Book abstracts

14. Garnaut, Dog Days (24 July 2022)

by kurto

Assesses Australian political economy near the end of the resource boom (circa 2013), asserting the need for more non-primary exports, decreased real-exchange rate (the Aussie adjusted for comparative interest rates, inflation, and productivity gains), and reduced living standards (less imports). Dismissive of political leadership, Garnaut, the Hawke-era government economist, barracks for technocracy. Why wouldn’t rivals respond in kind? How do his prescriptions escape the trap of public choice economics and unaccountable progressives?

Japan’s postwar boom had brought the center of the world economy closer to Australia; the impact of China’s post-1978 gains are well documented. White Australia had been inefficient because the country needed people as well as hobbled by encompassing protection, personified by McEwen. The Hawke-Keating era had never known a majority for reform: it was championed by independent experts. The recession of 1990-91 started backlash against reform.

Though Hawke ran a tight budget, the country did not save enough of the fiscal surplus (as a percentage of GDP), instead drawing the lesson that budgetary policy was ineffective.
The Howard administration is upbraided for acting to soften the introduction of GST and higher gas prices. Australia has yet to adopt ready-made foreign productivity practices: in the 1990s, growth trailed the OECD, 1.1 vs 2.5 per annum.

One-third of the economy is exposed to international trade, and the leading constraint on Aussie economy remains balance of payments. Health and education comprise 13 percent of GDP and 20 percent of employment. Accordingly, productivity must be packaged not pursued piecemeal. (Unexplained) monopoly pricing stops the declining cost of imports from reaching consumers, checking the desired depreciation of the Aussie. Immigration has raised skill levels and thus helps attract international capital (although such capital would seem suspect); the assertion that immigration reduces Aussie inequality in comparison with the US is unsupported, and there is no general discussion of social cohesion.

More in the policy realm, states lack effective powers to tax and therefore fiscal freedom while the Commonwealth cannot exercise powers of scale. Garnaut recommends constitutional review by experts. But states with larger equalization receipts have larger public sectors: public choice dynamics look to be at work: why would they not capture the review process?

A chapter on the green economy, now seeming a prelim to more recent work, fails the ex ante test: among many other examples, studies touting the effects the Olympic and the World Cup have been wildly optimistic and rarely address inevitable unintended consequences. Why should ‘climate change’ different? Aren’t advocates another special interest? There’s also a discussion of contemporary alternatives for taxing primary resources, summarized as ‘fair distribution’ of the burden of adjustment.

Most aggressively, Garnaut says no ‘thinker or leader’ has lead decisive historical progress (‘inflections’), crowing a number of questionable assertions about the capacity of political leadership, in support of arguments for technocratic government.
Politics in a democracy is inevitably a contest between groups seeking efficient policy for economic development and equity, and other groups seeking interventions to confer special benefits upon themselves or to kill or constrain interventions that would impose unwanted costs.
Abbot is chided for his determination to keep political promises in changed economic circumstances – why will public experts prove more adaptive? Confusingly, Garnaut suggests the relevant of international benchmarks (p.51) but also the failure of Aussie social sciences to stand independent (74). Private interests skew research.

How is technocracy insulated from moralizing practice (e.g., woke America) – Garnaut’s pandering through the back door?

15. Taylor, Struggle for Mastery in Europe (5 Sep 2019)

by kurto

Narrates the foreign policies of Europe’s leading nations from mid-century civil strife through the conclusion of World War I. After 1848, balance-of-power calculation trumped the ideological standoff between conservatives (i.e., monarchists) and revolutionary nationalists. After World War I, Germany’s bid for continental mastery had not only obviated balance-of-power arrangements but also scuttled the system in favor of the 20th-century contest between communism and liberal democracy (Soviet Union vs. United States).

Balance of power was effected by design grounded in realism, not in treaties. Britain saw France as the keystone; Russia wished to push the two German powers into leading the defense of conservativism; Austria wanted Russian support; Prussia clung to traditional allies in Britain and Russia. Palmerstone thought BOP strengthened Germany by giving it a ‘free hand’; Bismarck agreed it was a means of security.

In 1848, the alternative to supporting the besieged Habsburg monarchy was the emergence of Hungary and unified Germany. Russia decided here interests lay in helping to restore Austria. During the Crimean War, Austria and Prussia avoided taking sides because the former was conflicted and the latter uninterested. The real stakes were Italian nationhood and the resolution of Germany. The war proved indecisive in these respects but created options for Napoleon III and then Bismarck. The Treaty of Paris, unlike the Congress of Paris following Waterloo, gave the deceptive impression of peace. (Coincidentally, it was the most successful invasion of Russian since 1800, reducing Russian prestige to the lowest point since 1721.)

Italy was more important to Europe prior to Germany’s industrial revolution; she could not make herself a nation. Austria could retain Italy only by conceding German leadership to Prussia; the basic principle of Habsburg diplomacy was to concede only after defeat; trying to retain both lost her both. Napoleon, meanwhile, bumbled into a policy of asserting ‘natural frontiers’ in aggrandizing Savoy. Italian unification finished Crimean destruction of post-Waterloo order; French ambitions of European hegemony were lost during 1863-66.

In dismembering Poland, Russia was no longer seeking Austro-Prussian unity. Prussia could subjugate the Poles, the Austrians could not. Her truly vital interests were outside the continent. (As an aside: most battles confirm the direction of events; Plevna in 1877-78 confirmed Turkish rule of the Bosporus Straights and Constantinople, giving the Ottoman Empire another 40 years; to this day, Russia remains confined to the Black Sea.)

Diplomacy is an engine of peace for those would have it. Bismarck’s convoluted doings played on European interests. The League of Three Emperors was anti-British, the Triple Alliance was contradictory. He favored Russia, disliked Austrians, and preferred France to Italy but above all sought prudential balance. Metternich’s system had been conservative, Bismarck’s was a ‘tyranny’ of German control, albeit pacific. Proper international order needs common principle, moral views, and treaties – Taylor favors Metternich.

Bismarck saw colonies in terms of European domination; England and Russia wanted to be left out of Europe to pursue empire. The Reinsurance Treacy (1882-83) ensured Germany would face a two-front war unless she abandoned Austria; Russian wanted Germany neutrality in a Habsburg conflict. Cancellation led to the Franco-German alliance, an arrangement unlike the German concord in that an autocratic and a revolutionary power came together. The chancellor’s successors lost the plot of continental domination by diplomacy and so were led toward war. It needn’t have been.

Europe would unite against Britain only when it had a clear champion: the age of African imperialism was merely postponement. During the 1890s the British were indeed isolated, Albion’s traditional Austrian links having faltered in 1894. Amid growing German predominance, the Franco-Russian tie-up unintentionally pushed Britain into Sudan (to protect Egypt vs French interests); the Boer War and the Anglo-Japanese pact underlined her solitude. Tirpitz’s naval buildup, instead of prompting Britain to buy Germany’s friendship, persuaded her to avoid conflict with France or Russia, and to adopt the ‘more than everyone else’ naval standard. Simultaneously, Weltpolitik combined with continental ambitions limited Germany’s options. The Dogger Bank affair’s denouement ended the expected (since Crimea) outcome of Anglo-Russian war.

British conservatives favored Germany, Liberals the Franco-Russian entente. Grey like most of his party repudiated BOP, but thought a scorned France would unite with Germany or Russia: Gallic independence became paramount, BOP came back to the fore, imperial interests which had predominated since 1860 were set aside. Once she had conciliated the other Great Powers to protect her empire, now she conceded imperial interests to defend the balance. Driven by trading and naval rivalry, in spite of tradition, Britain set herself against Germany.

Germany could not directly challenge Britain so long as there were two other independent powers. Abandoning the naval program might have won British neutrality, in which case she would have won the continental battle. The Moroccan crises were the point of no return. (To prove the point, the 1912-14 Balkan Wars, regarding the fate of Turkey in Europe and Asia, reduced Anglo-Russian goodwill, thereby reducing German tensions). These indirectly raised the question of French intentions should a Russo-German conflict break out: Poincare determined it would mean war no matter who started the affair, abandoning France’s a formerly defensive posture. German interests in the Baghdad railway and elsewhere in the Ottoman Empire brought here into direct conflict with Russia for the first time, for the latter needed ‘neutral’ control of the Straights for shipping. Germany required Austria to gain control of the Near East, and so was captive to her weaker partner. Romanian interests, excited by the Balkan Wars, sought to free 2 million ethnic compatriots from Hungary, which was core to the Habsburgs.

Alliances didn’t cause WWI, Taylor says; every country had reasons to hesitate or doubt surety of gains. Even Germany’s primary motivation – whether naval power, Near Eastern interests, continental supremacy – cannot be certainly identified. But the Schlieffen Plan’s adoption, which required a quick-strike win in France to avoid prolonged two-front fighting, since necessitated commitment to action. Germany did not engineer August 1914 but welcomed the occasion, the Balkan Wars having false taught of a quick win.

During the great War, every small-state alliance was a hindrance. For example, but for Italy the Allies might otherwise have severed Austria from Germany. Civilians tried to negotiate, the generals to win outright. Eventually the former were pushed aside for Ludendorff, Clemenceau, Lloyd George. The war ended BOP as a system, the treaty sought to permanently cripple Germany’s Great Power capacity, Russia having fallen to revolution. In 1918 Europe ceased to be the world’s center, though the next struggle was not clarified until 1945, in a new ideological rivalry.

16. Cannon, Governor Reagan (28 Dec 2010)

by kurto

Narrates Ronald Reagan’s rise to and career as governor of California (1966-74), the era when he became an accomplished politician. Reagan’s conservative / populist rhetoric belied pragmatic governance, often made necessary by Democrats controlling the legislature. For example, he raised taxes his first year in office and blocked Eel River development, bucking the establishment. His bipartisan welfare reform also was successful; his record on education reform and the budget (i.e., tax reform) less so. Based on contemporary reporting and augmented by post facto interviews, Canon portrays not only the principal but also the many surrounding figures. Including by a treatment of boyhood, acting, and his presidential campaign, the book adds up to first-rate political biography.

1. Drucker, Management Challenges in the 21st Century (2011)

by kurto

Postulates a framework for managing knowledge workers, defined as ‘technologists who bring learning to work that is at least partly manual, such as lab technicians’. The best chapters regard the enterprise’s use of info (foundation info, productivity, competence, resource allocation) in order to create value and manage assets, which Drucker describes as people themselves; and knowledge-worker productivity, which turns on creating a culture where individuals know how to make what they know useful to others. Always thoughtful and provocative if typically aimed at larger organizations.

2. Diamond, Getting More (9 May 2011)

by kurto

A conversational, anecdotal presentation of the author’s Wharton course on negotiation. The primary framework is 1) what are my goals? 2) who are they? and 3) what will persuade them? The author elucidates 12 tactics for executing a 4-step model (page 160), the most important being focusing on the counterpart’s vision and problems, using their standards, finding the ‘real issue’, trading items of unequal value, and taking incremental steps. Like many such frameworks, it seems most effective if frequently put to use.

3. Bryson, In a Sunburned Country (18 Aug 2011)

by kurto

An idiosyncratic and patchwork travelog of (mainly) outback and western Australia, taking special note of the country’s postwar trajectory away from ‘white Australia’ and ties to Britain, and the geological and biological diversity of the flora and fauna. Frequently the author uses himself as a foil. Humorous but largely forgettable; immersion in sports is a better way to learn the culture.

5. Ryan, Try for Gold (11 Nov 2011)

by kurto

The narrative of US Olympic rugby is well known, and this tale diligently rehearses 1920 and 1924 while breaking little new ground. The most interesting topic is not the relationship of protagonists ‘Babe’ Slater and Rudy Scholz, but the success of the crossover athletes. Sadly the author is sloppy in executing the 3d-person omniscient and so probably misses other such seminal moments in American history. Infuriating style but impossible not to come away enlightened and proud. A useful appendix.

4. Wickham, Inheritance of Rome (14 Apr 2019)

by kurto

Assesses socioeconomic trends in formerly imperial Roman lands over 400 – 1000 AD, describing the collapse as tectonic but not catastrophic: culture especially displayed continuity and evolution if simplification.

The era’s most important event was the Empire’s breakup at the hands of the Vandals in 439, severing Rome’s food supply (i.e., grain and oil), followed toward century’s end by Gaul’s defection to the barbarian powers. These restricted trade, simplified wealth to land ownership, and restricted government (fisc, justice, administration). By 650 every successor kingdom had its own traditions. Islam’s rise further severed Rome from the Byzantine world (which for a time retained control of the Nile valley), completing the end of the Mediterranean regime and prompting two centuries of ferment. Taxation, shifting from commerce toward land, closed off the possibility of successors to Rome, prompting elites to favor military pursuits over luxury.
Roman culture emphasized great cities, which decayed. Medieval Christianity, by contrast, was not subsumed in Roman values: its structures changed the least, its critique of society and government persisted. Secular education gave way to religious inspiration.

Wickham organizes around the Roman West, the rising Islamic sphere, and Byzantium, and emphasizes archaeology, for example the dispersion of clay pots indicating trade, as free of ‘assumed narrative’ found in manuscripts and such traditional evidence.

In the European Common Era, the period 500-800 marks the greatest local autonomy, the least centralization. Population was sparse but not disorderly. There was little inter-regional trade, Francia being more active than its contemporaries (along the Rhine and the Meuse to the North Sea) and Britain less so: wealth maps accordingly. Most housing reverted to wood (until 1200); elites moved into towers as visually claim to leadership and status, the visual (and the miraculous) being more powerful than written word. Gaul and Germany formed under Merovingian customs over the 6th to 8th centuries, though not too far prior to Charles Martel’s ascendance. Visigothic Spain and Lombard Italy elaborated differently, the Spanish retaining greater cohesion until the Islamic conquest and the Italians fracturing entirely. Only the Franks sought empire, only the Spanish Visigoths retained imperial government. All militarized, all lost sophisticated taxation. Court-centered aristocracies persisted, of Roman stock but post-Roman custom. (English and Irish social structures congealed more easily under Anglo-Saxon or Gaelic patterns, the exception being Catholic influence). Though also disrupted, the Church retained its institutional shape – almost one-third of land in France and Italy was church-owned. To varying degrees, bishops (who tended to be aristocrats) held local sway. Literacy declined less than once supposed – government was still based on written instruction – but society’s elites militarized and much land was needed to feed and clothe armies. Europe’s early medieval ages have been seen as Germanic but though societies indeed localized, Wickham holds post-Roman sociocultural practices didn’t change much after 750 and the greater change was militarization. Reduced distribution of wealth (land) determined what the peasantry could and could no longer do. Under the Merovingians, for example, court was most important; some peasants were free, some were serfs, checking broader class solidarity; women were less present publicly than in Rome.

The Byzantine empire separated from Rome over 609-642, being unable to hold back Islamic (Persian) attacks and so losing the productive wealth of Egypt; Constantinople depopulated from 500,000 to ~ 50,000 residents, a much faster decline than Rome two centuries earlier. Byzantines survived by turning to the state.

Development in the Islamic lands is generally presented as contrasting with the West and Byzantium, rather than in terms of theology. From 630, Arabs sought to remain separate from the lands they conquered; to be on the military payroll was a badge of honor. Consequently Persian and Roman society did not blend. Beginning with late 8th-century Umayyads, administration shifted to viziers and the center of Islamic government commenced a continuous line of caliphs running to the early 16th century. In the 9th century, Baghdad became the cultural center of Islam, led by a community of scholars premised on ulama. (But: the 9th century also saw the Sunni-Shia split.). There were four main schools of law ranging from legal reasoning (interpretation) of caliphal legislation to hadith (premised on Mohammed’s statements). By 900 the latter prevailed – the ‘closing of the gate’ – no new laws promulgated by the caliph or anyone else was considered fixed. Land did not equate to power in medieval Islam, only position within the state, which brought tax wealth. Paradoxically, the succeeding Abbasid empire fell because the state grew too large.

Both Muslims and Byzantines were concerned with representation – what is holy, what is idolatrous. Aversion to the visual was a factor in the Roman-Byzantine schism of 843 (the popes long since having identified as Roman). Both Byzantine and Arab commerce were closely tied to the state: private wealth gave access to the state, which led to more complex ways to accumulate and recycle wealth.

The Byzantine city-state, which saw declining trade over the 7-8th centuries, recovered in the 11th-12 centuries notwithstanding the coming Arab conquest. By the 10th century, the second great Mediterranean trade cycle, including in the following century the Italian ports as well as the Crusade-fueled trade, was underway. But intra-regional trade among Europe, Islam, and Byzantium did not recover.

After 800 the West saw the introduction of moral political practice, exemplified by the Carolingians: the church and state working together. Yet by the period’s end, Carolingian public structures had failed, replaced by the rise of aristocratic power, the exclusion of peasantry from the public sphere (somewhat analogous to the collapse of the caliphate), and the eventual rise of European kingdoms. Charlemagne matches Justinian in advancing basic literacy, religion, socially minded legislation, and participation in assemblies. He patronized scholars but the sociopolitical world of 6-8th centuries pertained into the 9th – a time that matched the French Revolution as a hotbed of education invading politics. Carolingian rulers allowed elites to rise according to intellectual ability, for purposes of promoting Christendom (theology), unlike the Byzantines, who favored tax-funded officials and army commanders. Leaders felt it necessary to moralize their decisions; however, Carolingian initiatives reached local societies via public justice not moral reform measures. The Carolingian era was destroyed by the multiplication of successors; these regional hegemons were more important than the overall rise of aristocrats; its decline undermined the pope’s international stature.

Culturally, Carolingians evidenced the dynamic of kings choosing bishops and bishops correcting kings; Byzantines relied on Roman tradition for assurance; the Abbasids looked to the now-defined ulama. As in Byzantium, in Islam education trained one for statecraft. Solidity came from tax (which was absent in the west), but religion of the elite was not seen to be essential to state survival or that the task of the state to provide for communal salvation. Frankish aristocrats after the Carolingians were less likely to be literate; the church upheld ‘international’ culture.

In the Viking era, southern England suffered no permanent regional breakdown before 1066. Only Dublin and Normandy, plus north Scotland and Ireland, survived as Viking political retains. The rest of Danish settlements were soon culturally absorbed. Aristocratic dominance based on property was more pronounced than the continent; yet the king maintained more political control. Arguably the main political creation was the catalytic of unifying England.
Russia exhibited Byzantine influences, but was too far from Islam, and so developed of internal dynamics. Spain’s government stems from the Visigoths not Francia or Al-Andalus. Sociopolitical systems in ‘ouher Europe’, notwithstanding this diversity, stemmed from solidifying aristocratic power as well as borrowing government mechanisms from neighbors, for example specialized royal officials, top-down judiciary, or military service owed the state. In 400, stable systems stopped at the Rhine-Danube border; by 1000 recognizable polities were evident west of the Volga, albeit in weaker forms than during the Roman era.

Institutional politics were most effective where there was a strong tax (e.g., Rome, Islam, Byzantium), and less secure if dependent on land grants to aristocrats since the metropole was likely to run out of land. The decline of public culture, which was the strongest remaining link to Rome), for example in law, often devolved to private rule (e.g., inside private castles). The land tax which underpinned the Roman fisc continued in simplified form, hurting the peasantry (as well as intraregional trade) since it was not distributed. The 10th century was often like the 9th yet saw substantial changes in public assemblies.

The decline of the peasantry, ‘encaged’ in castles, figures prominently in Wickham’s writing. During the Carolingian and succeeding eras, aristocrats consolidated land ownership though peasants did not. But inheritance became normal only post 1000 (in Francia, post 900), which cramped monarchies. Private castles were a 10th century development, tying aristocrats to regional more than political interests, and leading to division among those who fight, those who work – the so-called feudal revolution. Feudal seignory is not a Carolingian structure writ small but a structural change; but not all aristocrats left court to rule local regions. Peasants in the 9-10th centuries were slowly excluded from the public sphere. Carolingian political economy promoted the demesne, ‘encaging’ the lower classes on the estate: they were dependent on the lords for land to farm and live. By the time they re-emerged after 1000, the Middle Ages were effectively over: villages were spheres of public power, estates of private rule.

The key major trends (shifts) of the era from 400-1000 by chronology are:
1. The breakup of the Roman Empire, which was more economic and fiscal than culture, aided by the rise of Islam severing Rome from the Byzantine world and fueling two centuries of crisis. In this time, governmental changes in the Islamic regions were more dramatic even then Carolingian lands.
2. The introduction of moralistic political practices exemplified by the Carolingian project – the church and state working together.
3. The end of the Carolingian empire’s public structures circa 1000, most obviously demonstrated by the rise of aristocratic power and the exclusion of peasantry from the public sphere. A somewhat analogous trend is evident in the breakup of the Caliphate. In northern Europe, modern kingdoms emerged.
4. Wealth was accumulated via land ownership, and land could be effectively taxed. The peasants suffered, regional exchange increased.
5. Institutionalized politics were most effective if there was strong tax revenue, and less so if the government was dependent on land grants to aristocrats.
6. The development of public culture with the strongest links to Rome was law; the decline to private rule on the estates (in French castles) illustrates the point.

Of note: French historiography has predominated the later Medieval ages, but the Frankish experience was not typical of Europe.

7. Elton, Practice of History (2010)

by kurto

History is a discrete discipline because it aims to explain bygone events, mindsets, and the course of change. Its purpose is to understand the past on its own terms, and not to apply or deduce laws or patterns. Masterful research, particularly of documentary evidence, enables historians to understand what is missing and/or what questions are implicitly raised. This is why political history is the queen of the discipline. There is truth to be discovered ‘if only we can find it’: such outcomes are more likely in history than in scientific disciplines because events and evidence are unalterable and independent of the practitioner. Evidence is to be criticized, however, leading to differing interpretations, which may be magnified by the historian’s individual style of writing. The format of presentation itself will be either narrative, the superior of chronology, or analytical, the higher form of description. The choice is normally dictated by the topic. In making the case for more use of narrative (where possible), Elton displays one of many instances where he sets his cap against social scientists and sundry postmodernists – in 1965. Aimed at professionals, it includes a section on teaching and is therefore not fluid. Still, a confident, masterful brief.

8. Beloff, A Historian in the 20th Century (2010)

by kurto

A loose-knit series of essays reprising the author’s career as a historian-cum-policy specialist expert on Britain, France, the US, Europe, and Russia as well as Zionism / Israel. The chapters reflect enduring concern with continental unity and imperial aftermath. There are few insights here and no methodological passages: he is better when more topically focused.