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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...
"We"
A community in agreement on fundamentals
The State of the Special Relationship
At the end of the day, Britain stands with America
Avoiding a Nuclear Crowd
How to resist the weapon’s spread
A Moral Core for U.S. Foreign Policy
Is idealism dead?
The Scapegoats Among Us
Blame-shifting after 9/11.
Obama and the State of Progressivism, 2011
Doing It Wrong and Doing It Right: Education in Latin America and Asia
Forty years ago Asia and Latin America were at similar levels of economic development. This is no longer true, however, for reforming East and Southeast Asian countries, periodic problems notwithstanding, have made long strides toward the developed world. Meanwhile, most of Latin America, after the reform euphoria of the 1990s, is passing through yet another of its periodic crises. Serious economic development in much of Asia has reduced poverty and inequality; in Latin America sustained economic growth and effective institution building have rarely occurred, and the region is falling ever farther behind the rest of the developing world. One critical factor in Asia’s success has been its universal, increasingly high-quality education systems, particularly at the primary and secondary levels, that have enabled most people to promote their own well-being and contribute to national development. The high quality of Asian education is evident in international testing that finds reforming Asian countries at the head of the class. Latin Americans, in contrast, when they even dare to participate in such testing, come out at or near the bottom. Why the difference? Because although both regions began with rigid, elitist traditional ideas and institutions, Latin Americans have been much less willing or able or both to adapt and transform their past in order to participate more productively in the modern world. Latin American leaders have not chosen to undertake deep and lasting reform, and the Latin American people, to the degree that they have any voice in the matter, have not demanded such changes. It is in U.S. interests to support education reform in Latin America because doing so will promote development and stability there and thus more productive relations between north and south. But we should do so only when the region’s leaders demonstrate the will to undertake substantive change and commit the resources to make it happen.
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.
Why Did the Obama Administration Break News of the Iran Plot Today?
Mothers in Combat Boots
Reassessing a military policy
Diverting the Radicalization Track
Promoting alternatives among the Middle East’s youths
Bottom-up Nation Building
Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq
Surrendering Outer Space
America yields the high ground
Dispatches from the Front
Victor Davis Hanson visits Iraq.
Religion and Social Order
Filling the gap when autocrats fall
The End of Balkan History
Serbia should let go of Kosovo and move on.
Missile Defense From Space
A more effective shield
The Politics of Airstrike
Why generals distrust politicians, and vice versa
The Newer, Bigger NATO: Fears v. Facts
The mistaken predictions of critics of enlargement