Karthik on International Relations

For my Holocaust in History, Literature, and Film class taught by Professor Kevin Madigan, I decided to write my final paper on the behavioral analysis of Nazi propaganda.

As someone who is deeply interested in Behavioral Economics on a professional level, Nazi propaganda is a dark and fascinating topic. To understand the origins of Nazi propaganda, it is important to know Germany after World War I, hit by economic recession and paying for reparations from war.

Given the political and economic climate in Germany at the time, combined with the humiliation and unfairness of the Treaty of Versailles, the nation state was ripe for deception. Given this, Nazi propaganda machine focused on hyperboles of a few favorite themes that they knew would win them favors:

• Humiliation of Germany and the unfairness of the Versailles Treaty
• The weakness of Weimar parliamentary republic
• The evil of world Jewry, Bolshevism, and Capitalism, contrasted against the patriotic Nazi German

And while these were the dominant themes, the propaganda itself evolved to have a 3-fold focus:

• Deification of Hitler (e.g. as a messianic figure to be followed)
• Defining the enemy and justifying their treatment (e.g. Jews and Bolsheviks)
• Rallying the masses (e.g. for war and eugenics)

So, I focused my paper on studying the these themes through a behavioral lens to understand and identify key cognitive and psychological drivers that went into creating them, and the role that they played in instigating social and other cognitive biases in the German population. And while there are several types of cognitive biases, I focused on 3 major categories of biases:

• Social & Attributional Biases: These are biases that affect our social perception and the means through which we determine who or what was responsible for a particular action or situation.
• Memory Biases: These are biases that can either enhance or impair the recollection of a memory, either near-term or long-term.
• Decision-Making Biases: These are biases that impair our ability to make rational decisions despite evidence to the contrary. This includes biases in probability and belief that impact decision-making.

Given this, I came up with the key set of biases that they Nazis chose to trigger in the population, and came up with a framework to identify such propaganda should the public encounter it.

You can find a copy of the paper here: Analysis of Nazi Propaganda: A Behavioral Study.

Daniel W. Drezner, professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, has a come out with a new book — “Theories of International Politics and Zombies“.

Of all the books that I’ve read on IR, I must say that this has been the most unique — and the most fun.

While the title may seem light-hearted and quite deadbeat, Drezner addresses the basics of IR theory in a fun and engaging manner.

One of the many reasons I am a fan of this book is because it uses a hitherto unknown/impossible scenario (i.e. the ghouls coming back alive) to address contemporary IR scenarios. As a proponent of Talebian philosophy who believes in the need to be prepared for the unlikely and extraordinary (such as the realpolitik of a ghoulish uprising), I find this book to be delightfully interesting.

This topic is more serious than one would realize. For instance, would Hillary’s liberal policies mean that she would demand equal treatment of the dead and the undead-alike, or would she want the dead to, err, stay dead? How would that work? Would pacifists and animal rights activists consider zombies to be dead or alive? And what if Hillary turned zombie? Would that change her opinion? And in fact, what if the President turned into a zombie? I bet that would work great with the conservatives! And what about other countries? How would they react? What could this mean to our food supply? What would this mean to immigration? Ahh, questions, questions.

Hydraulic Despotism: A Literal Interpretation & Analysis — published on the World Poverty & Human Rights Online website as part of a WPHR class I’d taken last Spring.

The published HTML version can be found on the site.

A Behavioral Economic Framework for Fighting Poverty and Promoting Freedom & Development — published on the World Poverty & Human Rights Online website as part of a WPHR class I’d taken this past Spring.

The published HTML version can be found on the site.

I’m hoping to be there at the 2010 Harvard African Law & Development Conference from April 16-18 2010. Lots of great folks and some very interesting (and hard) topics.

If anyone else is planning on being there, holler (especially if you are from the WPHR class).

A Capitalist’s Apology: Free Markets, Freedom, and Development — published on the World Poverty & Human Rights Online website as part of my WPHR class this Spring.

The published HTML version can be found on the site and a PDF version is also available for those interested.

Microfinance and the Human Condition: A Bottom-Up Approach towards Promoting Freedom and Development — published on the World Poverty & Human Rights Online website as part of my WPHR class this Spring.

The published HTML version can be found on the site and a PDF version is also available for those interested.

I rarely recommend textbooks as good reads. Not that they aren’t, of course, but they often tend to be academic in nature and therefore of little interest to anyone other than academics (and unfortunate students).

However, I’m taking a class by Professor Stephen P. Marks on World Poverty & Human Rights this Spring, and one of the textbooks is Amartya Sen‘s rather excellent book Development as Freedom.

The book was such an engaging read that I finished reading it even before the start of my semester. Sen’s writing is very humanist in nature, peppered with a wry sense of humor in parts, all the while maintaining a tone that is at once both philosophical and pragmatic to the world’s problems.

Sen starts out addressing the question of whether or not freedom is conducive to development. He feels that such a question is at best defectively formulated, for reasons given below.

Sen ponders over how freedom is often dissociated from development, and considered a pleasant consequence thereof. However, Sen counters that freedom in itself should be the goal of development, and it is both constitutive and instrumental to development. He makes the argument that freedom (political, economic or societal) is central to achieving development; while freedom may result from such development, it would be unwise to ignore the inverse relationship, and true development will only happen through the proliferation of such freedoms. Furthermore, if the definition of development is to move beyond GNP and include freedom, unfree societies aren’t really quite developed.

Sen also argues against the “Lee Hypothesis”, named after the first Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew. The idea behind the “Lee Hypothesis” is that democracy and freedom are luxuries that only developed societies can afford, and to become developed, less-developed societies will need to push forth agendas that may be at odds with democracy and freedom. Furthermore, a more ardent view would be that “non-democratic systems are better in bringing about economic development” for such societies.

In the same vein, he also takes to task the interpretation that “Asian Values” are inherently unsuitable and unfit for democracy, where Asia is defined not by region but through culture. The argument goes that discipline and obedience are critical traits to the Asian cultural psyche and as such, democracy is at odds with such a principle. This particular notion has had the unfortunate reputation of being exploited by authoritarian governments across Asia.

Sen counters both the “Lee Hypothesis” and the “Asian Values” argument by offering the example of the biggest democracy in Asia — India. While India has made several economic mistakes through the years, the fact that it continues to be free democracy hsa helped its economy grow while preserving the freedoms of its citizens. Sen also counters that the “Asian Values” argument isn’t necessarily unique to Asia, and that even within Asia, there have been differing schools of thought, including those that question blind allegiance to the state.

And of course, this book also touches upon Sen’s (now-famous) insight on famines and democracies. He argues that famines are not necessarily caused by lack of declines in food production but rather due to instability in the political, economic, or societal structures that leaves sections of the population unable to fend for themselves. Sen further proposes that countries that are “free” in the economic sense would have citizenry with a consistent income flow, and this income can be used to borrow or import basic necessities in times of need.

But at the end of the day, Sen concludes that true development cannot be measured through mere tangibles (e.g. GNP). Freedom remains the only true measure of development, and when there is freedom, development will follow.

As part of a class that I’m taking this semester, there’s a supporting website call World Poverty and Human Rights Online.

The goal of WPHR.ORG is to act a forum for discussion on topics related to human rights and development, and provide a real-time repository for human rights violations.

Highly recommended.

The topic and abstract for my IPE term paper that I had originally planned turned out to be a little too broad in its scope. As a result, my final paper had a much tighter focus.

Fluctuation & Flexibility: A Case Study of Exchange Rate Regimes from the 1997-1998 East Asian Crisis

The choice between fixed and flexible exchange rate regimes has long-lasting impacts on a nation’s economic security, and consequently, its political outlook. However, such a freedom of choice is almost always limited by the fiscal and monetary health of the nation. This paper evaluates the extent of such a freedom, and how choices in exchange rate regimes affect a country’s economic performance. Specifically, this paper uses the East Asian economic crisis as a case study to examine the effects of exchange rate policies.

The case study was performed on the basis of an exchange rate regime model by Patrick Osakwe, and was built using data before and after the Asian Crisis. The data and the results from the model were then utilized to review the original assumptions, and this laid the foundation for the conclusions drawn from the case study.

You can find my paper — Fluctuation & Flexibility: A Case Study of Exchange Rate Regimes from the 1997-1998 East Asian Crisis — and the referenced Patrick Osakwe’s paper on choice of exchange rate regimes in emerging markets.

Finally, a quick caveat that this was a class term paper that’s effectively going to be a working paper to extend and validate Osakwe’s model. So, please treat it as such.