From ecbm@cc.newcastle.edu.au Wed Apr 2 22:22:13 1997 3 Apr 1997 15:21:50 +1000 Date: Thu, 03 Apr 1997 15:21:50 +1000 From: "Bruce R. McFarling" Subject: RE: Sub-Saharan Africa In-reply-to: <01BC3D92.25260720@ts31-04.tor.iSTAR.ca> To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK On Mon, 31 Mar 1997, David Lloyd-Jones wrote: > There are mines -- but thre is nothing in the mines that can't be mined > cheaper in countries that have roads, rails and, importantly, river > transport -- to say nothing of telephones, hospitals and cold beer. There is this wonderful thing about mining things where they are cheaper to mine -- you get it out of the ground, and then the next bit is harder to mine (lower quality, deeper underground, etc.) So eventually you run out of the cheaper cobalt, diamonds, whatever in the places that have roads, rails, river transport, telephones, hospitals and cold beer, and the cheaper mining is in the places that lack those things. Hence Zaire is a top 5 world producer of Diamonds, cobalt, and some other minerals. Its the lower value-added-per-pound stuff like growing corn and beans and cotton where the lack of roads and consumer/producer services in rural areas starts to really hit your output. Even a Zaire can still produce diamonds (they are, after all, mining diamonds with shovels in certain parts of Haute Zaire), but after decades of decaying infrastructure, provinces like Haute Zaire that should be the breadbasket of central Africa can not even feed Kinshasa. > It's difficult to imagine what Karl had in mind when he asked > his question -- unless it was some bizarre ideological notion > that a.) the industrialised countries live by exploitation, I assume that I am in a minority on WSN in agreeing with dlj's assertion (stated in an oblique fashion) that OECD nations do not live by exploitation of the underdeveloped nations of the world. This exploitation is a sideline, which is profitable, but could be sacrificed if something more important was at stake, such as control of productive organisations in the OECD countries. > b.) Africa is exploitable, Africa *is* exploitable. Part of the reason for the lack of capital inflows is that Africa is too *easily* exploitable: some guns to keep the right sorts in power and a smidgen of consumption goods for a few people who succeed in getting high enough up the pyramids of sacrifice, and there is no need of diverting hard currency resources to ensure a flow of highly useful, low- value-added, raw materials. And while the lost potential for economic growth is an undeniable problem for the populations of the countries affected, it is not necessarily a problem for those with hard currency funds that could be used in Africa. There are, after all, no guarantees that economic organisations permitting more widespread economic development would be to the benefit of those in control of hard currency funds. > c.) exploitation is highly profitable. The truly impressive profits accrue to activities that can participate in a process of successful economic development. However, those with hard currency funds to divert to Africa aren't necessarily qualified to be participants in a process of successful economic development in sub-Saharan Africa, so those types of profits might not be an option. It is certainly the case, for example, that someone with suitable local contacts, access to suitable cloth and raw material, and experience in managing textile production in Zaire could make a lot of money in Kinshasa right now. However, the local network and experience are every bit as necessary as the working capital, and the rewards are greatest to someone who wishes to use the profits within Zaire > All three are ridiculous. Exactly. While based on perfectly valid observations of what is going on, if simplified to this degree the result is too extreme to be taken seriously. Of course, it was dlj who suggested this as the explanatory framework. Since he read this framework in in order to ridicule it, there may be suspicious souls on the list who would suspect (a thing, I've heard, that suspicious souls do) that dlj's reading is not unbiased. Or, in other words, the goal of setting up a framework in order to ridicule it might increase the likelihood of constructing a ridiculous framework. Virtually, Bruce R. McFarling, Newcastle, NSW ecbm@cc.newcastle.edu.au From dlj@inforamp.net Thu Apr 3 18:50:08 1997 Date: Thu, 03 Apr 1997 20:49:28 -0500 From: David Lloyd-Jones Reply-To: dlj@pobox.com To: ecbm@cc.newcastle.edu.au Subject: Compendium of lerrors in logic. Bruce R. McFarling wrote: > > b.) Africa is exploitable, > > Africa *is* exploitable. Part of the reason for the lack of > capital inflows is that Africa is too *easily* exploitable: Here Bruce takes advantage of the dual meaning of exploitable, "useful," or "subject to being cheated." Since we have all learned from Bruce's posts on logic, we are able to recognise this as an exploit in the undistributed middle. > > All three are ridiculous. > > Exactly. While based on perfectly valid observations of what is > going on, if simplified to this degree the result is too extreme to be > taken seriously. Of course, it was dlj who suggested this as the > explanatory framework. Since he read this framework in in order to > ridicule it, there may be suspicious souls on the list who would suspect > (a thing, I've heard, that suspicious souls do) that dlj's reading is not > unbiased. Again time for recourse to logic: the fact that a conclusion is ëxtreme" does not per se renbder it false. My drinking buddy Karl Hess comes to mind. Similarly the fact that a suggestion is _mine_ is not necessarily evidence for its incorrectness. Finally, the fact that one is a "suspicious soul"does not ipso facto preordain that everything one examines will turn out wrong. Suspicion is for many people a useful attribute in finding what is correct, good, sound and beautiful. -dlj. (Computer glitch: the word pronounced X-treem is showing up on my screen with the Japanese character mon, gate, in the place of the e and the ex. I hope it comes across correctly at your end...) From ecbm@cc.newcastle.edu.au Thu Apr 3 22:10:41 1997 4 Apr 1997 15:09:58 +1000 Date: Fri, 04 Apr 1997 15:09:57 +1000 From: "Bruce R. McFarling" Subject: Re: Compendium of errors in logic. In-reply-to: <33445E28.7430@inforamp.net> To: dlj@pobox.com On Thu, 3 Apr 1997, David Lloyd-Jones wrote: > Bruce R. McFarling wrote: >=20 > > > b.) Africa is exploitable, > >=20 > > Africa *is* exploitable. Part of the reason for the lack of > > capital inflows is that Africa is too *easily* exploitable:=20 > Here Bruce takes advantage of the dual meaning of exploitable, "useful," > or "subject to being cheated." Since we have all learned from Bruce's > posts on logic, we are able to recognise this as an exploit in the > undistributed middle. =20 =09I rather take advantage of the dual meaning in the other sense of 'take advantage': I think that both meanings apply. The difference is therefore not logic but substantive. =20 > > > All three are ridiculous. > >=20 > > Exactly. While based on perfectly valid observations of what i= s > > going on, if simplified to this degree the result is too extreme to be > > taken seriously. Of course, it was dlj who suggested this as the > > explanatory framework. Since he read this framework in in order to > > ridicule it, there may be suspicious souls on the list who would suspec= t > > (a thing, I've heard, that suspicious souls do) that dlj's reading is n= ot > > unbiased.=20 > Again time for recourse to logic: the fact that a conclusion is =EBxtreme= " > does not per se renbder it false. My drinking buddy Karl Hess comes to > mind. Similarly the fact that a suggestion is _mine_ is not necessarily > evidence for its incorrectness. =09Again, I do not mean to claim that all extreme conclusions are ridiculous, but this one, I thought, was. Hence, "if simplified to this degree *the* conclusion" not "*a* conclusion". Not a difference in logic or substance, either, because dlj believes that this simplification is ridiculous. Only a difference in whether the original post contained sufficient information to conclude that the simplification is the single most reasonable reading. > Finally, the fact that one is a "suspicious soul"does not ipso facto > preordain that everything one examines will turn out wrong. Suspicion > is for many people a useful attribute in finding what is correct, good, > sound and beautiful. =09Again, I said that suspecting is something that suspicious souls do. I think tha tin categorical terms, that's pretty close to accurate. Whether or no this would lead to a correct, good, sound, and beautiful assessment of what dlj is up to, I leave for the members of the list to judge.=20 Virtually, Bruce R. McFarling, Newcastle, NSW ecbm@cc.newcastle.edu.au From dlj@inforamp.net Fri Apr 4 03:25:01 1997 Date: Fri, 04 Apr 1997 05:24:26 -0500 From: David Lloyd-Jones Reply-To: dlj@pobox.com To: ecbm@cc.newcastle.edu.au Subject: Re: Compendium of errors in logic. Bruce R. McFarling wrote: > > > Finally, the fact that one is a "suspicious soul"does not ipso facto > > preordain that everything one examines will turn out wrong. Suspicion > > is for many people a useful attribute in finding what is correct, good, > > sound and beautiful. > > Again, I said that suspecting is something that suspicious souls > do. I think tha tin categorical terms, that's pretty close to accurate. > Whether or no this would lead to a correct, good, sound, and beautiful > assessment of what dlj is up to, I leave for the members of the list to > judge. But this was not the question: the question was the validity, not the correctness, of the argument. (Had my correctness been in question I suspect that Bruce might have found a way of attacking it without all this illogical indirection and suggestion.) Ar least we are agreed that it is up to the list to judge -- but it is Bruce's reasoning and argument that I submit for the judging. -dlj. From austria@it.com.pl Fri Apr 4 07:21:39 1997 From: austria@it.com.pl Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 16:20:56 +0200 (MET DST) Subject: A new very good electronic source on Poland: PNB, April 4, 1997 To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu <---- Begin Forwarded Message ----> Date: Fri, 04 Apr 1997 13:12:44 +0200 (Central Europe Daylight Time) To: pnb@ikp.atm.com.pl From: Polish News Bulletin Subject: PNB, April 4, 1997 ##### ## ## ##### ## ## ### ## ## ## ##### ## #### ##### ## ## ### ## ## ## ## ## ##### ------------------------ POLISH NEWS BULLETIN April 4, 1997 ======================== Contents: News - Politics Krzaklewski to Vote Against Constitution Jagielinski's Resignation Still Not Approved Senate Appoints New Broadcasting Council Member AWS Sets Terms for Election Candidates ROP: Referendum Together with Elections Insurance to Be Tax-Deductible? Miller on Immigrants Rights Kuszewski on Doctors' Resignations CBOS: Politicians Less Trusted No Polish Troops for Albania Tuberculosis Rate Still High WSI: Pay Increases Planned? News - Economy and Business NIFs to Hit Stock Exchangein Late June Shipbuilders Prepare to Resume Work NBP Ceases to Finance Budget Deficit Hop Growers Protest Gdansk Refinery Takes over Jedlicze Saint Gobain's New Plant Opens Rumours on Russian-Polish Fishing Dispute Dispelled Economists on Threats to Free Market Czech Skoda Eyes Star Truck Maker Poland Blacklisted in U.S. Trade Report Analyses and Commentaries Fishermen Feel Neglected by Government ############################## News - Politics ############################## ------------------------------------------------------------ Krzaklewski to Vote Against Constitution ============================================================ Solidarity chairman Marian Krzaklewski declared yesterday that he would vote against the new Constitution in the May 25 referendum. "We shall do all we can to make sure that the provisions of the constitution that are confrontational vis-a-vis the civic constitution bill do not come into force," he said, adding that the amendments introduced to the bill by the president made the constitution "even more confrontational." Bishop Tadeusz Pieronek, secretary of the Episcopate of Poland, said that the Church will urge the faithful to take part in the referendum without telling them how to vote. "This is something that every citizen must decide for himself." The results of the voting in the National Assembly could provide some guide to voter behaviour in the constitutional referendum. The Constitution was backed by all senators and deputies from the SLD, Freedom Union (UW) and Labour Union (UP) caucuses and by 131 Polish Peasant Party (PSL) MPs; six PSL members were against and five abstained. The Constitution was backed by all but one independent MP, the German minority, PPS and Nowa Demokracja.(Based on 4 April 1997 issues of Gazeta Wyborcza No. 79, p. 2; Rzeczpospolita No. 79, p. 2). ------------------------------------------------------------ Jagielinski's Resignation Still Not Approved ============================================================ Aleksandra Jakubowska, government spokeswoman, said that Prime Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz would definitely accept the resignation tendered by Deputy Prime Minister and Agriculture Minister Roman Jagielinski of the PSL peasant party. However, the prime minister is not certain whether the PSL would still like Jaroslaw Kalinowski, also from the PSL, to take over the positions vacated by Jagielinski. The meeting of the two government coalition parties slated to be held yesterday (Apr. 3), did not take place, and was postponed until next Tuesday (Apr. 8). At a news conference yesterday, Jakubowska assured that, within a matter of days, the prime minister was going seek approval from President Aleksander Kwasniewski for Jagielinski's dismissal, following official procedures according to which the president appoints or replaces members of government upon the premier's request. According to her, Cimoszewicz is not going to wait until a no-confidence vote for Jagielinski is held in the Sejm. The spokeswoman explained that the delay in accepting the agriculture minister's resignation was caused by urgent matters which the prime minister had had to attend to. Jakubowska told the press that the prime minister would not appoint Jagielinski's successor until he met with the PSL. She also added that, if the peasant party re-affirmed its support for Kalinowski, the premier would consider the candidate. In the meantime, the PSL is standing firm over its decision made over six weeks ago for the party's representatives not to attend government coalition meetings with the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) until Jagielinski is recalled. (Based on 4 April 1997 issues of Rzeczpospolita No. 79, p. 2; Zycie No. 79, p. 2; Gazeta Wyborcza No. 79, p. 3; Nowa Europa No. 79, p. 2). ------------------------------------------------------------ Senate Appoints New Broadcasting Council Member ============================================================ The Senate has chosen Jan Sek, a senator from the PSL peasant party, to represent the House on the National Broadcasting Council during the next six-year term of office. In a vote held yesterday (Apr. 3), Sek saw off the challenge of his rival candidate, Senator Elzbieta Solska (independent, member of the PSL caucus) obtaining seventy-five votes to five, with five abstentions. Krystyna Czuba, journalist from the Catholic Radio Maryja, who was the third candidate for the position, withdrew just before the vote. Sek will replace Witold Knychalski, also connected to the PSL, whose term in office expires this month. Sek was recommended as a candidate for the Broadcasting Council by the PSL. His current functions include chairmanship of the Senate committee for relations with Polish communities abroad, and membership of the programme council of the public television company TVP. Sek is also a faculty member of the UMCS University of Lublin. The terms of office of two other members of the Broadcasting Council also expire this month, namely: Robert Kwiatkowski representing the Sejm, and Jan Szafraniec representing the president. Kwiatkowski is likely to be re-appointed, this time, as the president's representative, while Adam Halber, deputy to the Sejm from the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD), is considered the likely candidate to be chosen by the Sejm. The Senate also looked into the changes proposed by its committee to the bill on barristers and solicitors. The senators were very critical of the provision forbidding marriages between judges and barristers or solicitors, which they believed to be at odds with the Polish Constitution and with international conventions on human rights. Justice Minister Leszek Kubicki repelled these accusations claiming that the relevant provisions ensured all citizens the constitutional right to a fair trial, while the senators' concerted disapproval was the result of successful lobbying by the legal community. The vote on the changes to the bill proposed by the Senate committee is to be held today.(Based on 4 April 1997 issues of Zycie No. 79, p. 3; Rzeczpospolita No. 79, p. 2; Nowa Europa No. 79, p. 2). ------------------------------------------------------------ AWS Sets Terms for Election Candidates ============================================================ The Coordinating Team of Solidarity Elections Action (AWS) has established the conditions by which its candidates running for the Sejm will have to comply. The AWS leaders agreed yesterday (Apr. 3) that every candidate wishing to run for parliament from the AWS would have to sign a special document, thus making a commitment that they would not quit the AWS caucus if they were elected. If they did, such a member of parliament would have to forfeit his or her seat, or pay a certain amount of money. None of the political parties and organisations affiliated to the AWS will be guaranteed a specific number of places for its candidates on the lists of election candidates to be put forward in particular constituencies or on the preference list for the national leaders (who, provided that a given party or coalition receives the number of votes required to get into the Sejm, may be granted parliamentary seats without actually running in any particular constituency). The name of the party or organisation to which a given person belongs may be listed alongside the name of the candidate. The lists of candidates are to be compiled at a local level, but overall supervision will rest with the AWS National Election Committee headed by Marian Krzaklewski, Solidarity chairman.(Based on 4 April 1997 issues of Gazeta Wyborcza No. 79, p. 3; Zycie No. 79, p. 2; Rzeczpospolita No. 79, p. 2). ------------------------------------------------------------ ROP: Referendum Together with Elections ============================================================ Jan Olszewski's Movement for the Reconstruction of Poland is demanding that the constitutional referendum be combined with the parliamentary elections thus saving over 60 million zloty which could then be used to rescue the Stocznia Gdanska shipyard and to satisfy other social needs. Since the parliamentary majority rejected the concept for submitting two constitution bills to a referendum, the referendum, scheduled on May 25, will be "of a confrontational character", Olszewski believes. He, therefore, suggests that the pilgrimage of Pope John Paul II to Poland will as a result be held "under conditions of social and political confrontation." This is why the ROP has proposed to hold the referendum after the pilgrimage, and, at best, to hold it jointly with the parliamentary elections. The ROP leadership also voiced their opinion of the issue of ratification of the concordat which, they claim, has been thus far blocked by the left because of their doubts of an ideological nature. Now, Olszewski argues, the concordat is being ratified in a situation where the matter would be resolved anyway in a few months by the new parliament. (Based on 4 April 1997 issue of Rzeczpospolita No.79, p.2) ------------------------------------------------------------ Insurance to Be Tax-Deductible? ============================================================ Opening the East-West insurance conference held in Warsaw, Marek Belka, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, refused to rule out the possibility that people buying insurance with pension funds could pay lower taxes. Pension funds are to be the pillar of the new social insurance system. Minister Belka pointed out, however, that any projects in this area have to match the financial abilities of the state. Belka announced that the capital of the PZU State Insurance Company would be increased soon and the company would be privatised. As of January 1, 1999 foreign insurance firms can operate freely on the Polish market. The Warsaw conference, held under the auspices of the OECD, was attended by 80 visitors from 50 countries, including all the OECD members. They discussed the problems faced by the insurance business in post-communist countries.(Based on 4 April, 1997 issue of Gazeta Wyborcza No.79, p.22) ------------------------------------------------------------ Miller on Immigrants Rights ============================================================ "Refugees' rights are not violated in Poland," Minister of Internal Affairs and Administration Leszek Miller declared in response to charges levelled by the Ombudsman. A week ago Ombudsman Adam Zielinski accused the Ministry of violating the rights of refugees by delaying the review of their applications. The Ombudsman also criticised the practice of keeping refugees in ordinary jails instead of special detention centres and the shortage of interpreters, which delays the hearings of refugees. Deputy Minister Katarzyna Piekarska in charge of immigration admitted that the period for reviewing applications for refugee status was too long in Poland. But this, she explained, resulted from the fact that several thousand applications were being reviewed by only nine people. Presently refugee status - i.e. the status of victim of persecution suffered in his homeland - is being sought by 3200 emigres from throughout the world. Of these Poland provides 700 people with essential living conditions in special centres financed from the budget. "Poland has to reckon with the possibility of an increasingly large number of immigrants settling in Poland," Minister Miller said in a press conference yesterday. In order to make activities in this area efficient and meet West European standards, a special framework has to be built. The Minister observed that so far immigrants have treated Poland as a transit country. But soon more and more foreigners from poor countries and those troubled by war will be coming here to stay permanently. The press conference was accompanied to the sounds of protests coming from outside where several tens of refugees from Somalia demanded favourable decisions regarding their applications and better treatment in refugees' centres. The legislation on employment and on combating unemployment gives immigrants, who have obtained refugee status, the same rights as those enjoyed by Polish citizens.(Based on 4 April 1997 issues of Rzeczpospolita No.79, p.1; Zycie No.79, p.2; Gazeta Wyborcza No.79, p.4) ------------------------------------------------------------ Kuszewski on Doctors' Resignations ============================================================ "Their resignations should be accepted. This is a free country where a doctor can earn as much as he wants or resign," Vice-Minister of Health Krzysztof Kuszewski said ambiguously yesterday when asked what he had to offer for doctors in the Lomza voivodship who had handed in their notice. In protest against low pay in the ambulance service, around 150 doctors employed therein (mostly as their second job) handed in their resignations earlier this week, and those are scheduled to take effect on July 1. Meeting with doctors' representatives in Lomza, Kuszewski explained that he was not personally able to satisfy doctors' pay demands, adding that this was a problem their employer should settle through organisational changes introduced in the ambulance service. According to the vice-minister, the service is overstaffed and a reduction in their number would mean higher pay. Lomza voivod Mieczyslaw Baginski announced in turn that he would look for reserves to finance pay increases from his budget, while ambulance service director Andrzej Stalewski declared that a reform package would be ready within a week. He has asked the voivod to allocate an additional PLN 900,000 for pay increases, agreeing that rates per hour in the ambulance service are embarrassing, even compared to low rates elsewhere in the health sector. "The vice-minister has obviously not come to Lomza with a sack of money, and is merely suggesting that we alter the service's functioning and look for savings," protesters observed after the meeting. Meanwhile, the protest committee of the National Union of Doctors (OZZL) is scheduled to meet today to decide if doctors in other regions should follow suit in this form of protest. Kuszewski also met with health service representatives in Bialystok, where he encouraged them to speed up the process of transforming health service institutions into financially autonomous companies. Doctors fear that this might lead to lay-offs, although most health institutions in the Bialystok voivodship have already taken steps to be restructured in anticipation of the national health insurance reform. (Based on 4 April 1997 issues of: Gazeta Wyborcza No. 79, p. 4; Rzeczpospolita No. 79, p. 1). ------------------------------------------------------------ CBOS: Politicians Less Trusted ============================================================ Since January, public confidence in prominent coalition and opposition politicians has dropped, a CBOS poll for March reported. Jacek Kuron (Freedom Union) remains the most trusted politician with a 68 percent rating, followed by Sejm Speaker Jozef Zych-65 percent, President Aleksander Kwasniewski-62 percent, Tadeusz Mazowiecki (Freedom Union)-54 percent, Premier Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz-53 percent (8 percent drop from January), central bank president Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz- 46 percent (8 percent drop), Aleksander Malachowski (Labour Union)-45 percent, Polish Peasants Party leader Waldemar Pawlak-42 percent (9 percent drop), Foreign Minister Dariusz Rosati-40 percent, Solidarity and AWS leader Marian Krzaklewski-39 percent. Confidence in politicians occupying the lower regions of the trust ratings also dropped: by 7 percent towards leader of Solidarity's Mazowsze chapter Maciej Jankowski, by 7 percent towards ex-foreign minister Andrzej Olechowski, by 6 percent towards Minister of Administration and Internal Affairs Leszek Miller as well as towards ex-president Lech Walesa and Labour Union leader Ryszard Bugaj.(Based on 4 April 1997 issue of Gazeta Wyborcza No.79, p. 4) ------------------------------------------------------------ No Polish Troops for Albania ============================================================ The Government Defence Committee (KSORM) decided yesterday, April 3, that Poland would only be sending medical aid and not troops or policing personnel to Albania. Deputy Foreign Minister Robert Mroziewicz said after the Committee's meeting yesterday that a military transport carrying humanitarian aid would be flying to Albania within the next few days. Defence Minister Stanislaw Dobrzanski said that the commission responsible for analysing the offers of supplying armaments and avionics for the Huzar attack helicopter had concluded talks with the bidders. However, he said that it would be some time before the final decisions are made. The Committee were highly critical of the performance of Poland's meteorological services, which failed to issue any advance warning of the gale-force winds of last week. Mroziewicz also said that the Committee had decided to allocate 5 million zloty out of budget reserves for undertakings related to the implementation of the international convention banning chemical warfare. Poland must urgently dispose of stockpiles of adamsite amassed by the Germans in Poland during World War II. The Committee decided yesterday to set up three special teams. One will deal with crisis situations and be headed by deputy interior minister Zbigniew Sobotka, another will be led by economic minister Wieslaw Kaczmarek and will be in charge of the coordination of the arms trade, while the third, will be headed by one of Kaczmarek's deputies and will be preoccupied with the state of the country's defence preparedness.(Based on 4 April 1997 issues of Rzeczpospolita No. 79, p. 2; Nowa Europa No. 79. p. 2). ------------------------------------------------------------ Tuberculosis Rate Still High ============================================================ Although the rate of tuberculosis in Poland is dropping, it still remains one of the highest in the world: in 1995 over 18,000 Poles suffered from the illness and each year over 1,000 Poles die from it. The rate of contagious disease in Poland is growing, among others due to the policy of open borders and increased population migration.(Based on 4 April 1997 issue of Zycie Warszawy No.79, p. 4) ------------------------------------------------------------ WSI: Pay Increases Planned? ============================================================ According to unofficial sources quoted by Gazeta Wyborcza, the Defence Ministry (MON) is planning pay increases for senior officers in the military information services (WSI), and new nominations for generals are expected in military intelligence and counter-intelligence. The respective decisions are said to have been adopted shortly after ex-chief of Staff Tadeusz Wilecki informed the military prosecutor of instances of the misusing of the WSI for political purposes. Defence Minister Stanislaw Dobrzanski confirmed yesterday that he had recommended pay raises for WSI commanders, but stressed that this had nothing to do with politics. Adding that the timing was merely a coincidence, he stressed that no final decision had yet been adopted. If endorsed, this would mean higher pay (by around PLN 200) for around 10 senior WSI officers. Meanwhile, Solidarity Elections Action (AWS) representative Romuald Szeremietiew believes that the military information services have played a significant role in Wilecki's dismissal. "Whenever there are promotions and pay raises, we should obviously ask why they have been offered," he observes. (Based on Gazeta Wyborcza No. 79, 4 April 1997, p. 4). ############################## News - Economy and Business ############################## ------------------------------------------------------------ NIFs to Hit Stock Exchangein Late June ============================================================ The mass privatisation programme's 15 National Investment Funds will hit the Warsaw Stock Exchange in late June after the Securities Commission (KPW) yesterday permitted their public trading. Holders of mass privatisation certificates will be able to exchange them into NIF stock as of May 12, Deputy Treasury Minister Ewa Freyberg said. KPW Chairman Jacek Socha said that the introduction of NIFs onto the exchange will confirm Poland's leadership among Central and Eastern European capital markets. Also, the move will expand the Polish market and combine its public and non- public segments "because the NIFs are public, while the portfolio companies are predominately non-public." This will not hurt the market, Socha said, "since all the funds have approved the reporting requirements for the public market." In all, 31,026,185 shares of each fund will be released onto the WSE, including the 26,372,257 shares offered by the Treasury in exchange for mass privatisation certificates (25,672,257 shares corresponding to the number of certificates collected by citizens by Nov. 22, 1996, plus 400,000 shares set aside for complaints and 300,000 set aside for the execution of a Constitutional Tribunal ruling dated Sept 3, 1996). Moreover, the government has allocated 4,653,928 shares as remuneration for management companies. WSE Chairman Wieslaw Rozlucki said that the NIFs' entry onto the exchange would make it possible to increase the exchange's capital by more than 10 percent. He added that stock investors would now have a wider choice because they would receive direct access to 500 companies covered by the mass privatisation programme. It is not certain how many mass privatisation certificates are held in private hands and how large a percentage of the certificates has been soaked up by large institutional investors and banks like PRO BP and Pekao SA. Newspapers report that the Catholic station Radio Maryja has also been collecting certificates to help the Gdansk shipyard. Some unconfirmed reports suggest that the station has amassed as many as 1 million certificates. After the certificates hit the exchange, the market will determine the NIFs' real value, analysts say, and it will quickly become evident which fund is the best and which is the worst. The price of an NIF certificate currently hovers around Zl 150 on the secondary market.(Based on the 4 April 1997 issues of Rzeczpospolita, No. 79, p. 1; Nowa Europa, No. 79, p. 3; and Zycie Warszawy, No. 79, p. 1). ------------------------------------------------------------ Shipbuilders Prepare to Resume Work ============================================================ Some 800 of Gdansk's shipworkers may resume work next week after Pekao SA bank reportedly promised a loan for the completion of a ship currently under construction. Sources suggest the bank will also provide money for the building of another ship, a bulk carrier ordered by Germany's Schoeller. The Solidarity for Gdansk Shipyard association, which is raising funds for the bankrupt enterprise, announced a new issue of Zl 14 million worth of help-the-yard tokens distributed among the public. The first batch of Zl 17 million worth of tokens has nearly sold out, the association's Aleksandra Mietlicka told reporters. It has not been disclosed as yet who will invest in the resumption of production at the yard. Pekao SA Spokeswoman Beata Wojcik said that talks are in progress with the potential investor "even though a formal application in the matter has yet to be received." Roman Galezewski, vice chairman of the shipyard's Solidarity organisation, said that the ship completion project is "excellent business" requiring little investment. The ship is 60-percent finished and 80 percent of the material needed for its construction has already been purchased, Galezewski said. (Based on the 4 April 1997 issues of Nowa Europa, No. 79, p. 5; and Rzeczpospolita, No. 79, p. 7). ------------------------------------------------------------ NBP Ceases to Finance Budget Deficit ============================================================ The Finance Ministry has decided that the NBP central bank will no longer finance the state budget deficit. The decision is congruent with the new Constitution (which must yet be endorsed in a nation-wide referendum), banning government institutions from financing the state deficit by drawing credit from the central bank. NBP President Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz told Gazeta Wyborcza that the Ministry's decision and the new Constitution's ban on the NBP's financing the budget deficit will serve to reduce inflation. She explained that financing the deficit by the NBP stoked inflation because in essence it would print empty money, thereby increasing the money supply. The NBP President noted that until now, successive budget laws had forced the central bank into buying Treasury bills as a means of financing the deficit. Moreover, those laws overrode a provision contained in a law on the NBP, which limited the value of Treasury bills purchased by the central bank to 2 percent of planned budget receipts. In Gronkiewicz-Waltz's opinion, the fact that the central bank will no longer finance the deficit may also increase the attractiveness of Treasury papers because the government will be forced to seek other sources of financing the deficit. * Another article of the new Constitution stipulates that public debt cannot exceed 60 percent of GDP. In 1996, public debt amounted to almost PLN185.4 billion or 51.2 percent of the GDP. Poland's foreign debt owned to the Paris and London Clubs, totalling almost PLN106 billion, constitutes a large part of the aforementioned sum. The remainder of the public debt is made up of the state budget's domestic debts (for example loans obtained through the sale of Treasury papers).(Based on 4 April 1997 issue of Gazeta Wyborcza No.79, p.25) ------------------------------------------------------------ Hop Growers Protest ============================================================ Over 300 hop growers demonstrated yesterday (April 3) in front of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food and the Premier's Chancellery buildings in Warsaw demanding state protection for domestic hop growers. In recent months, hop growers have encountered major problems in selling hop following last year's hop glut: Polish breweries need an estimated 2600 tons of hop per year while last year's harvest yielded 3400 tons. The planters are demanding that the remainder by bought by the Agricultural Market Agency but this year's budget law does not provide funds for that purpose. Hop growers claim that the present problems are also being caused by German restrictions on Polish hop exports. A delegation from the protesters was received by Deputy Premier and Agriculture Minister Roman Jagielinski, who assured that he would motion for the emergency procurement of hop. At the same time he pointed out that such a measure could only be taken at the expense of the procurement of other agricultural products, especially dairy ones and grain. Jagielinski also promised to motion for preferential credits for hop procurement and processing, which would bear only a 6-8 percent annual interest. Some Polish breweries buy hop abroad because it is cheaper than hop grown at home. Hop production in Poland is expensive because plantations are widely dispersed and the yield is low while capital input is high. Representatives of the Hop Growers Union have been invited to participate in the preparation a programme for developing Polish hop production.(Based on 4 April 1997 issue of Rzeczpospolita No.79, p. 9; Nowa Europa No.79, p 5) ------------------------------------------------------------ Gdansk Refinery Takes over Jedlicze ============================================================ The Gdansk refinery is to take over 75 per cent of Jedlicze, a small refinery in the south of Poland. A letter of intent was signed Wednesday. The company that will emerge as a result of the deal will hold 61 per cent of the home lubricants market, Chairman of the Gdansk refinery Wlodzimierz Dyrka said yesterday. The operation is another step towards establishing two competing fuel producer groups: centred around the Gdansk refinery and around the Plock refinery. The Gdansk refinery is the second largest, after Plock, national producer of fuels. Last year it processed almost 3 million tons of oil, but its performance was not as good as in 1995; with the 14 per cent increase in its revenue, up to 3.2 billion zloty, the company's net profits decreased from 177 million to 71.7 million zloty and its net profit amounted to 46 million as against 125.1 million zloty in 1995. Owing to the release of fuel prices on February 13 of this year the price of fuel produced by refineries will depend on world prices for raw materials and on market demand. On Wednesday the refinery management reduced the wholesale price of diesel oil by 30 zloty per ton. The refinery is preparing for the privatisation programme for the fuel industry, which has been endorsed by the government. The enterprise is to contribute to the Polska Nafta holding 75 per cent of its shares while employees will get 15 per cent. Until the end of April offers from strategic investors will be accepted. The privatisation process is expected to be completed by the end of next year at the earliest.(Based on 4 April 1997 issue of Gazeta Wyborcza No.79, p.24) ------------------------------------------------------------ Saint Gobain's New Plant Opens ============================================================ Polfloat Saint-Gobain glassworks, the largest French investment project in Poland, was opened yesterday in Strzemieszyce near Dabrowa Gornicza. The DM 180-million facility will offer jobs to 280 employees, manufacturing 550 tons of float glass per day. Initially, approximately 50 percent of its production will be exported, but domestic demand is expected to grow in the coming years. "The Polish government has granted us no concessions," general director Guy Rolli stressed yesterday. The glassworks has been constructed just outside the Katowice Special Economic Zone, and Saint Gobain's request to expand has been turned down. The concern's new project in cooperation with the South Korean glass producer Hanglas is likely to be located within the Zone, however, where a DM 55-million car window factory is to be built. Saint Gobain has invested DM 250 million in Poland since 1993, and it now employs a workforce of over 1,200 in its 10 facilities in Poland. (Based on 4 April 1997 issues of: Rzeczpospolita No. 79, p. 9; Nowa Europa No. 79, p. 5). ------------------------------------------------------------ Rumours on Russian-Polish Fishing Dispute Dispelled ============================================================ Neither the Russian environmental protection authority, nor the fishing authority have any objections concerning the Polish fishing boats currently operating in the Sea of Okhotsk. Vice-Minister Amerkhan Amerkhanov of the environmental authorities stated yesterday (Apr. 3) that Polish vessels were respecting the relevant fishing agreement, and, since the case of the trawler Aquarius (detained in late February and released about four weeks later) had been settled, none of the boats had had problems with the environmental protection inspectorate. Vice-Minister Galina Shapovalova of the Russian fishing authority also said that the Polish boats currently fishing in the Sea of Okhotsk were not violating any legal regulations. Polish Minister of Transport and Shipping Boguslaw Liberadzki has requested Aleksandr Rodin, the head of the Russian fishing authority, to clarify rumours of alleged objections raised by the Russian side concerning the legality of fishing by Polish boats in the Sea of Okhotsk. As well as this issue, the Polish side is making every effort to gain authorisation to transfer a part of the fishing limit for Alaska pollack which it had been granted in the Bering Sea to the Sea of Okhotsk.(Based on 4 April 1997 issue of Rzeczpospolita No. 79, p. 9). ------------------------------------------------------------ Economists on Threats to Free Market ============================================================ At a seminar on economic legislative initiatives held in Warsaw yesterday, members of the Polish Economists Association expressed concern over the threats to Poland's free market economy posed by the excessive powers of executive authorities in issuing legislative acts by way of administrative decisions. In a recently published report, the Association distinguished three main areas of threat to the free market: - undermining the security of economic turnover and burdening companies with the cost of introducing legislative changes. An example of this is the finance minister's power to revoke or change - on the grounds of protecting public interest - decisions issued by fiscal chambers. - limiting competition, for example by granting partial excise tax exemptions to selected companies. - political and property corruption: state interventionism increases administration workers' influence on the allocation of goods, services and privileges, thereby opening the floodgates of corrupt practices. The authors of the report believe that the above threats necessitate the introduction of legislative changes. (Based on 4 April 1997 issue of Nowa Europa No.79, p. 7) ------------------------------------------------------------ Czech Skoda Eyes Star Truck Maker ============================================================ The Czech Republic's state-owned Skoda car-makers are interested in buying into Poland's Star truck company through taking over the stock currently held by the government, yesterday's Financial Times reported. The Treasury would not confirm the report but one official told Rzeczpospolita that "the Treasury may sell the Star stock it holds, but it is not known when." The official added that the transaction would require all the necessary pre-privatisation procedures, including financial analyses and a public invitation to negotiation. Star was privatised in 1994 as a result of a bank-led arrangement with creditors. The government holds less than 46 percent of the company's stock, including a pool of shares set aside for employees. Sobieslaw Zasada Centrum is the second largest shareholder in Star with 28 percent of the stock soaked up on the secondary market.(Based on the 4 April 1997 issue of Rzeczpospolita, No. 79, p. 8). ------------------------------------------------------------ Poland Blacklisted in U.S. Trade Report ============================================================ Poland is again listed among the 46 countries putting up various trade barriers against U.S. businesses in the latest annual report released by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. The report, which examines the United States' commercial relations with other countries, criticises the Polish system for product safety certification, which the report believes is incompatible with international standards. The office is critical of Poland's practice of requiring the testing of foreign products. Still, the authors of the report concede that Poland is reforming this system. In the protection of international intellectual property rights, the Polish government has made major progress, the report states, helping reduce piracy of American copyrights. However, piracy and copyright violations continue, the report warns. The office is also critical of the sanitary regulations and controls used by Poland with regard to imported plants, which the office believes hits American grain exporters. (Based on the 3 April 1997 issue of Nowa Europa, No. 78, p. 3). ############################## Analyses and Commentaries ############################## ------------------------------------------------------------ Fishermen Feel Neglected by Government ============================================================ Polish fishermen have been protesting loudly for some time now over the intrusion of Danish fishing vessels into the Polish economic zone. They complain about unfair competition and the risk of overfishing in Poland's fishing grounds. However, the Ministry of Transport and Shipping maintain that foreign boats were only allowed into the Polish zone because the Polish fishermen were not using up the herring and sprat quotas awarded to them anyway. In keeping with international maritime convention, in such cases littoral states should open their fishing grounds to other countries on specified terms. The Danes, who incidentally signed contracts with Polish companies, are abiding by the relevant agreements and regulations, the Ministry insists. The grave financial plight of Poland's fishermen is due in part to the fact that the bulk of the profits from their catch ends up in the hands of middlemen. While retail prices of fish keep going up, procurement prices hardly change at all. The fishermen themselves are to blame for this problem because they are unable to organise and set up the kind of fish exchanges other countries have, which are controlled by fishing organisations. The Poles accuse their Danish counterparts of sending huge 40-metre boats from the North Sea to the Baltic; these boats are powered by engines that are several times more powerful than the Polish equivalent while their fishing capacity is forty or more times greater. The claims of overfishing are backed up by Dr. Jan Netzl, of the Sea Fisheries Institute of Gdynia, who claims that the quotas awarded by the International Baltic Fisheries Commission are much too high. In the case of cod, overfishing is already an undisputed fact. According to the Gdynia scientist, the quotas are based on the level of biomass in the Baltic in the 1980s, which was then very high, and that ironically was due to pollution, chiefly mineral fertilisers washed from the fields and organic effluent dumped into the sea. (Based on 3 April 1997 issue of Nowa Europa No. 78, p. 5). The PNB is a non-profit organization publishing a daily digest of the Polish press. No legal responsibility is accepted for any errors or omissions or misleading statements, however caused, in either source or final texts. <---- End Forwarded Message ----> From austria@it.com.pl Fri Apr 4 07:38:52 1997 From: austria@it.com.pl Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 16:39:04 +0200 (MET DST) To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Dear colleagues, reading Chris Chase Dunn's excellent book Rise and Demise I wondered, though, whether or not the environmental and sexism factors in the rise and decline of systems were properly enough taken into account. Although the issue(s) somewhat are being dealt with, I think that world system research - also in its quantitative variety - could and must do more in the future. In line with Chris' invitation to join him in the debate, here are some points which I'd like to make: 1) brutal deforestation by the Romans in Dalmatia was said to be one of the reasons of Mediterranean agriculture at that time. In general terms, here is what I have recently written on the present capitalist world economy and the environment. Perhaps it is of use for a further debate about 'Rise and Demise' (an absolute must, by the way, for all students of the capitalist world economy - and I add - for all diplomats alike!) 2) the amplification of the discourse of development theory, that still tends to be sometimes fixed towards such monetary dimensions as growth and distribution alone, might be somewhat surprising. Over recent years, there has emerged a new sub-field of development and transformation theory, that is sensitive to the concerns of 'the new social movements' around the globe (Bello, 1989; Friberg, 1988; UNDP, 1993, 1994; Woehlke, 1987, 1993). The situation of women and the situation of the environment emerge as one of the prime issues of development (Benard and Schlaffer, 1985; Betz and Bruene, 1995; L. R. Brown, 1992; Dubiel, 1993; Frank and Fuentes-Frank, 1990; Leggett, 1991; Saffioti, 1978; Seager and Olson, 1986). Cross-national analysis about economic and social preconditions and the quality of the environment are relatively new (Beckerman, 1992; Shafik and Bandyopadhyay, 1992). 3) It is hard to construct a single indicator of the environmental situation of a country. The following indicators are being used widely: the greenhouse index per 10 million people, energy consumption per capita, and the annual rate of deforestation. A fourth indicator, per capita carbon dioxide emissions, is also available. The greenhouse index measures the net emissions of three major greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane and chlorofluorocarbons. The index weights each gas according to its heattrapping quality in carbon dioxide equivalents and expresses them in metric tonnes of carbon per capita. Energy consumption, on the other hand, refers to commercial forms of primary energy - petroleum (crude oil, natural gas liquids, and oil from non-conventional sources), natural gas, solid fuels (coal, lignite, and other derived fuels), and primary electricity (nuclear, hydroelectric, geothermal, and other) - all converted into oil equivalents. Energy consumption refers to domestic primary energy supply before transformation to other end-use fuels and is calculated as indigenous production plus imports and stock changes, minus exports and international marine bunkers. The use of firewood, dried animal excrement, and other traditional fuels, is not taken into account for lack of international comparative data. Energy consumption per capita can be considered as perhaps the most important single indicator of the factors, that lead to global environmental degradation. The two environmental indicators have a very high positive correlation with each other. The third indicator, annual rate of deforestation or total forest area (under proper consideration of arable land per total land), is connected with the first and the second process in a complex fashion. For the future of the world environment, deforestation is the most alarming contemporary process of environmental degradation. Forest burning directly leads to a greatly increased CO2 emission; deforestation reduces the world's future capacity to produce oxygen and to adapt to increasing CO2 levels. To put it into a drastic comparison with medicine: the patient suffers from cancer on the left lung (the green house-effect), and the doctors decide to extract the still functioning right lung (the world-wide CO2 --> O2 photosynthetic regenerative capacity of the world's tropical forests). Due to the destruction of the outer ozone-layer of the earth, this fatal process will still be increased. Each second, a rainforest area as large as a football field, is being demolished on purpose (Launer, 1992). 4) Among the factors, leading to deforestation, the export-oriented economy, the use of tropical wood in the world paper and furniture industry, and the burning of wood for cooking and heating purposes are the three most commonly mentioned factors. A great number of scholars, among them Leggett et al., 1991, tried to bring deforestation rates systematically into a causal relationship with the kind of dependent capitalist development, analysed amongst others by Bornschier and Chase Dunn, 1985. The creation of large plantations in Latin America for meat exports to the United States of America is often causally linked in the literature to the problem of deforestation (Launer, 1992). Brazil's supposed role is of special importance here, because Brazil still has a share of 27.5% of the world's tropical forests. Indonesia's year-long wood-export drive has often been mentioned as the most paradigmatic case of the influence of the capitalist world economy on the rapid disappearance of the world's forests. The role of the peasantry in dependent capitalism was also often mentioned in this context. Extensive tropical agriculture, implanted by 500 years of dependent development, described by the Peruvian Marxist José Carlos Mariateguí in his classic '7 Essays', and later on analysed by Feder, 1972, is thought to be one of the main factors leading to the alarming rates of deforestation. Small scale peasants - the dependencia argument runs - are evicted throughout the countries of Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Pacific from their meagre holdings by the land-hungry process of dependent agricultural capitalism for the sake of export-oriented breeding for meat production and tropical export crops. But what is already commonplace in the former 'Third World' could become a rule of the day also in the former 'Second World'. Forests are being cut down not only in Indonesia and in Northern Borneo at an amazing speed, but also in the Warmia region of the Mazurian lakes in Poland and in other parts of Eastern Europe. Forest cutting for export purposes, disregarding the social and ecological rights of the local populations, could serve, a dependencia-minded argument could maintain, the short-term profit interests of the old and new export-oriented elites. In the former or continuously communist countries of Eastern Europe and the USSR-successor-states, environmental quality poses indeed one of the main concerns of development planning nowadays (World Resources Institute, 1992). Eastern Europe's transformation could be again seen as a testing ground for various development paradigms and strategies. 5) The globalization argument would emphasise, that, contrary to the optimistic expectations about an improvement in the environmental situation due to the new presence of transnational capital, the adoption of an energy-consuming 'US-style'- model would mean a significant long-term increase of various emissions. The global atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration increased from 280 ppm in pre-industrial times to 315.8 in 1959, to stand at 354 in 1990. World carbon dioxide emissions increased from 6002 millions of metric tons in 1950 to 21863 millions of metric tons in 1989. Over the last 100 years, the earth's temperature rose by 0.6 degrees; from 1970 to today, the rise was 0.3 degrees. The earth's temperature will rise by a further 3 degrees until 2100, if contemporary emission trends continue (Stiftung, 1996). Over the last 160000 years, there has been a close correlation between carbon-dioxide concentrations and changes in the world temperature (Gore, 1994; Leggett, 1991). Roughly, a change of +- 100 ppm carbon dioxide historically led to a change of +- 12.5 degrees Celsius. From 1750 to today, carbon dioxide emissions amount to 800 thousand million tons of CO2.. Although the temperature change factor might be smaller, and a rise by 100 ppm CO2. might lead to a temperature rise of 1.1 degrees, the heating of the atmosphere in the coming decades will be enormous: Graph 5.1 Charles D. Keeling's data series from Mauna Loa - atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse and ozone-depleting gases, 1959-90, and the trend for the next 60 years our own calculations from Keeling's data, World Resources Institute, 1992, using the trend-line extrapolation of the EXCEL 5.0 programme (3-order polynomial expression) Desertification, storms, flooding in many parts of the world during the winter seasons, as well as famine and droughts during the summer months could be the results of these recent increases in carbon dioxide levels and are indeed already a reality in many parts of the world. There were 16 major disasters in the 1960s, 29 in the 1970s, and 70 in the 1980s. Since 1967, 1.3 million people died from droughts, 800000 in cyclones, 600000 in earth quakes and 300000 in floods (UNDP, 1994). The last time, that a carbon dioxide concentration as high as around 300 ppm was reached in the earth's history was around 130000 before our time; from that moment onwards, global temperatures and carbon dioxide concentration ratios fell to 20000 before our time, when a level of just 180 ppm was reached. 6) World pollution is even a clear statistical function of the ups and downs of the longer swings in the world economy, most notably the Kuznets cycle and the Kondratieff cycle. The World Resources Institute has provided information on the basis of the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Centre about CO2 emissions in the world from 1950 onwards. The growth rates of CO2 consumption clearly correspond to the Kondratieff and Kuznets cycle analysis about economic growth, which we introduced in Chapter 3. Graph 5.2: CO2 emissions and their growth rates from 1950 onwards Legend: World CO2 emissions from fossil fuel consumption and cement manufacture, 1950-89. Left hand scale: emissions in millions of metric tons per year; right-hand scale: growth rates. The graph shows also the polynomial expression (6th order) of the growth rates, as calculated by EXCEL 5.0, as well as the gliding averages on a 9-year basis. The dark line is the linear regression trend of CO2 emissions, projected for 5 consecutive periods 7) It is clear, however, that some Western countries on the other hand use technical and civilisational standards that indeed constitute a significant improvement in terms of the environment compared to the preceding regime. Table 5.1 now summarises the most important environmental indicators for the region before or during the start of the transformation process by international comparison: Table 5.1: environmental quality in Eastern Europe and the former USSR in comparison to the US, the UK, France, (West) Germany, Sweden and Austria Country Environmental degradation indicator CO2 SO2 NOX % forest defoliation per capita emissions (tons) (moderate to severe) (in industry) Albania 3.04 15.6 2.8 - Bulgaria 11.87 114.6 16.7 24.9% former CS 14.47 178.9 60.7 33.0% East Germany - 313.3 42.6 16.4% Hungary 6.05 115.2 24.5 12.7% Poland 11.54 103.3 39.1 31.9% Romania 9.16 8.6 16.8 - former Yug. 5.61 69.6 8.0 22.6% (Slovenia) former USSR - 32.4 14.6 35.0% (Kalinin- grad oblast) USA 19.68 83.2 79.6 - UK 9.89 62.1 43.9 28.0% France 6.38 27.1 30.1 - W-Germany 10.48 24.2 48.4 15.9% Sweden 7.0 25.9 35.4 12.9% Austria 6.82 16.3 27.7 4.4% Source: our own compilations from World Resources Institute, 1992 8) Deforestation in Eastern Europe and the former USSR is already more severe than in most parts of Western Europe. What will happen to these forests in the course of world-market oriented development? To this we must add, that in a country like Poland environmental concerns do not receive the priority that they should receive. Only 34% of the population is served by waste water treatment plants (EU average 70%); municipal waste services reach only 55% of the population (EU average: 96%; our own compilations from UNDP, 1995). The basic argument of a globalization-oriented explanation of environmental quality on a world scale (Launer, 1992; Woehlke, 1987) would run as follows: dependent development not only leads to social strains and imbalances, with all it's economic dynamics that it might initiate at the same time; it also means a further strain on the natural resources and the environment by the energy-, space-, forest- and individual-traffic intensive life-style that the world-wide market economy, especially in it's North American variety, brings about. Although some forest-, energy- and emission-saving might be the initial consequence of the introduction of more modern and western technologies, the basic problem of dependent and polarising development would remain on the agenda. Profit-oriented development between unequal partners will always, globalization theory argues, lead to forms of 'unequal exchange'. Concretely, the world-wide market economy and the new international division of labour will (i) transfer energy and pollution intensive industries to the countries of the periphery and the semi-periphery (ii) industrial waste from the centres will be increasingly attempted to be deposited in those regions (iii) export-intensive industrialisation and the debt crisis will mean an almost reckless use of remaining natural resources, especially forest areas, for export purposes to earn badly needed foreign cash, or to destroy forests to gain land for tropical and sub-tropical export agriculture. International tourism (including it's 'soft-body'-component), air traffic, individual traffic and the 'western' lifestyle, that begins with the plastic bag, ranging over well-known soft drinks - preferably from the tin-can - to equally well-known western TV-serials, will in the end more than negatively compensate the initially positive contributions, that economic transformation, market mechanisms and the recession of the 1980s will have meant for the countries of the periphery and the semi-periphery of Eastern Europe and the countries of the South in terms of the environment. Poland produces today more waste per inhabitant already (1500 kg per year) than Spain, Italy, France, the UK or Germany (1021 kg) (Wprost, 20.09. 1995: 52; Tausch/de Boer, 1997). Poland might have new factories for paper recycling with western technology, but the raw material - old paper - is being imported from Western countries. 9) In addition, regional development authorities throughout Eastern Europe and in other semi-peripheral regions will hope to attract foreign buying power in exchange for local property rights in environmentally still undamaged regions. Insert here what you like: Caribbean island coasts, still untouched regions in Eastern Europe, like the Mazurian lakes, the Tatra mountains, et cetera. They will share the fate - dependency theory would tell us - of the sell-out at the Spanish Mediterranean coast, wide areas of the Austrian Alps and many other places in Europe. In other zones, unabated deforestation will develop, not unlike many Third-World countries. Unequal environmental exchange will increasingly affect (semi)peripheral regions in greater geographical distance from the centres; mass tourism to the tropical zones of the world will cause a tremendous increase in air-pollution from air-traffic that these 'island get-aways' bring about. For these reasons, environmental indicators are so negatively determined by transnational penetration. An important control variable in our analysis of the deforestation process is the percentage of total land, devoted to agriculture. At the one hand, it allows for the fact, that large regions of the world are affected by a growing desertification; on the other hand, this control variable duly considers the negative effect, that the expansion of world agriculture had on the world's woodlands in a historic perspective. 10) Europe in particular must not only come to terms with the environmental destruction, to which it contributes disproportionately on a global scale, Europe must also lead the way in bringing about a lean and socially just state at the same time. Social justice, by and large, means gender justice today (UNDP, 1995). The eastward expansion of the Union will further increase this problem dimension. Faced by the marginalization of women on the labour markets due to the workings of globalization, Europe is tempted to spend its way out to maintain their position in a global context. The eastward expansion of the Union will mean, that millions of up to now economically marginalized women will become citizens of the Union, whose fate has to be taken care of by Brussels at least in some way. Aggregate societal data suggest that after the transformation, the situation of women in Eastern and Central Europe did relatively deteriorate in many ways (Cornia, 1993, 1994). Since Cornia's very telling research results are easily available internationally, it might suffice here to quote some aggregate UNDP data to further illustrate our point. Our aggregate data show, how difficult a relatively rapid integration of the more traditionalist, rural and in many ways backward East into the European Union could become. Only the Czech Republic is socially by any means on a comparable level with the more highly developed countries of Western Europe: Table 5.2: the marginalization of women, social devastation and decay in former communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe in comparison to the European Union countries Indicator CS H BUL PL ROM ALB EU maternal mortality per 100000 live births 14 21 40 15 210 100 9 sulphur and nitrogen emissions per capita 239 141 - 141 - - 74 Rapes per 100000 women 12 31 21 19 - - 17 homicides by men per 100000 1.3 3.5 4.0 2.5 1.6 prisoners per 100000 inhabitants - 142 160 204 - - 59 suicides by men per 100000 30 58 23 24 13 - 19 total health expen- diture as % of GDP 5.9 6.0 5.4 5.1 3.9 - 8.2 mean years of schooling female population >25y. 8.6 9.9 6.4 7.8 6.7 5.2 9.9 mean years of schooling male population >25y. 9.8 9.7 7.6 8.5 7.5 7.2 10.3 tertiary graduates as % of population of nor- mal graduate age 11.8 6.4 6.4 6.6 2.2 1.7 12.6 average age of women at first marriage 22.2 22.4 21.1 22.8 21.1 20.4 25.1 % of seats in parlia- ment occupied by women 9% 7% 13% 9% 3% 6% 13% human development index rank on the world scale 27. 31. 48. 49. 72. 76. - _____________________________________________________________ Source: our own compilations from UNDP (HDR, 1994). The world rankings of the EU countries on the human development index are: Sweden 4. France 6. NL 9. UK 10. Germany 11. Austria 12. Belgium 13. DK 15. SF 16. LUX 17. IRE 21. Italy 22. Spain 23. Greece 25. Portugal 42. Gender empowerment, as it is known, combines parliamentary seats, held by women, the share of women in the total number of administrators and managers in a country, the share of women in the professional and technical workforce, and the share of women in earned income (UNDP, 1996). Table 5.3 shows the performance of the transformation countries in comparison to Western democracies: Table 5.3: gender empowerment CND 0.685 USA 0.645 Japan 0.445 NL 0.646 NOR 0.786 SF 0.710 France 0.437 SW 0.779 Spain 0.490 Australia 0.590 BLG 0.580 Austria 0.641 NZ 0.685 CH 0.594 UK 0.530 DK 0.718 GER 0.654 IRE 0.504 ITA 0.593 GRE 0.370 ISR 0.485 HUN 0.507 POL 0.431 BUL 0.486 Source: our own compilations from UNDP, 1996 Eastern Europe, finding itself at the absolute lower middle range of the continuum between backward and 'modern' societies, characterised by the values of education as an end in itself, self-realisation outside traditional role patterns, associated with child-bearing and the family, control of male aggressive behaviour and a developed social welfare system, socially belongs much more to the countries, still (semi-)characterized by traditional role patterns. In the industrialized world, countries as different as Japan, France, Israel and Greece also have a gender empowerment index lower than 0.500. They all have in common a certain secondary role of women in public life, as compared to the real world leaders in terms of emancipation, like the Protestant democracies in Scandinavia, the Netherlands and Canada. The unquestionable advances in the relative role of women, that were evident throughout the region before the year 1989, came to a grinding halt after the transformation. With the background of the general poverty levels, sketched above, the socially disruptive dimension of this conflict becomes evident. For the political economy of the world system, interesting research questions arise out of such tendencies. Does the market economy, especially in it's dependent variety, in the end really marginalize women furthermore, or does the (re)advent of full-fledged capitalism bring about a marked improvement in the social situation of women? There emerge very interesting results on the situation of women from our empirical investigations in Table 4.1. Three measures are used to further test the relationship between globalization and gender-related human development. One is maternal mortality, the second is the new UNDP gender-related development index, the third is the gender empowerment measure. The first and the third index are more distribution-oriented than the second indicator. Each year, 290 women per 100000 live births lose their lives in the moment of giving birth. What is the ultimate moment of happiness in a life for woman and man, to experience in togetherness the advent of a newly-born life, becomes the ultimate pain for millions of mothers around the world. They lose their lives due to the structural violence existing in the world system, they lose their lives in their ultimate moment of loneliness while giving birth, desolated and marginalized by a social order on the global level that produces more and more commodities, services and pollution but that forgets about the poor backyards, shanty towns and desolate clinics in the world poverty belts. In the industrialised countries of the OECD, maternal mortality is 11 per 100000. That is to say, at the global level there is an 'excess mortality' of 279 women per 100000 live births, considering the progress in medicine reached at the level of the western democracies. In Eastern Europe, maternal mortality already reaches 66 per 100000 live births, and in the developing countries, 420. All three indicators of the female situation de la vie are being significantly blocked by MNC penetration (see Table 4.1). 11) Our results indicate that dependency is by far the most important determinant of maternal mortality, and that the two dependency-related indicators: terms of trade and trade dependency co-determine the process of maternal mortality in the world system. Our results also indicate that gender empowerment and gender development are significantly and negatively influenced by MNC penetration (regression statistics follow in my original manuscript - which - I hope - will be available soon from the Archive) Kind regards yours Arno Tausch From austria@it.com.pl Fri Apr 4 07:52:04 1997 From: austria@it.com.pl Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 16:52:14 +0200 (MET DST) Subject: Tausch - comments on Arrighi's Long Century To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Arrighi's text is sheer delight for any world system scholar. I'd like to comment on some of the points made by him, making use of my 'Transnational Integration' piece: Arrighi wrote in (1995): 'Partial as the current revival of a self-regulating world market has actually been, it has already issued unbearable verdicts. Entire communities, countries, even continents, as in the case of sub-Saharan Africa, have been declared 'redundant', superfluous to the changing economy of capital accumulation on a world scale. Combined with the collapse of the world power and territorial empire of the USSR, the unplugging of these 'redundant' communities and locales from the world supply system has triggered innumerable, mostly violent feuds over 'who is more superfluous than whom', or, more simply, over the appropriation of resources that were made absolutely scarce by the unplugging' (Arrighi, 1995: 330) On the other hand, it is clear that nations like Cyprus, South Korea, Singapore, Antigua, Thailand, Malaysia, Mauritius, Botswana, Saint Vincent, Suriname, Turkey, Indonesia, China, the Solomon Islands, Pakistan, India, Bhutan, and Chad had a GNP growth rate of 5% or more per annum during 1980-93. What tendencies, then, do emerge from the multivariate analysis of international development in the post-1980/1989 world in 134 countries with fairly consistent and complete data? First, we mention our database: Final model: the database % labor force participation ratio (UNDP, 1996) % of the labour force in agriculture (UNDP, 1996; Fischer Weltalmanach, 1996) % of the labour force in industry (see: labour force agriculture) absolute GNP (UNDP, 1996) agricultural share in GDP (UNDP, 1996; Fischer Weltalmanach, 1996) average population growth (UNDP, 1996) economic growth 80-93, p.c. and year (UNDP, 1996) EU membership years (Fischer Weltalmanach, 1995, 1996) FDI per GDP (UNCTAD, 1996; Business Central Europe, 1996) human development index (UNDP) inflation 93 (UNDP, 1996) main telephone lines per 100 population (UNDP, 1996) mean years of schooling, population aged >25y military expenditures per GDP (UNDP, 1996) state sector size (government expenditures per GDP; UNDP 1996; Weltalmanach, 1995, 1996; World Resources Institute) structural heterogeneity (labour force share in agriculture divided by product share of agriculture; see labour force data) total fertility rate (UNDP, 1996) UN membership years (Weltalmanach, 1996, 1995) violation of political rights (1, democracy, to 7, dictatorship) (Stiftung Entwicklung und Frieden, 1996, based on Freedom House) violations of civil rights (see political rights) years of communist rule (Autorenkollektiv; Weltalmanach) The variables of the final model: absolute GNP growth 80-93 inflation 93 FDI per GDP UN membership years mean years of schooling absolute GNP FDI per GDP Years of Communist Rule population growth state sector size % labor force participation % labour force agric. % lf industry agr. share in GNP MILEX HDI violation of political rights violation of human rights Is Arrighi's hypothesis about the 'deregulatory logic' of post-1980 capitalism confirmed by the data? Under inclusion of the world of former 'real' socialism, the curve-linear effect of the development level on subsequent economic growth is partially taken over by variables, pertaining to the employment structure. Again, only the statistically significant effects, that cannot be explained by simple random, are being taken into account. Countries with a large labour force participation ratio, and hence, a relatively smaller industrial de-facto reserve army of employment, grow slower than countries at the middle income level with a still larger industrial reserve army outside agriculture and a relatively abundant supply of labour on the labour market. Our results from Chapter 4 about the (female) reserve army are again confirmed here, now on a more general level. One plausible reason for this shift in predictive power away from the Matthew's effect to the employment structure is the still preliminary character of income data from Eastern Europe. Wage flexibility in the urban sector seems to be another of the main underlying processes here. But on the other hand, predominantly rural societies at the present stage of globalization are being negatively affected by the ongoing urban bias in world development (M. Lipton). Above, we already drew attention to the fact of the structural development blocs in Europe. Seen from the perspective of Third World development, it is amazing to see how some European countries repeat the experience of what Armando Cordova once called 'structural heterogeneity' and what development sociologists today also call - somewhat differently from Michael Lipton - structural disarticulation. In terms of measurement, it boils down to the same effect: disarticulation, urban bias, structural heterogeneity - they all happen, whenever agriculture has a much larger share in national labour than in national product, reflecting the relative discrimination of the rural sector in society. The world map of structural disarticulation looks like the following: Map 9.1: The urban bias of world development Some of the most surprising data from this comparison about the urban bias are: Austria 4.0 Brazil 2.09 Germany 4.0 India 2.06 Israel 1.33 Japan 3.5 NL 1.25 New Zealand 1.11 Poland 4.5 UK 1.0 USA 2.14 Legend: employment share of agriculture, divided by product share of agriculture. For the ongoing debate about this 'urban bias', 'structural heterogeneity' or 'disarticulation' see Huang, 1995; Rothgeb, 1995, Wickrama and Mulford, 1996, as well as the earlier theoretical advances by Amin, 1976; Cordova, 1973, and Lipton, 1977. Our data analysis is based on EXCEL 7 and UNDP, 1996 Hence also the negative effect of agricultural employment on growth. The international system indeed seems to work like a single, huge, distribution coalition. Economic growth disproportionately favours countries with a long-established record of UN-membership. Participation in the distribution coalition allows for a better access to the distributed goods, while the predominantly rural societies of the 'Fourth' and 'Fifth' World are being excluded from the benefits. The human capital effort indeed pays off in terms of economic growth, and also state sector size affects growth in a way, as predicted by conventional economic theory. The size of the military sector significantly and negative affects economic growth. Again, our results from Chapter 4 are confirmed here. Former communist countries often stagnate, because their human capital effort is too low, because their state is still too big, because their wage flexibility is too low, because their military burden rate is still too high, and because their rural populations are being discriminated against. But per se, the tendencies of world society after 1980 during the new cyclical set-up seem to suggest, that a world political experience as a former communist nation does not block against subsequent economic growth. Also, the argument, that smaller nations with a low absolute GNP find it more difficult in world society, does not apply anymore, when we look into the whole set of determining conditions for 134 capitalist and post-communist societies in the world. By contrast: absolute market size is not a precondition of subsequent economic growth anymore, as successful island nations like Mauritius, show impressively. Our equation determines 46.6% of economic growth from 1980 onwards; the F-statistic for the whole equation is 8.05, with 120 degrees of freedom. Human development, on the other hand, is positively determined by a high agricultural share, and hence the absence of what Michael Lipton once called the 'urban bias of world development'. It is also being negatively determined by a high ratio of foreign direct investment penetration. Thus, recent findings of cross-national development research, most notably Huang (1995) are being confirmed anew. Our two statements are very well compatible with the essence of dependency theories. A development, that is dependent to a large extent on foreign capital, is socially polarising and regionally exclusive. The rural regions stagnate relatively, while the rich urban centres are receiving disproportionate shares of the newly created wealth. But ceteris paribus, it also emerges, that the human capital formation effort (mean years of schooling) is negatively related to the human development index, mainly because highly repressive totalitarian communist regimes - in the past - had a relatively good quantitative record in the education sector, that was connected with severe deficits in other areas of social policy. GROWTH 10,213 0,27658 -0,0449 -0,0038 0,04683 0,04623 -0,0412 -0,9458 -0,0299 -0,0034 1E-04 -0,372 -0,0035 -4,1729 2,44484 0,09678 0,02556 0,03757 0,02002 0,03517 0,01661 0,25246 0,01213 0,01112 0,0003 0,13 0,01406 3,1815 0,466 8,04862 120 4,177 2,858 -1,755 -0,1006 2,339 1,31457 -2,481 -3,746 -2,463 -0,308 0,33523 -2,861 -0,2517 UN memb.y mean y scho absoluteGNP FDI per GDP Years of Comm population gr state sector %labor force %lf agric. %lf industry agr.shareGP MILEX HDI constant HUMAN DEVELOPMENT UN memb.y mean y scho absoluteGNP FDI per GDP Years of Comm population gr state sector %labor force %lf agric. %lf industry agr.shareGP MILEX -0,0017 -0,0042 -6E-05 -0,003 -0,0018 -0,0002 -0,0134 0,00027 0,00053 -7E-06 0,02086 -0,0001 0,86611 0,0036 0,00087 0,0014 0,00069 0,0013 0,00062 0,00931 0,00045 0,00041 1,1E-05 0,00445 0,00052 0,08829 0,88 74,1983 121 -0,4828 -4,78 -0,0435 -4,383 -1,3488 -0,3169 -1,4343 0,59058 1,29988 -0,6638 4,691 -0,2103 UN memb.y mean y scho absoluteGNP FDI per GDP Years of Comm population gr state sector %labor force %lf agric. %lf industry agr.shareGP MILEX mean y scho absoluteGNP FDI per GDP Years of Comm population gr state sector viol hum rites %lf agric. %lf industry agr.shareGP MILEX employm -0,9723 -0,2063 0,06753 0,13692 2,14696 0,05062 1,33109 -0,2628 -0,2096 4,1E-05 2,07067 18,7369 0,63941 0,14877 0,2391 0,11011 1,10838 0,10571 1,61876 0,07624 0,06768 0,00188 0,73014 12,7789 0,293 4,60169 122 -1,5206 -1,387 0,28244 1,2435 1,93703 0,47887 0,82229 -3,4465 -3,0963 0,02195 2,836 mean y scho absoluteGNP FDI per GDP Years of Comm population gr state sector viol hum rites %lf agric. %lf industry agr.shareGP MILEX Source: our EXCEL 5.0 calculations from UNDP and other data sources, quoted above. As to the footnotes about the outprints, see Chapter 4. In terms of employment policy and labour force participation rates, Europe is not in a very lucky constellation right now: low population growth, a strong urban bias, high overall educational levels, combined with a high employment share of industry and a run-down of military expenditures all would suggest a still future lowering of the labour force participation rates, while in some European countries there is still a high agricultural employment share, which works as an additional constraint against a higher labour force participation ratio. Transnational integration and national disintegration - a synthesis So, again, what has been Osvaldo Sunkel's prediction more than 25 years ago? We have stated above, that Sunkel's main hypothesis consisted in saying: '...The advancement of modernization introduces, so to speak, a wedge along the area dividing the integrated from the segregated segments (...) The effects of the disintegration of each social class has important consequences for social mobility. The marginalized entrepreneur will probably add to the ranks of small or artesanal manufacture, or will abandon independent activity and become a middle class employee. The marginalized sectors of the middle class will probably form a group of frustrated lower middle class people trying to maintain middle class appearance without much possibility of upward mobility and terrorized by the danger of proletarization. The marginalized workers will surely add to the ranks of absolute marginality, where, as in the lower middle class, growing pools of resentment and frustration of considerable demographic dimension will accumulate (...) Finally, it is very probable that an international mobility will correspond to the internal mobility, particularly between the internationalized sectors (...) The process of social disintegration which has been outlined here probably also affects the social institutions which provide the bases of the different social groups and through which they express themselves. Similar tendencies to the ones described for the global society are, therefore, probably also to be found within the state, church, armed forces, political parties with a relatively wide popular base, the universities etc.' (Sunkel, 1972: 18-42). Income distribution data show, that large areas of the world are dominated by medium to high inequality, and that inequality decreased in some countries, but increased in others - especially in the former socialist countries after the transformation, and in industrialized nations themselves. So, 25 years after Sunkel's essay, parts of the periphery might be underway towards a partial redistribution and a partial re-integration of their marginal sectors, while polarization increases in the centres. This generalized hypothesis is also supported by our analysis of employment data, which, limited as they are, show, that while the South made at least some headway, the 'North' (and that, as usual, includes the very 'down under South' of Australia, New Zealand, and partially also Argentina, as correctly predicted by Wheelwright and his school a quarter of a century) has declined. Map 10.1: income inequality in the world system Legend: EXCEL 7.0 graph from World Bank WDR 1996 data (Table 5) and Moaddel, 1994 Map 10.2: capitalism and inequality growth/decline in the world system Legend: income distribution changes as measured by the 10 year standardized growth/decline in the share of the top 20% in total incomes. Calculated from World Bank, WDR, 1996 and Moaddel, 1994, using EXCEL 7.0 Map 10.3 unemployment in the world system Legend: EXCEL 7.0 maps from ILO World Labour Report and UNDP Human Development Report data. Data for Eastern Europe were supplemented by CSO (Central Statistical Office Warsaw) Poland Quarterly Statistics, IV, 3, Dec. 1996 This partial re-peripherization of the 'North' and 'far South' of the world system is accompanied by growing instances of how globalization in the economic sphere leads in these former zones of prosperity towards partial increases in human rights violations and more exclusive patterns of government. The 'Southernization' of the 'North' in the economic sphere is partially accompanied by 'southernization' in the political sphere. Suffice to say here, that in Europe we experienced the largest civil rights violations since the Second World War, and that unemployment in Germany now reaches almost Weimar proportions. Map 10.4: human rights violations in the world system Legend: our own compilations from Freedom House Sources/Stiftung Entwicklung und Frieden, 1996, and EXCEL 7.0 map system Map 10.5: international narcotics control priority areas Source: EXCEL 7.0 map on the basis of US Department of State (1996), 'International Narcotics Control Strategy Report', March Europe thus faces three very important decisions about the future: east-ward expansion of the European Union, European monetary union, and the structural internal reform of the Union. Faced with these decisions, an intellectual battle rages across the continent between euro-sceptics and integrationists, between federalists and nationalists, between centralists and regionalists. World systems research and development research provides radical, fascinating and novel answers to these old controversies. What is the evidence of cross-national quantitative research? (i) The process of globalization did not level-off the differences in wealth and well-being between the different regions of the world, especially between Europe and the Mediterranean southern periphery of Europe. Far from granting a real free trade regime, Europe has petrified existing patterns of the division of labour between the centres and the peripheries. Poverty, unemployment, homelessness and other negative social phenomena become more and more relevant, not just for periphery and semi-periphery countries, but for the former centres in Europe themselves. We are evidencing a peripherization of the European landmass, while the countries of the Western Pacific and the Eastern Indian Ocean are the future centres of world capitalist development. (ii) Europe is characterized by the very mix of conditions, which, on a world-wide scale, block against rapid economic growth. Too little national savings, privileged home-markets for idle and saturated European transnational corporations and the European continental powerful banks, migration instead of innovation, excessive government consumption, political distribution coalitions - also regarding gender conflict lines - which try to get via political means what they cannot achieve on the world markets anymore, the continued practising of traditional patterns of national defence, based on conscription, are precisely the mix that explains 44.2% of stagnation from 1980 world-wide, without resorting to capital investments and other intra-economic explanations of growth. The 134 nation study on growth in world society, mentioned above, again underlines these points. What would be the answer against this process what in the Dutch languages has been so aptly termed as Verluderung? A slim, socially just state, which enhances savings, deters distribution coalitions, subjects the European transnationals to the discipline of the market, instead of pouring down the sink billions of ECU's in terms of subvention money, ending up more often than not in the pockets of the shadow economists of our times, would be among the pre-requisites of a real reform of the European Union member states and an adequate answer to the question about the place of Europe in the world. 15 of the most important 19 development dimensions in the world system are being negatively determined nowadays by MNC penetration. The capitalist world economy is in addition characterized by strong 20 year cycles (Kuznets cycles) and 50-60 year longer waves (Kondratieff waves), which again are shown to be relevant in this work on the basis of new calculations, based on Joshua Goldstein's previous research. They, and not so much grand designs of conference diplomacy, will determine the future place of Europe in the world economy. Precisely, because the Union is presently a protective club shielding away market influences from European transnationals, banks, and distribution coalitionists, Europe's upswing is belated, and the Maastricht-induced stagflation threatening to coincide with the next major Kuznets cycle trough, to be expected in 2002 or 2003, will make our stagnation even worse. Political stability, under such circumstances, in the Mediterranean and in other countries becomes a question mark. European foreign policy, blinded by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, overlooks the intrinsic conflict structure of the world economy, that is shaped like a 'W' and that threatens future intensified conflicts on the borderlines of world instability. (iii) Subventions, mass migration and distribution coalitions mean structural conservation and environmental decay at the same time. Since environmental strain cycles coincide with world economic swings, it is to be expected that any real future European recovery will increase the environmental problems on the European continent, still increased by the transport-intensity of EU-development patterns, connected with the subvention system. Physical mobility of labour is the key de-facto concept of the past policies of the Commission in Brussels, while information mobility is being hindered by local and national telephone monopolies, and the absence of privatisation in transport, especially roads. (iv) The eastward expansion of the Union will have to face up to the dilemmas of modernization in the environment of past rapid urbanisation (what world system scholars have termed the urban bias in world development), little efficient state-directed mass communication and belated demographic transitions in much of the Balkans and the former Soviet Union, if not the former Warsaw Pact in general. Modernization and structural adjustment in the post-1989 set-up is bound to fail in the East if it is not accompanied by a massive real inflow of foreign resources. The semi-democratization in much of the region, that set in after 1989, from the viewpoint of political stability, is much more dangerous than the full rule dictatorship or full democracy. Money laundering and fluctuations in the terms of trade are additional important determinants of the growth prospects of the reform countries. (v) Modernization, globalization, and East-ward expansion of the Union might increase existing cleavages in the countries of the East, if they are not accompanied by a deep structural change in favour of the up to now underprivileged sectors and strata. Many of the lessons of neo-classical economists about Southeast-Asia can be repeated here in an East European context. The discrimination against exports by import substitution strategies, effective currency overvaluations, privileges and wage inflexibility in the monopolistic sectors, and finally and overarching all these phenomena, a conspicuous contempt of urban elites against the countryside and a deep urban bias of development have created a structure, where the political and social divisions between the different parts of countries have increased. It is shown in this study with regional multivariate analyses from Polish election data 1993 and 1995, that electoral results are heavily determined by these regional and world economic aspects, while other theories fail to capture the dynamics of socio-political cleavages in the new democracies of the East. (vi) Euro-sclerosis at the heart of the Union of presently 15 nations is a reality. Take any indicator of economic illness in the relatively stable Western democracies today - unemployment, lack of economic growth, insufficient human development: it will be neatly determined by just three variables: - age of democracy within world politically guaranteed boundaries - size of the state sector, like central government expenditures per GDP - years of membership in the European Union Instead of causing stable long-term economic growth, the Union rather causes what might be termed 'the Belgium syndrome'. Relatively young democracies, like Poland or the Czech Republic, Hungary or Slovenia, will still benefit for a few years from the positive effects of early membership; but the positive initial effects will disappear with the workings of the really existing Union in the long run. So, what then is the prescription? For Arrighi (1995), there seems to emerge the imperative of organizing the international community anew around the dynamic axis of the East Asian/North American archipelago, implicitly hoping for democratization spin-offs along this dynamic axis. The Japanese trasnational bank and the Japanese transnational corporation overseas seem to be the most dynamic element of world capitalism nowadays. Arrighi seems to advance the viewpoint that such a 'world community' controlled capitalism would still be better than the rule of chaos and war. For us, Europeans, the lectures of the empirical study of contemporary changes in world capitalism are twofold: one is more medium-term, the other long-term: the upgrading of the European Parliament ('no taxation without representation'), a more slender and socially just state in the member countries, free trade, again and again, and also more decisive efforts in human capital formation (in the framework of privatisation of Universities and other institutions of higher learning) would be a proper European step in the right direction in the short-and medium term. To learn form the East Asian Space-of Flows (Arrighi, 1995) above all suggests that heeding the advice of contemporary economics, learning its lessons from East Asia in such areas as corporate strategy, labour market organization, international trade and migration, would be more advantageous than to be trapped again by the fatal conceit of a thinking along the lines of the territorial control, the Lebensraum. And Germany, in particular, at the decisive time, seems to forget that the main imperatives of world system ascent are economic and not territorial - now in the wider, European Union sense. Such advice unheeded, eastward European Union expansion could dismally fail, made all the worse by the negative effects of ongoing Maastricht austerity. Thus the time is ripe for a socio-liberal alternative to orthodox etatism and neo-conservatism alike. On a long-term basis, though, only a socio-liberal world state will be able to overcome the intrinsic instabilities of the capitalist nation system, that has (un)governed the world since 1450. Today's problems are too global to be left to a (supra)national state. And at any rate, transnational capitalism rings the bell to all attempts at national regulation for the next 50 or 100 years. So, our predictions for Europe are dire: Sunkel's scenario, at least in part, offers a key to our future. Capitalist globalization can only be answered by global democratisation strategy. From austria@it.com.pl Fri Apr 4 08:04:26 1997 From: austria@it.com.pl Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 17:03:30 +0200 (MET DST) Subject: On Huntington and Karl Deutsch To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu Europe must come to terms with the contradictions of world cultures and world cultural conflict, global anarchy and global decay Nationalism will continue to receive from the contradictions of globalization. One theory (Huntington) holds, that cultural dividing lines increasingly achieve relevance; and even could threaten to endanger the transformation project to build up a stable, market oriented western democracy on the ruins of communism. To those, accustomed to the dialogue about international politics as a 'dismal science' it will be no surprise to learn about recent international research results regarding genocide and mass murder in this century (Rummel, 1994, 1995). 218 repressive regimes (141 state regimes and 77 quasi-state and group regimes) from 1900 to 1987 have killed nearly 170 million of their own citizens and foreigners - about four times the number of people killed in domestic and international wars during that same period. Power kills; democracy is the general method of non-violence, says Rummel: but what happens, if democracy and non-violence are seriously undermined by ethno-politic! al conflict? After the horrors of the Holocaust and the Second World War, the following victimisation of mostly civilians stand out in contemporary history: Graph 6.1: War victims and victims of mass murder after 1945 Source: our own compilations from Stiftung Entwicklung und Frieden, 1996, based on Rummel, 1994 and other sources, quoted there Who will be the groups that most violently are going to challenge the logic of accumulation on a global scale? Does capitalist globalization, that process of unequal and uneven development, in the end cause the cultural conflicts in the world system, as globalization theories would maintain (Axtmann, 1995)? A research effort at global, cross-national analysis of social integration and disintegration did not lead very far, perhaps because the research design was centred around too many variables and the number of countries included in the analysis makes the research findings very dependent on outlying cases (Klitgaard and Fedderke, 1995). But what emerged at least was that there are different types of social disintegration in the world system, and that - as the authors contend - stagnation is more detrimental than growth to the issue of social stability. This hypothesis might be contested in the light of new research results; but at any rate, that recent essay opens the way for! the debate of these issues anew. Ethno-nationalistic conflicts, terrorism and war were to break out along the real 'earthquake line' in today's international system, the great dividing line between the cultures. That is at least what Samuel Huntington, Harvard professor of political science and for many years one the closest advisers of successive United States governments on matters of international security and military policy, has maintained in his recent contributions. Huntington tries to offer a socio-cultural explanation to the question, where Europe's frontier will be finally drawn. Are there clear empirically observable tendencies in development performance according to the classification, suggested by Huntington, of the basic underlying socio-cultural patterns of a given country? Professor Huntington's thesis is not at all abstract and has - however we view it - a vital importance for the future of the European Union. From Marseilles to Algiers, from Madrid to Rabat, from Rome to Tunis or Sofia, from Athens to Bucharest or Cairo, from Vienna to Kiev or Ankara or Teheran geographical distances are smaller or about equal as the distances from these European Union cities to the Canary Islands, the Irish Republic, northern Scotland or northern Scandinavia or other remoter parts of the already existing Union. The migration pressures from Eastern Europe and the population explosion on the southern rim of the Mediterranean will increase. In 30 years, the population balance on the southern rim of Europe will have dramatically shifted. The southern border of Europe already is and will even more so become a border between relatively wealthy developed societies and societies, that are threatened by overpopulation, scarcity of resources, and poverty. By the year 2! 000, 290 million people will live in the 19 countries of the Arab world alone. Today, less than three-fifths of the rural population have access to safe water, 80 million people are illiterate, 50 million of them females, 10 million people are underfed, 73 million Arabs live below the line of absolute poverty. Average life expectancy is still 61.9 years, 40 million people have no access to health services, while 50.4 thousand million $ were spent on armaments. Arms imports in the Arab world amounted to 3.5 thousand million $ in 1992 alone (our own compilation from UNDP, 1995). These tendencies are all the more notable, because eastward expansion of NATO and the EU is not synchronic, and the most probable outcome would leave open an entire geographical corridor from Russia and Belarus right through to Switzerland. The most likely future eastern boundary of Western Europe will take the following shape after NATO and EU-eastward extension: Map 6.1: The eastern and southern border of western Europe While Ireland, Sweden, Finland, and Austria are the four neutral EU members, the Slovak Republic - left out - would provide a corridor through the European heartland. The extension of the European Union will also pose some interesting questions regarding Northern Europe - where Norway belongs to NATO, but not the European Union. In terms of external and internal security, a more homogeneous territory would be the optimal answer, while socially, the Slovak Republic, Romania, and the Ukraine - as among the most important 'corridor' countries - will realistically not qualify for early European Union membership in the coming years: The most realistic scenario is of course Huntington's borderline between western Christianity (Catholics and Protestants) on the one hand and Orthodox Christianity and Islam on the other hand in Europe. Huntington's border rather would look like the following: Legend: Scandinavia, the Baltic States, Poland, the Czech and Slovak Republics, Hungary, Slovenia and Croatia are seen as part of the West; while the rest of Eastern Europe belongs to the Orthodox or Islamic heritage. The migratory pressures from the South and the Southeast will certainly increase in the future, as the following map shows: Legend: our own compilations from Fischer Weltalmanach, 1997 and EXCEL 7.0 The still existing high concentration of development problems and population dynamics in the immediate vicinity of Europe over the next 30 years will dramatically change the shape of international politics, economics and migratory pressures in the region. A dependency-oriented explanation of underdevelopment would hold, that the 'Huntington factor' is in reality disappearing, whenever we control for MNC penetration. The main result of our investigation will be that the Huntington factor only plays a certain role when we do not control for the amount of MNC penetration; however, if we do consider MNC penetration properly, the effects become weaker or are even the reverse. The( in)validity of Huntington's culture conflict approach on a world level However forceful Huntington's theory might seem to be at first sight, we can consider it to be falsified by our investigations. While Lipset and Weede seem to be inclined to regard Confucianism as a growth precondition, Huntington's theory is more pessimistic and foresees a joint rising world cultural challenge against the dominant centres by Islam and Orthodoxy. The important element in the test of Huntington's theory seems to be the joint interaction of societies, classified under his index. The Huntington-Index might be thus the mere reflection of this underlying geographical and world economic peripherization, that jointly affects the Orthodox and the Islamic world. This joint peripherization would cast a large shadow on the prospects for market-economic reform in Russia, Romania, Bulgaria, and the 'Federal Republic of Yugoslavia'. Enough of ideologies. Let the hard facts speak. Substituting 'UN membership years' by the Huntington-index of the clash of civilisations (Huntington-Index countries = 1, other countries = 0), we get the following results on the level of world society from our Table 4.1: Table 6.1: the influence of Huntington's index on development performance at the level of world society MNC PEN73 Govex Trade Dep social sec Huntington-I Women Parl Women %LF ln PCI ln PCI^2 ln(MPR+1) Fertility Rate Constant adjustment -0,761 -1,491 0,125 -3,538 0,048 -0,058 0,83 0,133 0,01 -0,024 -0,004 21,47 0,188 1,029 0,349 5,208 0,029 0,04 0,806 0,06 0,007 0,022 0,002 19,93 0,301 2,649 4,341 111 335,1 779,1 t-Test -4,035 -1,449 0,359 -0,679 1,684 -1,46 1,03 2,193 1,353 -1,08 -1,989 MNC PEN73 Govex Trade Dep social sec Huntington-I Women Parl Women %LF social sec ln PCI^2 ln(MPR+1) Fertility Rate Constant growth -0,944 -0,625 0,167 -4,228 0,021 -0,084 0,209 0,138 0,015 -0,038 -0,003 26,73 0,165 0,9 0,305 4,558 0,025 0,035 0,706 0,053 0,007 0,02 0,002 17,45 0,409 2,319 6,997 111 413,8 596,8 t-Test -5,723 -0,694 0,546 -0,928 0,844 -2,426 0,296 2,616 2,311 -1,956 -1,645 LEX 1960 1 der e-funct 1 der pi-func MNC PEN73 Viol Civ Rits Trade Dep Terms Trade Huntington-I Women Parl Women %LF ln(MPR+1) Constant DYN 0,811 -0,025 -0,038 0,984 0,013 0,001 -0,049 2E-04 -0,706 -29,49 -0,299 26,79 LEX 0,885 0,024 0,031 0,708 0,017 0,006 0,173 0,002 0,742 6,961 0,037 2,724 0,737 2,257 28,23 111 1582 565,3 t-Test 0,916 -1,054 -1,216 1,391 0,793 0,238 -0,282 0,147 -0,952 -4,237 -7,993 pol rights MNC PEN73 Govex Trade Dep social sec Huntington-I Women Parl Women %LF ln PCI ln PCI^2 ln(MPR+1) Fertility Rate Constant violations 0,536 1,045 0,079 -1,473 0,02 0,06 1,002 -0,103 0,004 0,009 5E-04 5,987 0,108 0,588 0,199 2,976 0,016 0,023 0,461 0,035 0,004 0,013 0,001 11,39 0,576 1,514 13,68 111 344,9 254,4 t-Test 4,973 1,778 0,399 -0,495 1,193 2,663 2,175 -2,992 0,939 0,713 0,453 MNC PEN73 Govex Trade Dep social sec Huntington-I Women Parl Women %LF ln PCI ln PCI^2 ln(MPR+1) Fertility Rate Constant civil rights 0,354 1,21 -0,015 -0,074 0,002 0,037 0,571 -0,087 8E-04 -0,011 -9E-04 3,205 violations 0,086 0,468 0,159 2,372 0,013 0,018 0,367 0,028 0,003 0,01 8E-04 9,077 0,586 1,206 14,28 111 228,7 161,5 4,121 2,582 -0,093 -0,031 0,177 2,027 1,554 -3,15 0,244 -1,115 -1,041 HDI MNC PEN73 Govex Trade Dep social sec Huntington-I Women Parl Women %LF ln PCI ln PCI^2 ln(MPR+1) Fertility Rate Constant -0,095 0,173 0,006 0,02 -5E-04 -0,003 -0,033 7E-04 -2E-04 7E-04 6E-05 0,488 0,008 0,043 0,015 0,217 0,001 0,002 0,034 0,003 3E-04 9E-04 8E-05 0,832 0,871 0,111 67,9 111 9,137 1,358 -12,04 4,018 0,392 0,092 -0,38 -1,72 -0,986 0,26 -0,598 0,736 0,808 MNC PEN73 Govex Trade Dep social sec Huntington-I Women Parl Women %LF ln PCI ln PCI^2 ln(MPR+1) Fertility Rate Constant -0,071 0,101 -0,006 0,16 6E-04 -0,002 -0,032 0,002 -1E-04 4E-04 8E-05 0,026 0,006 0,031 0,011 0,159 9E-04 0,001 0,025 0,002 2E-04 7E-04 6E-05 0,608 0,873 0,081 69,29 111 4,971 0,724 Gender Development Index -12,38 3,232 -0,609 1,008 0,692 -2,021 -1,311 1,096 -0,58 0,568 1,401 MNC PEN73 Govex Trade Dep social sec Huntington-I Women Parl Women %LF ln PCI ln PCI^2 ln(MPR+1) Fertility Rate Constant -0,02 0,016 0,015 -0,184 0,001 0,005 -0,018 0,003 -2E-04 -6E-05 4E-05 0,866 0,004 0,023 0,008 0,114 6E-04 9E-04 0,018 0,001 2E-04 5E-04 4E-05 0,437 0,818 0,058 45,46 111 1,691 0,375 Gender Empowerment Index MNC PEN73 Govex Trade Dep social sec Huntington-I Women Parl Women %LF ln PCI ln PCI^2 ln(MPR+1) Fertility Rate -4,882 0,7 2,019 -1,606 1,868 6,039 -1,006 1,946 -0,958 -0,117 1,015 MNC PEN73 Govex Trade Dep social sec Huntington-I Women Parl Women %LF ln PCI ln PCI^2 ln(MPR+1) Fertility Rate %agland Constant %forest -0,391 -1,834 -5,294 -2,078 28,24 0,334 0,689 -10,99 -0,366 -0,082 0,107 0,008 -63,58 area 0,128 1,408 7,606 2,559 38,26 0,211 0,293 5,918 0,46 0,055 0,164 0,014 146,8 0,313 19,45 4,173 110 18940 41610 t-Test -3,043 -1,303 -0,696 -0,812 0,738 1,584 2,353 -1,856 -0,797 -1,495 0,654 0,564 MNC PEN73 Govex Trade Dep social sec Huntington-I Women Parl Women %LF ln PCI ln PCI^2 ln(MPR+1) Fertility Rate %agland Constant annual 0,015 0,091 -0,646 -0,22 3,273 0,008 0,001 0,278 -0,054 0,003 -0,004 3E-04 -11,53 deforest 0,006 0,07 0,377 0,127 1,898 0,01 0,015 0,294 0,023 0,003 0,008 7E-04 7,281 0,336 0,965 4,643 110 51,87 102,4 t-Test 2,324 1,306 -1,712 -1,732 1,724 0,748 0,099 0,946 -2,367 1,181 -0,511 0,511 MNC PEN73 Govex Trade Dep social sec Huntington-I Women Parl Women %LF ln PCI ln PCI^2 ln(MPR+1) Fertility Rate %agland Constant ethno 0,009 0,098 0,218 -0,059 0,91 0,016 0,032 0,511 -0,032 -0,002 -0,02 -0,001 -3,323 warfare 0,011 0,118 0,638 0,215 3,207 0,018 0,025 0,496 0,039 0,005 0,014 0,001 12,3 0,109 1,63 1,116 110 35,59 292,4 t-Test 0,816 0,83 0,342 -0,275 0,284 0,884 1,292 1,031 -0,823 -0,391 -1,444 -0,985 MNC PEN73 Govex Trade Dep social sec Huntington-I Women Parl Women %LF ln PCI ln PCI^2 ln(MPR+1) Fertility Rate %agland Constant destab./ 0,002 0,029 0,073 -0,033 0,535 -6E-04 -0,002 -0,048 -0,008 -0,001 -2E-04 -4E-04 -1,938 war 0,003 0,028 0,153 0,052 0,771 0,004 0,006 0,119 0,009 0,001 0,003 3E-04 2,959 0,095 0,392 0,965 110 1,78 16,92 t-Test 0,885 1,02 0,477 -0,633 0,693 -0,151 -0,28 -0,399 -0,883 -1,078 -0,049 -1,55 Legend: our own calculations with EXCEL 4.0 and 5.0 The Huntington Index, under control for MNC penetration, is even significantly and positively related to adjustment and gender empowerment; and the only negative significant effect is the influence on deforestation. Traditional forms of globalization are responsible for the process of stagnation in the world periphery and semi-periphery. In the countries falling under the Huntington-index, environmental concerns should achieve greater attention in the future. The return of dictatorship? Towards understanding the process of ethno-political conflict and the world-wide refugee problem In 1989 we heard the prophecy of the 'end of history'. Instead of talking about the end of history, we might be faced with the acceleration of history. Deadly ethno-political conflicts continue to beset the world. In the international system, wars are of course not new; 16 of all the 21 wars with more than a million deaths in history happened during the 20th century. From 1945 to 1992 more than 25 million people died in wars or as a direct consequence of wars (Stiftung Entwicklung und Frieden, 1993). Civilians have to pay an ever larger price for these wars; the tendency has been rising steadily and in 1990, already 90% of all war victims were civilians. The number of international refugees according to the most narrow definitions increased world-wide from 7.8 million in 1982 to 16.6 million according to the strictest criteria in 1991. To these numbers, one would have to add 3.4 million refugee-like situations of people in foreign countries and 23.5 million internal refugees. All together, there were at least 43 million refugees c! lassified according to various categories around the world in 1991 (op. cit.: 184-185). But estimates of the real number of refugees reach as high as 500 million on a global scale (Datta, 1993). The 'official' data show furthermore, that according to UNHCR criteria, the number of refugees world-wide increased from 16.6 to 24 million people (Stiftung Entwicklung und Frieden, 1996). Ethno-political conflicts are among the most vicious forms of international and domestic conflicts. Over 40% of the states of the world have more than 5 major ethnic groups within their borders, with at least one of them facing permanent discrimination (UNDP, 1994). There were 10 major ethnic conflicts in Europe, 6 in the Middle East, 28 in Asia, 23 in Africa, 3 in Latin America during the period 1993-94 (Gurr, 1994). These 50 lethal conflicts produced almost 4 million deaths and displaced 26.8 million people as refugees (Gurr, 1994: 351). It would be wrong, though, to assume that there are necessarily centrifugal tendencies in the international system as such that will still further extend these types of conflicts like bush-fires. Rather, Gurr in his far-reaching empirical work proposes to start from the hypothesis, that the collapse of the communist bloc is only partly to blame for the increase in ethno-political violence, since 54% of all ethno-political conflicts were star! ted before 1987. Since the 1990s, already existing conflicts have tended to intensify, but the spreading of conflicts, Gurr argues, could be avoided. Contention for power, struggle for indigenous rights and ethno-nationalism were the main causes of these conflicts. Huntington's recent thesis about the clash of civilisations receives a considerable qualification from Gurr's empirical work: only 4 of the ethno-political conflicts correspond to the traditional left-right ideological struggle; while 18 are motivated by civilisational struggles (Gurr, 1994: 357). Although ethno-political conflict intensified after the end of the Soviet Union, it would be wrong to blame the first process on the second. The disintegration of the Soviet Union only increased an already existing tendency in world society. Power shifts, the emergence of new states, and revolutions still play an important role in the determination of conflict. But, according to Gurr, it would be wrong to assume, that the ! fragmentation tendency of the world system were to continue indefinitely. Rather, the most likely scenario will be an increase in communal contention about access to power in the weak and heterogeneous states in Africa. Secessionist conflicts outside Africa and the former communist bloc even declined in intensity over recent years (Gurr, 1994: 364). Map 6.2 shows the Gurr-Index on a world scale: Map 6.2: ethno-political conflict in the world system Legend: Gurr (1994) and EXCEL 7.0 map programme, as applied to Gurr's original data (Gurr, 1994: 369-375. The Gurr scale - magnitude of ethno-political conflict - is the squared root of the sum of deaths (in 10s of thousands) plus refugees (in 100s of thousands) from ethno-political conflicts 1993-1994 Macroquantitative evidence on these processes is very difficult to construct and collect, as long as data collection and data reporting is so deficient in many of the new states of the East and continues to be so in the South as well. Thus, our model can be called only a preliminary test of the Deutsch/Huntington approach to ethno-political conflict and had to start with a few available data series that render themselves at least partially to the testing of the general patterns of the new realities of ethno-political conflict around the world. Our predictors included indicators of dependency (aggregate net transfers, that is to say, inflows that are greater than outflows due to international exploitation), of the liberal approach to development (political and human rights violations versus respect), and of the social-policy approach (mean years of schooling, adult literacy rate, human development index, the fertility rate and its change as an indicator of the process of demogr! aphic change). The Deutsch/Huntington school however regards alphabetisation as an indicator of social mobilisation, and hence as a threat to stability. Our following analysis shows, that the threat to democracy in the semi-periphery and the periphery continues. Superficially, it seems to be, that similar conditions at different times produce similar theories and empirical results: during the emergence of the many new states in the 'Third World' in the early 1960s, more pessimistic versions of modernisation theory gained ground. With the contemporary problems of democracy in the former 'Second World', the stability question of the new recently emerged or liberated states cannot be separated from such modernisation theory dimensions anymore. In the model, that we propose, the chain of causation, underlying the empirical trends, is related to, but not completely patterned according to modernisation theories. For Huntington, instability always was determined by social mobilisation (SM), which works in the direction of instability (IST). This is at least the consistent interpretation, that Weede (1985) has proposed, and which we f! ollow here. Deutsch was even more radical than Huntington in expressing the idea that development is a threat to stability. His clearly formulated mathematical formula for political stability expects a positive trade-off between government sector size, income concentration and stability on the one hand and a negative trade-off between social mobilisation, level of development and stability on the other hand (Deutsch, 1960/66). The tragedy in former Yugoslavia could be regarded in many ways as a paradigmatic case, to be explained at least in part by Deutsch's theory. The Deutsch/Huntington school would believe that, however legitimate the issue of transformation from the communist political and economic system in that country might have been, the strategy to cling to communist regional power while opening up the country to the world market was the real and final reason for the break-out of the conflict. In fact, Yugoslavia in the 1980s held many world or at least European records in economic and social policy, that seem to be forgotten more and more in the futile debate about early international recognition of Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia as the alleged main cause for the subsequent tragedy. At first inspection, Yugoslavia should have become a real miracle of neo-liberal economic transformation in the 1980s after the ethno-heterogeneous state class model of the 1970s came to a grinding halt. Maliciou! s social scientists might dig out some day these old journal and book contributions, praising the old leadership for what it had achieved in the name of the market, the international financial institutions, and in the name of economic theory. Amen. We refrain from that: errare humanum est. Yugoslavia attempted the most-far-reaching neo-liberal transformation strategy in the region; and for that reason alone its experience should be carefully studied elsewhere: (i) Yugoslavia had the most rapid urbanisation rate of all European countries from 1960 to 1990 (3.2% per annum). In fact, urban population doubled from 28% to 56% in just thirty years. This enormous potential and challenge of social mobilisation was coupled with (ii) a very rapid process of economic transformation and a disappearance of the central state. Yugoslavia recorded the highest rate of gross domestic investment of all countries of the world with complete World Bank WDR data for 1988 and also the highest gross d! omestic savings rate for the same year. With a savings rate of 2/5 of the national income, Yugoslavia should have been well underway towards self-sustained growth. At the same time, however, the central government in Belgrade reduced in accordance with many international advisors and in a very radical fashion (iii) its role in national economic affairs to almost non-existence. Yugoslavia again holds a world record here, this time for having trimmed down the size of the national total government expenditure as percentage of GNP from 1972 - from 21.1% to 7.5% in 1988. It was the most radical economic transformation from socialism to dependent regional nationalism ever to have been recorded throughout the period of the end of communism in the world; because in no former communist country had there been such a deliberate attempt to reduce the share of the federal government below the 10%-mark. Not even in Pinochet's Chile such a radical cure has been attempted. In both relative an! d in absolute terms, Yugoslavia was a megaperformer of a kind of regional post-communist IMF-adapted adjustment. The price of the strategy was very clear, but many will shrug their shoulders and ask: so what? The price of the medicine is well-known from many countries now and in a way was also paid in most of the other countries of the region: absolute poverty - according to World Bank World Development Report figures 1990 - increased in the crucial years between 1978 and 1987 from 17% of the population to 25% of the population, and earnings per employee fell by 1.4% annually from 1980 to 1987. Still, household income distribution (iv) was still relatively egalitarian, with the highest 20% controlling just 42.8% of total incomes, and thus not tying the rich closely enough to their political system, so that they would be prepared to fight and die for it, while at the same time impoverishing the poor in absolute terms. All the necessary preconditions for instability, as predicte! d by Karl Deutsch more than 30 years ago, were present: and to complete the checklist for an absolutely assured crash in the light of Deutsch's nation-building theory, the country had recorded a fairly rapid economic growth rate in the period preceding the stagnation and disaster course of the 1980s; GDP growth stood at 6.0% in the period between 1965 and 1980 and was again in fact the highest economic growth rate in Europe. The present study on the basis of a sample of 99 countries with complete data on transfers and ethno-political violence includes countries of the periphery and the semi-periphery, and nearly all newly-formed states of the former world of communism. There, the Gurr-Index of ethno-political conflict (EP) is significantly pushed upwards at the one hand by the degree of development of the productive forces. Lamentably enough, adjusted per capita income (PCI) increases, and not decreases ethno-political conflict in world society. This result confirms Deutsch's approach and rejects the still more optimistic vision of the trade-off between stability and development level, expressed by Huntington. The dialectic of the situation is further complicated by the fact, that countries, in order to avoid the stability trap of ethno-political conflict, have to undergo an early demographic and/or social and cultural transition; without that, the tendency towards ethno-political conflict even mo! re increases. High fertility is related to high income concentration, low fertility to low income concentration (Tausch and Prager, 1993). With high fertility rates (FR) - or plausibly, a poorly developed mass communication system -, no reductions in the level of ethno-political conflict can be achieved. Deutsch furthermore believed, that especially in a crisis government sector size increases stability. Huge per capita aggregate net transfers, that is to say, inflows that are greater than outflows, decrease the level of ethno-political strife; while repressive states (REPRESS) are less prone to ethno-political conflict than full scale democracies. Thus stability-oriented 'Keynesianism' in the periphery is today being substituted by the 'Tiananmen formula': repression + capital inflows. There are some elements, that further qualify Deutsch's theory further: social mobilisation (alphabetisation) has no visible effect on instability: Table 6.2: The determination of the Gurr-Index of ethno-political conflict in the periphery and semi-periphery unstandardized regression t-value significant coefficient at 5%-level transfers per capita -0.74 -2.06 yes political rights violations -0.60 -2.65 yes human development index -0.51 -0.64 no repressiveness of the security apparatus +6.22 +0.59 no population density^0.50 +0.04 +0.02 no adult literacy rate -0.03 -0.87 no mean years of schooling +0.02 +0.16 no ln PCI +0.91 +3.65 yes ln PCI^2 2.56 +0.25 no historical fertility rate +0.34 +2.76 yes failure of demographic transition -0.00 -1.26 no ________________________________________________________________ n = 99 countries with complete data; R^2 = 32.5%; F = 3.81; 87 degrees of freedom. Legend: 32.5% of ethno-political strife is being determined by our model. n = 99 periphery and semi-periphery countries with complete World Bank data about aggregate net transfers, that is to say, inflows that are greater than the outflows due to international exploitation, and Gurr data about ethno-political strife. We should go back here once more to our Yugoslav example. Yugoslavia, b