They asked the following questions (english translations from ISSP documentation):

Suppose the government suspected that a terrorist act was about to happen. Do you think the authorities should have the right to…

• Detain people for as long as they want without putting them on trial? 2006: 53 % yes – 2011: 50 % yes
• Tap people’s telephone conversations? 2006: 85 % yes – 2011: 67 % yes
• Stop and search people in the street at random? 2006: 58 % yes – 2011: 44 % yes

This constitutes a clear drop in support for security measures that invade privacy and civil liberties, quite the opposite of what we  would expect. This supports the impression of the response that seemed to amaze international media and bloggers  (f.ex. Glenn Greenwald, Huffington Post, AFP). Virtually no cries for tightening of security, revenge or a “decisive response” as we would expect if this had happened in the United States.

Professor Anne Lise Fimreite from the University of Bergen and researcher Magnus Ranstorp at the Swedish Defense Academy attribute this to the decisive political leadership calling for openness and democracy in the days following the attack. The mantras that has been repeated over and over have been the two quotes “We will meet terror with more openness and more democracy” and “If one man can show that much hate, think of how much love we can show” from Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg and Labour MP Stine Renate Håheim respectively.

As a Norwegian myself, I do feel a sense of positive nationalistic pride in this development. Still, the numbers are quite high, and the Parliament did decide to adopt the European Data Storage Directive after intense debate. The struggle to defend civil liberties is far from a given victory.

United States’ agents have localized and killed a foreign national on foreign soil, then recovered his body. This man is accused of committing serious crimes against humanity, but no attempt was made to capture him alive and put him on trial. The president of the United States has acted as both prosecutor, judge and jury with the US Navy Seals as executioners. Despite this, President Obama freely owns up to his achievement, without even an attempt at explanation as to why the killing was necessary. Official word from the US Government is also that the mission was to kill It also seems that the aim has been to kill him, not a serious attempt to capture. And the rest of the western nations applaude. Including Norway’s prime and foreign ministers. And the people of the United States (and to a lesser degree in Europe as well) celebrate. Celebrate the killing of another human being.

I am, as most Norwegians, an opponent of the death penalty. I believe it is wrong to kill a human being, even if they have committed serious crimes, unless keeping them alive constitutes a direct and immediate threat to more lives. But even if you do believe in premeditated killing under certain circumstances, should it not be a last resort? Should it not happen only when there has been a trial, or when no other options were possible?

Osama bin Laden was an evil man. Killing him may also have been necessary, but I have problems accepting the fact that not even an attempt is made to justify the killing as necessary, and that a live capture was not even part of the mission agenda. Is this how a supposedly liberal democratic state is supposed to behave?

At the very least, I had expected a little bit of criticism from the press or even a modicum of moderation from governments that are against the death penalty.

Some of the inspiration for my thesis comes from an article in the student newspaper in Trondheim, Under Dusken, and similar comments over the following years. Political science professor Anders Todal Jenssen insisted that the student democracy in Trondheim lacked legitimacy because of the low voter turnout and that the introduction of political parties would be the solution to this problem. Binding platforms would make student politicians accountable to the voters and increase support for democracy. As a student representative myself at the time, I was provoked. We were proud of the lack of polarization within the student democracy and, although I didn’t know the term at the time, the level of deliberation. This started me on the quest for an alternative to Professor Todal Jenssen’s strong belief in the salience of political parties.

Democracy does of course seem unthinkable without political parties. Almost every democracy is dominated by a system of organized factions that structure, educate and drive the political process forwards. The necessity for such a system is no longer seriously questioned in political science. I do not believe, however, that any institution should be beyond question. Even if we have no intention to get rid of political parties, we should strive to understand the effect they have on democracy. As I will show in this thesis, one such effect may be reducing open and free deliberation among decision-makers. This may be a cost we are willing to pay, but not a cost we should pay without knowing its size. Deliberation should not be considered merely as a normative ideal for democracy, but also a descriptive model for understanding the workings of democracy. The amount and quality of deliberation may explain political decisions and outcomes that aggregative models do not. This should make deliberation a topic of interest even if one does not accept its normative justification.

Institutions influence the way democracy works. If deliberation is an important characteristic of democracy, we should take interest in how institutional design affects deliberation. There has been some research on this, but political parties, integral to almost all modern democracies, seem to have been neglected in this respect. I will show that there are sufficient theoretical reservations about their effect on deliberation that this should be a topic of proper empirical testing. To test the relationship between political parties and deliberation empirically, we need an approach for measuring deliberation. We should have a method with a theoretically sound basis, that measures what we want it to, and that is acceptable within the wider sphere of political science (a discipline that is both theoretically and empirically oriented).

I will examine various proposals for examining the amount and quality of deliberation and consider their respective strengths and weaknesses. The Discourse Quality Index seems to be the most promising such method in use today. I have tested the utility of the method for addressing whether political parties weaken deliberation in a political system. To do this I applied the method to two democratic bodies: the student parliaments of the universities in Trondheim and Oslo, Norway. Due to a limited amount of data I did not get significant results concerning the question itself, but I have collected practical experiences and new insight into the method and its applicability.

Quickly summarized, I find in my thesis that there seems to be sufficient theoretical grounds to support the assumption that political party systems are detrimental to deliberation. A major obstacle to empirical testing of this and other theories about deliberation is found in the current state of empirical methods. Several methods have been tried, but none seem to be able to completely combine the demands needed for the conclusions to gain general acceptance. The Discourse Quality Index seems to be the most sophisticated and promising of such methods, but there are still a number of problems that should be addressed. Read the entire thesis (PDF)

Gore and Wolfowitz, pretty far apart in domestic politics have come together in their condemnation and call for action by the American government. They also display some insight into matters in Malaysia and Anwar Ibrahim. Matters in Malaysia are by no means entirely black and white, but the heart of the matter is that abuse of judicial power to undermine democracy is wrong no matter what. As they formulate it:

Our views of Anwar Ibrahim have been formed completely independently of each other. We do not always agree with his views on foreign policy, but we do agree that as a political leader, statesman and intellectual, Mr. Anwar possesses qualities that encourage hope for the future. These qualities include lucidity and openness to debate and engagement; commitment to principles of accountability and good governance; and a serious concern for the future of his country and the world—not to mention his extraordinary courage in standing up for what he believes. We are convinced that he is committed to the values of pluralism, tolerance and freedom that are needed for Malaysia to flourish.In the end, what matters is not our opinion of Mr. Anwar’s character, but the opinion of his fellow countrymen. Malaysians should decide for themselves, through an open electoral process, who they wish to lead them. They should not be deprived of that opportunity by an abuse of judicial power.

The Trade Federation - evil trade monopolists

Drezner claims that we have little information on the pre-Phantom Menace policies of Supreme Chancellor Vallorum, leader of the Galactic Republic. We do however know that the monopolistic and militaristic  Trade Federation appears to be at least partially sanctioned by the Republic, as they have their own representatives in the Senate. Vallorum does however appear somewhat opposed to their blocade of trade to Naboo, as he at the beginning of The Phantom Menace  dispatches the Jedi to negotiate.

If we go beyond the films, to the Star Wars: Republic comic¹, we learn that the Trade Federation’s monopoly on interstellar trade indeed seems to have Republic support. When the “pirate” Iaco Stark tries to break their monopoly on trade of the medicinal substance bacta, the Republic actually goes to war with him and puts an end to the free trade of the substance that was much to the benefit of consumers on the Outer Rim. The Senate might have been manipulated and deceived into it, but they were not able to prevent it, and did not appear overly concerned about freeing trade.

When it comes to trade, it indeed appears that the Galactic Republic had clear tendencies towards supporting monopoly and an oligarchic corporatism without competition. In the economic sphere there seems to be some circumstantial evidence that the Jedi and their allies had clearly illiberal tendencies.

Feels good to be a nerd…

1. which I have not read, and am referencing second hand

Malaysia has a parliament and elections, but it is nowehere near being a working democracy. This week they have once again proven this with the censorship of MP and opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim. Anwar now faces possible suspension from parliament over a comment made during one of its sessions. He claimed that the nationalist campaign 1Malaysia, intended to boost national unity, is somehow related to Ehud Barak’s 1999 political campaign One Israel. The relation is the PR firm APCO that allegedly has been working for the government coalition Barisan Nasional.

Making connections to Israel is not trivial in Malaysia, a country with a Muslim majority and where religion is frequently politicized. Using a European analogy, this claim is roughly as controversial in Malaysia as if a British MP had claimed that Gordon Brown’s policies reeked of nazist ideology. It is probably a breach of parliamentary decorum worthy of a reprimand from the Speaker, but definitely not grounds for exclusion from parliament. In a democracy, we have to accept even remarks that we disapprove of. The threat of such extreme sanctions for minor infractions does not make for a climate of open and free discussion necessary for true democracy.

The government coalition has worked hard and played dirty to keep Anwar Ibrahim down. The censure against Anwar fits the trend nicely. As preposterous as the censure is, the remarks themselves clearly show that both sides know how to play that game. I don’t believe for a second that Anwar actually believes that the 1Malaysia policy is the result of conspiring with Israel. But the mere suggestion is enough to sow doubts in the religious, less educated rural Malaysia. He scores a double point when the government responds with trampling on free speech, aggravating the more secular urban citizens hoping for a more democratic Malaysia.

That both sides play dirty should surprise very few. It is also understandable that the opposition is willing to stoop to that level given that their opponents have the draconian arsenal of the government at their disposal. Perhaps they even have to in order to survive. But is this a good starting point for building a more vital Malaysian democracy? We can only hope that the level of debate will rise if the level of democracy increases.

Professor Graver, far from leaping to the defense of his profession actually defends the depiction by Fløgstad, even giving it current relevance by drawing parallels between the reinterpretation of German law to accomodate Nazism and the reinterpretation of American law under Bush to legitimize coercive interrogation techniques such as “waterboarding” or even hitting a detainee in the face or stomach.

He points to a dangerous tendency within his own profession not to take a moral stand, insist there are two sides to every issue and be servile to government. This may be done under the guise of a neutrality necessary for preserving the rule of law even under bad regimes, but it requires ignoring the original intent of the law, ripping the very foundation out from under the system in the process. There are good examples of the law profession participating in the defense against external enemies, but in defending the rule of law against perversion by internal enemies, the historical record is not very good.

His conclusions are rather radical, considering that they come from the dean of the oldest and most prestigious law faculty in Norway (my translation):

History gives us little reason to be optimistic. The state can be built by law in good weather, but law and order are insufficient – occasionally even dangerous – during a storm. But what should then protect us when it really counts, when we cannot trust lawyers and the rule of law? What we must then trust in is the anti-authoritarian impulse in the people, the very antithesis to the part in us that wants to bend to authorities and superior force, even the one with legality behind it.

It is in other words not law and justice that will save the rule of law when it is seriously threatened, but the will to rebel against law, and the will to insist on justice even against the system of justice. The ability to recognize when law and judgement is wrong and when the power of the court is oppressive and an assault on justice is the core of the wisdom that is needed.

Is this also a caution relevant to political science? Are political scientists as servile defendants of the system even when the system has been perverted to attack the very values it was designed to defend?

Similar charges in 1998 led to Anwar being sacked as s deputy PM, imprisoned and quarantined from politics – also being the decisive blow against his economic reform program¹. It may have been a pyrrhic victory for the sitting regime as it also served as a rallying call for the opposition eventually leading to the creation of the current opposition coalition where such diverse parties as the Islamist PAS and the socialist DAP stand reasonably united with Anwar as their leader.

In the previous round, the allegations against Anwar were by many seen as a decisive low blow by a hegemonic leader (Mahathir Mohamad) against his reform-oriented deputy who was rising too fast in public popularity . In 1998 Mahathir sat on the pinnacle of a strong pyramid of patronage and media control. He needed to prevent Anwar from getting in the position for a possible hijack of this effective machine. In destroying an internal enemy he created an external one.

Under Mahathir’s successor Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, that pyramid became increasingly wobbly. He was unpopular, even with the Malay majority that had strongly supported Mahathir. He was also generally seen as incompetent, and failed to exercise the autocratic control over Malaysian politics his predecessor had. Not only did an organized parliament opposition appear, gradually increasing its political power, but oppositon also grew within his party UMNO and the government coalition Barisan Nasional was creaking at the seams.

Anwar’s political quarantine ended in 2008, and in the same year an electoral landslide made Barisan Nasional lose its traditional 3/4 majority in parliament. The internal opposition became strong enough to force the retirement of Prime Minister Abdullah, to be replaced with Najib Tun Razak the son of nation builder Tun Abdul Razak and member of one of the true power dynasties of Malaysia. Where there were only feeble attempts at criminal charges against Anwar at the end of Abdullah’s reign, they have now once again managed to drag him into court where he faces the possibility of a long prison sentence and a new political quarantine. His alleged offence is engaging in homosexual activity.

Reuters comments on the strong media bias that especially influences the poorer and less educated rural Malaysia. Still, The Washington Post suggests that this whole trial may be a bad move from the government. Indeed I agree that should he be convicted, it will be yet another pyrrhic victory for the leadership of Malaysia. It was a desperate move and a bad idea in 1998 and gave Anwar the martyrdom status necessary to become the opposition icon he is. And that was in a time when Mahathir’s autocratic control of the country was much stronger than Najib’s today. It is an even worse idea now. The opposition struggles with being an alliance of very diverse groups. Further martyrdom for Anwar will certainly give them renewed strength, provided they manage to find a new leadership figure without breaking apart.

Should Anwar lose the trial, it will also cast further shadows of doubt over the Malaysian court system. In the previous round, Anwar’s sodomy conviction was actually overturned after four years. The police and prison authorities were also strongly reprimanded for mistreatment of Anwar while imprisoned. The way the trial is conducted may tell us much about whether the independence of the court system has improved or worsened since 1998.

One way or the other, the trial will have great impact on Malaysian politics. The process and its outcome will be very interesting to follow.

1. I have previously published a student paper about this in the post Sex, lies and capital controls

This might be the result of a Scandinavian (possibly harmful?) naivité about such issues, possibly brought on by a very homogenous ethnic makeup.¹ It may also be the result of a society that has been able to advance beyond a harmful focus on race. I saw an example of the opposite up close when living in Malaysia, a thoroughly race-focused country where race and religion ar important for official categorization of people. It is the story of a massive affirmative action programme that has spiralled totally out of control and become the basis for widespread discrimination in society.

I may be wrong, but my impression as an outsider is still that focus on the concept of race appears to bring more harm than good. The problem in the US is as I understand it that large groups have low income, low social mobility, language problems, high unemployment et cetera, not that the members of these groups have a different skin tone. Language holds power, and official contributions to keeping racial divisions an active part of the language may be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Am I just an naively idealistic Scandinavian with an unrealistic view of the world?

1. The CIA World Factbook lists the 2007 estimate as: Norwegian 94.4% (includes Sami, about 60,000), other European 3.6%, other 2%

I quote:

[...]the candidates are God awful.  Seriously, they stink.  Just to review our choices:  Democrat Martha Coakley has a prosecutor’s complex that would make Javert seeem like a bleeding-heart liberal.  She is a God-awful politician so out of touch with  reality that she accused Red Sox hero extraordinaire Curt Schilling of being a Yankee fan (Schilling’s blog response is here).  Based on the ads I’ve seen, her campaign has also been, by far, the nastier of the two.

This leaves Republican Scott Brown, who based on this vacuous Boston Globe op-ed, is an empty shirt with no actual policy content whatsoever.  He was in favor of health care reform before he was against it.  He can’t stand the run-up in government debt, and wants to cut taxes across the board to take care of the problem — cause that makes perfect economic sense.   The one thing he is unequivocally for is waterboarding suspected terrorists.

It would be true political irony if all Obama’s blood sweat and tears over health reform should go to waste because of a mess like this. But that’s politics for you. Part of the reason why it’s so interesting…