I think Hamas's victory has little real impact. We now have a clearer picture of what Palestinians think and desire i.e. Fatah was a complete failure and they remain angry at Israel.

I would look to Northern Ireland. Why did the violence stop? Population trends made Catholics less of a minority and a larger potential political force. The economy of Free Ireland greatly improved and with it came a chance at a better life for many. Lastly, people grew tired of the violence. People get older, wiser. Street gangs have waves of violence that calm down as old leaders age, until new Turks come along.

Democracy's tend to avoid war not because they are democracy's but because democracy's lead to greater economic expansion and opportunity. Absent economic growth, Democracies collapse.

It may be easier for Israel to identify and kill Hamas leaders, but I don't see that as a big benefit. Killing elected officials would only enflame the Arab street.

I suspect Hamas will fall into a period of corruption as they take control. They may moderate (be open to bribes) their verbal attacks on Israel and may seek peace in exchange for the good life that so many middle east leaders seem to achieve. Regretfully, that also means that economic growth will elude most Palestinians and so will peace.

It seems a bit inconsistant to me to justify the contention that free fair elections are not good predictors of peace/future democracy by using the example of 1930s germany and then argue that 1930s germany was a special exception when you talk about why democracy leads to peace.

Still, I tend to think your conclusions are mostly correct and even supported by the example of germany. Wars are very rarely beneficial for the populance at large but frequently provide increased status or other benefits to the aristocracy. However, we need to take into account the fact that people are not always rational. If they are affected by a strong emotional drive (say anger at the true ending WWI or at isreali occupration). Thus I think that even if one believes the palestinians sill achieve true democracy it is unclear if this is likely to encourage peace.

In fact your arguments about why democracy encourages peace seem to be turned on their head in the case of palestine. In this case the governing elite are the ones who benefit immediatly from peace (international acceptance, decreased chance of assasination etc..). While in the long run the populance benefits as well in the short term it may involve giving up closely held beleifs and swallowing anger.

I agree with Becker in that the economic incentives of democracy lead to increased stability, and that the centralization of Hamas power will not play a significant role in reducing the group's likelihood of attacking Israel. While I do not have any meaningful additions to their comments, I would like to call attention to the grammatical errors of the previous two responses. I enjoy reading people's insightful comments, but please, use grammar more advanced than an elementary level when discussing the relvance of a self-declared terrorist group's democratic rise to power and its impact on American foreign policy in the Middle East. It adds credibility to your well-founded points.

...if the Palestinians are able to develop a genuinely republican government and move rapidly toward embourgeoisement, there is some hope for the eventual emergence of a peaceful Palestinian state.

A peaceful Palestinian states may exist for a short while but it will not be viable in the long term any more than a Jewish state of Israel will be viable in the long term.

Public opinion has been shifting away from racial discrimination and racial segregation for the last few hundred years and this trend is likely to continue. As a result, neither a Palestinian state or a Jewish state of Israel will be able to maintain the policies of racial discrimination necessary to keep people of Jewish ethnicity separate from people of Palestinian and Arab ethnicity.

While it is likely that Israel will attempt to destroy the Palestinians as an ethnic group in an attempt to maintain itself as a Jewish state and while it is likely that this effort will be largely successful, Israel is surrounded by a huge population of various Arab ethnic groups and, once public opinion makes segregation policies unacceptable, natural population diffusion will inevitably lead to Israel becoming a predominantly Arab state.

Whether a democratic referendum to change Israel's name will be held when Israel becomes predominantly Arab is difficult to predict. It is ironic, however, that so much effort is focused on getting Hamas to acknowledge Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state when, in fact, Israel's existence as a Jewish state is unlikely to last more than a few more decades anyway.

First, I think it is questionable to refer to the Confederacy as a democracy when only a little more than, I believe, five million of its nine million residents were citizens.

Second, I would also ask whether the much-remarked-upon affluent or at least middle-class background of terrorists in general, and the Al Qaeda leaders, the 9-11 attackers, and Palestinian bombers in general, can be squared with an optimism based in the tendency of middle-class people as a group to shun war and violence. Even if the group anti-violence tendency holds, it only takes a few violent middle-class people to make a big problem.

Third, I would also ask (ask the Palestinian people, perhaps more than Judge Posner) that if the harsh Israeli repression provoked in response to the Palestinian terror campaign does not count as the Palestinian terror policy "failing dramatically," what would?

Fourth, a further question might be whether the rapid economic growth of Gaza and West Bank while under Israeli occupation (see reference below) counted as moderating embourgeoisement of the population, or not.

Reference:
Efraim Karsh, "What Occupation?" Commentary July-Aug. 2002, reprint
http://www.palestinefacts.org/what_occupation.html

I found uncontroversial (and unoriginal) Posner's suggestion that procedural guarantees of democracy are insufficient to form a peaceful, moderate Palestinian nation. American constitutionalists on the left often make the critique of democratic proceduralists on the right that procedure is insufficient to guarantee the liberty and freedom mentioned in our Constitution. Indeed, the argument over procedural and substantive due process is often of this character.

What I found surprising, however, is that Posner suggests that "[d]emocracy is unstable unless anchored by legally protected liberties, including freedom of speech, freedom from arbitrary arrest, and property rights" without mentioning the role of institutions. It should be obvious that it takes more than explicit guarantees in a Bill of Rights to keep a regime stable; after all, a regime could interpret a Bill of Rights in perverted ways so long as it had a ruling coalition with sufficient military force to do so unopposed. Institutions with established codes of conduct, standardized and fair requirements for membership, established methods of evaluating data, and public decision-making must administer the state. It is only when such administration is present that the radical shifts of politics can take place free from coercion or violent upheaval.

It is odd that Posner failed to mention the role of socially mediating institutions given that Fatah rejected Hamas' offer to join in a ruling coalition precisely because Hamas lacks the institutional knowledge to administer the state. Fatah wants to see Hamas fail, which would create a political vaccuum that Fatah could fill. The challenge to Hamas now is acquiring the institutional knowledge to administer the state properly, not writing a Bill of Rights that explicitly guarantees liberties germane to legal systems that adopted English common law.

Cut from a WashPost discussion with terrorism scholar Daniel Byman:

Orlando, Fla.: According to Richard Posner on his blog, "Democracy is unstable unless anchored by legally protected liberties, including freedom of speech, freedom from arbitrary arrest, and property rights." He is here referring to Hamas' victory in the elections and suggesting that without guaranteed liberties, nations tend to become rogue states. I think he is overlooking the role of institutions. What is more likely to create states that sponsor terror, the absence of constitutional liberties or the absence of stable institutions that administer the state well?

Daniel Byman: I do not see the issue as inherently tied to either institutions or constitutional liberties. Terrorism is a horrible but logical choice for some governments, particularly when they have few other strategic alternatives. Other governments may genuinely believe in the terrorists' agenda. We see democratic governments being more pacific on this issue than others, but the democratic governments that might go down this road often have other options, including military and economic ones.

"It is odd that Posner failed to mention the role of socially mediating institutions"

It is not odd in the context of this blog. When have you seen Posner or Becker recognize the meaningful existance of ANY institution other than The Market in their posts here?
Maybe I missed that week but I certainly don't remember any.

You could go back a few weeks and look at how the institutionalist argument raised by several commentors (about non-sustaining wages and the abolition of tenure as an externalization of costs onto social welfare) was completely ignored.

You are absolutely right to point out that a bill of rights doesn't solve the problem. Many third world or post-soviet countries have model constitutions that make ours look old-fashioned. However, an excess of executive power will overturn even the best intentions of the Constitution.

Posner gives an old answer to fix that by postulating the existance of a middle class, or rather, a sheep-like herd of consumers who are "are largely ignorant of policy" and who leave all decisions to enlightened statesman so long as those rulers don't overstep some imagined line and sour the market for iPods.

But that is facially and unapologetically elitist, and runs counter to the core ideal of democracy as a mechanism for reflecting the will of the people. Posner doesn't think the people know what they want. They are confused and ignorant of policy, they know only big screen TVs and electric food dehydrators, they baa contentedly every 4 years in the voting booth so long as the elites stay moderate.

Why does it matter that representative democracy is somewhat elitist? Because understanding that leads to a different hypothesis on recent events Palestine:

First you assume that Palestinians are not stupid. Oppression radicalizes and politicizes people like nothing else. Palestinians that voted for Hamas KNEW that it would be likely to cut off aid and reduce their market power.

Second you assume that Palestinians are realists. This mandate is thus unlikely to be about nominating Hamas to reform itself as a replacement representative democracy that will somehow be less corrupt than Fatah was. Why wouldn't Hamas do the same thing that every other "representative" of the Palestinian people has done?

So, what are these realist, intelligent, self-actualized Palestinians doing when they elect Hamas? I suggest they are voting for a change in the FORM of government. Hamas is a populist movement, with tinges of socialism. Not unlike the movements that started to get a lot of votes in America during the Lochner years and the Depression. (Of course, unlike American populists, Hamas is also unforgivably violent.)

So, the "embourgeoisement" of Hamas is likely the exact opposite of what many Palestinians wanted. Hamas is similar to the IRA, various Mafias, and Drug Lords in developing countries. It fulfills an institutionalist, redistributive role that the representative or dictatorial State is not filling. It gains the support of the people the same way Jesus did, by helping widows, feeding the poor, overturning the moneychanger tables... but it also protects itself with violence, something Jesus famously refused to do.

When a population elects such an organization AS the state, they cannot merely be seen to be replacing corrupt representatives. Rather they can be seen to say, representative democracy and free market economy isn't working for us. Some Palestinians seem to want redistribution and protectionism, even via violent means.

Calling for Hamas to behave like a less corrupt Fatah is not going to work if doing so would mean Hamas loses its mandate.

And by the way, it should be clear from this that I am not endorsing Hamas. I am merely suggesting that one might obtain a better understanding of the situation by at least entertaining the possibility that voters in Palestine are rational and considered the policy implications of their choice. (By asking why someone other than a bloody-minded partisan might prefer Hamas as it exists today over Fatah)

Democracies are a mirror of their underlying society. Hamas for better or for worse reflects underlying Palestinian social ethos or lack thereof.

To Mr Hall: I have been looking for a good editor, ever since elementary school as a matter of fact. Perhaps you could help me?
I have made some chnages to my earlier post. I hope they meet your approval.

I think the Hamas political victory has little real impact on the peace process. The election results simply demonstrate what we already knew: a majority of Palestinians think the Fatah party was a complete failure and Palestinians remain angry at Israel.

What lessons could we learn from Northern Ireland? Why did the violence stop there? Population trends made Catholics less of a minority and a larger potential political force. Second, the Irish economy grew at a rapid pace. A population with increasing opportunities for material success is less likely to destroy the social structures that give them those opportunities. Lastly, people, communities, grow tired of the violence as the communities in general grow older and wiser.

Democracies tend to avoid war not because they are democracies but because democracies with free markets achieve greater economic expansion and opportunity for the greatest number of people. Absent dispersed economic growth, democracies often collapse.

Perhaps Judge Posner is correct and Israel may find it easier to identify and kill Hamas leaders, but I don't see that as a big benefit. Killing elected officials would only enflame the Arab street.

So what will happen? I expect some Hamas leaders will be corrupt. They will seek to bring home the Muslim equivalent of pork to their supporters.

A culture of corruption and violence (and the resulting poverty) will continue in Palestine. Some Hamas leaders will seek compromises in exchange for the good life that so many Middle East leaders seem to achieve. Other nations will seek to bribe the leaders into the peace process, but the bribes will only allow the corruption to spread.

Regretfully, corruption and violence will prevent the average Palestinian from having real opportunities for their families. Without those opportunities any hope for peace will remain a faint hope. Just as it was last year.

I find the situation somewhat amusing. For years the pundits, political pols, econ-polit-military elites have dictated to the Palestinians what is and what will be. In their first chance in quite a while to speak their minds; they have stood up and given the proverbial "finger" to Fatah, Israel, U.S., UN, the World and put Hamas in the Hot Seat. Only time will tell if a paradigm shift has occured or it is just business as usual. I really enjoy seeing Democracy at work!

It sure is entertaining to watch "intellectuals" like Posner try to put lipstick on this pig --- or should I say goat? --- of an election. I actually tend to be rather sympathetic to Palestinian aspirations for statehood, and rather critical of Israel. But, please: Only an "intellectual" can so rationalize these results. The soon-to-be nuclear Iran, which has been funding Hamas all along, now has gotten themselves a satellite in the occupied territories! All of the jibber-jabber about the beauty of democracy is sheer nonsense. Again, the kind of nonsense only an intellectual could embrace. Those who hate Israel and want to see her destroyed scored a massive victory. Money from Israel-hating Arab governments and Iran will now flow in freely, and, as I said, the Iranian mullahs now have a beachhead. Brilliant, you eggheads who thought "democratization" of the Middle East was such a good idea! George W Bush, Manchurian Candidate if there ever was one, is doing a marvelous job --- in Iraq, Palestine, Egypt, and Lebanon --- of hastening the rise and expansion of Islamic fundamentalism. He is turning out to be the best friend the mullahs and terrorists could ever have wished for.

Judge Posner's analysis of the moderating influences on Hamas in power is perfectly reasonable, provided, as he notes, that Hamas is primarily interested in retaining power through elections.

This is a huge proviso. The announced goal of Hamas is the destruction of Israel, and even political people sometimes mean what they say. If that is the case here, is not Hamas now in a much stronger position to further that project? If the United States and Europe withhold funds from the Palestinian Authority, will not oil profits in Iran or Saudi Arabia replace the deficiency? If Hamas officials in government make easier military targets, do they not also become more appealing martyrs by virtue of their election? If Hamas in the shadows was an effective terrorist organization, will not Hamas in power be a stronger one?

We are not very good at analysing the motives and strategic incentives of people who believe their hands to be directed by a God who will remedy any weaknesses in their plans because of His interest in their objective. Few political leaders have acted on such assumptions since the Sixteenth Century, but such a mindset may be exactly what we are facing in Hamas and the Iranian theocracy.

Although not very important to Posner's point, it is incorrect to describe most of the antebellum Southern states as democracies in the sense that most Northern states had become democracies. Certainly in Virginia and the Carolinas, and I think in other Southern states as well, the slaveholding coastal planter elites worked tenaciously in state constitutional conventions to restrict sufferage and slant apportionment to prevent most small farmers, merchants and laborers from having any meaningful political voice. That is the main reason why we have a state named West Virginia.

The question that divides the foreign policy pundits is whether "illiberal" democracy in an unstable, radicalized region is preferable to an autocracy run by corrupt but pragmatic dictators. I agree with Posner that democracy without basic freedoms is not necessarily a preferable state of affairs. An elected theocracy can be just as oppressive as an unelected one. Ultimately, the international community must set ground rules and create incentives to ensure that nascent governments in unstable, strategically important regions are both democratic and liberal. Otherwise, radicalism could continue to flourish.

Of course Mr. Posner does not address the question of final settlement talks directly with Israel, anymore than he really seems to understand that there has been a generational change in leadership.

Hamas has no intention of disowning its dream of a one state solution, anymore than the IRA disowned its dream of a united Ireland. But Hamas, unlike the aging, corrupt Arab nationalists elites of Fatah, has tremendous legitimacy among the young and middle aged Palestenians that are Palestine's future - enough in fact to pursue a semi-permanent truce with Israel.

Arafat knew full well that by accepting the terms of Camp David he would be accepting a death sentence for himself, and for all his talk of martyrdom he did not want to die by bullet or bomb. And for all of Hamas's talk of martyrdom, they will prefer a different kind of glory.

Hamas understands full well that Israel's long-term prospects as a unitary nation-state are less-than-bright, and that over the next century Arab Israelis will likely become the demographic majority in that country. As a geographic and political entity, it may still be called Israel, but it seems likely to be a Jewish state in at most name only, and ultimately absorbed into some kind of broader Arab union.

I think it is questionable to refer to the Confederacy as a democracy when only a little more than, I believe, five million of its nine million residents were citizens.

Agreed. And were women allowed to vote? If not, then only half the five million (fewer, of course, if we exclude those too young) could vote. At some point a "democracy" so severely restricts the right to vote that it no longer fits the description. I think the Confederacy is in that class.

The fact that the Palestinian Authority is powerless encourages extremism, as it can do nothing for its people apart than threaten Israel. Shades of the pre-1918 democratically elected German parliament in an undemocratic state.

Perhaps Athens v. Sparta (-431) and Great Britain v. USA (1812) could also be considered wars between quasi-democracies.

However, one suspects that if two democracies ever did go to war, then the winners would discover, when writing the history books, that the losers had not really had a democratic government after all.

"This threat may cause Hamas to avoid attacks on Israel. Hamas's victory may be the best thing that has happened to Israel in years."

I agree!

"This threat may cause Hamas to avoid attacks on Israel. Hamas's victory may be the best thing that has happened to Israel in years."

I agree!

what i believe is that economic variables do play a dominant role in Hamas future behaviour. Hamas has been stablished in 1960s. i can not convince myself that this pro-active group has servived and continued activity only through altruistic and idiological reasons of its members during the last four decades. there must be sound economic supports behind the activity of Hamas fulltime members.
I think that those who has been hamas supporters and financial providers in previous years want hamas to continue its previous policy toward Israel and the peace process.
there is a view that Palestine\'s economy is fed through war, if so why should hamas try to change this situation and loose its present supporters.
certainly, after winning the election Hamas has the possibility to find new supporters and financial sources in western countries. what matters here is whether these new financial sources are comparable to the previous ones. moreover we should see whether Hamas finds these new sources of money permanent and confident as the previous ones? atleast previous ones were not conditioned on being or not being in the power!
I could not find about Hamas total earning (and spending) these years, so i don\'t know whether its present funds are comparable to 1 billion support of western countries.

the possibility of suspension of western financial helps rise another question. we should ask ourselves why did the Palestinian vote for Hamas? didnt they know that there might be such a suspension in the subsidies they receive? was it because of the fact that they didn\'t receive much of these subsidies? how could hamas win the election in such a ituation?
I think hamas has bought palestinian votes with its financial sourses, or at least with promises on future financial supports for the people. In an economy where people receive subsidy instead of paying tax to the government votes are easy to buy. I should remind the case of Iran as an ilumination to this issue.

As someone who lives in Iran, i saw how people voted for the hardliners. Oil prices had risen and it were hardliners who gave most promises about distributing these profits among people, moreover hardliners in Iran were the only competants (among reformists, conservatives, left and right wings, etc) who have not been in power in the last three decades and so had not any pitfalls in their resume. so people voted for them hoping to receive part of the oil rent. but the hardliners knew that they could not fulfill their promises, so after comming to power, they changed their policy and tried to increase tension with other countries to a level that people forget about their promises before the election.

from this comparison i want to predict that, because hamas will be unable to provide people with the welfare level that voters hope, hamas would take radical steps in the next few months and build such a high tension with Israel that palestinian forget all about welfare and corruption. moreover, through this policy, hamas will gain even more financial support from rich arab friends who are richer these days because of oil prices.

I also anticipate radical changes in the structure and body of palestinian government. Hamas has won the parliment because of the subsidies it has given to palestinians, so it\'s leaders feel it is their right to have all the power in their hands. I anticipate that They will behave totalitarianistic.

Roger Cohen

Is it not a contradiction to consider democracy wrong only when the bad guys win?

Re: Richard Mason

Sparta was a monarchy, not a democracy. In many ways, in fact, it was a military dictatorship necessitated by the need to keep its angry slave population tightly chained.

Great Britain was a constitutional monarchy in 1812, not a democracy. Only about 10% of adult males had the right to vote in Britain in 1812 and government was dominated by aristocrats and the landed gentry.

Re: Question of US Civil War as 'Democracy vs. Democracy'.

I think civil wars are a special case for this issue--nations don't tear themselves apart under normal conditions of democracy--such things represent a clear failure of democracy to find a peaceful, uniting solution within the nation.

Hamas, when Arafat was alive and heading Fatah, was (among other things) the justification for negotiating with Fatah, i.,e., Fatah looked moderate in comparison to Hamas. The Oslo peace accords were a product of this thinking.
Now, Hamas, an unequivocal terrorist organization dedicated to the destruction of the State of Israel, has won a democratic election and, as a result, seeks legitimacy on that basis.
However, unless Hamas creates a republic--as opposed to a mere democracy--its status as democratically elected makes it no different than Nazi Germany in 1933.
A government that guarantees the individual rights of its citizens (which only a republic, rather than a democracy, can do) from the tyranny of majority rule will also respect the rights of the citizens of other nations. This is the reason why free and democratic countries rarely, if ever, go to war with each other. This does not, and probably never will, describe Hamas.
The establishment of a republic takes more than an election. The philosophical basis for such a society must be explicitly agreed-upon and articulated in a constitution. Moreover, the power of the state must be translated from that of an oppressor to that of a protector of the individual rights of its citizens (the rule of law and law courts are the means by which this is achieved). When this happens, economic prosperity as a corollary to personal freedom is possible and even likely. This is so because private property rights are then respected.
I ask you: does any of this even remotely sound like Hamas?

Further observation re: the U.S. Civil War as an example of two democracies that nonethelss went to war against each other. In fact, the North was truly republican insofar as it was capitalistic and democratic. The South was the polar opposite: feudal and agrarian with, of course, a large segment of its population made up of unenfranchised slaves. It's no accident that the North didn't just defeat the South militarily, its victory destroyed a way of life and ushered in a new era of republican values throughout the entirety of the country.

Robert, Just one question. Does an armed rabble throwing tea into Boston Harbor or storming Boston Commons look and sound like a Republic that any civilized government can negotiate with?

Corey: Posner doesn't think the people know what they want. They are confused and ignorant of policy, they know only big screen TVs and electric food dehydrators, they baa contentedly every 4 years in the voting booth so long as the elites stay moderate.

Thanks for reinforcing my point that Posner ignores the role of institutions. But I was not making the larger point that the Chicago School of Law and Economics is impoverished for systemically doing so. I was highlighting an inconsistency in Posner's argument as he made it in his post. I find inconsistent that he assumes that the presence of a middle-class will provide for stability in a democracy without evaluating what about middle-classes tends to promote stability. Iraq had a burgeoning middle-class, but not a stable one: it collapsed in the wake of economic sanctions. Now that those sanctions are gone and the proximate cause of those sanctions (a belligerent pan-Arabist dictator) is on trial, the middle-class is not resurging to the fore; there does not appear to be any incremental movement toward the reformation of a middle-class of the kind Rousseau described and Posner is hinting at would be a moderating influence on politics. This despite much trade and market-activity. The reason is that the middle-class never left any institutions behind, and politics is raw, unfiltered through respected and venerable institutions. Everyone knows there are Sunnis who engage in violence so as to attract the attention of the powers-that-be, because there is no formal entry to political careerism without a show of brutal force.

I vehemently disagree with Corey that middle-class voters are stupid and have brains that begin and end with basal ganglia. Nor do I think Posner is suggesting they are: at most he is concurring with Rousseau and Hannah Arendt that they tend to be banal and conventional and with political psychologists who have proven again and again that orinary voters make form attitudes in response to visual cues and verbal signals, not extensive research or culling of data. My criticism is that Posner fails to address that a middle-class without any permanent institutions, much like a king who rules through fear and force, does little to establish rule of law for his successors. To mention the middle-class and fail to explore this dynamic (as opposed to failing to explore it without having mentioned the middle-class) is either a failure of reasoning or imagination. But I do not think fault can be fairly attributed to the whole intellectual enterprise of the Chicago School of Law and Economics.

" vehemently disagree with Corey that middle-class voters are stupid and have brains that begin and end with basal ganglia. Nor do I think Posner is suggesting they are"

I most certainly DO NOT think voters are stupid. I was suggesting that Posner, and anyone who asserts blind preferences for Madisonian representative democracy, does. Madison thought little of the people's capacity, (and perhaps if you believe Zinn's account, was afraid of it) as did Rousseau and (I say) Posner.

W, you describe the view charitably, saying that voters: "tend to be banal and conventional and ... political psychologists ... have proven again and again that orinary voters make form attitudes in response to visual cues and verbal signals, not extensive research or culling of data."

This is a subordination of voter agency and deliberative power to a presumed superior form of "rational" or "enlightened" discourse. Voter heuristics are bad, congressional debate is good.
Well, that's Madison. "Faction" or "passions" bad, "enlightened statesmen" or "deliberation" good. However, Hamas and other populist groups don't depend on enlightened procedural discourse for their power, legitimacy, or political results.

That makes them scary, most people would cite some bad example... say the Nazis, or maybe discriminatory ballot initiatives in Colorado, and say that proves the superiority of representative over populist or direct democracy.

For some, this is a foregone conclusion:

[robert:] "However, unless Hamas creates a republic--as opposed to a mere democracy--its status as democratically elected makes it no different than Nazi Germany in 1933."

Well robert, there are other forms of democracy than Madisonian Constitutional republics that enforce negative rights. Republics also produce wars and bad results. There was that whole British empire thing, Vietnam, 2 wars in Iraq... What was the last industrial power to unilaterally invade a sovereign nation? Not Germany... the USA!

I do mean to attack the "whole intellectual enterprise of the Chicago School" of L&E for what I perceive as a dogmatic internalization of the equation legitimacy=democracy=republicanism.

To my view, the way for Hamas to gain legitimacy is to stop being violent. To Posner's view, the path is republicanism and the establishment of a stabilizing market consumer class. Democracy can be distributive and socialist if the people wish for the government to be redistributive and socialist. But when law professors say "democracy" they invariably mean a programatic allegience to Federalist 10.

I assert that palestinian voters were rejecting the ideals of Federalist 10 when they elected Hamas. If so, then conditioning the legitimacy of Hamas on its adoption of Madisonian ideals is a bit like deciding never to recognize Hamas at all.

To N.E. Hatfield:
The events that you describe were protests by British subjects against colonialism, and not indicative of the type of society that was to be established after the revolution (which these protests specifically helped to foster). In fact, our revolution is viewed as successful from an historical standpoint precisely because a non-violent republic was established in its wake. Can Hamas--a terrorist organization masquearding as a democratically-elected soverign entity--make the same promise and establish a republic now that it is in power?

Robert, We Colonials down in Maryland and Delaware didn't know that at the time and I don't think anyone else did either. Especially, if your forebears were sitting in on the Sons of Libery meetings at the local taverns. Even today they've got some real hotheads in them.

Oh, BTW, I'm indirectly related to Colonel Conant.

Sparta was a monarchy, not a democracy. [...] Great Britain was a constitutional monarchy in 1812, not a democracy. [John Biles]

But both governments had democratic elements: Parliament in Britain, the Ephorate and the Assembly in Sparta. Indeed both nations could claim to be great pioneers of democracy by their own lights.

I hoped to avoid the argument by using the word, "quasi-democracies."

The larger point is that a rule like "(true) democracies don't fight each other" is of little use, if the standard of democracy is vague enough that people can dispute it, or strict enough that historical true democracies are scarcely to be found.

'...the way for Hamas to gain legitimacy is to stop being violent.'

Apparently not legitimacy with Arabs. Violence seems to increase legitimacy.

COREY: Voter heuristics are bad, congressional debate is good.

This is both reductionist and a false dichotomy. Congressional debate is often nothing more than the visual cues and verbal signals that comprise voter heuristics: the two are quite obviously compatible; just ask DailyKos about John Kerry's latest blog-diary.

Moreover, Federalist No. 10 presumes that faction is permanent and so proposes a government structure that takes faction into account. What is specifically notes is bad about faction is that tyrannical majorities can often crush the will of vulnerable minorities, e.g., every other taxpayer in your neighborhood votes to authorize the local zoning board to seize your home via eminent domain so that a shopping mall can be put in its place. The critique of faction that is apparent in federalist No. 10 was also reflected in Anti-Federalist fear of the federal government, which resulted in the Bill of Rights. While in my critique of Posner I certainly meant to convey that a Bill of Rights is insufficient for stability by itself, I certainly do think that a Bill of Rights alongside a strong middle-class and fair institutions to administer the state (and interpret a Bill of Rights) is close to sufficiency, if not sufficiency itself. To the extent that you are criticizing the notion of fundamental rights that are removed from the pendulum extremes of raw populism, I fundamentally disagree with you, Corey. Direct democracy is a terrible idea, precisely because it lacks the conception of citizenship that Rousseau held so dear -- that instead of simply voting on the basis of raw self-interest, citizens should vote on the basis of the whole (or, as Rawls' refined and styled it, voting from behind "the veil of ignorance"). You do tend to get tyrannical majorities -- transient ones, not necessarily entrenched ones like the Third Reich -- when people vote on the basis of raw self-interest, because then they band together not on the basis of nationalism or professional values or rules of etiquette or deference to respected institutions, but on the basis of instant gratification. It tends to kill the motivation for long-run thinking, and you end up with a government acting as little more than an apparatus of welath-transfer that would shock the most cynical of public choice theorists. So, Corey, again, your attempts to co-opt my posts notwithstanding, I vehemently disagree with you.

Mr. Hatfield said: "Just one question. Does an armed rabble throwing tea into Boston Harbor or storming Boston Commons look and sound like a Republic that any civilized government can negotiate with?"

I don't recall the 'armed rabble' ever wanting to destroy Britain. I don't recall the 'armed rabble' using ordinary Britons as scapegoats either. Do you?

Given that Hamas won the election by chiefly criticizing Fatah's corruption and mismanagement, it does not follow that Hamas' win is populist validation of Hamas's convictions. At most, it expresses rage toward not having well-run public services, which was the theme of Virginia governor Tim Kaine's rebuttal to President Bush's State of the Union. Even Democrats could have beaten Fatah in the Palestinian election, no convictions necessary.

Moreover, we have no idea whether Hamas truly opposes Madisonian ideals in governance, because Hamas has never governed a nation before. We shall see whether Hamas adopts or rejects Madisonian ideals in the future. We do not now know.

Masked Gunmen Briefly Take Over EU Office


By IBRAHIM BARZAK
The Associated Press
Monday, January 30, 2006


GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- Masked gunmen on Monday briefly took over a European Union office to protest a Danish newspaper's publication of cartoons deemed insulting to Islam's Prophet Muhammad, the latest in a wave of violent denunciations of the caricatures across the Islamic world.


The gunmen demanded an apology from Denmark and Norway, and said citizens of the two countries would be prevented from entering the Gaza Strip.


The gunmen also announced that the Palestian Authority would no longer accept funding from blasphemous infidels and that the EU could keep the $450 million budgeted for this year.


[Ha, ha. That last sentence I just invented, but the rest is true.]

The AP needs spellcheck.

W, I have neither the need or desire to "co-opt" your posts.

I will quote you however:

"...when people vote on the basis of raw self-interest, because then they band together not on the basis of nationalism or professional values or rules of etiquette or deference to respected institutions, but on the basis of instant gratification."

People DO band together on precisely those grounds all the time. You've been affected by the Madisonian/Chicago assumption and you have DEFINED people as raw-self-interest-actuators, prone to seek instant gratification. Of course direct democracy would be bad if the people were selfish machines. They usually are not.

If John Kerry or Posner can act for the public good, my Mom can act for the public good. It is cynical to assume that people only have a concept of their own self-interest. People are compassionate, they self-sacrifice all the time, they love each other, they watch movies and read stories in order to vicariously experience other people's problems and triumphs. They debate politics with empathy and a realist understanding of the real world applications of policy.

Despite your terrible dislike for direct democracy, it is constitutionally established in some form in 26 states. It would be an interesting topic for discussion here - are tyrannical majorities of voters or tyrannical minorities of elite representatives more tyrannical - but this week it is off topic.

I am happy that you vehemently disagree with me.

Arun, The Brits weren't called "lobster-backs" for nothing. And what do you do with lobsters? ;)

Corey,

It is outright cowardly to attack my post and then claim that a rebuttal to it would be off-topic (COREY: "It would be an interesting topic for discussion here - are tyrannical majorities of voters or tyrannical minorities of elite representatives more tyrannical - but this week it is off topic.") I would note that the only person who has veered off-topic here is you (COREY: "I do mean to attack the whole intellectual enterprise of the Chicago School of L&E for what I perceive as a dogmatic internalization of the equation legitimacy = democracy = republicanism").

Furthermore, you have now deliberately distorted at least one of my posts, which is intellectually dishonest. You simply mis-read Federalist No. 10. What's more, you take it out of context, failing to appreciate it alongside other Federalist Papers that shed light on its contours, e.g., Federalist No. 51, 43, 46, and 49. You also confuse ideas and terms, suggesting that federalism, which is constitutional value that I, as someone explicitly calling for fair and well-run institutions, support, is equivalent to direct democracy (COREY: "Despite your terrible dislike for direct democracy, it is constitutionally established in some form in 26 states"). Federalism and direct democracy are not the same beast.

COREY: It is cynical to assume that people only have a concept of their own self-interest. People are compassionate, they self-sacrifice all the time, they love each other, they watch movies and read stories in order to vicariously experience other people's problems and triumphs. They debate politics with empathy and a realist understanding of the real world applications of policy.

It is cynical to assume it. It is not cynical, however, to rely on scientific data. As I stated in my first post, as you well know, given that you cited it, political psychologists have proven time and time again that voters do not conduct extensive research to form their attitudes, nor do they engage in extensive deliberation before casting votes -- they rely instead on verbal signals and visual cues to confirm or deny their first impressions. You inaibility to incorporate scientific data in your worldview suggests that you are an ideologue, or otherwise divorced from reality.

COREY: If John Kerry or Posner can act for the public good, my Mom can act for the public good.

This is a startling admission from someone who claims that Rousseau's ideas amount to little more than elitist trash. Rawl's revamping of Rousseau faith in a stabilizing middle-class, as I mentioned before, is essentially what you have now claimed. It seems you have performed the most miraculous of about-faces -- today Rousseau is trash, tomorrow he is gold! It makes me proud to know that I was persausive. Perhaps you are amenable to reason after all. But this does not relieve you of the burden of your earlier comments, which assumed, without proving, that relying of visual cues and verbal signals is not the essence of congressional debate, especially given how awkwardly Senators like John Kerry try to communicate such verbal signals and visual cues via a disinterested press. And, while it might be true, why you would assume that Hamas is acting on behalf of the public good is beyond me, unless you support all pro-terrorism organizations in a knee-jerk fashion.

COREY: You've been affected by the Madisonian/Chicago assumption and you have DEFINED people as raw-self-interest-actuators, prone to seek instant gratification.

I have yet to be "affected" by the "Madisonian/Chicago" assumption, but unlike you, apparently, I have read scientific studies by political psychologists. Nowhere in any post did I insist that people are intrinsically selfish or deterministically predisposed to vote on the basis of self-interest. I noted that they tend to vote on that basis without a broader conception of citizenship like that envisioned by Rousseau or Rawls and without the structural features of a government comrpised of institutions that takes political faction into account. The flaw is not with people, the flaw is in a theory of government that amounts to little more tham mob rule or anarchy. Since you are the proponent of such an anarchist theory, the flaw is one evident in your posts. How you can twist my illumination of this flaw in your posts into me having some hatred for humankind only reveals the depths of your perversity.

COREY: Of course direct democracy would be bad if the people were selfish machines. They usually are not.

This is actually irrelevant to my last critique of your proposal for mob rule. My point with respect to this -- and here I am in line with Posner -- is that fundamental rights must be elevated above political bickering so that certain rights cannot be eradicated by transient majorities. I gave a good example of the home-owners whose neighbors want her home demolished so they can subtitute it with a shopping mall. It does not take a "selfish machine" to vote for such an action; assuming that every mother in the neighborhood wants her children to attend a good public school, every involved and caring mother could decide that it is in the best interest of all the neighborhood's children to seize your home and replace it with a shopping mall that generates sufficient tax revenue to improve the schools. The point is that such thinking, as admirable as its intentions are, is short-term thinking, because living in a world where no one has any enforceable individual rights is being exchanged for more tax revenue right now. That, comparatively, is instant gratification, as opposed to long-run thinking. What you have done, by trying to pervert my usage of the phrase "instant gratification" is equivalent to asserting that I believe middle-class voters are stupid and have no brains other than their basal ganglia. But we both know that would be despicable to do. After all, we both know that I have written above: "I vehemently disagree with Corey that middle-class voters are stupid and have brains that begin and end with basal ganglia. Nor do I think Posner is suggesting they are: at most he is concurring with Rousseau."

COREY: I am happy that you vehemently disagree with me.

W, you are taking this far too personally, but if that's how you roll... I certainly recognize your right to rebut. I mentioned going off-topic as a way to indicate why I was stopping. But it was a rash statement, because after rereading Posner's post, I think that "legitimacy = democracy = republicanism" is an excellent three word summary.

"Rawl's revamping of Rousseau faith in a stabilizing middle-class, as I mentioned before, is essentially what you have now claimed."

No, I said my Mom can deliberate about the public good, as a way to endorse the idea of popular competence. My family is neither middle-class nor possessed of stabilizing values. We are increasingly radicalized by our decreasing economic standing in society.

"I have read scientific studies by political psychologists."

How nice for you, was it hard? If I had to guess, I would say you sound like someone with an affinity for the Columbia School:

"I noted that they tend to vote on that basis without a broader conception of citizenship like that envisioned by Rousseau or Rawls and without the structural features of a government comrpised of institutions that takes political faction into account."

But see, you are putting preconditions on the people's ability to be rational - defining rational in a way that excludes much human interaction. People are a "mob" unless they adopt a specific conception of citizenship and submit to institutional rule. This is what I read you to say. It looks Madisonian to me.

Well, there are many conceptions of citizenship, there are more institutions than you or Posner or Rousseau would endorse. I suspect that the Hamas model is one, anarcho-syndicalist labor organization is probably another. You may be more willing than a L&E or Public Choice theorist to see "citizenship values" in people but that doesn't mean you don't have a specific normative idea what they are supposed to look like.

You can do the Columbia School thing and reform institutions to be more responsive to reality (and thus more "fair") but you are still excluding raw populism, calling direct democracy anarchist... You've still adopted a normative precondition. And that is a problem if the Palestinians are operating outside of those conditions. It leads to the conclusion that they are illegitimate on formal grounds, even if Hamas starts behaving well.

I don't think I disagreed with you that people's deliberative process was more heuristic and less "scientific". Did I misread that you think heuristic is worse than scientific? What about aggregated heuristics? What if they are informed by inter-subjectivity, popular culture, and morality in complicated interactions that can't be modeled?

Madison sets up a preference for certain kinds of "enlightened" discourse over "passions and interests" in Fed. 10. That is not a controversial statement.

You seem to be setting up a preference for a certain kind of "long-term" reasoning that you think institutions are capable of and that people are not if left to themselves.

"My point with respect to this -- and here I am in line with Posner -- is that fundamental rights must be elevated above political bickering so that certain rights cannot be eradicated by transient majorities."

Yeah, but the ironic thing about your example of eminent domain and the shopping mall is that the institutions ratify it. New London v. Kelo... Hello Supreme Court!

Or what about this, we can pass a minimum wage law in Florida via direct democracy, but Congress has been unable to for over a decade.

Lets say I agree with you that fundamental rights must be elevated, but I don't agree with your mechanism for doing so. Legislatures are both majoritarian and corruptable, Courts are inconsistant, unrepresentative, and sometimes so counter-majoritarian that they invalidate half the New Deal, the Executive just arrested someone for wearing a T-shirt in the Capital building because it would look bad on TV. Maybe I think that people actually elevate fundamental rights over political bickering MORE often than any of these other institutions, not because they applied scientific reasoning, but because they have a collective concept of right and wrong (in the moral sense) that institutions lack because of their structural limitation.

"You inaibility to incorporate scientific data in your worldview suggests that you are an ideologue, or otherwise divorced from reality."

Oh be nice, you know as well as I do that every side of this issue has produced "studies" that show this or that institution is "the most dangerous branch." Behavioralists, public choice, L&E, Sunstein and "information aggregation"...

I have an electrical engineering degree and a decade of real world experience incorporating science into my worldview. I find it to be a sterile and hollow pursuit that leads to answers no better or worse than my intuitive guesses based on having read some Russian literature and a lot of Chomsky. But whatever floats your boat.

COREY: But see, you are putting preconditions on the people's ability to be rational - defining rational in a way that excludes much human interaction. ... You've still adopted a normative precondition.

I have placed no preconditions on rationality. I never even mention the word "rational" in any of my posts. Nor have I made any normative preconditions; I made a very simple argument that a conception of government that excludes the role of institutions is insufficient. Sufficiency and necessity are not the same thing, much as federalism and direct democracy are not the same thing. You need to get straight on these concepts.

COREY: the ironic thing about your example of eminent domain and the shopping mall is that the institutions ratify it

That is no irony. The point -- as I stated explicitly -- was that fair and well-run institutions and a Bill of Rights would be sufficient. A fair institution would not interpret a Bill of Rights in a narrow and short-term fashion. The problem with the institution in my example is that it is unfair. This should be obvious to any reasonable person.

COREY: you are still excluding raw populism, calling direct democracy anarchist...

No, I called your bare bones theory of government an anarchist one. At most, I noted that raw populism leads to extremism and tends to result in instability over time.

COREY: You may be more willing than a L&E or Public Choice theorist to see "citizenship values" in people but that doesn't mean you don't have a specific normative idea what they are supposed to look like.

Yet you cannot name or describe what this "specific normative idea" is. This straw-man of yours -- the "specific normative idea" -- appears nowhere in my post, because I simply didn't assert one. You are reading into my post attitudes and claims that are not there, probably for partisan political reasons that explain why you wrote the phrase "the Executive just arrested someone for wearing a T-shirt in the Capital building because it would look bad on TV." That someone -- Cindy Sheehan -- just appeared publicly with Hugo Chavez, an antagonist of not only President Bush but also the United States. Chavez is anti-American, Cindy Sheehan shares Chavez' anti-Americanism, and you went out of your way to sympathize with her, to make some cheap partisan point that has no relevance to this discussion: I suspect, Corey, you have viewed Posner's post through the same partisan prism.

COREY: You seem to be setting up a preference for a certain kind of "long-term" reasoning that you think institutions are capable of and that people are not if left to themselves.

Here, you refer to my example. Let us stick to it, then: I do not know of anyone who would prefer to have his house seized against his own will. Do you?

"Yet for all its influence, the theory of the democratic peace carries a crucial caveat. In a series of studies culminating in their new book, 'Electing to Fight,' the political scientists Edward D. Mansfield and Jack Snyder argue that new democracies are often unstable and thus particularly warlike. Mansfield and Snyder note that democratizing countries often lack the rule of law, organized political parties and professional news media. Without those restraining institutions firmly in place, empowering the public can mean empowering bellicose nationalists. As communism crumbled in Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia and Franjo Tudjman in Croatia used populist nationalism to fuel their rise to power - and to start a blood bath."--NY Times

http://www.wehaitians.com/are%20democracies%20really%20more%20peaceful.htm

One of the characteristics of Hamas that makes its future behavior so difficult to predict is its religious zealotry. Perhaps Posner (who published an economic/behavioral analysis of sex) and Becker could comment sometime on the economics of religious fundamentalism, or, more generally, religious absolutism. I am not sure, however, that a generic analysis not limited to a specific belief system is realistic.

"Here, you refer to my example. Let us stick to it, then: I do not know of anyone who would prefer to have his house seized against his own will. Do you?"

No, I don't, which is why I believe that if you put the Kelo v. New London result,(where the Supreme Court took an old woman's house away) to a popular vote, it would come out the other way. People would see that taking one person's house away to increase the tax base makes their own house vulnerable. The recent popular protests at Souter's house in New England support my guess. Making the Supreme Court more fair is certainly a good goal.

I mentioned Sheehan because I thought it would be obvious to people as a recent example of an institution failing to protect fundamental rights (free speech). It may be "Un-American" in your mind to wear a protest shirt or meet with Hugo Chavez, but aren't you partly troubled that it is an arrestable offense now? Should I be arrested if I agree with Chavez?

Why doesn't direct democracy qualify as an "institution" in your worldview. Is it because you feel:

"raw populism leads to extremism and tends to result in instability over time."

That's a pretty conclusory statement, supported by the fact I guess that Rousseau, Posner, Madison, and the studies that you read agree with you. I understand that you disagree, but I don't think that the statement is empirically justifiable. And even if it is, I see no reason why your approach of making the instituions more "fair" couldn't be applied to the structures by which popular will and morality are collected and interpreted. No reason that is other than a conclusion that populism is wrong per se because it has been debunked as extremist.

"No, I called your bare bones theory of government an anarchist one."

I just wanted to point out that I didn't start out here advocating a normative conception of government, I merely asserted the existance of other normative conceptions of government and the possibility that Palestinians have already rejected Posner's suggestion that they "develop a genuinely republican government and move rapidly toward embourgeoisement."

This matters a great deal, because if we conclude that Hamas is illegitimate because they refuse to embourgeois-ify, then the aid goes away and many Palestinians are thrust further into poverty, which can only radicalize them further. In effect, Posner has put two conditions on Hamas: 1) don't be violent, and 2) adopt the form of government that our political science deems stable. As I have said/implied above, I think the first condition is essential but the second is both hegemonic and impossible under the circumstances. Palestine can not stabilize in this manner without aid, so embourgeoisement as a condition on aid is begging the question.

COREY: I believe that if you put the Kelo v. New London result,(where the Supreme Court took an old woman's house away) to a popular vote, it would come out the other way.

Then, according to Corey, we shouldn't have either Article III of the Constitution or the Supreme Court. We should just have direct votes on and and all legal matters as they arise, which sounds anarchist to me, because it means there is no rule of law. Not only is this an anarchist theory of government, but because -- in your view -- the consequences will be better, it is -- in your view -- the normatively right one. I think we now see that I was correct to call you an anarchist and correct to note that you are the only one here imposing his norms onto others.

I would also note that it is not possible for direct democracy to overturn Kelo unless a majority of voters recognize that encroaching on individual rights is a no-no, which requires a broad conception of citizenship similar enough to (or "like") that which both Rousseau and Rawls so praised. (So, your argument has officially become inconsistent.)

COREY: if we conclude that Hamas is illegitimate because they refuse to embourgeois

I never used the word legitimate or called Hamas illegitimate. You are, again, throwing up straw-men.

COREY: No reason that is other than a conclusion that populism is wrong per se because it has been debunked as extremist.

I don't even understand this point. It just seems like weak and cheap rhetoric. I only hesitate to call it nonsense because I honestly don't know what it mean and it might, in some alternate reality, perhaps, make sense.

COREY: That's a pretty conclusory statement,

"Tends to" is not a conclusion. It is a description. At most, it could be thought of as a prediction. By no means have I made a categorical statement that would be amenable to contradiction, try as you feebly might.

COREY: I mentioned Sheehan because I thought it would be obvious to people as a recent example of an institution failing to protect fundamental rights

No, you didn't. If you had meant to do that, you would have mentioned Sheehan by name and you would have analyzed the institution in question and the fundamental right in question and specifically explained how the decision-making process by that institution was unfair. You did not do that. I suspect you are covering your partisan ass right now.

I would also note that someone who gets his facts from Noam Chomsky has little credibility in assessing what is empirically justifiable: I would suggest you look at Steve's post above, which quotes from the New York Times.

Corey,
Why do you support Hugo Chavez and the terrosist organization Hamas?

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20050901faessay84506/f-gregory-gause-iii/can-democracy-stop-terrorism.html

Praise for Electing to Fight:
"American foreign policy has been based on the premise that democracy promotes peace. Electing to Fight conclusively shows, however, that democratization, when mishandled, leads to war. Its challenge to the conventional beliefs of scholars and politicians makes it one of the most important books on international affairs in recent decades."
—Samuel P. Huntington, Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor, Harvard University

"Everyone agrees that democracies make peace not war. But is that true? Jack Snyder and Edward Mansfield have posed the question and answered it with great rigor and sophistication. The result is an important book that describes a far more complicated relationship between democratization and peace than simple-minded rhetoric would suggest."
—Fareed Zakaria, Editor, Newsweek International

"With notable analytic agility and rigorous empiricism Mansfield and Snyder dissect the popular policy nostrum that promoting democracy abroad promotes peace in the world. Their incisive work will help policymakers steer clear of misleading, facile assumptions and impel scholars to dig deeper and think harder on a subject of critical contemporary importance."
—Thomas Carothers, Director, Democracy and Rule of Law Project, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Does the spread of democracy really contribute to international peace? Successive U. S. administrations have justified various policies intended to promote democracy not only by arguing that democracy is intrinsically good but by pointing to a wide range of research concluding that democracies rarely, if ever, go to war with one another. To promote democracy, the United States has provided economic assistance, political support, and technical advice to emerging democracies in Eastern and Central Europe, and it has attempted to remove undemocratic regimes through political pressure, economic sanctions, and military force. In Electing to Fight, Edward Mansfield and Jack Snyder challenge the widely accepted basis of these policies by arguing that states in the early phases of transitions to democracy are more likely than other states to become involved in war.

Drawing on both qualitative and quantitative analysis, Mansfield and Snyder show that emerging democracies with weak political institutions are especially likely to go to war. Leaders of these countries attempt to rally support by invoking external threats and resorting to belligerent, nationalist rhetoric. Mansfield and Snyder point to this pattern in cases ranging from revolutionary France to contemporary Russia. Because the risk of a state's being involved in violent conflict is high until democracy is fully consolidated, Mansfield and Snyder argue, the best way to promote democracy is to begin by building the institutions that democracy requires — such as the rule of law — and only then encouraging mass political participation and elections. Readers will find this argument particularly relevant to prevailing concerns about the transitional government in Iraq. Electing to Fight also calls into question the wisdom of urging early elections elsewhere in the Islamic world and in China.

"I think we now see that I was correct to call you an anarchist and correct to note that you are the only one here imposing his norms onto others."

An imposition would only occur if someone actually believed me. :) Its prettly lame to take the "you are partisan and I am not" tack. I have never disavowed my ideological precommitments, you have.

You want to see ideological precommitment, look at the above post:

"the best way to promote democracy is to begin by building the institutions that democracy requires — such as the rule of law — and only then encouraging mass political participation and elections."

Democracy does NOT require the rule of law! Take, for example, communitarianism, or direct democracy, or anarcho-syndicalism... no rule of law, democratic decision making. Democracy and rule of law are not the same thing. (Recognize that sentence structure W?)

I'm not going to defend Chomsky against his reputation among people who think the New York Times is god's answer to every question. It would waste everyone's time.

To respond to someone else:
"Why do you support Hugo Chavez and the terrosist organization Hamas?"

I do not support Hamas as long as they remain a terrorist organization. Now they are elected, and if they stop being violent, I would conceed that they legitimately represent the palestinians. If Chavez or Hamas get a legitimate mandate, then they help determine the course of their people, even if that conflicts with American ideas or my ideas about the proper form of government.

I'm repeating myself now so I'll apologize for the verbosity and wish you all a good weekend.

COREY: Democracy does NOT require the rule of law! Take, for example ... anarcho-syndicalism...

I never said democracy required rule of law. I noted and you now admit that your conception of government was an anarchist one because it lacked any rule of law.

Since the original discussion concerned the stability of the Hamas-led government, rule of law is clearly relevant. You seemed to be arguing -- although perhaps you have again switched your position -- that direct democracy, in and of itself, can provide for a regime's stability without a Bill of Rights and without any fair and well-run institutions. I suppose in some trivial sense that is true, but totalitarinism by itself can provide the same benefits, and I doubt your normative conception of good government includes totalitarianism. I am also not so sure why you think that belligerent democracies are good and if you believe they are not then it was inconsistent for you to "prove" that democracy does not require rule of law: given that rule of law is sufficient to provide stability and tends to tamp down the extremism that leads to belligerence it would be consistent with your normative belief that Hamas should disarm. It pains me to point this out, but rejecting rule of law for you is irrational and renders your theory incoherent; and if you tactitly accept the value of rule of law, as your belief that Hamas should disarm suggests, then you are an anarchist who accepts rule of law, which is inconsistent. Either way, what you have presented thus far is nonsense.

COREY: I have never disavowed my ideological precommitments, you have.

You are attempting to imply that I have ideological commitments and that I disavowed them. That is untrue. I simply didn't make any ideological commitments and asked you to stop pretending that I had "specific normative ideas" without any evidence.

Corey,
How would you know that those political scientists were committed to an outcome before they conducted their studies? There is no proof of that. Have you even read the book? And you truncated the sentence you quoted. The full context is here:

"Drawing on both qualitative and quantitative analysis, Mansfield and Snyder show that emerging democracies with weak political institutions are especially likely to go to war. Leaders of these countries attempt to rally support by invoking external threats and resorting to belligerent, nationalist rhetoric. Mansfield and Snyder point to this pattern in cases ranging from revolutionary France to contemporary Russia. Because the risk of a state's being involved in violent conflict is high until democracy is fully consolidated, Mansfield and Snyder argue, the best way to promote democracy is to begin by building the institutions that democracy requires — such as the rule of law — and only then encouraging mass political participation and elections."

I think it is fair to call someone partisan if she brings up Cindy Sheehan inexplicably.

Democracy, Human Rights, And Peace: Lessons From Our Own History.

I want to look at the fundamental premise that bringing democracy to the Middle East will decrease the terrorist threat to America.

On paper, the idea appears to have some merit. If we suppose that much of the anger in the Arab world is an outgrowth of the repressive authoritarian regimes that restrict freedom and have denied material progress to much of the Middle East then democracy and open societies might be the antidote. Of course, much of the anger (at least directed to the U.S.) is also due to a conflation of factors having to do with real and/or perceived historical actions by the U.S. against the interests of many Arab nations (e.g. the CIA’s overthrow of Mossadeq in Iran, our support of Saddam Hussein in the 1980s – as well as supplying him with chemical weapons used on Iranians – , our support for the monarchs of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait) as well as our continued support of Israel and our perceived bias against the Palestinians.

Again putting aside the morality or wisdom of bringing democracy by military force to the Middle East, I want to delve into something even more fundamental: whether democracy is necessarily conducive to human rights and a more peaceful society. And there is no better place to start than with our own history.

Paradoxically, the American democratic experiment, with its commitment to individual liberty, began in the late 18th century when the slave trade was at its peak. Since Africans were not considered fully human it was easy for our founders to deny liberty to millions of blacks. In addition, women were given few rights in our new democratic experiment and brutal suppression and extermination of the Native Americans continued almost unabated throughout much of the 19th century. It is clear from these events that democracy, at least in its infancy and by earlier historical standards, can coexist alongside some of the world’s greatest atrocities.

Many argue (rightly to some extent) that it is problematic to judge people hundreds of years ago with the same moral lens that we have today. The fact that our republic was founded by people who were themselves slave owners for much of their lives, or who didn’t believe women should have the right to vote, does not diminish their astounding political accomplishments. But it does cast doubt on the premise that democracy in and of itself is necessarily consistent with human rights and peaceful societies.

In fact, the American subjugation of blacks continued in many parts of our nation for almost 200 years. My own parents grew up in America at a time when the South was segregated and blacks were routinely brutally murdered for nothing more than looking at a white person the wrong way or trying to exercise their democratic rights (even though the intensity of lynching decrease in the early to mid 20th century). In many parts of our great democratic nation domestic terrorist organizations with a worldview just as hideous as the Islamofascists (i.e. the KKK) reined for decade after decade, and the murder statistics don’t do justice to the intense suffering and fear these groups (and individuals) inflicted on millions of our own fellow American citizens. While all of these facts are common knowledge to most Americans, it is truly astounding to recognize that our democratic system based on liberty and freedom not only tolerated such psychopathic behavior for almost two centuries, but that many in our political establishment condoned it. As I have mentioned before, Democratic support in the South for Jim Crow and institutionalized brutality is a titanic shame that will always stain the Democratic Party.

But more importantly, our history puts firmly to rest any notion that democracy automatically leads to the promotion of human rights and peace, at least within the short-term. Sadly, majorities in democracies can easily use their power to oppress minorities and continue doing so for very long periods of time. We even see this practice continue today in America with the oppression of gays that is being institutionalized around the country (I am referring to the bans on not only gay marriage but even civil unions which have characterized most of the anti-gay legislation around the country).

It is clear that human rights, while no doubt easier to achieve in democratic societies, require much more than open societies and the right to vote.

As to the supposition that democratic nations do not incite wars of aggression this too is historically inaccurate. Hitler and the Nazis had widespread popular support in Germany and in addition to the imperialistic wars and conquests led by the democratic nations of Europe, America’s involvement in the Spanish-American War was also based on imperialistic motives. The Vietnam War was initiated based on false pretenses in the Gulf of Tonkin, and we overthrew the democratically-elected in Guatemala in the 1950s.

My point is not to insinuate the democracy is an unworthy goal (it is) or to excessively criticize the history of U.S. foreign policy, but to dispel the notion that somehow bringing democracy to the Middle East will greatly reduce the terrorist threat. By simply looking at our own history (as well as other historical examples), it is clear that democracies in the Middle East could easily thrive in conjunction with strongly anti-U.S. policies, terrorists, and all sorts of homegrown forms of oppression (the Iranian and Palestinian elections support this). And my guess is that bringing democracy by force to such a volatile region might very well magnify the chaotic and unpredictable forces that are unleashed when people experience greater individual freedom after centuries of abuse (e.g. there are lots of scores to settle).

In summary, there is little support for the core assumption underlying Bush’s primary foreign policy objective that bringing democracy to Iraq will decrease the threat of terrorism. Supporting democratic movements is a noble goal, but unless it is coupled with the promotion of human rights, economic integration, and international cooperation it is unlikely to translate into the establishment of peaceful and friendly allies that respect human rights. Bush’s policy has emphasized the democracy angle largely at the expense of these other dimensions and this is a recipe for disaster.

J.S.

While I agree with much of J.S. post, I disagree that the absence of gay marriage laws and the preservation of pre-existing marriage laws is proof of widespread oppression of gays. I also disagree with his description of Bush's foreign policy. I think that part of Bush's foreign policy -- at least now -- involves both the creation of home-grown Constitutions (with Bills of Rights) and the creation of fair and well-run institutions that provide avenues for political participation that would otherwise be diverted into unrpoductive violence. That seems to be the plan both in Afghanistan and Iraq.

However, I certainly agree with J.S.'s broader point that democracy itself cannot provide for stability in the meaningful sense: a peaceful foreign policy, a stable middle class, an educated citizenry, the absence of sectarian or ethnic strife or a national identity or conception of citizenship, etc. Any regime can provide "stability" in the trivial sense -- the Third Reich annihilated Jews with an efficient constancy for years. I would reiterate, though, that a Constitution and a middle-class are insufficient without taking account of the role of institutions in the rule of law.

How could anyone be shocked by Hamas winning an election in Palestine? I think a lot of people are blinded by the sort of pious statements of faith in democracy that people proclaim mainly to make themselves feel good.

Why did Hamas win? Here's a wild-eyed theory: They won mainly because the Palestinian people do, in fact, really hate Israel. They want Israel wiped off the map. They have some pretty strong historical reasons for hating Israel, but regardless of justifications, they clearly do. Electing Hamas is the Palestinian people expressing their desires. Just like electing officials who promised to keep blacks "in their place" was a genunie expression of white voters' preferences in the South for many years.

Outside of (to my mind) really silly expressions of faith in the inherent goodness of democracy, I don't see any reason at all to think that democratic regimes in the Arab world are going to generally be at peace with Israel. If you had an election in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria, or Jordan, would the people want to take a hostile line toward Israel or a more friendly one? How about other Islamic countries, like Egypt, Iran, or Pakistan?

For similar reasons, democratic regimes in these countries won't be pro-US. (I seem to recall that Osama Bin Laden had a much higher approval rating in polls in many of these countries that George Bush, though I don't know how valid those results really were.)

If democracy prevents terrorism, then it's kind-of hard to figure out the origin of internal terrorists within the US, which we've dealt with from time to time. (The KKK would properly qualify some of the time, the OK city bombers, the violent fringe of the pro-life movement, some of the Black Panthers, some early 20th century anarchists, etc.) And other democratic countries have had serious terrorist problems--for example, in Ireland, Germany, and France.

Pretending we can fix the root causes of terrorism by somehow imposing democracy on the Arab and Muslim world at gunpoint is absolutely nuts. It's amazing how many otherwise smart people fall for this idea.

... Hamas ... won mainly because the Palestinian people do, in fact, really hate Israel. They want Israel wiped off the map.

Neither of those statements is very precise.

The phrase "wiping Israel off the map" could mean Israel changing its name and adopting policies of complete ethnic neutrality or it could mean rounding up everyone in Israel and sending them to death camps.

Similarly, a lot of people "hate the USA" but that could mean anything from disapproving of the Bush administration's foreign policy to disliking the North American climate.

If I had to guess, I would say that Palestinians feel a profound sense of injustice at the hands of the Israeli government both on an individual level and on a cultural level.

The problem of individual injustice could be solved quite easily by Israel changing it's name and adopting policies of complete ethnic neutrality (including granting the Palestinians full citizenship).

The problem of cultural injustice is much more difficult. We live in a time of tremendous change in which all the traditional cultures of the world are being rapidly discarded. Although the Palestinians may blame Israel for the destruction of their culture, the reality is that all cultures are being destroyed by the larger forces of technology and population growth.

Regardless of whether Israel grants the Palestinians their own "state" consisting of a few disconnected parcels of land 10-20 miles in diameter enclosed within Israel's "security" barrier, the most the Palestinians, or any other culture, can hope for in the long term is that some tattered fragments of their culture willl be preserved in the form of some chains of ethnic restaurants and a couple museums and theme parks.

Actually, their best hope is probably to take a hint from the American Indians and go in for some casinos. They might have to bend their religion a bit but the traditional religions of the world are on their way out anyway.

What about a comment on the dannish caricatures...?

Unlike some, I certainly believe that the Palestinians have more to hope for than the propogating of a succesful line of casinos.
Peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict requires for both sides to compromise and to, as Alan Dershowitz says, "Place pragmatism over ideology." Unfortunately, as the years drag on, it seems that neither side is willing to compromise enought to appease the other.
As strenuous a task as the peace negotiations have been, the election of Hamas will certainly serve to further complicate the issue. Hamas leader Mahmoud Al-Zahar said in a recent debate that Hamas will in no way negotiate with Israel on any level; Hamas then recently changed their stance to make provisions for a "hudna".
The use of this word is of particular interest as a "hudna" is a phrase that generally indicates a period of tranquility while waring sides gather arms.
Perhaps Hamas' victory will force a more moderate stance. However, it may be rather quixotic to believe that Hamas, with their credo to destroy Israel, will ever be content to simply co-exist with an Israeli state no matter what compromises are offers.
The Hamas landslide may very well turn out to be one of the most dynamic events in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.