Hand it to Layton, at least he's linguistically consistent when he betrays his internationalism.

Watch the second and third questions in this press conference and then ask yourself whether Jack Layton's internationalism has ever meant a thing.

UPDATE: J Kay says everything I wanted to here.

UPDATE2: If you want to see the heroes who were killed today, go here. You can go here if you want to see people who don't understand for a minute why these heroes served - probably with chests full of pride.

UPDATE3: I am reminded of this hilarious post.

Prime Minister's Question Time

I do believe I will be spending a lot of time here in the future. Blair is unmatched on his feet. If for no other reason - and make no mistake, I think there are many reasons - it's a shame he's gone.

Three Non-Random Thoughts

1.) I've just returned from a couple of days in Wisconsin. I gave a little talk on collective action problems and global health at the World Affairs Seminar. Ten years ago, I attended the Seminar as a high school student. It was a great and important experience then, and returning now was equally important. It easily borders on cliché to suggest that today's youth are the hope of tomorrow and then to assert that the future is in good hands. But, after a couple of days around whip-smart high school kids, all of whom have their hearts in the right place, I am closer to believing the cliché is true.

2.) This is an extremely counter-intuitive but convincing paper. It argues that to maintain trade openness in the United States - to defeat the protectionist racket - greater wealth distribution is required. There is an easy knee-jerk reaction to this argument, but I encourage you to read the paper. It's thought-provoking if nothing else.

3.) Dan Leger has more courage than ninety-nine percent of other journalists. He sets aside some serious myths in today's Chronicle-Herald regarding the current debates over equalization. I've avoided blogging on the topic, though I've had some great back and forth with some of my smarter friends in Nova Scotia. For the time being, let me say that Leger captures my sentiments, as does this piece by Coyne.

The logic of political survival hits one about the head

Unfortunately, this is what the logic of political survival looks like in Zimbabwe. May Mugabe ride into the syphillis-sunset before this gets any worse. And maybe those who still celebrate him as a hero could saddle up with him.

The Logic of Political Survival

Among the great books recently written in political science, Bueno de Mesquita et al's The Logic of Political Survival must make the list. It basically tackles a fundamental question of political science: why is it that bad governments (particularly undemocratic ones) can survive for so long? To make the long story short, they argue that governments with medium-sized selectorates (which is a generalization of electorates to include non-democratic selection processes) are able to survive by enriching their selectorates at the cost of the larger public. This works best for selectorates which aren't too small, because when they are too small it's easier for someone else to put together an opposing and winning coalition (think of military coups). And in selectorates which are too large it becomes more efficient to allocate goods on more fair grounds. In medium-sized selectorates a bad leader can stay in power for a long time. For the case of Zimbabwe, that seems to be what this article is demonstrating.

Mugabe is basically allowing his presidential guard to thoroughly pillage Zimbabwe by taking advantage of things only available to those in the selectorate: favourable and contrived exchange rates on US dollars, cheap gasoline, and (until recently) productive and well-kept farms. This hardly proves Bueno de Mesquita et al's argument (indeed, it is open to some real criticism). But it does a nice job of illustrating it.