Liberal Economic Theory Research Articles

DEMARCATION BETWEEN SCIENTIFIC AND PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC ECONOMICS: IT IS NECESSARY TO REJECT THE CHREMATIST COMPONENT

The purpose of the study is to focus the attention of the economic public on the fact that the economy will be able to function effectively only when it appears completely in its pure form and gets rid of various ballast-forming components that are currently closely intertwined with it and inhibit its development. The methodology consists in the use of systemic and philosophical-humanistic approaches, logical and sensory perception of reality, as well as the use of analogies borrowed from nature and from closed technical processes that have already been built and function successfully on the basis of the universal laws of the universe. The results. The difference in the approaches of various theories to the functioning of the economy is shown. It is proven that the modern liberal economic theory is scientifically unsound, as it operates with pseudo-scientific categories such as "profit", "percent", as a result of which the economy does not work and constantly leads to all kinds of negative phenomena: crises, inflation, unemployment, etc. With the new model, there are no contradictions inherent in the modern economy and, above all, crisis phenomena. The scientific novelty is that, for the first time, scientifically based principles and rules of operation, completely different from the existing economic model, have been adopted. The negative impact on the economy of such pseudoscientific categories as "profit" and "interest" has been proven. Money should be paid only for work. All theories, schools and trends that support the receipt of "profit" and "interest" on loans are unscientific. Practical significance. A new economic structure is proposed, which will function on completely different principles - a model of a highly efficient national economy. In this model, the real economy comes to the fore, and the financial system is relegated to the background, only as a service system. The transition to the proposed macroeconomic model will allow many times to improve the functioning of the economic system in the interests of the entire society, which will very quickly be reflected in the increase in the well-being of all citizens and the state.

Corporate Governance Welfarism

Abstract Corporate governance is on the verge of entering a new stage. After the managerialism that dominated the view of the corporation into the 1970s and the shareholderism that supplanted it, we are witnessing the emergence of a new paradigm: corporate governance welfarism. Welfarism rejects the faith that market forces will promote general welfare and lacks confidence in the government’s ability to set proper boundary constraints. By looking to corporations to internalize externalities directly, welfarism thus offers an alternative way to deal with social problems that the political system has failed to address. Welfarism comes in three strands—portfolio welfarism, shareholder welfarism, and direct social welfarism—two of which are consistent with shareholder primacy. The important distinction between welfarism and shareholderism, rather, is that welfarism, by embracing goals that are much broader than shareholder value as a means to promote overall welfare, reflects a departure from the classical liberal economic theory that underpins shareholderism. Welfarism, in turn, departs from managerialism in looking beyond the single firm, in relying on shareholder and stakeholder pressure rather than on managerial discretion to balance firm value maximization and broader objectives, and in embracing a wider set of potential stakeholders. Welfarism is on the rise ideologically. While it is unclear how much welfarism has already affected operations at individual firms, the underlying drivers of welfarism are likely to remain or grow. There are, therefore, good reasons to believe that the push towards welfarism will take hold, grow, and, over time, generate a welfarist turn in corporate governance. Welfarism, however, is subject to two inherent limitations. First, welfarism has its greatest traction for publicly traded companies with dispersed shareholders. By contrast, for companies with a single shareholder, a controlling shareholder, or a small group of shareholders, the welfarist prescriptions will have only a limited impact. Second, the very lack of consensus that impedes political solutions reemerges under and constrains welfarism by generating disagreements among shareholders, impugning its legitimacy, and imposing political barriers to its implementation.

EVs Are Not the Answer: A Mobility Justice Critique of Electric Vehicle Transitions

Within climate–energy–transport scholarship and professions there is a growing consensus that electric vehicles (EVs), which include personal cars, sport utility vehicles (SUVs), vans, and pickup trucks, are essential for decarbonizing mobility. This article urges caution and pause before an EV lock-in and calls on geographers and other scholars, professionals, and sustainability advocates to consider the multiscale environmental and social problems associated with EVs. The article begins by reviewing the mainstream assumptions about mass EV uptake, with particular emphasis on projections forecasting more, not fewer, cars in the future. Using a mobility justice framework, I ask who is making these assumptions and why and discuss the influence of liberal economic theory on future projections of EVs. I next consider assumptions about the environmental efficacy and decarbonization potential of mass EV uptake and review how EV production and consumption might escalate rather than reduce global resource and energy demand. I also scale down to cities and describe how EVs will lay claim to many of the same spaces designated for green mobility, such as cycle tracks, bus lanes, and compact, walkable spaces. The conclusion proposes research questions to consider with regard to EVs, future transportation, future geographies, and future carbon emissions.

Emphasis and Suggestion Versus Musical Taxidermy: Neoliberal Contradictions, Music Education, and the Knowledge Economy

For decades, education has been inundated with neoliberal policies described as enabling its structures to adjust to a global knowledge economy. Located at the intersection of such "reform" language and classical liberal economic theory is a troubling paradox–the idea that knowledge should be centrally concentrated in order to "liberalize" education along free market lines. This essay considers implications of centralized knowledge for music education in light of this contradiction and the rhetoric that obscures it. To raise awareness of this paradox, I briefly summarize some of the literature on neoliberalism and state intervention before examining the ideas of an individual skeptical of central knowledge planning despite his pivotal role in the birth of modern educational "reform": Peter Drucker. The ideological collapsing of Drucker's nuanced views by neoliberal interests stands in stark contrast with what could be a less instrumental argument for the development of problem-solving skills for lifelong benefit. Finally, I ask whether we reinforce this contradiction if we champion music's curricular legitimacy and relevance, yet fail to teach students to think musically for themselves as evidenced by prescriptive instructional methods or participation in standardizing musical knowledge through failure to resist the totalizing ideology of the audit culture.

Philanthropic Discourse in Anglo-American Literature, 1850–1920

Philanthropic Discourse in Anglo-American Literature, 1850–1920

La justificación del despido en derecho comparado europeo e internacional

La exigencia de justificación del despido, constituye una garantía de máxima importancia en la medida que permite controlar la decisión del patrón. No obstante los últimos diez años, varios países europeos han reformado su derecho del despido para flexibilizarlo. Esas reformas son en su mayoría impuestas por las Instituciones de la Unión europea (sobre todo en los casos de Grecia, Italia, España, Portugal) como prerrequisito de una ayuda financiera. De las medidas adoptadas parece resultar una devaluación de la exigencia de justificación vinculada a una teoría económica liberal según la cual: mas el derecho del despido sería flexible, más las empresas serán dispuestas a contratar nuevos empleados. Estas y otras problemáticas, serán analizadas en el presente trabajo.

Theory, Trade and European Integration: A Comment on Ludolf Herbst’s “Contemporary Theory and the Beginning of European Integration”

Lucia Coppolaro Theory, Trade and European Integration A Comment on Ludolf Herbst’s “Contemporary Theory and the Beginning of European Integration” Introduction When grading written exams, any professor of the history of European integration would be more than glad to read a definition of European integration as “the historical process whereby European nation-states have been willing to transfer, or more usually pool, their sovereign powers in a collective enterprise.”1 In fact, the definition is so accurate that the professor could only praise the student and award a positive grade for the answer. What the professor would tend to underestimate is that, as Ludolf Herbst’s article illustrates, “the term ‘integration’ was not particularly widespread” until the 1940s, and that, as a political concept, European integration was established only in the early 1950s, when “use expanded rapidly to include a much broader scope.” With the Schuman Declaration of May 9, 1950, European integration became both a catchword and a key-word for the post-war period, entering common usage and acquiring a precise meaning that we now take for granted. As Herbst notes, “the success of the term certainly has something to do with its ability to refer to the process of European unification in general, the current state of this development, and the goal of the overall process.”2 A similar story can be told about the word “globalization.” This word became a catchword at the end of the 1990s, but we tend to ignore its origins and meaning. We assume that the semantic meaning has never changed, and we tend to forget that when liberal economic theories and economists referred to globalization in the 1920s, “integration” was the word they used. Herbst’s article traces the origins of the word integration and looks at integration theories. It provides an analysis of “the history of the political reception of these ideas, taking into account those theories that took on political relevance.”3 Adopting this original perspective, the article enables us to gain a better under1 Mark Gilbert, European Integration. A Concise History, Lanham/MD et al. 2012, p. 1. 2 Ludolf Herbst, Contemporary Theory and the Beginning of European Integration, in this Yearbook , pp. 21–70; all quotes are from pp. 22–24. 3 Ibid., p. 23. 72 Lucia Coppolaro standing of the origins and development of European integration. It shows how policy-makers pursued concrete national interests – rather than a theory – and brings out the relevance of trade in the origins of the integration that occurred. By putting the word integration and the theories associated with it into historical perspective, Herbst’s article shows how the Marshall Plan (1947) and the European Coal and Steel Community (1951) were not the result of sudden choices made by US and European politicians, but responded to challenges that had been faced since at least the end of World War I. Thus, the article very usefully sheds light on the many misunderstandings that have come to surround European integration , above all that of seeing European integration as a process or journey inevitably leading to a United States of Europe. This perception of inevitability, curiously enough, again links the words integration and globalization, since both are often perceived as inexorable processes. European Integration: a New Solution to Old Problems Herbst’s article reconstructs the semantic origin and development of the word integration from Terence to the Enlightenment, and then examines its use in the 19th century. The article notes how economists and liberal theories at the end of the 19th century and in the first half of the 20th century referred to the integration (and its opposite, disintegration) of world markets as economic historians would now refer to economic globalization. Moreover, Herbst shows that the term integration was commonly used in law and economics both in the interwar period and during World War II. Conversely, the word was almost unknown in the political sphere, and there “remained the exception.” Tellingly, the movement seeking European unification used the word “federation” rather than integration to describe its goals.4 The situation changed gradually, but only after World War II, when the term became popularized through adoption by the US government, the establishment of the...

Community Colleges and New Universities Under Neoliberal Pressures: Organizational Change and Stability by John S. Levin

Reviewed by: Community Colleges and New Universities Under Neoliberal Pressures: Organizational Change and Stability by John S. Levin Carrie Klein John S. Levin. Community Colleges and New Universities Under Neoliberal Pressures: Organizational Change and Stability. New York, NY: Palgrave McMillan, 2017. 345 pp. Hardcover: $79.99. ISBN 978113748019–4 In his recent book, Community Colleges and New Universities Under Neoliberal Pressures, John Levin provides insight into how the higher education landscape has changed under the hegemonic influence of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism, based on classical liberal economic theory, posits that the free market, both unencumbered by state regulation and secured by state mandate, can best ensure individual liberty (Harvey, 2005). As a theory that has evolved into an ideology, neoliberalism's influence has shaped higher education institutions by creating a corporatization narrative that has pervaded both the institutions, themselves, and the political landscapes in which they exist. Levin explores neoliberalism's influence on higher education by revisiting, from 2000–2014, the seven U.S. and Canadian community colleges he studied in his 2001 book, Globalizing the Community College. In that book, Levin investigated the organizational change that took place at these institutions between 1989–1999 in response to an increasingly globalized marketplace. The result of this extension is a longitudinal narrative field study that describes how these institutions, three of which have become new four-year universities, both reflect and resist neoliberal values, policies, and practices. A major contribution of this book is Levin's use of the various study sites to illustrate how higher education institutions have responded to the impacts of neoliberalism. Readers will benefit from Levin's narrative approach in telling detailed individual stories of institutional evolution over the last three decades. Using data from policy and planning documents and interviews with college and university faculty and administrators, Levin successfully argues that the presence of an increasingly predominant neoliberal state has and is changing the work of the colleges and universities in this study. In the introductory chapter, Levin uses extant literature to lay the groundwork for this argument. He argues that neoliberalism has shifted the role of higher education institutions from being entities for the public good that benefit society at-large to becoming entities for the private good that benefit market development and the knowledge economy. Levin states that neoliberal discourse, policies, and practices value "national productivity and global economic preparedness" leaving "no room at the neoliberal inn for the public good" (p. 3). He notes that community colleges and new universities are particularly impacted by neoliberalism, because they often do not have the political or organizational capital, power, and resources to buffer themselves from neoliberal pressures. Also explained in the introductory chapter is Levin's choice to use an institutional logics framework coupled with the various contexts of the study sites to understand the ways in which institutions have responded to neoliberalism. Institutional logics are the "socially constructed, historical patterns of material practices, assumptions, values, beliefs, and rules by which individuals produce and reproduce their material subsistence, organize space and time, and provide meaning to their social reality" (Thornton & Ocasio, 1999, p. 804). Levin uses institutional logics as a "shared conceptual framework for the understanding of behavior in practices of participants in institutional fields" (p. 12), to help explicate the ways in which institutional members at the study sites make meaning of and respond to neoliberal pressures. Specifically, Levin contends that institutional logics act as a force of stability in the face of potential destabilization, by anchoring agency and decision making for institutional members, who are facing externally imposed organizational change. To provide context for these arguments, that neoliberalism is impacting higher education and that institutional logics are the mechanisms through which institutions respond to neoliberal pressures, Levin devotes Chapters 2 and 3 to the stories of organizational change at the study sites. Chapter 2 focuses on community colleges in both the U.S. and Canada. Chapter 3 focuses on three former community colleges in Canada that have, since 1999, transitioned into four-year universities. The strength of these chapters lies in the narratives used to highlight the history and context of each of these institutions and the various ways in which each of the institutions...

Neoliberalism and the Future of Democracy

This paper describes neoliberalism and summarizes new works on democracy in Continental philosophy. Unlike laissez-faire or liberal economic theory—a “leave us alone” strategy in which the state does not interfere with private enterprise—neoliberal governments use the resources of the state to assist the market directly and employ the market to direct or oversee the resources of the state. Alongside neoliberal government, and in its wake, is a society in which the guiding axioms for each human being are self-entrepreneurship and competition. Over the last decade, however, a new body of philosophical work has been dissociating democracy from neoliberal government, critiquing a failed system of political representation, and considering to what extent democracy must take place beyond or outside of the current state. Of equal concern to these philosophers is how to take flight from a way of life that is characterized by self-entrepreneurship and competition. For some, the start of a political future beyond neoliberalism hinges upon a recent distinction between constituent and destituent forms of power. Whereas constituent power attempts to reform one’s government through demonstrations in public space, destituent power abandons the project of reforming one’s government momentarily or even completely in order to experience another form of life entirely.

The Increasing Importance of Geoeconomics in Power Rivalries in the Twenty-First Century

ABSTRACTRelations between states in the post-Cold War period have been shaped by an increased economic competition including ‘non-market’ factors such as intelligence sharing between state agencies and private businesses, successful economic diplomacy and different techniques to influence and manipulate non-governmental organisations to weaken an economic adversary, among other things. The considerable influence of these non-market factors illustrates the limits of the liberal economic theories that emphasise the dominant role of market forces. Geoeconomics is an interdisciplinary analysis that includes geopolitical factors, economic intelligence, strategic analysis and foresight and has the objective to provide a tool for states and businesses to develop and implement successful strategies to conquer markets, and protect strategic segments of the domestic economy, among other things. This article argues about the growing significance of geoeconomics in contemporary power rivalries, presents some strategic aspects of the role of state in the establishment and coordination of a national geoeconomic disposition, and highlights briefly the importance of the strategic management of information to support geoeconomic strategies. Some arguments of the article ‘Geoeconomic Analysis and the Limits of Critical Geopolitics: A New Engagement with Edward Luttwak’ are briefly discussed as well.

Inequality and Liberal Democracy: A Critical Take on Economic and Political Power Aspects

After decades of benign neglect, the issues of economic and social inequalities have re-entered the stage of mainstream political attention and debate in the western heartlands of the capitalist system over the past couple of years. On the face of it, this is no accident or surprise. The renewed attention on economic and social inequality unfolds against a background of very slow, partial and highly uneven “recovery” from a major financial crash which emerged in the north-Atlantic core in 2007–2008. In this setting we observe that the growing attention to issues of inequality in recent times is not unrelated to the manifest amplification of the longer-term trend towards increased economic inequalities that has become more evident in the period since 2008. This article will draw on (engage with) recent work and debates in neighbouring academic fields (political economy, economic sociology, political studies) concerning the sources, meaning and implications of growing economic inequalities. It pays particular attention to the high-profile work of Thomas Piketty on inequality trends. The article will consider the implications of such research and inequality trends for what now passes as liberal economic and political theory and also for the study, forms, conceptualisations and practice of political communication.

PHILOSOPHICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF ECONOMIC THEORIES

The relevance of the methodological foundations show in article. Any kind of scientific and economic theory are not in the final form, and are constructed in a certain way. Becomes paramount methods of constructing these theories. The purpose of the article is to classify economic theories, depending on the methodology used. It is proved that economic theories are implemented in the system of metaphysical or dialectical style of scientific knowledge, involving various methods of constructing the liberal economic theories are based on the standards of inductive metaphysical theories; conservative economic theory – by the standards of deductive metaphysical theories; theory of information economy is built according to the principles of dialectical. Identify the methodology of economic theories to evaluate the quality of economic projects, their adequacy and viability of social development.

The Price of Liberalization: Smallholder Coffee Producers in the Era of Globalization

Coffee is the second most traded commodity in the world, and it is one of the leading exports for eighteen sub-Saharan African countries. Seventy percent of coffee is grown by smallholder farmers. As global trade of coffee has grown, have smallholder coffee farmers benefited from increased internationalization of their economies? Liberal economic theory suggests that pressures caused by the internationalization of an economy widely affect preferences, institutions, and policies. This essay examines whether smallholder coffee farmers have wanted or been able to benefit from free trade and whether they support institutions that support greater free trade. Liberal economic theory emphasizes that producers and consumers change preferences as a result of internationalization of economies, so the response of smallholder farmers should be similar in all coffee-exporting countries. This essay finds that the theoretical model requires modifications for fully understanding coffee producers' preferences. Increases in retail prices were not reflected at the farm gate level. Moreover, the theory does not account for variables such as the International Coffee Agreement, international financial institutions, and fair trade, which influence price signals and opportunity costs.

Torture Is Not a Game

John Schiemann's Interrogational Torture: Or How Good Guys Get Bad Information with Ugly Methods posits that we can use game theory to determine whether or not is an effective way to get information. Schiemann says that game theory is a necessary- perhaps our only-means to obtain firm that meet a scientific standard when comes to the effectiveness of (Schiemann 2012, 3). His model will substitute for the empirical data we do not- and likely will not ever-have (Schiemann 2012, 4). In what follows, I show that we know enough about to know that conceptualizing primarily as a strategic interaction between two players is dubious at best and dangerous at worst. Propagating the falsehood that is primarily a game obscures the fundamental character of and invites policy makers and social scientists to use formal models to improve or perfect torture. However, the article is an exemplar of how rational choice theory as a descriptive understanding of the world undermines the original aims of the normative liberal economic theory from which sprang. In particular, the article highlights the paradoxes of an excessive commitment to the idea that reasoned choices the most important feature of any and all human interactions.Torture Is an Attack on the Capacity to ChooseIn justifying his use of formal methods to understand torture, Schiemann quotes eminent scholar Darius Rejali as saying that the evidence regarding is fragmentary. However, what Rejali actually says is that the evidence is rich and too fragmentary for particular kinds of conclusions (Rejali 2007, 7). It is not the case that we do not know much about or its effectiveness. Accounts of come from many countries, so many different writers, and in so many styles, guises, and emotional hues (from coldly technical to blatantly cruel, cruelly disingenuous, and literally tortured) (Rejali 2007, 7) that they not amenable to large-N data sets. However, Rejali and others who have examined the compendious evidence argue that does tell us something. In a chapter in Torture and Democracy titled Does Torture Work? Rejali concludes that the sources of error in organized are systematic and ineradicable . . . [torture] yields poor information, sweeps up many innocents, degrades organizational capabilities, and destroys interrogators (Rejali 2007, 478). Torture sometimes works but is unlikely to be effective in the very circumstances when is most needed, for example, during times of battle or emergency (Rejali 2007, 474- 78). Similarly, Rumney writes that while it is certainly the case that there inherent uncertainties in considering the effectiveness of coercive interrogation, cannot be said that we have 'no idea' as to its (Rumney 2006, 485). He concludes that coercion does sometimes work in individual cases, but a significant body of evidence raises serious doubts about its overall reliability and predictability (Rumney 2006, 485, 512).1 We do not need a formal model to know that is a generally ineffective way of gathering intelligence.We also know that the reasons for torture's ineffectiveness stem from the fact that is different from other forms of coercion. Consider some of the techniques used against detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (techniques that have been called torture light to indicate that they relatively low on the scale of human horrors). Citing sources familiar with the report of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Jane Mayer recounts that prisoners were locked in confined spaces that did not allow them to stand or stretch out for hours on end, kept on their tiptoes with their arms extended up over their heads for eight-hour stretches every day for two or three months, kept awake for as long as ninety-six hours, bombarded with bright lights and eardrum-shattering sounds for twenty-four hours a day for weeks on end, kept completely naked in cold water and frigid temperatures for a month, slammed against walls blindfolded with the use of a dog leash, sexually humiliated, and, of course, infamously, exposed to repeated simulated drowning (Mayer 2008, 165-69). …

The Failure of Trade's Empire in The History of Emily Montague

The contingencies of applying free trade imperialism to an impoverished Canada in the 1760s force the characters in Frances Brooke's The History of Emily Montague to abandon the sentimental colonial project, retreating to England to establish their domestic Utopia. Other critics have read Emily Montague's relation to the colonial project as ambiguous; I agree but relate these ambiguities not to the novel's gender or colonial practices, but to its economic ideology of global laissez-faire capitalism. Brooke's novel tries to narrate a plot of infinite wealth accumulation, but Canada's particular political and economic problems will not abide. The novel ends up laying bare the contradictions at the heart of this emerging liberal economic theory.

The Failure of Trade's Empire in The History of Emily Montague

The contingencies of applying free trade imperialism to an impoverished Canada in the 1760s force the characters in Frances Brooke's The History of Emily Montague to abandon the sentimental colonial project, retreating to England to establish their domestic Utopia. Other critics have read Emily Montague's relation to the colonial project as ambiguous; I agree but relate these ambiguities not to the novel's gender or colonial practices, but to its economic ideology of global laissez-faire capitalism. Brooke's novel tries to narrate a plot of infinite wealth accumulation, but Canada's particular political and economic problems will not abide. The novel ends up laying bare the contradictions at the heart of this emerging liberal economic theory.

Parties, Unions, Policies and Occupational Sex Segregation in the United States

We utilize the 2000 Equal Employment Opportunity file of the U.S. Census and various secondary resources to determine if party control, union density and states' anti-discrimination and family leave policy legacies affect levels of occupational sex segregation across large counties. Our findings offer a puzzle to political sociologists because two theories that are typically pitted against one another (Power Resource Theory vs. Liberal Economic Theory) predict and result in comparable outcomes. Indeed, as suggested by Social Democratic Theory, the sub-national United States have lower levels of occupational sex segregation when the Democratic Party and unions are strong, and policies are the mechanism through which these states maintain low occupational sex segregation. Yet, interestingly, as suggested by Liberal Economic Theory, occupational sex segregation is also low when unions and the Democratic Party are both weak, suggesting that unfettered market capitalism redresses socio-economic inequalities.

Values Economics and Theology: The Contribution of Catholic Social Thought and its Implications for Legal Regulatory Systems

The dominant system of global private economic ordering, grounded in classical liberal economic theory and based on robust private markets and a limited state regulatory role, has come under attack. That attack has been sharpened over the last several decades as the development of many poor states has failed to accelerate and as a consequence of the economic crisis of developed states that began to be felt in earnest in 2008. Like legal systems, economic systems grounded solely on rational activity without a foundation in normative value systems, are either incomplete or subject to perversion. This paper focuses on the values of substantive economics developed recently through application of Catholic theology. It focuses on the Catholic critique of consumerism, its understanding of a necessary labor policy and its sense of a just global economics. It will suggest a number of places where socio-economics and theology share common ground, and even something of a common framework of analysis, and that consequentially, there may be some force to arguments that some values may be trans-religious, as well as trans-cultural. The paper starts with a short consideration of the approach of economics in its modern globalized context, and the contribution of socio-economics to that approach. It then briefly suggests the contours of an economic critique of that modern approach, using as a foil for that purpose Fidel Castro’s attacks on economic globalization in favor of Marxist alternative global economic models. It then considers Catholic social thought as an alternative to both. For that purpose the paper focuses on Catholic social thought as it touches on the issues raised by global economic activity in three respects: materialism, labor rights and globalization. It ends with a consideration of an important criticism of conventional economics in Catholic social thought: that the dominant system is likely to fail because it lacks a legitimate ethical framework. For that purpose, the paper considers a recent revival of an article written by Benedict XVI in the 1980s when, as Cardinal Ratzinger, he suggested that the current dominant system would collapse for lack of a legitimate moral base, a base that could only be provided by Religion.

Africa Debt Crisis and the IMF with a Case of Nigeria: towards Theoretical Explanations

This paper, attempts to employ and apply the dependency and liberal economic theories in order to demonstrate how these two theories help in the accurate analysis and explanations of the debt crisis in the developing countries, particularly Africa and especially Nigeria. In doing this, the paper considers very briefly some of the actions and policies of IMF and other IFIs, the administrations of some Nigeria leaders and the undertakings/trend of events during the implementations of the Structural Adjustment Programme in Nigeria. It also reflects some of the activities in other countries in Africa relevant to the analysis. The paper concludes that the IMF, World Bank and the West should be blamed for collaborating with some Nigeria leaders in making the country indebted. And that the Nigerian masses needed reparation for the losses, pains and sufferings they have passed through because of IMF’s SAP.

The International Wanderings of a Liberal Idea, or Why Liberals Can Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Balance of Power

Scholars in international relations have failed to note a paradox about the balance of power: the concept of checks and balances and equilibria underlie classical Liberal constitutional and economic theory. Interest balancing interest lies at the core of the Liberal solution to the problem of anarchy, power, and human nature, whether in politics, economics, or the international sphere. Liberal scholars have adopted instead a rationalist utilitarian or a normative democratic approach. At the same time, Realists in international relations predict a balance, which realist scholars in domestic politics, like Schattschneider, have effectively questioned. This intellectual confusion denies Liberal theory a robust view of international politics, not least because the balancing principle is erroneously rejected as conservative. The confusion also undermines the coherence of Realist theory, which has hitherto tried to accommodate opposing predictions (balance of power and power concentrations) under one paradigm. I offer an explanation of how this conflation of theories arose. Conflating Liberalism with idealism leaves Realism as the only prudent alternative in international politics. The relation between the two theories is not zero-sum: both capture important aspects of international dynamics, and each can ignore the other only at serious cost.Deborah Boucoyannis is Lecturer in Social Studies at Harvard University (boucoyan@fas.harvard.edu). For comments and suggestions over the time the article has been in gestation, the author thanks Bear Braumoeller, Tim Crawford, Daniel Drezner, Nisha Fazal, David Grewal, Arman Grigorian, Mark Haas, Russ Hamilton, Michael Heaney, Jacques Hymans, Seth Jones, Andreas Kalyvas, Jacob Levy, Jack Levy, John Mearsheimer, Jennifer Mitzen, Kevin Narizny, Jacob Schiff, Jack Snyder, Kenneth Waltz, Alex Wendt, Bill Wohlforth, and the participants at the Political Theory and PISP workshops at the University of Chicago. Special thanks are due to Monica Toft, John Ikenberry, and Jennifer Hochschild for their support of the article; it was mostly written with the generous support of the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University.