by Richard Gowan | May 26, 2011 | Economics and development, Europe and Central Asia, Influence and networks, Off topic, UK
When you want something done in your office, like fixing a broken chair, how do you go about it? Do you go to the administrator responsible and ask nicely? Or do you create a giant mask of the administrator, distort their features to make them look grotesque, and then hold a PR opportunity outside their office yelling that they are gambling recklessly with your work-space like pimps on a night out in Vegas?
I may be in the minority here, but I tend to go for the asking nicely approach. Not so, one imagines, the advocacy team at Oxfam. Or at least not if their approach to influencing the G8 leaders currently meeting in Deauville is any guide:
Veteran G8 campaigners, Oxfam, have kicked off the G8 Summit week by rolling out their famous G8 big heads for a game of bluff to demand the G8 recommit to Muskoka, L’Aquilla and Gleneagles Commitments.
Take a look at the picture above. What is all this meant to achieve?
The message for the G8 from the Big Heads for this photo shoot is: “Will they bluff on aid commitments this year? Oxfam is calling on them to reaffirm their Gleneagles, L’Aquila and Muskoka commitments, and setting out an emergency plan to deliver the overall shortfall in aid promised of $19 billion.”
Uh-huh? My guess is that the message that most G8 leaders actually take away from this sort of thing – if their aides even let them see the pictures – is a bit more like this:
Who are these twerps? Why have they made me look like a pimp? Can’t someone arrest them? Now can we return to the serious business of talking about Carla’s baby bump?
But you never know, anything’s worth a try, I suppose.
by Claire Melamed | May 25, 2011 | East Asia and Pacific, Economics and development, Global system, South Asia
Everybody say...aaah!
Horrific new data released by the latest census in India and analysed on the Guardian’s development blog shows that things are getting worse for girls. The ratio of girls to boys at birth has fallen from 927 girls per 1000 boys in 2001, to 914 girls per 1000 boys today. In the worst district, the ratio is 774 girls to 1000 boys. Usually you’d expect about 950 girls per 1000 boys. That adds up to 15 million girls not born in India in the last 10 years.
Wealth and urbanisation aren’t changing this – Mumbai’s figures are worse than the national average. They might even be making it worse, since medical progress, through the easy availabilty of ultrasound, makes it easier to identify girls and safer abortions reduce the risk of getting rid of them.
This is a tragedy, an abuse of just about all the rights I can think of, and a pretty horrific illustration of how new technology can sometimes serve outmoded and repressive ideologies rather than contribute to their overthrow, as the technological optimists would have it.
But it’s also, possibly, storing up big economic problems for the future – for all of us. Research in China, where the ratio is even worse, at about 819 girls per 1000 boys, finds an interesting link between the one-child policy, the preference for boys, and high savings rates. It goes like this: there are more boys than girls. When the boys grow up, they are competing over the limited number of girls in the marriage market, and so their parents give them a helping hand by saving up for a nice flat, a nice car (yep, this stuff really does work, like it or not). The authors show that Chinese savings rates shot up in around 2002, when the generation where boys really outnumbered girls reached the age when they started to think about marriage, and that savings rates are higher in areas where the gender ratio is most skewed. They argue that this effect explains about half of China’s high savings rate.
Now, as I’m sure all the well-informed readers of this blog will know, the high rate of savings in China was one of the factors causing the global imbalances which were one of the contributors to the financial crisis.
So there you have it. Women’s rights are good for financial stability. Perhaps a cause that the likely first woman head of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, would like to take up?
by Richard Gowan | May 24, 2011 | Cooperation and coherence, Economics and development, Europe and Central Asia, Global system, North America
It’s G8-time again! Sadly, not all the leaders who’ve turned up to recent G8 summits – like the guy on the right, seen at the Italian-hosted meeting in 2009 – will be able to make it to this week’s conclave in Deauville, France. What will they miss? Arguably not all that much, now the G20 takes precedence. Bruce Jones, Emily O’Brien and I have a new paper out on the Brookings website about whether the G8 still matters:
On May 26 and 27, France hosts the annual G8 Summit. Although the French have prepared a wide-ranging agenda – covering everything from internet security to the Arab Spring – there is skepticism that the G8 remains relevant in the post-financial crisis world. The G20 has eclipsed it as the primary forum for financial diplomacy, while talks between G8 foreign ministers on Libya this March delivered little.
There are, however, two recurrent arguments for maintaining the G8:
* It acts as an insurance policy for its members against the failure of the G20, a risk highlighted by ill-tempered exchanges over currency issues at the last year’s G20 summit in Seoul.
* It is a useful political club for liberal Western democracies (plus or minus Russia), whereas the G20 contains a less ideologically coherent group of major powers.
This paper argues that neither of these arguments is fully convincing.
Find out why they fail to convince here.
by Richard Gowan | May 20, 2011 | Cooperation and coherence, Economics and development, Europe and Central Asia, Global system, Off topic
Imagine that you ran out of money, and all your friends were nearly bankrupt. Would you then go to the nearest outlet of HSBC or Citibank and demand to be made the branch manager, as you understand the need for an overdraft really, really well?
No, you would not. But this is roughly the argument EU leaders are now making about why another European should head the IMF after the Strauss-Kahn affair:
Angela Merkel insisted that given the IMF’s dominant role in helping eurozone states like Greece, Ireland, and Portugal deal with massive debt problems, it makes sense for Europe to retain the position. “About the question as to why a European, I would like to answer this by saying, of course, the emerging countries have a right to one of the top positions of either the IMF or the World Bank in the medium term,” Merkel said.
“But I think that in the current situation, when we have considerable problems with the euro, that the IMF is very heavily involved in this, which points to the fact that it is possible to put forward a European candidate and that we should promote this within the community of states.” Merkel said the fact that Strauss-Kahn had not served a full term also should be taken into account.
Asked if the EU could support someone from outside the bloc, a European Commission spokeswoman, Pia Ahrenkilde Hansen, said, “We believe we can identify a strong candidate in the midst of the EU.” And Ollie Rehn, European economic and monetary affairs commissioner, noted that knowledge of the European economy was one useful qualification for any candidate to succeed Strauss-Kahn.
Let us suppose that these arguments have merit. I assume that, as a quid pro quo, the EU’s leaders would accept that:
- As the majority of UN peacekeepers are in Africa, the head of UN peacekeeping operations should be an African (not, as a recent tradition dictates, from France).
- As the three biggest recipients of WFP food aid are Sudan, Pakistan and Ethiopia, the organization should be run by a troika of officials from those three countries.
- As the wettest place on earth is Cherrapunjee in north-east India, the World Meteorological Organization should be run by an Indian, not a Russian.
No European leader would accept these arguments (although the only one I’ve heard made seriously is the one about Africa and UN peacekeeping). Why do they imagine that the same logic should apply to the IMF?
PS: For a less bilious take on the issue, read this piece by Thorsten Benner.
by David Steven | May 19, 2011 | Economics and development
From Martin Kettle in the Guardian, the eye-catching – and bizarre – idea that the Chinese are rooting for Peter Mandelson to take over at the IMF:
A more intriguing UK outsider [than Gordon Brown], in every sense – and absolutely guaranteed to have Brown chewing the carpet – is Peter Mandelson. China has asked if the former business secretary and EU trade commissioner would take the job. Mandelson is definitely interested. The coalition might be open to it too. Germany and France are another matter. Mandelson nevertheless ticks a lot of boxes.
Martin – please tell us more. After all, it’s hard to imagine a source for this story other than Mandelson himself.
