Politics and Governance

U.S. foreign policy is often morally barren. In their pursuit to further U.S. national interests, American policy makers hide behind the words of Mr. Kennan to justify some of the more unsavory actions taken by the U.S. government abroad. Mr. Kennan’s oft-quoted statement encapsulates the dominant school of thought in international relations: namely, political realism.

Persuasion is the essence of presidential power.¹ Since the mass media are the primary means for a society to connect politics and the public, the President cannot help considering the media as strategically important for persuading the public to support his positions in politics.² Thus, presidential power to mobilize public opinion can be gauged as presidential influence on political news.

Today our democracy is flooded with money—currency that gives wealthy interests undue power and influence in our legislative process. But our democracy can run, and should run, on a different kind of currency. Currency can be more than just money; the efforts of moneyed interests to the contrary notwithstanding, our democracy is about more than just money. At its core, our democracy is about people, it’s about activism, and it’s about heart.

The military is undeniably the most popular institution in Turkey. Seen as the protectors of Atatürk’s legacy and famously non-corrupt, the Turkish military challenges the belief that people enjoy less democratic freedoms in countries where militaries are strong. Decades of harsh military dictatorships in countries such as Chile, Paraguay, and Argentina have given politically involved militaries worldwide a well-deserved negative image. The Turkish military is a rare exception to this norm. For over 80 years, it has established a reputation as the protector of secularism and an advocate for democracy. It has never wished to govern the country, but rather to “guide Turkey on a steady course toward social progress and the embrace of universal ideals.”¹ Ironically, this goal requires that it play an intricate role in Turkish public life, in effect meaning that Turkey is not yet a true democracy.

On September 29, 2006, the 109th United States Congress approved building a fence along a major section of the U.S.-Mexico border. The price tag of the fence is up for debate—estimates range from the $1.2 billion approved by Congress to over $7 billion in materials to erect the structure. Yet there are also inherent costs and benefits to this immigration policy that go beyond the price of materials. This article examines the costs and benefits of three major types of immigration reform initiatives—enforcement, legalization, and guestworker programs— from a market failure perspective.

Developed countries have experienced widening yet uneven wage differentials in the globalization era since the 1980s. What explains these varying degrees of wage inequality in those countries? By employing time-series cross-section analyses of 12 OECD countries from 1970 to 1992, I found that leftist partisanship and dense labor organization tend to reduce the wage inequality, even when controlling for other relevant variables such as inflation, unemployment, GDP per capita, trade, and capital liberalization.

Most people would say this is the age of globalization. I prefer “interdependence,” because “globalization” has largely an economic connotation. Interdependence goes beyond economics to culture, communications, travel, immigration, politics, war, peace, and it can be positive or negative or both. It simply means we can’t escape each other.