As I was re-reading all blog posts I realized that my blog posts became more analytical and less expository as the weeks progressed. At the beginning of the semester my blog posts were a few statement sentences and then followed by a plethora of my unorganized thoughts in question format. Not my strongest pieces of writing. But as the course progressed my blog posts (for democracy in the news and elective posts) began to incorporate course readings and materials and became more analytical–and thus stronger pieces of writing. I was able to pull in variables and indicators from certain datasets and hypothesize based on certain variables and indicators if Egpyt could be still deemed a democracy or more a semi-democratic government. I find that my blog post for assignment 11 ‘polish a post’ is my best piece of writing as after being given the opportunity to re-write it it became more analytical and scholarly. However, if we are going on popularity my blog post on celebrity marriage statistics got the most comments and feedback which might make it the most memorable.  

I was gonna read through other classmates blogs that I had commented on to see which ones I even found worthy of commenting on to figure out which one is most memorable. But the first blog post that came to mind was @Dominik’s ‘joke’ blog post on how different countries and regime types would distribute or treat two cows. I don’t think I have ever laughed so hard at a political joke in my life and therefore Dominik’s blog post deserves to be the most memorable. It is a satirical but well supported statements of how economics, countries and regime types value goods and how they distribute goods among citizens. I recommend you all go read it.

As of right now I have successfully read all the articles associated with the Democracy and Welfare readings and constructed an outline detailing my argument. One of the articles states that Polity may not be best to operationalize certain measures due to endogeniety problems. I found this interesting as the first three articles that were on the class reading list all used Polity to regress stats on spending. So then this got me thinking is there a right way or just a best way to operationalize things such as satisfaction, subjective well-being and contentment with government quality. Are the articles that try to operationalize these last three things weaker than articles that measure more solid concepts such as education spending and infant mortality rates. And does this mean we can never quite understand the impact that democracy has on happiness? These are things that I will discuss in greater detail in my paper.

Many European countries that held previous guestworker regimes such as Germany, Switzerland and the UK, alongside with Canada have adopted Safe Country (EU) and Designated Country of Origin (Canada) principles to expedite their asylums claims at the expense of individuals from certain countries. The EU and Canada’s rationale is that by designating certain countries as safe, individuals from these countries will not receive refugee status. Individuals in greater urgent need will receive refugee status in less amount of time as individuals from safe countries will have their claims expedited and rejected. The current head of the UNHCR, Antonio Guterres, has approved this process of expediting claims via Safe Country and Designated Country principles. Canada and the EU claim that countries are not arbitarily designated as safe. They are subjected to democratic tests that check for basic human rights, state protection and minimal democratic functionings before being approved as a safe country of origin. As of late February 2013 Canada had compiled a list of 35 countries (28 of which were from the EU) and deemed them all as designated countries of origin, and thus not able to qualify for asylum or refugee status despite economic persecution, policy persecution or homosexuality persecution.

Thus the debate that unfolds is: is it democratic to weigh one individuals life over another by signalling greater threat perception? Under the equality of personhood principle, all individuals should have equal rights to asylum, membership and naturalization. An individual from Cyprus (which is a designated safe country in Canada) should not be deprived life, liberty and security of person because there country meets the basic democratic and human right requirements. Though I do agree that an individual from Syria is in greater need of urgent protection, I believe that individuals from countries that have asylum claimants in urgent need of protection should have their claims expedited and receive status faster rather than processing claims of those from safe countries first to eliminate ‘unnecessary files’.

The other dilemma that unfolds is how should we conceptualize a refugee in light of the repercussions of globalization. Can someone claim as economic persecution as a viable liability to gain asylum and refugee status in another country? Similarly, can individuals claim climate change or environmental degradation as a threat to their survival in order to gain asylum or refugee status? Would these Safe Country and Designated Country of Origin principles cease to exist if the refugee umbrella expanded to include economics, climate change and environmental degradation? I believe these principles of the EU and Canada are merely a temporary band-aid over a much larger problem–how to control the unregulated admission of immigrants that do not have the standard of life that many of us Canadians are grateful to have been born with.

I chose a post from one of the very first weeks of class. I had posed a question asking about if a state of emergency could be declared democratic; and after having rewritten my first paper I have some new insight to this blog post. The original is as follows:

I thought Miller’s article on women’s suffrage rights and child mortality rates to be an enlightening article. I had never thought to link the two issues, but I found Miller’s argument very convincing and supportive (in regards to the US). I do think Miller’s argument is limited to liberal democratic states, during an economic upturn, and to diseases with cures or foreseeable cures. Liberal democratic states have higher political accountability in their ridings allowing them to consider electoral preferences of voters when doing roll call voting. In an economic upturn there are more resources available to be used for vaccinations, medicines and medical funding. (Also the USA did not have the budget deficit that it does today). Lastly, cures or vaccinations for typhoid fever have been discovered, and providing sanitary drinking water is more easily providable than cures for AIDS/HIV. Thus I think Miller’s argument can only be narrowly applied. We can not apply this argument to developing countries in Africa or the Middle East where women’s suffrage came about in later decades and was not accompanied by an increase in child mortality rates.
Secondly, Miller’s argument hinges on the hygiene public campaign as a trigger for women’s mobilization for an increase in public health spending. Political elites came to expect that women would want an increase in public health spending to increase hygienic practices in hospitals and public places to reduce child mortality rates that arise from unhygienic practices. Regarding application of this argument to other countries. We would need a hygienic campaign or trigger to spark a need for increased public spending to accompany women’s suffrage rights.
Do you think there are cases where Miller’s argument could be applied? A similar case that came to mind was Canada’s suffrage rights and the fight for maternity/parental policies. Where suffrage rights led to public policy spending that was targeted at the new electoral voting class. Are there other cases?

I remember my elementary days when many of my friends would sport ‘Save the Manatees’ t-shirts from WWF. Well on the bright side the manatees are still alive, but on the downside they are facing another danger that is threatening their ability to survive as a species. Social media led to the end of manatee (also known as sea cows) boat killings, but this new threat is global warming. Global warming has been proven to produce red tides, most commonly down in California and in the Gulf of Mexico. The Gulf of Mexico is a prime location for the manatees. Red tides cause uncontrollable blooms of algae that persist in warm winters during the winter months. The toxins contained in these algae blooms are toxic to mammals who breathe them in. The toxins can cause paralysis and prevent the manatees from being able to breathe on their own. Their bodies shut down and they die. Since January 149 manatees have been found dead off the coast of Florida, while 11 have been rescued by local zoos. In 1996 the record for red tide killings of manatee was 151, and officials have confidently announced that this year we will surpass this previous figure.

What will it take for people to jump on the global warming bandwagon? People are dying, animals are facing extinction, and our homelands are slowly sinking below sea levels. Yet we keep finding the urge to drive from our house to the grocery store instead of walking, and buying new IPhones that contain metal from environmentally degraded African countries. Social media has worked in the first campaign for bringing awareness to the manatee’s plight. It also worked in raising hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars for climate change induced Hurricane Katrina and the 2006 tsunami. Is social media a sufficient outlet for creating a revolution to combat climate change and save the manatees in the process?

The Cyprus recession and bail-out plea has aroused two different thoughts. In democracies we have political accountability, but can there be such things as public accountability? Last week political elites of Cyprus asked Cypriots to give their banking savings to the government to cover the $10 million needed to gain an IMF bail-out package. The people of Cyprus were outraged that their money would be transferred to the government to try and secure the country’s monetary and banking system. My initial reaction was similar to the people of Cyprus. My hard earned money; I already pay taxes how much more do you want from me. But then I thought, if political elites have to be held accountable to the people should there be some sort of rule that holds the public accountable. That the public lend there savings to the government in an IOU deal only to be reimbursed by the banks on their mortgages, pensions, or education savings in the future. There is some logic to this madness of the Cypriot political elites.

Secondly, in democracies can there be a greater governing force that has the authority to intervene in state matters without the consent or electoral decree of the people? Many people in Cyprus are outraged at the EU authorities for meddling and intervening in their national affairs. The EU has now tag-teamed with the IMF on the bailout package which will soon be handed over to Cyprus. The EU cites destabilization of the region as a legitimate excuse to intervene in the country’s affairs. They believe they have an obligation to the people to help them stabilize their banking system and monetary accounts in order to prevent a domino effect from occurring in the EU which would subsequently scare investors away. The people of Cyprus have not voted for the EU authorities help. In light of this do the EU authorities have legitimate rights to intervene, or should the problem only be addressed by nationals. Or did Cyprus give away their national autonomy and sovereignty with the joining of the EU that now makes them susceptible to a hierarchy of authorities.

For more information check out BBC’s latest article on the Cyprus situation. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21933473

As there are only three of us including myself that have posts up on the Twitter Fight Club assignment, @Zach you had a 50% chance of getting signalled out in a debate. You make a claim that having an abundance of sources of information available on twitter is a good thing, and for the sake of debate I am going to say that it is not. In the case of reading through twitter fight club contestants posts (which range from 18 000-56-000) a lot of it is useless information and I am wondering to myself how do I make an argument for those people to complete part 2 of this assignment. These contestants are all academics and largely intelligent people, but in trying to find posts that match their education is hihgly time-consuming. In the case of @texasinafrica, all I wanted to find was posts regarding her love/passion for pirates in Africa and instead I stumbled across posts about puppies and doughnuts. Usually this would interest me but not today…

What Twitter needs is a more efficient way of perusing through followers/followees tweets to find ones with hastags or comments that appeal to what we are trying to learn or find out. In the case of strong academics with 56, 000 tweets I don’t have time to sift through them to find the intellectual comments they do tweet about. If Twitter is going to have an overload of information available they should discriminate between personal tweets, work tweets, or academic tweets. This would allow followers to choose what kind of information they want from their followers.

In regards to TwitterFightClub, lots of information is timely and not so good. However, lots of information that is easily accessible and ordered is good.

People to follow:

@texasinafrica. I like Laura Seay’s hegemon and rival hegemon perspective on state failure and conflict in Africa. She tweets interesting conceptualizes of Chinese and American politics in relation to Africa. Plus her anecdotal comments on pirates are a laugh.

@max_fisher. Max Fisher is a blogger called Hello Mr. Democracy for the Washington Post that has been named one of Times Best Tweeters. Lately he has made interesting tweets regarding NK diplomacy, drugs and nukes, as well as on the Zainab war.

@dianawueger: Diana is a research assistant at the naval postgrad and an editor for gunpowderandlead.org (one of the #TFC13 organizers). Her recounts of weapon arms and facial hair provides for some comedic relief against opponents and in-between rounds.

Our Thursday discussion prompted the causal link between repression and per capita income. Less repression occurs when there is a higher per capita income. This got me thinking, if people with lower incomes and forms of employment are more likely to revolt and protest, what does this say about the above statement? Can we infer the reverse about the statement above; that more repression occurs when there is lower per capita income–or is that an inverse error? If it indeed is true, that higher repression occurs when per capita income is lower does that mean that governments do not care about the higher probability of protest and revolution rates? Based on the instrumental logic of action for repression, governments may still be able to achieve their interests despite civil uprising. This is commonly the case in Africa, less so now in the Middle East. We could attribute this differential to the rise in wages between the Middle East and Africa therefore increasing the per capita income spread.
This brings us back to the discussion two weeks ago on democracy and economic growth. Autocrats believe that it is not in their interest to maximize total output and spur eocnomic growth. According to the above argument autocrats would not be able to use repression on the public if their was high per capita income. So they stifle economic growth to maintain low income per capita and the ability to use repression though the lower class citizens have the opportunity to revolt.