Blogoir: July

A curious article over at Foreign Affairs about the efficacy of democracies in doing better to protect citizens from earthquakes.

Is it because democracies are simply richer and so build better buildings? No:

In a democracy, leaders must maintain the confidence of large portions of the population in order to stay in power. To do so, they need to protect the people from natural disasters by enforcing building codes and ensuring that bureaucracies are run by competent administrators.

... Earthquakes in politically sensitive areas such as the capital may threaten autocrats, but high-casualty events elsewhere do not; politicians respond to the desires of their immediate constituents and regard the needs of others as far less salient.

It matters little that the means exist to mitigate the effects of disasters if politicians are not incentivized to implement them. Despite high casualties, autocrats can expect to keep their thrones.

On the other hand, democratic leaders who fail to prevent natural disasters from causing calamity are replaced. As such, democrats plan and react to natural disasters, while autocrats do not.

No doubt there is something or other in this argument. The hot breath of angry voters on a politicians plump neck no doubt catches said politician's attention.

That said, if the issue is incentives this article surely incentivises leaders to become autocrats - why put up with all this democratic hassle when you're likely to be thrown out of power for something which was not your fault?

My beef with the piece is that it somehow assumes in a mechanical way that 'democracy' is only about power being dispensed downwards in a notably more efficient way than happens in autocracies. The true virtue of democracy - toughly enforcing building codes!

It's far more interesting than that.

In a democracy people themselves have power.

The power to sue other people (and indeed the government) if they do not do their jobs properly. The power to work for private corporations or research labs and create better, stronger materials. The power of transparency so that people can see what designs are being used and how contracts are awarded. The power of using the Internet to find global best practice in earthquake prevention techniques. And so on.

Not that all of this works well 100% of the time. But these things are mutually reinforcing, and the overall impact is to empower and incentivise everyone in a better direction. The system as a whole is more responsible and responsive.

The article contradicts itself:

In China, the government only half-heartedly assisted the remote province of Qinghai after an earthquake in 2010 and suffered few political consequences for its inaction. But when an earthquake hit Sichuan in 2008, the Chinese government -- wary of protest in this politically and economically powerful center -- undertook relief operations that won the approval of much of the international community.

Ha! Having seen that disasters annoy the masses, the crafty Chinese autocrats lifted their game. And became more effective autocrats. Nay, they won the 'approval' of the 'international community'. Tra-la.

Here is an interesting account from Devil's Knife of his participation in a public discussion on Freedom and all that.

I can imagine that his account of the end of Friendly Societies had some people bemused, but it is an interesting story:

As in other things where the state starts to provide a service, they crowded out the Friendly Societies. After all, if you were a relatively poor manual worker, you could not spare your three shillings per annum to the Friendly Society and the three shillings that the government was taking directly from your pay.

And so the Friendly Societies all but vanished, along with the communities they nurtured. And with them went the libertarian model of welfare—of people getting together as a voluntary collective in order to look after themselves. And so the model of state as mater and pater—the state in loco parentis, with all the intrusive hideousness that concept has spawned—was started...

It's the actions of regular people that are the most significant, serious, and worthy of respect, and they don't deserve to be treated like dolls when, in reality, the only truly and moral libertarian proposition is that they should be masters of themselves.

They did so in the past, and their aspirations were crushed by corporate whores and political shills: and in removing the ability of people to organise themselves, these evil people also removed the desire for them to try.

It is this that has led to our "broken society"—the cynical ambitions of the vested interests, backed up by the monopoly of violence that a corrupt and venal state willingly brought to bear upon its people.

Hmm.

If I am forced to work for someone against my will, that form of oppression is called slavery.

Slavery is a priori Bad, for various reasons:

• it creates a relationship of arbitrary pseudo-superiority imposed by violencce
• it belittles the slave - what sort of life is worth living in enforced servitude to someone else?
• it degrades the moral sense of the slave-master - why take responsibility for anything when you can beat a slave into doing the work?

Hence the famous line (emphasis added) of Satre in the preface to Frantz Fanon's furious attack on the psychology of colonialism, Wretched of the Earth:

The rebel’s weapon is the proof of his humanity. For in the first days of the revolt you must kill: to shoot down a European is to kill two birds with one stone, to destroy an oppressor and the man he oppresses at the same time: there remain a dead man, and a free man; the survivor, for the first time, feels a national soil under his foot...

Of course, it is one thing for the slave to use violence to free himself/herself. That requires strong nerves and, perhaps, a willingness to die in the attempt.

But maybe it is even harder for someone to resist the temptation to want to be a slave-owner - to free oneself from the very wish to live at the expense of others.

As described in this peerless line - the far other side of Sartre's insight:

"I swear -- by my life and my love of it -- that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."

Hence, a question.

If I am forced by the state under threat of violence (arrest/imprisonment) to work for other people who do not work, am I not a slave?

This is another way of looking at Devil's Knife's point.

The fact that so many people these days get money in the form of benefits extracted by force from others for merely existing is wrong.It sets up every possible bad incentive system.

And above all it degrades self-reliance and self-respect.

As Steve Biko said:

The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed...

 

I bewail the creepy drift in our political culture from Reason to Emotion, from Objective to Subjective - over at Business and Politics.

Bored? Frustrated?

Check out the I Write Like website.

It's simple. Cut and paste in some text you've written, press the button and Bingo!, it tells you which famous writer your work emulates.

Only problem is, it can't make its mind up.

Having cut and pasted in various passages from this my own site, I discover that depending on my mood I write like all of the following (all men at least):

• Kurt Vonnegut
• Edgar Allen Poe
• Arthur Conan Doyle
• David Foster Wallace
• Dan Brown

In fact, if you paste in a longer passage and get a result, then cut out some of the sentences from the same passage you can get a quite different result.

Anyway, this passage shows my inner Dan Brown hard at work:

The small group of Givers had their divisions, with arguments around their relative contributions and how they should be weighed. In total cash terms the UK of course stood to give far more than eg the Netherlands, but in terms of contributions per capita the Dutch were paying notably more than the Brits.

Whereas this reveals my latent David Foster Wallace:

It was clear from the outset to anyone in the know (a) that there would be an increased EU budget, and (b) that those who Give and not those who Get would determine just how much bigger.

Since the large number of EU member states wanting to Get were in a relatively weak position, they had to make a vast amount of noise to try to intimidate those who Give into being more generous.

Enough. And in any case, those people write like me.

Time to take the dog for a walk.

The legal processes surrounding the attempt by Belgrade to get former BH Presidency member Ejup Ganic extradited from London to Serbia to face war crimes charges rumble on.

The latest hearing has ended. According to the Sarajevo media, judgement is expected on 27 July.

Needless to say, media reports of the detailed legal issues at stake have been fitful. Some attention has focused on the various claims made by the Ganic team:

• that Serbia's application was flawed on its face or substantively
• that it has no substantive merit and/or presents no evidence which has not been presented in other courts and dismissed as inadequate
• that Ganic can not expect a fair trial in Belgrade

Lawyers representing Serbia have replied:

• that there is enough evidence to launch a substantive prosecution in Belgrade
• and that the Hague Tribunal and other courts are cooperating well with the war crimes courts in Belgrade, and indeed congratulating Belgrade on its work in this difficult area - a fair trial will be assured

My barrister training back in the mists of time taught me one thing: to look at the merits of the case in hand.

The point here (as far as I can see - I may be wrong) is that this is not a case about war crimes. It is about extradition law.

The London courts are not expected or even empowered under the relevant law and guidlelines to delve far into the substance of the allegations against Mr Ganic.

They are dealing with allegations made by state A and against a citizen of state B. Their task is primarily to ascertain whether as a matter of law state A (here Serbia) has met the standards required for Mr Ganic to be transferred to Belgrade.

In terms of where the matter stands procedurally, the Home Office guidelines for cases involving Category 2 territories (which both Serbia and Bosnia are) suggest that we have just had the 'extradition hearing'.

This is interesting (emphasis added):

Some countries are not required to provide prima facie evidence in support of their request for extradition. These countries are (as of 1 January 2007):

Albania, Andorra, Armenia, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, Croatia, Georgia, Iceland, Israel, Liechtenstein, Macedonia FYR, Moldova, Montenegro, New Zealand, Norway, Russian Federation, Serbia, South Africa, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine and the United States of America.

Then there's this:

The judge must satisfy himself that the request meets the requirements of the 2003 Act, including dual criminality and where appropriate, prima facie evidence of guilt; and that none of the bars to extradition apply (the rule against double jeopardy; extraneous considerations; passage of time or hostage-taking considerations).

Finally, he is required to decide whether the person’s extradition would be compatible with the convention rights within the meaning of the Human Rights Act 1998.

If he decides all of these questions in the affirmative, he must send the case to the Secretary of State for the latter’s decision whether the person is to be extradited. Otherwise, he must discharge the person.

In other words, Serbia does not have to clear too high a legal hurdle on the substance of its extradition request, since Serbia (like Bosnia and Herzegovina) is among the countries whose word and processes are deemed by English law to be respectable enough not to merit deeper investigation.

If the judge decides in favour of extradition, the case goes to the Secretary of State, but only for further consideration under three headings. The Secretary of State is not to look at the wider merits of the issue:

Secretary of State

Where a case is sent to the Secretary of State she (sic) must consider whether surrender is prohibited because:

1. the person could face the death penalty: This is an absolute prohibition unless the Secretary of State receives an adequate written assurance from the requesting state that the death penalty will not be imposed, or will not be carried out, if imposed
2. there are no speciality arrangements with the requesting country: The condition of “speciality” requires that the person must be dealt with in the requesting state only for the offences in respect of which the person is extradited (except in certain limited circumstances)
3. the person was earlier extradited to the UK: this might require the Secretary of State to obtain the consent of the earlier extraditing country, before the person can be extradited on to the requesting state...

If the Secretary of State does find that surrender is prohibited, she must order the discharge of the person. If none of the three prohibitions apply, or appropriate assurances have been given, the Secretary of State must order the person to be extradited.

In the Ganic case the three rather technical prohibitions applied at the political level do not (I assume) apply. So if the Secretary of State is in due course presented with a ruling from the judge confirming Ganic's extradition to Serbia, on the face of it that ruling will have to be upheld.

If the Secretary of State does order extradition Ganic can appeal, just as Serbia can appeal against a decision in favour of Ganic by either the judge or the Secretary of State.

And who knows, maybe wily lawyers on either side will come up with other proceedings (eg based on UK or EU Human Rights norms) to add new complications.

In short, plenty of legal juice - and juicy fees - remain to be squeezed before Mr Ganic very finally gets on a plane bound for either Belgrade.

Or Sarajevo. 

H/t Samizdata who lead us to this vivid site featuring three Texas fun-lovin' ladies.

One a Polysomnography Technician (what else?), another at college, the third looking after her family.

Yup. Beautiful smart strong women who have it all. The feminist's dream come true?

That said, men with a nervous or unfaithful disposition might consider it wise not to apply.

 

 

Remember the Archbishop's Tale?

That was the peerless work of someone far far away called Iowahawk.

Now he's back, as ever on the subject of Holy Men. In this case two distinguished US politicians-cum-vicars, Al Gore and John Edwards, whose capacity for loudly pursuing righteous causes is exceeded only by the scale of their ultimate respectively ruinous bimbo eruptions.

So put on your safety belt and a pair of Pampers nappies to deal with the ensuing, hem, seepage as you read this one, which can lay claim to being the funniest thing ever written:

"Sinners!" he cried from the alter, to the astonished flock. "Behold the picto-gram of the hockey stick divine! By thy carbon ethers thou hast brought great righteous anger to the Lord God and his holy mother Gaia! Repent now, lest ye be damned to an eternity of summers most uncomfortable!"

Upon which he presented for sale to the duly frightened parishioners the only two true paths to their salvation: Vicar Albert carbon indulgences and Vicar Albert arse-corks.

In due time Vicar Albert's curious wares found great favour in the royal courts of Europe, and soon vast pilgrimages of dandy-men and gentlewomen arrived at his worship house, begging from him the latest carbon forgiveness parchments and fine porcelain arse-corks, by which they could better display their fashionable piety to nature.

Alas - temptation:

... both men were keen in the knowledge that by divorcing their ungainly spouses they risked their holy ordinance and a king's ransom in indulgences. And as if to treble their anguish, with each sermon it seemed the Devil had stocked the pews aplenty with adoring and voluptuous maidens, beneath whose silken petticoats lied a tasty forbidden feast of love-oysters.

Health & Safety Warning Alert 

Risk of dying from laughing. And Bawdy Bits.

Former British Ambassador Oliver Miles is on a roll in the Guardian.

After giving Ambassadorial blogs the thrashing they so richly deserve, he now writes with eloquence and good sense about what Ambassadors actually do:

When I worked in Belfast, I was warned by a home civil service colleague not to "trust" the Irish government. It made me think about diplomacy. Do we or should we trust the American or French governments? Should they trust us?

It's the wrong question. One of the arts of diplomacy is to find solutions to problems that depend not on trust but on interest.

Excellent.

Read it all. I have added a comment there.

Not much.

Various more or less unsatisfactory inquiries and analyses have been done. Nothing too bad or egregious to report, they say.

Move along, folks! Back to mass collectivist action to run down civilisation - according to Green Rules.

Clive Crook likes the idea of acting to mitigate the risk of climate change but is unimpressed:

But no, the reports make things worse. At best they are mealy-mouthed apologies; at worst they are patently incompetent and even wilfully wrong.

The climate-science establishment, of which these inquiries have chosen to make themselves a part, seems entirely incapable of understanding, let alone repairing, the harm it has done to its own cause...

It's not the extreme or otherwise ill-advised policy recommendations of the greens that have turned opinion against action of any kind, though I grant you they're no help. It's the diminished credibility of the claim that we have a problem in the first place.

That is why Climategate mattered. And that is why these absurd "vindications" of the climate scientists involved also matter.

The economic burdens of mitigating climate change will not be shouldered until a sufficient number of voters believe the problem is real, serious, and pressing. Restoring confidence in climate science has to come first.

That, in turn, means trusting voters with all of the doubts and unanswered questions -- with inconvenient data as well as data that confirm the story -- instead of misleading them (unintentionally, of course) into believing that everything is cut and dried.

The inquiries could have started that process. They have further delayed it.

Scroll down through the comments of the usual incompatible for and against sort, until you get to steveinch, who reads my very mind:

The issue isn't whether climate is changing. The issue is whether there is a credible plan with an IRR above the cost of capital to do something about it.

For the moment, the answer to that question, particularly as it applies to unilateral action by the US, appears to be no. With regard to coordinated global action, the answer may be yes, depending on how you think of the notion of intergenerational discount rates. If you are willing to argue that there should be no discount rate for intergenerational issues, you can conclude that a coordinated global approach would work. Of course, if you take that point of view, no sovereign nation should borrow to finance its operations unless it will pay the debt off within a generation.

But even with that charitable view of discounting, the case for unilateral action is weak because unilateral action will not solve the problem. Thus the costs of action exist and so do the costs of climate change.

The case for unilateral action economically must be made based on an expected value calculation, and, even with a zero discount rate, the numbers simply do not add up.

Precisely.

Is it wiser (a) to heave away at impossible global expense now ("just in case") to try to stop the climate changing? Or (b) instead spend money as and when the climate does 'change' to alleviate the effects (some of which will be positive anyway).

No-one knows. The Stern Review seemingly failed on this most central point.

The only fact that counts is that Western governments are not going to pass any measures which make a massive one-off difference. Money and voter support are not there.

So let's get on with adapting and accumulating lots of small advances in energy-saving and more modest use of resources.

Bring on Interflush.

And this Israeli invention for solar power.

At long last we are starting to be honest about the national indebtedness issues we face:

The true scale of Britain's national indebtedness was laid bare by the Office for National Statistics yesterday: almost £4 trillion, or £4,000bn, about four times higher than previously acknowledged.

It quantifies the burden that will be placed on future generations, and it is the ONS's first attempt to draw together the "off-balance-sheet" liabilities that have been accumulated by the state. The figures imply a huge "intergenerational transfer" – broadly in favour of today's "baby boomer" generation at the expense of younger people and future generations.

The debt primarily consists of the cost of public sector and state pensions, and of payments promised to private contractors under private finance initiatives. It far exceeds any of the figures so far published for the national debt, the largest current estimate for which is £903bn. That is projected to rise to £1.3trn by 2015...

It's impossible for us mere taxpayers to put our heads round what that means, although the Indy tries:

Failure to cut back now or raise taxes – and there is little sign of the population clamouring to make life easier for the as-yet-unborn – will leave future taxpayers with an additional burden of £200,000 each over their lifetimes to pay for the public services enjoyed by this and previous generations.

Even with current plans to reduce the deficit, the tax bill would still be as high as £150,000 over the life of someone born in 2011.

Hmm. A bit more than £2000 per year over a lifetime suddenly starts to seem not quite so bad? These figures are enormous. But the national wealth generated by millions of people working away over generations is even more enormous.

One way or the other, the article brings out well the emerging question of 'intergenerational justice' - how far should we be borrowing from unborn people to pay for rubbish like climate change exhibitions at the UN?

And once we start thinking that government now should pay only for what people living now really can afford now, the size of government might well start to fall pretty fast as voters look hard at what they really want to pay for.

This also explains the nervous efforts made by collectivists to get away from the language of tax and debt.

It's not debt. It's investment, see?

Fine. Some of it is. A road built now benefits people well into the future.

But no business gets a blank cheque from the bank to make investments which have costs now and results later. Governments have to stop pretending that they are different.

As is deftly argued by Jonathan Davis who has the temerity to wonder whether Paul Krugman is talking tosh:

Not even to begin laying the ground for reductions in public spending today, let alone to confront the huge unfunded liabilities that lie beyond budget planning horizons, makes little sense. On past form it will take years for any cuts announced today to be fully implemented, if indeed they can be achieved at all.

Just as 364 economists turned out to be wrong when they denounced Sir Geoffrey Howe’s infamous 1981 UK budget, it is not axiomatic to me that Prof Krugman and co are right this time round...

Have a quick look at this latest example of junk diplomacy, hard at work with our money:

The exhibition “Climate Faces — Changing Earth, Changing Lives”, now on display in the Main Gallery of the Visitors Lobby of United Nations Headquarters, will be opened formally in a 6 p.m. ceremony on Wednesday, 14 July.

Included in the exhibition are photographs and testimonials from two British Council global projects: “Cape Farewell”, which chronicles a voyage to witness the effects of climate change in the Canadian arctic by 28 high school students as well as scientists and artists from around the world; and “Turning the Tide”, featuring illustrations submitted in a photo contest by young people in 40 countries, showing how climate change impacts their communities.

A perfect tsunami of wasted money involving the UN, World Bank and British Council preening each other's egos to emit propaganda.

As an eagle-eyed reader says:

A good example of circular opinion forming.

Large governmental or international organisations funded by the taxpayer to organise events to create/increase public pressure on those same organisations to do what they themselves wanted to do in the first place to justify their own existences and salaries.

Cut. Then cut harder.

As his ratings and credibility slip-slide away, President Obama eyes the various US election races later this year. Will the Democrats do terribly? Or merely awfully?

One plan he has - maybe the only plan he has - is to blame everything bad on the previous Bush presidency. Hence his claim that he has had to deal with this grim legacy:

... a decade of misguided economic policies — a decade of stagnant wages, a decade of declining incomes, a decade of spiraling deficits.

Luckily he has Keith Hennessey to remind him of some basic facts. So he won't make that mistake again.

Over at Business and Politics I brood on the dismal sniggering by UK business people when the Prime Minister informed them that he had summoned the UK's Ambassadors back to London - and made them all fly economy class.

Inappropriate. If you publicly sneer at your own team, won't everyone else do the same?

More important, it's counter-productive in the Prime Minister's own terms. He says wants the UK's Ambassadors to support British business. How does he think that in fact they can do just that?

Why does this sort of thing make me, a libertarian-minded conservative, feel queasy?

Partly it’s the hint of the faux-egalitarian blokeiness which characterises our tragic age, a sense that high-end behaviour and practices are less worthy than the lowest common denominator ‘solidarity’ of everyone having a pint in the pub.

That, you recall, was something New Labour cultivated ad and indeed ultra nauseam. In January this year it got David Miliband into trouble in India, when he annoyed the Indian Foreign Minister by calling him by his first name, a move at once naively patronising and culturally insensitive. So much for all those FCO diversity targets.

Whereas the media have focused yet again on the lame issue of Ambassadorial residences overseas, no-one has mentioned the sniggering feebleness of the business people whom the PM addressed.

According to the Indy they laughed when Mr Cameron said that all the Ambassadors had been ‘made to travel economy class’ to join the London meeting. Huh?

Why did no-one have the guts to call out something like this:

“Excuse me, Prime Minister, but we are hoping to win a huge contract in Nigeria. You got it 100% wrong.

 Having our Ambassador in Tokyo sweating in economy class rather than talking for hours to the Nigerian Finance Minister who was in Club on the same flight sends the Nigerians all the wrong signals as to how his views are valued in London.

And, much worse, it misses a terrific chance to lobby quietly for this deal and many others on that long and boring flight!”

Shame on you, business-people. You deserve what you'll get.

Crawf Minor (Lower Sixth) is in hot pursuit of several Maths A-Levels here in the UK.

All of which reminds me that once upon a long lost time I could pick my way through the mysteries of cos and sin and even on a good day tan.

Not to forget my old enemy: d²y/dx²   This allowed one to calculate not the rate of change, but the rate at which the rate changed.

Or something like that. I think.

People who can fathom out this sort of thing are smart. In fact, some of them go on from tricky basic maths to acquire lively and unpredictable new pets:

Langton got involved with ants.       

Paterson with worms.

Others had to make do with turmites. Or even busy beavers.

The notable thing about this sort of thing from our point of view is the deep idea that order (and 'orders') can and do come forth naturally without clumsy central direction. A light framework plus a few very simple rules are enough to generate impressively large and robust new structures. 

Which is where we walk over to Cafe Hayek (where orders emerge) and read this excellent piece about why new developments are often disappointing, and why indeed a solution to a problem often isn't very widely applicable:

Development happens thanks to problem-solving systems ...any solution that is going to work is likely to come from the use of local knowledge, or at least dispersed knowledge rather than some expert who proposes some solution from the outside without local knowledge.

That's the core brilliant Hayekian idea, unanswered by collectivists and centralisers of all shapes and sizes - dispersed knowledge.

More:

You can’t just take some piece of a market-based solution and impose it from the top down. You want organically emergent solutions that bring all the pieces along at once. Competition encourages the other pieces to emerge. Top-down solutions usually constrain competition and miss out on the extra parts of the puzzle.

... How do you liberate people to allow them to help themselves? You look for the barriers that keep them from helping themselves. Ironically, sending large amounts of money to corrupt leaders probably creates the single largest barrier.

Of course.

Which is why the rise of the mobile telephone gives Africans new chances to help themselves without development experts and corrupt leaders pushing them around.

And, perhaps, why it is a good and profound move to move huge slabs of NHS money to general practitioners (ie non-hospital doctors) so as to try to capture  much more directly in public health spending the benefits of all that dispersed GP knowledge about the nation's aliments ?

You may feel that your modest daily needs concerning the exotic world of Diplomacy are met by this website, and you usually may be right.

Still, now and again a little more of what you fancy does you good. So go and have a look at the Browser, where they have been busy looking at different aspects of diplomacy. With good results.

There is Sir Jeremy Greenstock, HM Ambassador at the UN during the key period leading up to the start of the Iraq war, interviewed about his five books exploring high-level policy and diplomatic technique.

Former British diplomat Mike Maclay looks at five books which deal with diplomacy at the sharp end - down in the mud of Bosnia and elsewhere.

Brigid Keenan looks at five books exploring diplomacy, overseas travel and family life.

And Ilan Kelman discusses five books about disasters of different forms and 'disaster diplomacy'.

These Browser interviews linked to the Five Books idea are invariably thoughtful and businesslike, bringing both the subjects and interviewed experts to life in a lively way.

With the nights now drawing in again, these interviews and book ideas also help those of you who want to get ahead of the mob in buying Christmas presents... 

As previously mentioned, the Total Politics political blog annual popularity poll comes round again.

All you have to do is send in an email listing at least five of your favourite UK political blogs. Voting closes at the end of July.

And if you kindly include this one on your list, thanks a lot.

The link and more info are here: 

Liam Murray notes that the Department of Health has four speechwriters, one for each Minister.

Plus 35 other people in the PR/Spin area.

This is ridiculous.

Cut. Then cut harder.

 

Being a serious former Ambassador Oliver Miles manages to give the lame FCO diplo-blogging genre the thrashing it richly deserves AND do so in an elegant Guardian article:

Why do diplomats (and Whitaker's article quotes some examples from Americans as well as the British) feel the need to let it all hang out?

The reason is simple. The Miliband regime in the Foreign Office, obsessed with "process", "image", and to be blunt anything trendy, encouraged the idea that running a blog was a good career move.

I wrote about this strange phenomenon back in 2009. See also this:

The point is that under the way our democracy functions British diplomats can't work like that. Nor do they. Anything close to being critical or tendentious or spikey or provocative is likely to annoy either a host government or HQ or both.

Just say a diplomat posted a blog entry politely speculating on the wisdom of current Climate Change or Middle East policy. Imagine the scenes in Parliament:

"The Secretary of State apparently can not persuade even his own senior officials of the wisdom of this policy! Why should we take any notice of him?"

Which is why the FCO blogs are a friendly but bland product, making no serious contribution to the 'global foreign policy debate'.

This angry piece by Melanie Philips shows what happens when a busily blogging Ambassador starts to be rather less than bland in a policy area of huge sensitivity, such as the Middle East.

I agree with Oliver:

Let's hope William Hague will blow the whistle. There is a good Yorkshire saying: Hear all, see all, say now't.

Although one might gracelessly quibble with the wayward apostrophe in now't?

Over at DIPLOMAT magazine is my light-touch article looking at the whys and wherefores of 'interfering in internal affairs'.

My original draft was wittily called Where Diplomacy meets Gynaecology but for no obvious reason this web version is called Diplomacy Meets Affairs of the State, which alas makes little sense.

Democratist replies to my earlier posting:

I have a number of points to make about the following statements you made in "International Election Monitoring: Keeping Democracy Honest?"

 

"The problem is that observers necessarily observe the observable, and only a tiny proportion of that."

What about LTOs and the Core Team? They are the field for two/three months and provide a lengthy reports on the political context - meeting all the key national and local politicians and bureaucrats - these will be factored into the "Preliminary statement" (on the day after E-Day) and the "final statement" that comes out a few weeks later.

Also - 10% coverage of all polling stations provides more than enough information to get a very good idea of what is going on - ask a statistician.

"It is not much use international observers dutifully watching voting and counting of an election where some candidates have been unfairly excluded and/or where the media coverage of the campaign has been skewed massively to favour one side (ie the ruling tendency)."

Yes it is - because we make it clear that this is what happened, and provide lots of evidence of how this was manifested on the ground. This can have important implications in the days following the election, precicisely because the OSCE has such a good reputation with the populations of these countries - and this can have a major effect on what happens there in the days immediatly following the election (e.g. Georgia 2003, and Ukraine 2004). Even Serbia in 2000 - although I suspect you know more about that one than me.

On the contrary, the very fact that international observers are observing such an election might be said to give its outcome a legitimacy it richly does not deserve.

Yes and in the past the OSCE has refused to observe for this very reason - e.g. Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan several times.

"We make our first report of what is to be a long day. Then we move on, spending only 20 or 30 minutes at each polling station. At various intervals we must phone our LTO team and read out, question by question, our results. The tick-box approach is evidence of the EU’s lack of trust in our judgment. We are data collectors, not observers. It speaks of a bureaucracy keen on statistics that it can brandish scientifically."

Again STO work has to be seen in the context of extensive core team and LTO reporting.

"Even when an election is obviously unfair and international observers say so (as in Sudan this year), the self-proclaimed winner just brazens out the criticism and carries on regardless of EU hand-wringing"

The OSCE and EU are separate organizations - my piece was about the OSCE ODIHR  (I am not an especially big fan of the EU). Observation is certainly no panacea (but tell me what is?) But, even where where dictators just "brazen it out" the observation does at least have the effect that it adds to their bad press, and - as in the cases of Georgia 2003 and Ukraine 2004 (both observed by the OSCE) can contribute to their overthrow. Why do you think the Russians have been so petrified of "colour revolutions" since 2004? Why do you think they prevented the OSCE for observing their parliamentary and presidential elections in 2007 amd 2008?

While I think that it would be great if the UK sent its own observation teams (although it would take a while to build up the same sort of credibility the OSCE has in the region), I think it is somewhat unlikely given that they aren't even willing to send 10% of OSCE observers at the moment (as they had usually done prior to 2008) - since, as you may have noticed, HMG is presently a bit skint...

Fair enough.

The OSCE 'space' differs from other international areas as its members have made all sorts of specific commitments to each other, including to take seriously OSCE election observation teams' findings. OSCE election observer teams who point to serious shortcomings therefore have a different sort of political weight.

Which indeed is one reason why Moscow and some other former Soviet area capitals manoeuvre to try to cut back OSCE activities and/or credibility.

And why Democratist is right to urge HM Government to keep paying its full share of the bill as a strategic investment. Even in these financially tricky times.