Rejoinders on Barendse and Chaves

1) Dr. Richard Barendse:

Thank you Richard for all your efforts. I will write a longer rejoinder on
the comments in due course, waiting for what Gernot Kohler as the editor of
the volume has to say. Basically, it will boil down to it that all your
arguments -all very plausible, dreadfully realistic! against the global
governance scenario (2) And point number two will be that world socialism as
an alternative would be even more difficult to realize than a kind of
bourgeoise socio-liberal democracy on a world scale. Everything I want is -
realistically - a bit of a kind of global Finland or Netherlands. 

2) Dr. Josi Chaves


1) There should be a clear analytical difference between government revenues
and government consumption, and we should be especially aware of the
negative consequences of 'fat' and consumption oriented government, paying
out to special interest groups, what they cannot receive in an ideal market.
There seems to be a process at work, that runs like follows: the poor get
via government redistribution something; but then the rich also want
something for themselves, with the end result of a relatively stable or even
worsening income distribution over time, with government expenditures
increasing dramatically. A typical model for such a process would be a
country like Belgium. I have analyzed this point empirically years ago in
the volume 'Towards a Socio-Liberal Theory of World Development', 1993. This
analysis confirmed also the macro-quantitative dependency assumptions of
Volker Bornschier about the long-term stagnation effects of dependency,
short-term growth spurts notwithstanding. For 68 countries with complete
data I arrived then at the main growth policy equation (adj. R2 = 48.26%;
per capita real income growth, 1965 - 1983). We should be aware that the
world economy today is in a new cyclical upswing, and that the results,
reprinted below, correspond to the B-phase of the 'fordist' Kondratieff
cycle that lasted from around 1932 to 1973/82. The effects of conscript
armies and political systems age have nowadays reversed themselves, at least
partially, while the state sector effects remain in force (see my essay,
above):

        
Beta-weights
ln (Military personnel ratio + 1) (for a defense
structure, based on conscription)
+0.39**
increase in government expenditure 1965-73 per GDP
-0.39**
public expenditure on education per GNP
+0.40**
increase in the share of direct taxes per GDP 1965-73
+0.29**
Squared Root of Bornschier's capital penetration index MNC PEN  -0.23*
Year, during which the constitution went into effect
+0.22*
increase in the squared root of the MNC PEN index
+0.19*
____________________________________________________________________
** significant at the 1% level
* significant at the 5% level

For that reason, which is extended in the quoted work (most probably the
largest politometric analysis ever undertaken on economic growth and social
development in the B-phase of the Kondratieff cycle 1965 - 1983) based on
hundreds of correlation analyses, path analyses and partial correlations, I
firmly believe that firm but limited government, based on direct taxes, is a
precondition of long-term economic growth (by the way, a belief held by the
Austro-Marxist Otto Bauer, first published in 1927/28 in his lecture cycle
on economics at the Vienna Volkshochschule). I do not think, that high taxes
on production would lead as anywhere.

2) I do share the opinion, that a policy of import substitution can be a
successful model of catching-up - at least for some time. In the recent NOVA
volume 'Global Capitalism, Liberation Theology and the Social Sciences',
which I co-edited, there is an excellent debate between Steffen Flechsig,
Kunibert Raffer and Mansoob Murshed on the issue, and I have practically
nothing to add to this. However: an entire continent, shielded away from
international competition and trade by walls of tariffs and what have you,
runs the risk of repeating the economic errors committed by Venice, the
Hapsburgs, Richelieu and later Napoleon, and finally by Bismarck and the
Nazis, who all believed in a 'terraferma' Europe - a fact, which two
authors, as different as the world systems scholar Giovanni Arrighi and the
neo-liberal British euro-skeptic John Laughland would agree upon. Import
substitution can be helpful for some time; but import substitution and
protectionism, in the long run, can be world politically dangerous and they
do backfire, because your industries will become less competitive and will
become real monopolists. My provocative thesis is that precisely this set-up
led also to the current crisis in the ex-GDR - with companies like Siemens
and Mercedes reaping the benefits of re-unification. Michael Lipton told us
this years ago in his 'Urban Bias in World Development', didn't he?

3) The Latin American (post 1970s) and the future European case could show
us, what a passive strategy of globalization means. I think we have to be
grateful to Kimmo Kiljunen in his contribution to our volume, for having
shown, what a passive and what an active strategy of globalization means. I
do share Kimmo's views, and would also hope, that different other European
countries were to learn from the Finnish active human capital and technology
approach.

3)

Those interested in Joschka Fischer's (German Foreign Minister), vision,
similar to my own, can download it in English from:

http://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/


MR Univ. Doz. Dr. Arno Tausch

Pr./D/13 - Federal Ministry of Social Security and Generations
Department for Bilateral Relations and International Organization
Stubenring 1
A-1010 Vienna Austria

Phone: ++43 1   711 00-2272 or 6232
Fax: ++43 1 711 00-6591
electronic fax: ++43 1 718 9470 1350

http://www.bmsg.gv.at

websites of possible interest:

http://www.rferl.org/
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Gives access to RFE/RL daily newsline,
special weekly reports like Balkan Report, Russian Federation Report,
(Un)Civil Societies, Security Watch, Poland, Belarus & Ukraine Report; East
European Perspectives, European Union Expands Eastwards, Weekday Magazine
...

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/GSSI/eu.html.
European Union Server, UC Berkeley

http://wiiwsv.wsr.ac.at/Countdown
EU Enlargement Countdown, Vienna Institute for Int Ec Comparisons

http://www.undp.org/hdro
Human Development Report Office, UNDP: social reports from over 100
countries (window: National HDRs); analyses of global social policy; very
recent social and health data from 174 countries

http://www.worldbank.org/poverty/index.htm
World Bank Poverty Net. Social Statistics and Analyses from around the
world; links and search engine to/for social policy and health documents 

http://www.eurochild.gla.ac.uk/documents/monee/welcome.htm?
UNICEF Transmonee data-bank Eastern Europe + CIS; statistical social and
health policy country profiles

http://www.bcemag.com/statistics/index.html
Business Central Europe data-bank Eastern Europe + CIS

http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/
Le Monde Diplomatique. Current issues and full, free electronic archive with
access to several years of LMD editions. German language edition under 
http://www.taz.de/tpl/.nf/home

http://www.bbc.co.uk/search
BBC World Service News search engine; free access to several months

http://www.nzz.ch/books/nzzmonat/0/search
Neue Zürcher Zeitung - search engine (one month archive)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/
The Guardian (with search engine; one year archive)

http://www.state.gov/www/outreach_publications.html
United States Department of State - Outreach. Analytical reports from United
States States Embassies around the world - free access to US informations on
practically all countries of the world. Social policy and health are
contained in 'Country Background Notes'; 'Country Reports on Human Rights
Practices' (Chapters 4 ff: disabled, gender issues, labor issues etc.);
'International Narcotics Control Strategy Report'; 'International Religious
Freedom Report' etc.

http://csf.colorado.edu/wsystems/wsarch.html
University of Colorado World-Systems Archive, editor: Chris Chase-Dunn,
Department of Sociology, University of California at Riverside. Free access
to documents on global social policy, inter alia the 'Journal of World
Systems Research',  to the 'Books - Web Documents' Series, to 'Working
Papers' on global social policy etc. etc.