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James Ceaser is the Harry F. Byrd Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia, director of the Program for Constitutionalism and Democracy, and was a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is the author of several books on American politics and American political thought, including...
DIRE STRAITS: Whither Japan?
Following World War II, Japan reinvented itself both politically, as it adopted the institutions of democratic government, and economically, as it became a dominant producer and exporter of consumer goods. These reforms were so successful that, ten years ago, experts were predicting that Japan would overtake the United States as an economic superpower. Instead, Japan experienced a decade of recession and economic stagnation that continues still. What happened? Is this a sign of serious structural problems in Japan's political and economic institutions? In other words, is it time for Japan to reinvent itself once again? If so, how should the United States alter its relationship with a new Japan?
It’s All in Your Head
Economists used to believe that economic growth arose from sudden, dramatic breakthroughs—the steam engine in the eighteenth century, the transistor in our own. Yet according to Hoover fellow Paul M. Romer, “this account gets things exactly backward.” The founder of New Growth Theory explains himself.
What Would Hamilton Do?
Revisiting the founding father to whom a national debt, properly funded, represented “a national blessing.” By Michael W. McConnell.
Is Women’s Empowerment a Bureaucratic Imperative?
Beyond Austerity
What Pinochet Did for Chile
The late strongman ruled harshly but left behind the most successful country in Latin America. By Robert A. Packenham and William Ratliff.
Communism, Democracy, and Golf
How should we deal with the reality of a United States that a decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall is the world’s ideological reference, economic innovator, and only global superpower? Hoover fellow Ken Jowitt offers some suggestions.
The Revolutionary Republic
In 1911, China rejected feudalism to enter the modern era. A new Hoover exhibit on a century of change. By Hsiao-ting Lin and Lisa Nguyen.
How We Won in Vietnam
What, exactly, was Hanoi fighting for?
The Next Great Leap
The Western media tell us that China’s leaders haven’t changed much in the past twenty years, and they may well be right. What has changed is the China around them. By Hoover media fellow William McGurn.
The Next Convergence
Hoover fellow Michael Spence ponders India, China, and the one essential element in economic growth: innovation. An interview with Peter Robinson.
How the Soviet System Cracked
Shifting incentives, miscalculation at the top
The Case against the International Monetary Fund
In July 1944, delegates from forty-four nations gathered in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to design a postwar international monetary system that would promote world trade, investment, and economic growth. The framers created the International Monetary Fund (IMF or fund) to supervise the new "Bretton Woods monetary regime" that sought to keep national currencies convertible at stable exchange rates and to provide temporary, low-cost financing of balance-of-payments deficits resulting from misaligned exchange rates.
In reality, the framers of the Bretton Woods regime created an international price-fixing arrangement enforced by the IMF. After joining the fund, each member country declared a value for its currency relative to the U.S. dollar. The U.S. Treasury, in turn, tied the dollar to gold by agreeing to buy and sell gold to other governments at $35 an ounce; the inflation of the 1960s, however, made the U.S. commitment to sell gold at that price unsustainable. To preserve U.S. gold reserves, President Richard Nixon closed the gold window in August 1971, effectively uncoupling the dollar from gold and ending the fund's original mission of supervising a system of pegged exchange rates. Looking for a new mission, the IMF quickly evolved into a financial medic for developing countries. Beginning in the early 1970s, the IMF skillfully used a series of global economic crises to increase its capital base and financing activities.
Has the expansion of IMF financing activities alleviated the balance-of-payments problems of member countries and encouraged prudent, progrowth economic policies? The evidence, much of it supplied by the IMF, demonstrates that the fund does more harm than good. Historical studies as well as recent initiatives in Mexico, East Asia, and Russia reveal that IMF financing programs, which rarely prescribe appropriate economic policies or sufficient institutional reforms, are at best ineffective and at worst incentives for imprudent investment and public policy decisions that reduce economic growth, encourage long-term IMF dependency, and create global financial chaos.
It is time to scrap the IMF and strengthen market-based alternatives that would promote an orderly and efficient international monetary system. Key reforms include floating exchange rates, internationally accepted accounting and disclosure practices, unfettered private financial markets, and fundamental legal, political, and constitutional rules that would allow free markets to emerge and countries to achieve self-sustaining economic growth and development.
Glimpses of Economic Liberty
Bit by bit, courts are being forced to ponder the laws and licenses that stifle people’s freedom to work. By Clint Bolick.
Making Development Work
Using markets to improve performance
Market Reform: Lessons from New Zealand
The economics and politics of liberalization and retrenchment
THE NEXT GREAT LEAP: China and Democracy
It has been more than fifteen years since the People's Liberation Army crushed the prodemocracy rallies in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, killing hundreds of students and workers and wounding thousands more. Since then, although stifling political dissent, China has continued to liberalize its economy and is rapidly becoming an economic superpower. Will the explosion of new wealth in China lead to new pressures for democratic reform? And just what is the legacy of Tiananmen? Peter Robinson speaks with William McGurn and Orville Schell.
Political Instability as a Source of Growth
The U.S. government emphasizes the importance of stable political leadership as a necessary condition for economic growth. Contrary to this view, I show that high leadership turnover is strongly associated with high economic growth both in autocracy and in democracy. The effect of "unstable" leadership is stronger in democracies than autocracies because democratic political systems have institutions that promote competition over policy ideas rather than over the distribution of private benefits to cronies. Two institutions are shown to be particularly important in promoting such public goods as a fair legal system, transparent decision making and accounting, a strong national defense, and a healthy, growth-oriented infrastructure. These two institutions are a large selectorate (the set of people with a say in choosing leaders) and a large winning coalition (the set of people whose support keeps the incumbent in office).
Political leaders are eager to stay in office and, contrary to the neoclassical economic model, are not benign agents of the people in whose name they lead. Because autocrats depend on small groups of supporters, they emphasize the use of private benefits to their cronies as the means to gain political loyalty and stay in office. This means that they generally have little incentive to pay attention to the overall quality of their public policies.
Democrats, in contrast, require the support of a large coalition to stay in power. Because private rewards have to be spread thinly to many people, democrats find it easier to compete for office by providing public goods that benefit everyone rather than private benefits for a few cronies. This means that, in democracies, political competition is over policy ideas. Two effects follow from the fact that democratic leaders must build large coalitions: Democratic leaders provide better policies to improve their chances of surviving in office, and because competition is over policy ideas, they are more easily turned out of office in favor of a political challenger than are autocrats. Thus, autocrats have longer terms in office and produce less-efficient economic growth. The U.S. government emphasis on stable leadership as a necessary condition for growth is mistaken and can lead to global economic contraction rather than expansion.
Europe's "Social Market"
Two, three, many capitalisms
The Roots of Democracy
Equality, inequality, and the choice of political institutions