory. As it is, readerscan only wonder about the odds—in a world where ideologues are the shapersof policy—of his quite sensible suggestions for reform ever seeing the light ofday. McGarity might have done better simply to treat the past 50 years as afamiliar chapter in the ongoing historical struggle to establish the proper role ofgovernment. Whether ideologues were uniquely important to this chapter iscertainly of less importance than the effects that deregulation has had on thenation.

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Such quibbling may be unfair. McGarity’s purpose is to tell a story; in fact, itis to tell the same one repeatedly, changing only the policy area. Whether it iswith respect to civil justice, environmental protection, or transportation safety,he walks us through the same three stages of assault: rules are rewritten,protection is foregone, and accountability is limited. The sheer repetitivenessof the events, while at times a bit tedious to digest, makes a compelling case thatpast efforts to safeguard society from unbridled market activity have indeedbeen significantly undermined. This analysis may not be social science as it iscurrently practiced, but given the vivid picture of the deregulatory movement itoffers, that fact should, rather than frustrate political scientists, push them toconsider the virtues inherent in earlier modes of academic inquiry. Readers willcome away not only with a firm understanding of the politics involved (welearn, for example, that among presidents, the good guys—Nixon, Ford, Carter,Bush I—and bad guys—Reagan, Clinton, Bush II—do not necessarily dividealong party lines), they will also receive a wonderful primer in the myriad legaland political means by which regulatory policies affect all realms of social life.

My chief concern about the book is less with its empirical case than with itsunderlying normative stance. McGarity makes quite clear (at times in some-what shrill tones) his view that we are much the worse for deregulatory efforts.My problem is not with that view—I am in wholesale agreement with it—butwith the fact that he spendsmore time asserting it than defending it. As a result,I had trouble seeing how anyone who disagreed with him would be convinced.Chapter after chapter left unchallenged two standard laissez‐faire responses:regulatory policy goals (for example, safer workplaces, cleaner air) may beadmirable but they are not worth the required sacrifice to economic freedom,and, in any case, they are more efficiently brought about via market mecha-nisms. Attention to those canards, as well as perhaps a tad more even‐handed-ness (nowhere does he display an ounce of cynicism about the value of anyregulations, all of which are presented as well thought out by people with onlygood intentions)would have transformed this book from a valuable resource forprogressives to a troublesome read for laissez‐faire ideologues.

PETER LINDSAYGeorgia State University

Political Giving: Making Sense of Individual CampaignContributions by Bertram N. Johnson. Boulder, CO, LynneRienner Publishers, 2013. 156 pp. $58.00.

Why do individuals contribute to political campaigns? The question bearsasking since, in spite of the considerable attention paid to organized interests


and their political action committees (PACs), individual contributionsmake upthe largest share of federal campaign receipts. In particular, Bertram N.Johnson’s new book asks why so many individuals give in amounts too smallfor them to expect anymaterial return. Johnson outlines a typology of potentialincentives for giving that includes material, solidary, purposive, and expressiveincentives. Though political scientists have written extensively about materialand solidary reasons for giving, the author argues that purposive and expressiveincentives have been overlooked. Purposive incentives originate from the in-trinsic satisfaction of contributing to promote a desired social or politicaloutcome; expressive incentives are based on the utility gained from articulatingparticular values. The author generates a number of hypotheses based on theseincentives including, in the case of purposive incentives, that individuals withstrong political preferences will be more likely to contribute.

Before testing his hypotheses directly, Johnson devotes a chapter to theinteresting history of individual political donors in American politics. A subse-quent chapter uses interviews with political fundraisers in order to understandhow contemporary campaigns raise money. Most fundraisers report that tech-nological change has not fundamentally changed the process of raising moneyover the past decade. Campaigns still focus on a candidate’s social and profes-sional network to raise large individual contributions and on interest groups forPAC money. Though technology may bring down the costs of raising smalldonations, fundraisers tend to dismiss small donations as not worth their time.The exceptions to this accepted wisdom are candidates with extreme views whocan use the Internet successfully to raise small donations from dedicatedpartisans.

Themeat of Johnson’s analysis tests the theory of purposive incentives usingmeasures of ideological extremism. Individuals who have extreme ideologyshould bemore likely tomake contributions in order to promote their preferredpolitical outcomes. Likewise, extreme candidates should be the recipients ofmore individual and small donations, since they are most committed to a clearpolitical end. Using donation data from the Federal Election Commission andmeasures of legislator ideology, Johnson finds that legislator extremism is astrong predictor of receiving individual donations and small donations. On thedonor side, an analysis of data from the American National Election Survey(ANES) reveals that extreme individual ideology increases the probability ofmaking a donation. In addition, this effect has increased markedly since theearly 2000s. Johnson’s empirical tests of his hypotheses related to expressiveincentives are less convincing, due in part to the questions available in theANES.

Johnson makes a strong case that extreme candidates rely more on individ-ual donors and small donations and that extreme individuals are more likely to

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make donations. Based on these findings, the author expresses skepticism ofreforms that would further limit the size of campaign contributions or matchsmall donations, fearing that such changes would mainly benefit extremecandidates. Surprisingly, Johnson engages very little with the issue of increas-ing political polarization, a topic that seems to follow directly from the subjectmatter. Students of politics would like to know if ideologically extreme donorsare encouraging more‐extreme candidates to run or if they are following thecandidates’ lead. In all, the reader is left with important insights about who ismore likely to give and receive individual contributions, but with a limited senseof how these relationships might influence the political system more broadly.

MICHAEL SCHWAM‐BAIRDColumbia University

Facebook Democracy: The Architect of Disclosure and the Threatto Public Life by José Marichal. Burlington, VT, AshgatePublishing Company, 2012. 193 pp. $85.45.

Without a doubt, the Internet is changing the way we interact with the politicalworld. As citizens, we not only struggle to fully understand how the Internetchanges the way we think about the world, but we struggle with understandinghow such changes affect behaviors. One of the largest, popular Internet Websites today, Facebook, is poised at the center of these changes. As a socialnetworking site, Facebook stands as an entity poised to be of critical, if not vital,importance to the manner in which citizens participate in politics.

José Marichal contributes to this discussion with an insightful look at theinterplay of citizens and social networking sites. As an examination of theFacebook platform and the philosophy behind how people actually network onthe site, Facebook Democracy offers a fascinating contribution to the study ofpolitical communication. Throughout this study, Marichal outlines what heterms Facebook’s architecture of disclosure. In the opening pages, Marichaldescribes how Facebook has created an expectation that users should openlyshare personal information on the social networking site. This sets the stage fora rather dynamic discussion of the medium that pulls from multiple academicdisciplines. Marichal supplants this work with a content analysis of 250 Face-book groups from32 countries. All in all, this is a comprehensive, well‐thought‐out examination of Facebook and its effect on democracy.

Prior to the Web 2.0 revolution, human interaction looked and felt muchdifferent. Social networks were already in existence, albeit offline. Withintraditional face‐to‐face networks, people interact in a way that is communica-tive. Marichal’s book strikes a chord because he describes how Facebook’s


preference for disclosure encourages a type of interaction that is much moreexpressive than communicative. Marichal argues that Facebook has encour-aged its users to engage in identity performance, where individuals exchangeand display information about themselves in a public space. This performanceis increasingly becoming a distinct form of interaction in Web peer‐to‐peercommunication.

The first third of Marichal’s book is dedicated to outlining these ideas indetail. Even early on in these chapters, it becomes clear that the strength ofMarichal’s book is its ability to generate insight. Very little is known aboutthe societal implications of online social networking. However, the mannerin which Marichal explains Facebook’s operating principles generates manydifferent ideas about how the social networking site is changing our perceptionsof the world around us. To interested citizens, this should be consideredimportant work. As a researcher interested in these issues, this book isinvaluable.

The remaining chapters of Facebook Democracy are devoted to severaldiscussions about this current state of affairs and its effect on democratic valuesand practices. Here, the discussion delves deeper by examining how the archi-tecture of disclosure affects topics such as voice, activism, and privacy. Asnormative issues, each of these chapters deserves greater attention; they onlybegin to scratch the surface of each topic. Again, while the strength of FacebookDemocracy lies in is its ability to generate insight on these issues, these chaptersexemplify the generalist nature of the study. The book leaves the reader with adesire to further examine Facebook and its connection to topics such associology, communication, politics, and democratic theory. As we movethrough the digital age, it becomes clear that the true impact of online socialnetworking on politics still remains to be seen. Facebook Democracy is athought‐provoking and essential book that helps facilitate our understandingof how the Internet is changing the political world.

MARIO GUERREROCalifornia State Polytechnic University, Pomona

Citizens of Asian America: Democracy and Race during the ColdWar by Cindy I‐Fen Cheng. New York, New York University Press,2013. 285 pp. $49.00.

In this book, Cindy I‐Fen Cheng describes how the public and the U.S. gov-ernment after World War II saw people of Asian ancestry as what she calls“foreigners‐within.” This perception led to two seemingly contradictory out-comes for the Chinese Americans and Korean Americans at the center of

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Cheng’s study. Successive Cold War presidential administrations understoodthe negative impact of American racial discrimination on the nation’s foreignpolicy aims, so officials praised the integration of Asian Americans into U.S.society as a sign of the country’s democratic character. At the same time,authorities targeted Chinese Americans and Korean Americans as potentialsecurity threats, in large part because their national origins supposedly linkedthem to Cold War enemies.

Cheng traces this vacillation between inclusion and exclusion in five chap-ters that examine Chinese American encounters with residential discriminationin Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area; Chinese American and KoreanAmerican “firsts,” such as Delbert Wong, the first Chinese American judge, andSammy Lee, the first Korean American Olympic gold medalist; the investiga-tion of Chinese Americans in a nationwide 1956 immigration probe; and thefederal harassment of Korean American leftists David Hyun and DiamondKimm in the 1950s and 1960s.

In these chapters, Cheng offers a number of new insights into an under-studied period. In her discussion of “firsts,” she presents the lives of her subjectswith a rare warmth and complexity; she also persuasively shows that suchpeople developed their own understandings of race, democracy, and Ameri-canness distinct from media portrayals of them as symbols of American supe-riority and freedom. Juxtaposing celebrations of Asian Americans’ loyalty withprobes into their alleged subversion, Cheng astutely observes that these appar-ently conflicting ideas were in fact not so contradictory after all. Rather, shecontends, “The legal suppression of dissent is vital tomaintaining the belief thatthe American heritage is indeed rooted in the principles of freedom andequality” (p. 20).

Citizens of Asian America sometimes lacks nuance and attention to detailand is more useful as a cultural critique of the early Cold War period than as ahistory of Asian Americans at that time. Throughout the book, Cheng conflatesthe numerous and often‐contradictory actors, agencies, and interests thatcomprise the U.S. government into a single, unified “state” intent on exploitingand persecuting Asian Americans. She argues that Asian Americans played anactive role in multiracial organizing for residential integration yet offers no realevidence for this. And her analysis is occasionally contradictory. Early on, shediscusses how images of Chinese American nuclear families matched thenation’s conservative gender roles; later, she argues of the same period thatthe “concept of ‘working women’ was becoming a measure of the preeminenceof the American way of life” (p. 105).

But such problems mostly reflect the ambition of a book that tries and oftensucceeds in illuminating the complexity of Asian American identities andimages at a crucial moment in the past. Overall, Cheng’s work is a solid


contribution to an emerging and valuable body of literature about postwarAsian American life.

CHARLOTTE BROOKSBaruch College, CUNY

Miami Transformed: Rebuilding America One Neighborhood,One City at a Time by Manny Diaz. Philadelphia, University ofPennsylvania Press, 2012. 192 pp. $29.95.

“Mayors throughout America are the government of first resort,” argues formerMiami Mayor Manny Diaz, but “they have also become the government of lastresort” (p. 201).Miami Transformed recounts howDiaz confronted challengesin one of America’s most‐diverse cities at a moment of major transformation(2001–2009). His tone is conversational and the analysis often simplistic. Butfaced with global challenges and federal dysfunction, his unalloyed confidencein cities and mayoral capacity is worth considering.

Miami Transformed is at once autobiography, political memoir, and mani-festo. Written for a general audience, it feels like campaign material (Diaz hasexplored running for statewide office). It traces a classic immigrant tale of hisfamily’s exile from Cuba in 1961 and growing up in Miami’s Little Havana. Butwhile his parents and their generation “were focused on change in Cuba,” forDiaz “many in my generation focused on change in Miami” (p. 31). Diaz’s earlyactivities centered on key issues of the time: diversity and legislative redistrict-ing, the growing role of exit polling (which he introduced to the future Uni-vision), and fund‐raising and the “ground game.” His primary career is as alawyer, and one chapter describes his role representing the U.S. relatives ofElián González. With such experience and exposure, he successfully ran forMayor of Miami in 2000.

While he laments that “all aspiring politicians should be careful what theywish for” and the bureaucratic mantra “No, it can’t be done” (p. 86), Diaz ischeerily confident describing his strategic agenda to improve economic oppor-tunity, education, public safety, public and private investment, sustainability,and cultural life in Miami. In short chapters he recounts the decline orstagnation he confronted, the collaborations and coalitions he built, and policysuccesses. Diaz served as President of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, so hisstrategies share the thinking and tools of contemporaries (though withoutreflecting on their limitations): enhancing access to existing social services,but shifting their provision from downtown; exerting municipal control overschools and testing; policing “quality of life” offenses; public‐private investmentin infrastructure and downtown revitalization; sustainability and New

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Urbanism; and promoting the arts as development strategy. Concluding with areflection on the failures of the federal government (and particularly Congress),Diaz calls on leaders to “invest in the promise (the U.S.) has always offered”(p. 205).

We live in amoment of urban optimism, andDiaz’s tale of transformation—his own from Cuban exile to Mayor, and Miami’s from “murder capital” toworld city—is timely. Urban resurgence in Miami and elsewhere is indeedremarkable and a credit to charismatic leadership. But it is hard to separateleadership from larger trends. And not all trends are quite so positive orcontradiction‐free. The book’s writing and analysis will lack sophisticationfor many scholars, urban policymakers, and informed readers, straining itscredibility as political/policy primer. But perhaps that is not the point. Sub-titled “Rebuilding America One Neighborhood, One City at a Time,” the booksports endorsements from Michael Bloomberg, Richard Daley, and RichardFlorida. It is a political manifesto by and for a new class of urban leaders, whosesights are set beyond city limits. It reveals the ambitions of America’s mayors,particularly in the vacuum left by dysfunction in U.S. capitals. Whatever itslimitations, this book provides a window into the future of both cities andAmerican politics. A nation led by mayors? Perhaps we could do worse.

DAVID L. PRYTHERCHMiami University, Oxford, Ohio

Hot Books in the Cold War: The CIA-Funded Secret WesternBook Distribution Program Behind the Iron Curtain by Alfred A.Reisch. New York, Central European University Press, 2013. 574pp. $70.00.

Radio Free Europe, broadcasting to five East European countries, became ahousehold word in the United States during the Cold War. It was the majoractivity of the Free Europe Committee (FEC), a public‐private partnershipbetween the Central Intelligence Agency, the State Department, and influentialprivate citizens. Complementing radio broadcasts, the FEC also targeted East-ern Europe with a printed word program. In its first phase, leaflets and mini‐newspapers were dispatched with fanfare by balloon. In its second phase,Western books and East European underground literature published in theWest were sent without publicity to Eastern Europe by postal mail and bytravelers.

Former FEC official John P.C.Matthewswas the first author to publicize the“book program” in his 2003 article, “The West’s Secret Marshall Plan for theMind.” Alfred Reisch oversaw the Hungarian project until 1974. His book


(completed just before his death in 2013) provides an encyclopedic, scholarlyaccount of the origins, operations, and impact of the program. Conceived byFEC official Samuel S. Walker as an instrument to encourage “transformationof the communist system by an evolutionary process” (p. 16), the “book pro-gram”was developed andmanaged almost single‐handedly by GeorgeMinden,a British‐Romanian who focused the program on East European elites tocombat their ideological isolation, “to keep [them] oriented toward theWest, independent‐minded, and friendly to America” (p. 52). Reisch drawson the Hoover Institution Archives (especially Minden’s detailed project re-ports), interviews and correspondence with participants, and personal experi-ence to provide a comprehensive, indeed forensic analysis of the program forthe years 1956–1973. Successive chapters cover in great detail the organizationof the project and its international coalition of publishers and book distrib-utors, mailing of books to Eastern Europe, distribution of books by travelers,acknowledgment letters from East European recipients, and efforts by com-munist regime censors to ban unapproved literature. Lacking documentationof the program in its later years, Reisch can only sketch in a final chapter thecontinuation of the project (now including the USSR) outside the FEC orbit.

The Iron Curtain that walled off Central and Eastern Europe was porous.Western radio broadcasts reached many tens of millions of East Europeanlisteners in spite of radio jamming. Reisch estimates that some ten millionWestern books and other publications reached East Europeans in spite ofpostal and customs censorship and that East Europeans responded withsome million letters requesting or acknowledging books. This was East–West “bridge building” at its best.

Reisch’s pioneering study demonstrates that the “book program” was animportant part of the American Cold War effort to counter Soviet influence,help East Europeans remain in touch with the West, and keep alive hope offreedom. Although the program was funded covertly from the U.S. intelligencebudget through the FEC until 1971, strategic direction came not from Wash-ington but from FEC officials Walker and Minden. They organized and man-aged a decentralized international consortium of publishers, individuals, andWestern governments who saw the value of a “Marshall Plan for the mind,”were eager to participate on the condition that the program be conducted in theshadows, and never publicized their activities. Nor was the program penetratedby Soviet bloc intelligence services. Now, over 20 years after its end, AlfredReisch has superbly analyzed and documented the “book program” that wasone of the most successful and cost‐effective instruments of American foreignpolicy during the Cold War.

A. ROSS JOHNSONThe Wilson Center

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Global Security Upheaval: Armed NSGs Usurping State StabilityFunctions by Robert Mandel. Palo Alto, CA, Stanford UniversityPress, 2013. 304 pp. Paper, $32.50.

This book challenges the existing idea that states are the best providers ofsecurity and stability. In this book, RobertMandel takes a self‐professed “devil’sadvocate” position in exploring the global shift in security provision from publicto private hands—arguing that armed non‐state groups (NSGs) can play apositive role in creating security and stability (p. 12).

To persuade us to take armed NSGs seriously as providers of security,Mandel uses a multi‐pronged approach. He demonstrates that a shift isunderway in global security that entails a decreasing ability of sovereign statesto provide stability and security alongwith increasing demands for stability andan increasing ability of armed NSGs to provide it. He defines armed NSGs(categorizing them into five types) and defines security stability, synthesizingexisting approaches to stability and ultimately stripping the concept down tofour elements (security authority, public welfare, internal harmony, and exter-nal autonomy). Employing 12 cases drawn from different types of armedNSGs,he highlights patterns of how these groups succeed or fail in providing a stableand secure local environment and draws inferences from these patterns aboutwhich armed NSGs are most likely to be security enhancing and when.

Mandel achieves his primary goal of getting the reader to rethink the rolethat armed NSGs are playing in the global arena. Both the case studies and thechapter spent conceptualizing types of armed NSGs demonstrate that not all ofthe groups are similar and they are not all similarly bad in terms of stability.

Having achieved that goal, Mandel also seeks to provide something of aguide to armed NSGs and to how the global community of policymakers candeal with them. This endeavor is more difficult.While the book provides a greatdeal of information and well‐thought‐out argumentation, it raises many ques-tions that beg further investigation at minimum.

Mandel focuses on armed NSGs as a potential source of stability, but alsonames five other relevant actors. It is not clear what is lost analytically byexamining only one actor, and one that is likely to emerge only under certainconditions of stability breakdown. Mandel asks us to look beyond states as theonly providers of security stability, yet his conceptualization is still rooted in theuse of force/monopoly on the use‐of‐force ideas that are so dominant in thestate‐centric literature. This harkens back to the existence ofmultiple sources ofauthority that pre‐dated the contemporary international system analyzed byHenrik Spruyt in The Sovereign State and Its Competitors, as well as others.

The 12 cases are chosen because they represent a “wide range of successfuland unsuccessful… effort to achieve security” (p. 8). Mandel acknowledges


limitations of the case analysis, but mainly related to the number of cases, andnot any other issues with case selection that make generalizability challenging.The cases advance Mandel’s primary goal of causing us to rethink the role ofarmed NSGs, but the lessons from these cases inspire rather than conclusivelyanswer questions about why they emerged in the first place, how they function,their relationship to the populace and the state, and how and when they will beeffective in promoting stability.

Mandel concludes by addressing the normative implications of armedNSGsproviding security stability, and highlights the dangers of these groups provid-ing stability through coercion. This thoughtful account is an excellent conclu-sion to this book that forces us to rethink the role of armed NSGs ininternational politics.

KATHLEEN GALLAGHER CUNNINGHAMUniversity of Maryland

Prisoners of the White House: The Isolation of America’sPresidents and the Crisis of Leadership by Kenneth T. Walsh.Boulder, CO, Paradigm Publishers, 2013. 256 pp. $27.95.

More than 40 years ago, George Reedy, a veteran reporter and former LyndonB. Johnson press secretary, argued in The Twilight of the Presidency that thegrowing power and isolation of themodern presidency had rendered presidentsdeaf to any sources of public opinion beyond the White House and, as a result,had made it impossible for them to govern effectively or democratically.

Kenneth Walsh, a longtime White House correspondent, readily acknowl-edges that the White House can be, in Harry Truman’s words, a “nice prison”(p. 97) and is aware of the dangers of presidential isolation. In fact, he arguesthat the isolation has only gotten worse over the last four decades. UnlikeReedy, however, Walsh contends that some “prisoners of the White House”have managed to scale the White House walls and stay connected to thepeople.

Walsh identifies “four fundamental ways in which today’s presidents keep intouch” (p. 12)—intuition, polls, the press, and Congress—and then evaluatesvarious presidents from Franklin Roosevelt through Barack Obama based ontheir success in using these tools to break out of the White House prison.According to Walsh, four modern presidents, Johnson, Richard Nixon, JimmyCarter, and Bush I, “lost the people”; five, FDR, Truman, Ronald Reagan, BillClinton, and Obama, “stayed connected”; and two, John F. Kennedy and BushII, were “defiant princes”who governed by their own lights more than did othermodern presidents (JFK to his benefit, Bush II to his detriment).

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At first glance, it seems that public opinion polling holds the key to escape.Walsh devotes far more time to polls than any of the other tools he identifies forovercoming presidential isolation. The four presidents who “lost the people”either failed to heed the polls or misused polls and, as a result, pursuedunpopular policies and suffered failed presidencies. His overriding focus onpolling, which includes a chapter on presidential pollsters, who he calls “some ofthe most interesting characters to ever work in government” (p. 167), suggeststhat a modern president’s success or failure is largely predicated on his use ofpolls.

Unfortunately,Walsh sheds little new light on presidential polling. He relieson only a handful of secondary sources that he quotes from far too much, to tellhis story and offers very little of his own analysis. He does include interviewsthat he conducted with presidential pollsters and cites some confidentialmemos. But Walsh does not do much with these. For instance, he quotes atlength from a memo Clinton pollster Stan Greenberg wrote in May of 1994(pp. 197–198) warning of the likelihood of a Republican landslide thatNovember without explaining whether or how the memo influenced WhiteHouse strategy. Despite his fascinationwith polling,Walsh does not really offermuch insight on how presidents have or should use polls beyond warning themto “make use of the pollsters, but don’t overdo it” (p. 205).

In the end, Walsh believes it is a president’s instincts, his capacity to readpublic opinion and relate to average Americans, that enable him to break out ofthe White House prison. Some presidents have this ability, some do not. ForWalsh, Truman won reelection in 1948 because he ignored the polls andconnected with the “commonman.” “His experience,”writesWalsh, “illustratesa major premise of this book—that the intuition and background a presidentbrings to the White House can be more important than all the pollsters, focusgroups, advisors, and constituent letters in the world” (p. 100). Prisoners of theWhite House, however, provides few clues about how presidents actually usetheir instincts, polls, and other tools to connect with the American people andlead public opinion.

MARK NEVINOhio University Lancaster

The Life of Herbert Hoover: Keeper of the Torch, 1933–1964 byGary Dean Best. New York, Palgrave, 2013. 560 pp. $60.00.

Voters summarily ousted Herbert Hoover from the White House in 1933, andcasual readers of history might assume that he promptly disappeared from thepublic scene, lost in the shadow of Franklin Roosevelt. As late author Gary


Dean Best’s extremely detailed and expansive Keeper of the Torch demon-strates, however, Hoover was, in fact, a visible and active former president,working tirelessly and for decades to revive his legacy, nurture his ideology, andrescue his Party’s political fortunes. Prior works by Best and others haveportrayed Hoover as a remarkable man diminished by the presidency, a manwhose keen intellect was unsuited to the mire of politics. This volume picks upthat theme in 1933, offering a portrait of the post‐presidential Hoover as abrilliant, complex character, sometimes angry, often shrill and contentious,relatively unskilled in the art of politics but always engaged in public affairs.

The meticulous historical scholarship on display in Best’s final volume isimpressive, as the author essentially retraces Hoover’s steps over the course of31 years, at times providing a day‐by‐day chronicle of events. The detail can, attimes, be overwhelming, a limitation explained in part by the productionprocess behind the volume. Best died after producing the manuscript. Aca-demic referees felt it unwise to alter Best’s work without the author’s input, andthus it was published in its entirety.

The scope of the book is daunting but Best skillfully escorts the readerthrough Hoover’s post‐election anger at being collared with responsibility forthe Great Depression, his misinterpretation of the Nazi threat, his post‐warwork to feed Europe, and ultimately Hoover’s late‐in‐life emergence as whatBest calls “The Grand Old Man of the Grand Old Party” (p. 447).

The secret to this extraordinary work of scholarship, of course, resides inHoover’s own active mind and prolific pen. The former president was a keenobserver, ever able to express the meaning of events as filtered by a politicalphilosophy he referred to as “historic liberalism.”Hoover clearly saw himself asthe protector of his conservative worldview, and he labored to promote it,working 12 hours a day into his eighties. He produced seven books between theages of 85 and 90. That voluminous record provided Best with an enormouscache of data as well as a complex task, analyzing and distilling it into anarrative. Dense with facts and citations, Best’s final scholarly work is un-doubtedly an important and useful account of Hoover’s post‐presidential life.

Throughout his post‐presidency, Hoover labored to keep his brand ofconservatism alive and to pass it along to new generations. Hoover died in1964, a few weeks before the electoral defeat of GOP conservative presidentialcandidate Barry Goldwater, who, according to Best “embodied the principles he[Hoover] believed in” (p. 462). Ultimately, Best’s final volume provides acompelling argument that the Reagan revolution of conservatism owedmuch to Hoover’s combative, 31‐year, post‐presidential evangelism of “historicliberalism.”

MATTHEW CECILWichita State University

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Henry Wallace’s 1948 Presidential Campaign and the Future ofPostwar Liberalism by ThomasW.Devine. Chapel Hill, Universityof North Carolina Press, 2013. 352 pp. $39.95.

The Progressive Party that nominated Henry Wallace as its presidential candi-date for 1948 stands as one of the boldest experiments in third‐party politics.Some historians have depictedWallace as a heroic leftist, amanwho challengedthe Cold War drift toward “reaction” and “red‐baiting.” He “spoke out force-fully” for the “common man” against the “stooges” of Wall Street, while politicstrended rightwards (p. xi). For others—including anti‐communist liberals—Wallace was a pawn of the Communist Party (CPUSA), following the line ofpolitical advisers who took cues from Moscow.

Thomas Devine has written a book that tackles this debate with intelligenceand accomplished research. He walks an elegant tightrope, arguing that, yes,the CPUSA followed the Cominform’s orders to play hard ball in Americanpolitics by forming a third party (sometimes misreading directives) but thatthere were also independent liberals animated by idealism and that “Wallacehimself was not subject to Communist discipline” (p. 34). For sure,Wallace wasa victim of sinister advisers, especially Calvin Benham (Beanie) Baldwin, whoselected unrepresentative members of labor unions to plead for Wallace to run(Devine points out that non‐communist labor leaders opposed a third party).Wallace’s lofty idealism, captured in his pronouncements about the SovietUnion’s desire for peace, helped him evade reality and the warnings of otherliberals like Eleanor Roosevelt. Thus, Wallace serves as a tragic anti‐hero.

Devine provides a nice background to the presidential election by examininga successful run for Congress by Leo Isacson of the American Labor Party (ALP)in a special election in February 1948. Isacson’s victory stoked the fires of third‐party dreamers. But as Devine shows, progressives drew the wrong lessons,ignoring the peculiarities of Isacson’s Bronx district and not recognizing howmuch grassroots infrastructure the ALP had in place.

Meanwhile, as Wallace toughened himself up for political battle, his worsttendencies moved to the fore. This was especially true in his commentary onforeign affairs and his critique of Harry Truman’s Cold War policies. Devineshows how Wallace “blamed the Truman administration for the Czech coup”carried out by the USSR in 1948 (p. 109) and lambasted the Marshall Plan—economic aid abroad in hopes of checking the spread of communism—as aWallStreet conspiracy. These arguments did not play well in the court of Americanpublic opinion; as Wallace gained exposure, his approval numbers dipped.Devine shows how some of his most‐intelligent advisers, including RexfordTugwell, abandoned ship, upset by the pro‐Soviet line adopted by the Progres-sive Party. Nor did the Party create a strong grassroots infrastructure. As one


“Progressive activist” remarked, the “united front from below” was a “pipedream” (p. 220).

This did not stop Wallace from what many historians—both sympathizersand critics—take as his most‐courageous act: to campaign in the South andattack racism (this during an election yearwhenDixiecrats stormed the region).Wallace faced angry crowds and death threats. But even this act of courage, forDevine, betrays Wallace’s naivete, since the candidate “remained convinced,despite ample evidence to the contrary, that the majority of white southernersshared his views on racial equality.” Or as one journalist put it, “The commonman that Henry Wallace is encountering in the South does not conform toHenry’s abstract conception” (p. 256).

The end of the story is brutal: Wallace finishes fourth, behind Dixiecrats,with a meager 2.37 percent showing. Devine’s story offers fair warning to leftistswho still dream of a third party today. Resisting a tale of conspiracy—that theCPUSAmanipulated every Progressive Party activist’s every step—Devine offersinstead a more‐complicated and ultimately tragic story.

KEVIN MATTSONOhio University

The Making of Southeast Asia: International Relations of aRegion by Amitav Acharya. Ithaca, NY, Cornell UniversityPress, 2013. 240 pp. Paper, $26.95.

This insightful book focuses on Southeast Asia and has broader conceptualrelevance for the examination of regionalismand international relations generally.Published in 2012 by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies and reprinted in2013 by Cornell University Press, this is the second and substantially revisededition of The Quest for Identity: International Relations of Southeast Asia,which first appeared in 2000. It addresses the major social, cultural, and eco-nomic forces at work in the region, but also presents Southeast Asian regionalismas an ongoing political project to accommodate strong and/or weak national andsub‐national forms of identity (and the nation‐states towhich they are connected)to notions of a wider regional identity.

Building on Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities (London: Verso,second revised edition, 1991; first published, 1983) Amitav Acharya argues atthe outset that regions, “as with nation‐states” are “imagined” and “sociallyconstructed.”He notes that “regional coherence and identity are not givens” butflow from the ongoing articulation of an “imagined community” by elites and/or the population of the region (pp. 21–23). The author also emphasizes thatthe pre‐colonial past is often used selectively to strengthen a contemporary

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sense of regional identity (pp. 35, 42–43). He notes critically that in the contextof decolonization after 1945, some elites viewed “post‐colonial region‐building as a matter of restoring the pre‐colonial integrity of the region”(pp. 81–82).

The author traces the first stirring of Southeast Asian regionalism to the1960s, when “moderate nationalist leaders” who had presided over the transi-tion from colonies to nation‐states and the onset of the Cold War founded theAssociation of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Its membership initiallyincluded only the key anti‐Communist nation‐states of the Philippines,Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand. While the Cold War dividedthe region, it may also have “inadvertently contributed to the regionalist causeby promoting solidarity among like‐minded regimes,” even though the nation‐states that were initially excluded from ASEAN at the time of its founding inBangkok on 8 August 1967, particularly, “the Indochinese countries,” viewed itwith “open hostility” (pp. 293, 155–174, 215).

This would change with the end of the Cold War, when a unified Vietnam(1995), along with Laos (1997) and Myanmar (Burma; 1997) and eventuallyCambodia (1999)were inducted intoASEAN (p. 215). The expansion of ASEANin the 1990s took place alongside the growing economic dynamism of SoutheastAsia as well as the wider Asian region. The desire of elites in Southeast Asiato benefit from the economically driven processes of national development ledto both a reiteration of national sovereignty and the strengthening of the idea ofa Southeast Asian region to mediate internal and external economic processesand geopolitical changes. More specifically, the nation‐states of ASEAN hadto face the challenges associated with the rise of China and the emergence ofIndia as economic and/or international actors in the post‐Cold War era.

Acharya also looks at the uneven impact of radical political Islam,particularly after September 11, emphasizing that promoters of a radical (ter-rorist‐based) set of Islamic fundamental goals “never had the potential tooverwhelm” Southeast Asia, whatever their ambitions might have been. Ter-rorist groups remain a cause for concern, but are not a major threat to nationalor regional stability. In fact, in terms of human cost, the author emphasizes thatthe 2003 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome epidemic, the 2004 tsunami inthe Indian Ocean, and the 2008 cyclone that hit Myanmar (Burma) caused farmore death and destruction (and translated into more‐significant regionalpolitical challenges) than did Jemaah Islamiyah, the group behind the Balibombing in October 2002 (pp. 247–254). I liked this book; it is an impressivetreatment of Southeast Asian regionalism that also has analytical relevance forthe study of regionalism in relation to the contemporary international order.

MARK T. BERGERNaval Postgraduate School


Constitutional Myths: What We Get Wrong and How to Get itRight by Ray Raphael. New York, The New Press, 2013. 336pp. $26.95.

While Americans are obsessed with their Constitution’s history, they have ahard time thinking about their Constitution historically. ConstitutionalMyths is less concerned with substantive misunderstandings than withmeta‐myths involving ahistorical appeals to the Founding. While framedas a debunking, the book packs an affirmative punch, arguing that there is noinconsistency between taking the Founding as a touchstone and a strongactivist government commitment to working pragmatically to meet thechallenges of its time.

After lamenting that today the Constitution is being used to divide ratherthan unite, the author sets out to explain what the Founders did in their owneyes and how and why later generations have disregarded that to forge asuccession of “phantom constitutions” (p. xiii). Recently, eight myths haveserved: 1) the Framers opposed a strong federal government; 2) the Framershated taxes; 3) the Framers were impartial statesmen, above interest‐drivenpolitics; 4) the Framers were guided by clear principles of limited government;5) JamesMadison sired the Constitution; 6) The Federalist Papers tell us whatthe Constitution reallymeans; 7) the Founders gave us the Bill of Rights; and 8)we can determine how specific provisions of the Constitution should be appliedtoday by discovering their original intent ormeaning. In each chapter, amyth isjudiciously assessed in three segments, the first sub‐headed “Kernel of Truth,”the second, “But…,” and the last “The Full Story.”

Ray Raphael’s emphasis on the Founding as a revolution in favor ofgovernment draws on the many arguments by the Founders (disgusted withthe centrifugal and rights‐violating localism under the Articles of Confedera-tion) calling for a vigorous, “energetic” national government to protect liberty.The author nicely shows the degree to which, in the Founders’ eyes, “therelationship between strength and restraint was complementary, not contra-dictory” (p. 62).

Such a government required adequate and reliable funding, which (in a newdeparture) they planned to raise by taxing individuals directly. The Federalists,moreover, almost immediately enacted progressive taxes on the theory thatthose with more money had a greater stake in effective government and werebetter positioned to advance the common good. The Federalists were alsoopposed or indifferent to a national Bill of Rights, which would check thepower of the national government, and not of the states.

While learned and thoughtful, the Founders were neither demigods norphilosophers but lawyers and politicians, with many of the goals, traits,

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and tendencies characteristic of those professions. To “render the FederalConstitution adequate to the exigencies of Union” (p. 39), they engaged inhorse‐trading, interest‐balancing, deal‐making, and compromise, disagree-ing—sometimes vehemently—about the best means of achieving it. Alexan-der Hamilton called for a president elected for life. Madison wantedrepresentation in the national legislature to be solely proportional to popu-lation, and was adamant that the national government should have thepower to veto state laws in all cases. Both believed the Constitution thatwe got—which, as lawyers, they vigorously defended in The Federalist—wasprofoundly flawed. Still, they thought it a step up from the Articles and aboutas good as, at that time, they were likely to get; they could push for improve-ments later.

Raphael undermines the myth of The Federalist as the preeminent state-ment of the Constitution’s theory and meaning. He shows that it was firstadvertised as a set of arguments in favor of the Constitution, then later as a“commentary” on the Constitution, and finally, at the height of the Cold War,for the first time, as “uniquely authoritative.” The Federalist was less read andinfluential in its own time than is typically taught. And it was written as muchto fudge as to settle matters, to both justify the creation of a national govern-ment with extensive powers and to placate the fears of those opposed to thosepowers by emphasizing limits. Far from explicating the document, it mirrors itscompeting strains (making it a ripe source, as Supreme Court justices know, forcherry‐picked quotations).

Althoughmany of these arguments were first advanced elsewhere, Raphaeldoes a superb job of synthesizing, supplementing, and marshalling them in asophisticated way for a broad audience. That said, there is a tension betweenhis insistence that the Constitution has an original meaning more in line withthe views of contemporary liberals and that it embodied foundational ten-sions, whose substantive resolution is, irremediably, a product of contempo-rary politics. Given that core tension, it is unsurprising that ConstitutionalMyths never gets around to explicating the hows and whys of Americanhistory’s “phantom constitutions”: Raphael’s broader framework suggeststhat they are business‐as‐usual and inevitable. This book is an adeptcorrective to some of the most‐strident imbalances in contemporary debatesover the implications of the Founding. But, in spite of itself, it suggests thatit may be phantom constitutions all the way down. However we may callout to the Founders’ vasty deep, we are fated to make our meaning in thepresent.

KEN I. KERSCHBoston College


Governing Security: The Hidden Origins of American SecurityAgencies by Mariano‐Florentino Cueller. Palo Alto, CA, StanfordUniversity Press, 2013. 336 pp. Paper, $26.96.

What is the relationship between security and the competing ideological andparochial interests of policymakers? Governing Security helps answer thisquestion by investigating this complex web of relationships as embodied inthe creation and evolution of agency design. In particular, Mariano‐FlorentinoCueller juxtaposes the history of the Federal Security Agency (FSA) and theDepartment of Homeland Security (DHS) to show how two different presi-dents, first Franklin Roosevelt and then GeorgeW. Bush, manipulated notionsof security to expand their political control by reorganizing government agen-cies. The result is a detailed political history of both organizations that isinformed by circumstance (the imperatives of crisis decision making) andcompeting interests (namely, those of the president and stakeholders in Con-gress), both of which are entangled in a fluid definition of security that is bothmanipulated for political goals but which also informs of the possibilities ofagency action. As such, Governing Security makes important contributions toour understanding of agency design, the evolution of regulatory power, andespecially the creation of FSA and DHS.

The book makes two overarching claims: it will use agency design and legalmandate to understand how national security is defined, and it will show howcompeting political interests attempt to “secure” control over agencies andimplementation. On both counts, the book is only partially successful. Certain-ly, the histories of FSA and DHS are presented as rich and complex, a contri-bution which should not be underestimated. But this detail tends to leave thereader with the impression that everything matters. The main causal mecha-nisms are underdeveloped, and it is not clear how the book’s core contributioncan be applied to other disputes over regulatory power or agency reorganiza-tion. Similarly, counter explanations are often neglected. For example, goodpolicy motives are rarely allowed to compete with ideas rooted in ideology orparochial interest. Likewise, the agency exercised by organizational process andstructure is often overlooked. For example, when Roosevelt decided to putessentially illegal biological weapons research under the FSA (p. 79), was hemotivated by security, his greater ability to control that department, or theflexibility inherit in the pockets of budgetary resources found in FSA but not inother agencies? Too often the book argues what is “likely to” or “might” havehappened and, in the process, denies itself the explanatory power that wouldhave come with discounting even a few major counter arguments.

The definition of “national security” has political power and GoverningSecurity persuasively argues that this definition can allow presidents to both

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consolidate and reorganize agencies to their own political advantage. This focuson the definition and manipulation of security, however, leaves some unan-swered questions. For example, if “security” was the guise that allowed Roo-sevelt to expand his power over a variety of public health and social safety netissues, what then explains the shift in the opposite direction?Why, for example,is the security trope no longer as successful in capturing funding for publichealth, education, and welfare? Perhaps part of the answer can be found ininvestigating the degree to which new or emerging definitions of nationalsecurity are shared among policy stakeholders, Congress, and the public; inother words, whether “national security” remains mostly only a rhetoricaldevice.

Overall, these concerns are minor issues in an otherwise compelling argu-ment about the creation of FSA and DHS. They do, however, raise cautionsabout the degree to which Governing Security offers an argument that can beused to explain other agencies.

SHARON K. WEINERAmerican University

Reining in the State: Civil Society and Congress in the Vietnamand Watergate Eras by Katherine A. Scott. Lawrence, UniversityPress of Kansas, 2013. 248 pp. $34.95.

In the very first pages of this detailed work, readers are struck by how timely itis. With recent news stories about leaks about NSA activity from EdwardSnowden and the ongoing story of WikiLeaks, it becomes evident that this isa must‐read for anyone who wishes to be a part of the contemporary debate.Katherine Scott goes back to the 1950s to begin telling the tale of a governmentand its people struggling over the roles of national security, privacy, and thepublic’s right to know in a democratic system. Scottmakes clear that this debateis central to the question of democratic governance in a dangerous world thatrequires a government to take steps to protect its people.

Having been around for much of the time frame covered by Reining in theState, but only a teenager by the time of Watergate, Scott recalls for me theevents that were going on around me but only registered at the level of thesubconscious.We all hear of theMcCarthy Era and the overreach by one electedofficial into the lives of average citizens, but perhaps do not recall that the U.S.Armywas actively involved in surveillance and counterintelligence work duringthe Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War protests. Scott details anumber of courageous individuals in elective office or retired from the Armywho came forward to expose these activities. Whatever now‐disreputable


positions he may have been known for earlier, Senator Sam Ervin emerges asone of those courageous individuals in the earliest efforts to stop our nationalsecurity structure from infringing on our constitutionally protected freedoms—speech, assembly, and privacy. It also becomes clear from Scott’s retelling of theevents that Ervin was uniquely qualified to head the Senate Select Committeeon Presidential Campaign Practices with his broad experience in attempting torestrain the government’s use of executive privilege to keep its surveillance andcounterintelligence activity away from scrutiny. Captain Christopher Pyle alsoemerges as a somewhat unsung hero by blowing the whistle on what he and hisArmy colleagues did in the name of national security. According to Scott, Pylewent on to work for Ervin (in his pre‐Watergate role) to help find other ex‐Army officers who might testify about their activities. Accumulating this evi-dence was crucial to the effort, since the administration was still using “execu-tive privilege” to stonewall the press and Congress.

Scott takes the story forward through the 1970s, and though she leaves herparticular part of the tale incomplete with the caveat that “[u]nder theleadership of President Reagan, who favored a strong national security stateand a powerful executive, institutions like the CIA, FBI, and NSC would find aclimate more favorable” to them and with a Republican majority in the Senate,a Congress less willing to exercise the same oversight role it had to that point.Certainly, as a result of the events of September 11, the wars begun underPresident George W. Bush, and the rise of a political faction favorable to anexpanded role for national security agencies, these same issues have risen yetagain. At the same time, there is a vocal faction in politics seeking the reductionin size and scope of government on a number of fronts, thus placing this kind ofdebate front and center in American politics. Scott’s work reminds us that thosewho fail to learn from history are, in fact, doomed to repeat it. On the plus side,it means that there will always be fertile ground for this type of work.

JIM TWOMBLYElmira College

Wal-Mart Wars: Moral Populism in the Twenty-First Century byRebekah Peeples Massengill. New York, New York UniversityPress, 2013. 223 pp. Paper, $24.00.

The rhetoric of political argument is inherently moral in character. Whetherdirectly or by implication, it refers to conceptions of rights, justice, virtue,obligation, and fairness, and it makes claims about the institutional designsthat safeguard these. The rhetoric may or may not be self‐conscious, and it maybe either authentic or cynically manipulative. But it always registers the moral

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foundations of the culture that sponsors it, reflecting, reinforcing, and evenreimagining them.

This is the terrain of Rebekah Peeples Massengill’s perceptive study of thepolitical contests in the United States over the role and behavior of the giantretailing corporation, Wal‐Mart. She wishes to understand the uses made ofmoral language and categories by disputants on both sides of the Wal‐Martcontroversies, and, in particular, how these uses differentially relate to moralconceptions of themarket. She also argues that the case study illustrates generalmoralizing processes in public debates aboutmarkets in theUnited States, as insuch cases as health care reform, tax reform, and government bailouts of majorcorporations. Generally, then, it is an examination of how Americans makesense of the “moral dilemmas of modern capitalism” (p. 4).

The study relies on qualitative analyses of the language in public statementsof organized opponents of Wal‐Mart, especially Wal‐Mart Watch, and of Wal‐Mart and its supporters. Massengill also analyzes major newspapers accountsin terms of how national media framed the moral content of this market‐centered contest for their wide audiences.

Wal‐Mart has long been a lightning rod for criticism of the destabilizingeffects of increasingly globalized markets and the powerful multinationalcorporations that energize them. Activists have criticized the company forlow wages and benefits, harmful environmental impacts, and for drivingmanufacturing jobs to low‐wage nations and local companies out of businessin American communities. The corporation has replied that it serves the needsof economically hard‐pressed Americans with its low prices and large variety ofgoods, that it has provided increased health care benefits to employees, and thatit has taken steps to reduce its environmental footprint.

Both sides draw from the common fund ofmoral values in American culture,but each draws on it in distinctive ways that are fateful for both the specificcontest at hand and the broader prospects of achieving a greater measure ofsocial justice in our political economy. Massengill locates the relevant moralcontent in three pairs of values: individuals and communities, thrift andbenevolence, and freedom and fairness. Each pair manifests internal tensionsand plays very differently in the arguments of Wal‐Mart and its critics.

The company emphasizes how it meets the needs of financially strugglingfamilies for low‐cost goods, rewarding the virtue of thrift by providing theopportunity (freedom) to improve their living standards through more‐afford-able consumption. It anchors these points in personal experiences as illustratedin appreciative individuals’ testimonies. Meanwhile, the critics employ themore‐distant language of distributive justice, focusing on the abstract rightsof workers to fair wages and taxpayers to fair tax burdens (to avoid payingwelfare supports for poorly compensated Wal‐Mart employees).


Massengill argues persuasively for the greater effectiveness in this rhetoricalstruggle of the corporation’s focus on concrete human needs and experiences.The emphasis on families distracts attention from the systemic sources of theirdistress, including Wal‐Mart’s role in them. Meanwhile, both sides’ rhetoricreinforces market capitalism’s existing structures, further constraining thecritics’ pursuit of the progressive goals of social justice.

At the end of her book,Massengill offers some ideas for improving the critics’chances. But her thoughtful analysis of political rhetoric shows just how muchis left to imagine.

PETER CLEARY YEAGERBoston University

Spoils of Truce: Corruption and State-Building in PostwarLebanon by Reinoud Leenders. Ithaca, NY, Cornell UniversityPress, 2012. 312 pp. $45.00.

Why is high‐level corruption rampant in Lebanon?Why has senior public officebeen routinely and brazenly used for private benefit since the 1989 postwarsettlement? Reinoud Leenders goes inside Lebanon’s public institutions insearch of the answers. Through rich descriptions of select postwar institutions,Spoils of Truce advances our knowledge of corruption beyond existing aggre-gate survey indicators and anecdotal evidence. The result is a more‐completeunderstanding not just of the magnitude and dynamics of corruption, but alsoof how crucial institutions evolved between 1989 and 2005.

Lebanon’s postwar institutions—including healthcare, reconstruction, oiland gas, waste management, city planning, and environmental protection—emerge from this book as sites of perpetual administrative ambiguity. They lackdefinedmandates and regulatory arrangements, external oversight, and a strictseparation between public and private interests. For Leenders, high‐levelpolitical corruption is a direct result of these deviations from Max Weber’sideal type of “bureaucratic organization.” Administrative ambiguity breedscountless opportunities for vast amounts of public resources to directly disap-pear into the pockets of high officials and politicians.

To its credit, the book is not content with simply situating corruption in itsinstitutional context. It also aims to explain the origins of these twilightinstitutions and points to the particularities of the powersharing arrangementthat ended 15 years of civil war. The postwar emphasis on inclusion, consensus,and the ever‐elusive “national unity,” coupled with Syria’s interference inLebanese power struggles, set the stage for extreme dispersal of power, quasi‐permanent gridlock in decision making, and political elites with weak popular

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support—all of which created political incentives for enduring ambiguity ininstitutions.

By situating corruption wholly within an institutional and political context,Spoils of Truce joins a very short list of serious studies of Lebanon’s contempo-rary political economy. Ultimately, however, the ambitious conceptual frame-work does not do justice to the empirical richness tracing Leenders’s analysis ofpower struggles and high‐profile cases of corruption. In many ways, theWeberian framework straitjackets the content’s potential. Although the readeris left without doubts that institutions in Lebanon operate well outsideWeber’sideal criteria, many questions arise as to how these institutions do function. Thedescriptive narratives offer some clues, but the book misses the opportunity toprovide a more‐original theoretical framework for how chaos is organized inpostwar settings in Lebanon and beyond. The tension between organizationalfunction and dysfunction, the unwritten rules that set limits for corruption, theincentives of players who against all odds battle to stem corruption, theunintended consequences of elite in‐fighting—all are elements that meritinclusion.

Beyond limiting theoretical innovation, the Weberian framework also hin-ders causal inference. Bymeasuring institutions solely against an ideal type, thebook creates a binary distinction that eliminates variation on the independentvariable, since no Lebanese institution is a paragon of bureaucratic efficiency.Yet as the case narratives illuminate, public institutions in Lebanon vary both ininstitutional qualities and in the form and magnitude of corruption. Theinfamous management of Beirut’s port (in which a contract was terminatedin 1997 by the firing of water cannons on company staff) marks a stark contrastwith the professionalism of the Central Bank. Exploiting this variation wouldstrengthen the book’s causal claims and also better satisfy Leenders’s call to takeLebanon’s public institutions seriously.

Similarly, a comparison of pre‐ and post‐war public institutions would offergreater causal leverage. By focusing on the period after 1989, the book assumesthat post‐war political corruption differed in nature and scope from thecorruption in Lebanon’s First Republic prior to the 1975 war. Supportingthis assumption is imperative for the book’s causal claims. Moreover, thistemporal analysis would help clarify the implications of this argument beyondLebanon: does the Lebanese case suggest that corruption is inherent to conso-ciational political arrangements (which have existed since independence) orrather that it is a cost of stabilizing post‐conflict societies?

These critiques pay tribute to the book’s thought‐provoking engagementwith power struggles and its spoils in Lebanon. The demand for an alternativetheoretical framework originates in the intriguing possibilities offered by thebook’s careful investigation of corruption cases and how they interactwith these


struggles. It is above all a testament to Leenders’s success in arguing that publicinstitutions deserve a central place even in contexts where they are especiallyvulnerable to political manipulation.

JULIA CHOUCAIR‐VIZOSOYale University

The Federalist Society: How Conservatives Took the Law Backfrom Liberals by Michael Avery and Danielle McLaughlin.Nashville, TN, Vanderbilt University Press, 2013. 304 pp. $35.00.

At 30 years old, the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies hasmatured into a nationwide network of more than 40,000 academics, practi-tioners, judges, politicians, and law students dedicated to restoring conserva-tive and libertarian legal values to America’s institutions. Although it isacknowledged by both friend and foe as an organization of significant conse-quence, scholars and political scientists have only recently started to grapplewith the important question of how exactly we ought to understand its influ-ence on the shape and direction of American law and policy. With The Feder-alist Society, Michael Avery and Danielle McLaughlin enter this conversation.Written by two lawyers and targeted at a popular audience, the FederalistSociety suffers from a bit of an identity crisis; it is part legal analysis, partpopular journalism, and part social science. By trying to increase its audienceappeal in this manner, unfortunately, The Federalist Society fails to do any ofthese exceedingly well.

While it does not introduce any new evidence or original interview data, TheFederalist Society’s introduction and opening chapter aggregate and summa-rize existing scholarly and journalistic work that has been done on the Feder-alist Society, detailing the founding, rise, and general policy project and sharedprinciples of the organization (pp. 1–46). The five chapters that follow vacillatebetween doctrine‐driven and legalistic analyses of conservative developmentsin several areas of constitutional law (property law, race and gender discrimi-nation, the right to privacy, and international law) and a kind of soft processtracing that attempts to link these conservative shifts in the law to the ideas andactors of the Federalist Society network.

While Avery andMcLaughlin’s research approach as they describe it (“[w]ehave traced the development of the ideas of society members from articles,books, panels, and debates into legislative proposals, citizen referenda, legisla-tion, legal briefs, court opinions, andWhite House policy,” p. ix) is appropriate,this approach is not carefully or rigorously executed throughout the book. Forexample, the authors have no systematic method for determining who is and

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who is not a Federalist Society member. Thus, anyone who factors prominentlyin their narratives of conservative influence becomes a Federalist Society“member” or “ally” (Appendix B, pp. 205–225). Because the resulting causalstory is only weakly tied to the Federalist Society itself, Avery and McLaughlinmanage to demonstrate only that conservative lawyers have helped bring aboutconservative outcomes in the law.

This finding, while not ground‐breaking, if situated within a broader dis-cussion of legal entrepreneurs and their roles in constitutional development,would have added some scholarly value to the book. However, there is noattempt in The Federalist Society to connect this case study to broader aca-demic discussions of the mechanisms of legal and constitutional development.This is a frustrating casualty of the authors’ desire tomarket the book to amore‐popular audience.

Citizens and observers of American politics might benefit from Avery andMcLaughlin’s narratives of the history and direction of constitutional law inthese critical areas. As a work of social science, however, it falls well short of thebar. Moreover, because the authors attempt to distill and discuss nuanced legaldoctrines in a “common‐sense way” (p. ix), legal academics and those steeped inthe law might find fault with their treatment and interpretation of thesecomplex and complicated legal topics. In sum, as a result of the authors’ attemptto reach a broader audience, The Federalist Society’s contribution to seriouslegal or social science scholarship is disappointingly minimal.

AMANDA HOLLIS‐BRUSKYPomona College


Freedom from Harm: The Lasting Legacy of the Laissez Faire Revival, by Thomas O. McGarity

Documents

Transcript of Freedom from Harm: The Lasting Legacy of the Laissez Faire Revival, by Thomas O. McGarity