Big Bag of Africa: Malawi politics, Rwandan agriculture, S. Sudan constitution

Malawi’s politics used to be highly geographic, with each third of the country focusing on one primary party. Between 2005 and 2009, that picture changed dramatically:

The DPP party gained an enormous following, enough that some people have started worrying about single-party democracy. Matt at Aid Thoughts postulates the primary reason for the great upswelling of unity is the national fertilizer subsidy. During the election, parties differentiated themselves mostly be claims of how they would apportion subsidy money. Since DPP had already shown how it (relatively) evenly distribute the money, they were a known entity. Now, is this vote buying, or demand-responsive democracy, or political entrepreneurship, or rampant socialism, or something else altogether?

One of my most-consistently-visited posts dealt with Rwandan agricultural growth prospects being potentially oversold. In the meantime, growth has been good and better than the regional average for five years. Hansl believes the way forward is to invest in irrigation, integrated fertilizer management, diversification of ag products, and most controversially get out of smallholder agriculture:

The relatively high level of land productivity reflects the favorable agro-climatic potential resulting in two harvest seasons, as well as the intensive nature of the predominant agricultural production systems. In contrast, labor productivity remains low compared to these countries, albeit increasing over the last decade. This is related to the fact that Rwanda has the highest proportion of rural population, most of them engaged in labor intensive agriculture. It appears that most opportunities for future productivity gains lie in the area of making agricultural production less labor intensive, in other words less subsistence based.

I commented earlier that the Rwandan hills will make mechanization somewhat difficult.

Comments on South Sudan’s temporary constitution. Primary concerns: it doesn’t say just how temporary, nor how the new process will be more transparent and participatory, nor if there will be term limits which the vice president had spoken in favor of. (HT: Roving Bandit)

Vaguely on the subject of African geopolitics, below the fold is a map of energy connections between African states:

Save the Fourth Amendment

One of the best things I’ve read recently. The only trick it missed was a reference to the TSA. A slightly shortened version of the Economist's article on the erosion of the 4th Amendment rights in the US (against unreasonable search and seizures).

Best quote: "The lesson from the founders, Mr Shipler concludes, is that freedom depends not on the virtue of leaders or officials but on a “durable foundation of constitutional protections”. The message from Guantánamo, and from the mean streets of north-east Washington, is that the foundation needs shoring up."

Most of the article below the fold:

Missing the Target

1 - (ad absurdum) Where in the Constitution does it say the federal government should have a working bathroom in the Capitol Building? It doesn't. Where in the Constitution does it say the federal government should make use of electricity? It doesn't. Where in the Constitution does it say the federal government should do ANYTHING with the internet? It doesn't. There many things not mentioned by name in the Constitution that are perfectly legitimate because they fall under the principles enumerated in it.

2 - (missing the point) From a debating standpoint, the fact that she argues against regulating potatoes without questioning the existing of a system of federal schooling, she yields the point. From a Tea Party/Libertarian standpoint, it's missing the point completely. When, for the sake of a silly but illustrative example, Mr. Banks tells Mary Poppins that the outings she has taken the children on "have little use, fulfill no basic need," he surrenders the point of their reality, tacitly admitting that it is possible that the children have been "popping in and out of chalk pavement pictures, consorting with race horse persons," and "having tea parties on the ceiling."

3 - (she's also wrong) In our current system, whose validity she has surrendered, the school system is run by the federal government and our food system is heavily reliant on interstate commerce. As such, I actually have very little problem believing that school lunches fall under a reasonable interpretation of the interstate commerce. They could even mandate that all school lunches be sourced locally, which would have so blatantly much to do with interstate commerce (specifically, forbidding it) that I doubt any conservative who thought about it could argue against it on Constitutional grounds anyway.

Yglesias, who points me to this, attacks it on very different grounds, mostly attacking self-serving right-wing politicians who suffer from two problems:

Obviously the federal government has the authority to specify for what purposes federal grant money can be used. Obviously. How else could it work? The other is the tendency to regard any existing profit stream as a form of property. Banks are entitled to their federal subsidies to offer student loans. For-profit colleges are entitled to their own student loan subsidy stream. Health care providers are entitled to unlimited wasteful spending at federal expense. Potato growers are entitled to their school lunch money.

The thing is (counter Yglesias), this isn't just regulating the use of federal grant money for the federal school lunch program. It also regulates what private citizens (students) are allowed to purchase at a federal building (school) by limiting students to 0 potatoes at breakfast and 1 cup per lunch per week. More specifically, "Under the USDA proposal, school cafeterias would have to limit starchy vegetables such as potatoes, corn, peas and lima beans to a total of one cup per week for lunch."

Notice that we are not mobilizing to protect corn, peas, or lima beans. I am quite surprised at the lack of outrage about removing corn because of the political strength of King Corn. I am mildly surprised that the people arguing that potatoes are healthy are ignoring the benefits of corn and peas. I am not at all surprised that they are arguing this will shut down potato bars and not that it threatens our national supply tater tots, french fries, and other good sources of partially-hydrogenated vegetable oil (also known as trans fats). The fact is, if students are limited to one cup a week, it will be dipped in fat unless the regulation makes a specific loophole preferring potato bars and whole corn to anything fried or processed. I think that would be a very reasonable compromise that would do more to support the notion of potatoes as "gateway vegetables."

Other interesting commentary from the article below the fold.

Unconstitutional

A federal judge has ruled that the requirement forcing all Americans to purchase health care is unconstitutional. Given the centrality of the clause, the entire act has been declared unconstitutional.

Cue the clowns (CNN whose headlines are all about the Middle East, FoxNews pops champagne, NPR places the story at position #2 behind Egypt, MSNBC merely links to the judge's ruling) and it's on to the next act in our political theater.

Hat tip: my mother

A World of Interesting Incentives

USAID cannot help Haiti develop crops that would compete with US producers.

Haiti weddings are up by a lot since the earthquake. Annan, posting at Blattman, hypothesizes the reason is that the social norms are changing: you don't need to get married in a big church because they were destroyed, and you don't have to have a big house to live in because they're gone too. The costs of marriage are down, so people are practicing monogamy while the getting's good.

The DRC is looking at changing its constitution in the way the president and legislature are elected. One version says the hope is to stamp out corruption. The other side is that the hope is to centralize corruption. But will the congress agree to the shift in corruptive rents?


On how commercial incentives erode social norms (work ethic, the nobility and sacrifice of the public servant, etc.), possible making the situation far worse.

Is the problem that companies can buy their Congressional representatives loyalty, or is it that Congressional representatives are already loyal to their constituents and companies merely give them the clout to follow their political incentives? Yglesias argues that the case isn't very clear regarding ethanol support.

What set of incentives would be necessary for colleges to offer these kinds of courses? (HT: Newmark)

FINAN 141: Introductory money management course. Offers a brief overview of higher-level theories such as relatives you may never have thought to ask for money, state-by-state law into just how far you can fall behind on your rent before being evicted, and getting the most for your old Magic the Gathering cards on eBay.
SPAN 301: Explanation and response to the four questions employers most commonly ask you in Spanish to make sure you weren't lying when you put on a resume that you speak it fluently.

Big Bag of African Politics

In addition to the US midterm elections, a number of African countries are holding their own elections. An eye-witness account of peaceful goings on in Zanzibar.

Ethiopia and the UK both deny the implications of a recent Human Rights Watch report. Based on interviews with 200 people, they find that people are denied food aid, agricultural subsidies, university slots, and other government programs if they are not members of the ruling party.

Freschi reviews the review of a new book on Ethiopia's mid-1980s famine. The conclusion: totally man-made - "the direct and in all likelihood inevitable result of deliberate policies in Addis Ababa by the Stalinist government of Mengistu Haile Mariam." The post also includes this delightful picture of Ethiopia, land "where nothing ever grows/ no rain nor rivers flow."

Mauritius has accomplished most of the MDGs, an underappreciated achievement. But part of being a developmentalist is never believing amazing progress is actually progress: "Charan is worried the government will use the positive MDG figures as an excuse to ignore other social problems"

The Economist discusses Kenya's growing importance economically and politically in Africa, designs on South Sudan, and the various factions. While that piece is only cautiously optimistic, Zutt believes that Kenya's new (August 2010) constitution will do a lot of good:

It subjects the presidency to more checks and balances.  It strengthens parliamentary oversight of the executive.  It devolves power to 47 elected county governments, introducing for the first time in Kenya a meaningful decentralization.  It protects the rights of citizens, and particularly women and vulnerable groups, through an ambitious bill of rights.  It requires all sitting judges to be vetted to determine their eligibility to continue to serve.

Only 1/5 of the projects undertaken by foreign governments to grow food in Africa (aka land-grabbing) have actually started growing food and even where they have, yields have been 1/4 of expectations. Despite this, more businesses are also beginning to look at increasing African agricultural production.

Africa is a Country points out that the average age of African leaders is 76, while the average age in OECD countries is 51. Penn  notes

I am not sure what to take away from this: whether this is a representative sample, then we’re talking about different kinds of political systems (with rules about term limits or the extent of pressure from civil society groups), different ideas about the links between age and experience, various types of regimes (including life presidents and dictators for the African countries cited), and, finally,  it is not like having younger leaders have led to better policies (whether social, economic or political) in the ‘First World.’

CGD encourages the inclusion of Nigeria in the G-20 because of its large population size. The Economist is bullish on African economic growth, predicting a number of countries with more than 5% GDP growth in 2010 and 2011.

In response to the debate about how to evaluate the progress of the Millennium Villages, Blattman proposes a different baseline comparison: the Institutions and Accountability package. The increased attention caused by the MV project gets national and state governments working ... in those areas. States learn by doing and get better at delivering their public goods to everyone.

By this argument, the kind of research we need to get built around the Millennium Villages are process consultants (to learn how to deliver services better) or people who think about how policy and institutional change actually happens, so the lessons and examples can spread beyong the example villages. We also need lots of close observation so that we can see why some interventions work well together, and why some don’t.

These questions are beyond and in addition to the questions of positive externalities, whether there are results in economic levels or economic growth, and how rigorously we can identify the causal effets.

Big Bag ... too big

Adam Smith is quoted by Thought du Jour on inequality

No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, cloath and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, cloathed and lodged.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (1776), Book I, Chapter 8, paragraph 35.

I don't think this has that much to do with inequality ("fair share" or "equal share") per se as it is about poverty. You could say it's about a living wage, but the ability of working people to meet their needs "tolerably well" hardly says anything about preventing the wealthy from buying multiple McMansions.

A different view of trade vs. aid: which one do you want as your friend?

Mr Meles’s contempt for what he calls the “neoliberalism” of the West is as plain as his admiration for “generous” and “dependable” China. ... The Europeans and Americans find this galling, since they continue to pay for many of Ethiopia’s hospitals and schools, as well as handing out free food. But trade between Ethiopia and China is increasingly what matters. It was worth $800m in the first six months of this year, up by 27% on last year. China has invested $2.5 billion in Ethiopia, mostly in infrastructure.

Easterly's logic test (a test that has offended a surprising number of commenters)

2. Some nut somewhere is a fan of the economist Friedrich Hayek. Therefore it follows that: (a) since I like Hayek, I am a nut, (b) you can logically prove that Hayek  is a talk show host (c) Hayek’s ideas make possible a free society in which nuts say nutty things, but you can ignore them.

Speaking of whom, the IMF is starting to sound remarkably Austrian:

The seeds of the crisis were sown, in large part, in the five years before the crisis. Between 2003 and 2008, much of the region experienced a boom in bank credit, asset prices, and domestic demand. ... while the influx of capital boosted growth, it also led to rising imbalances and vulnerabilities.... Boom-bust credit cycles can be very costly, so it is essential to prevent credit booms from getting out of hand.

They have yet to adopt Austrian solutions, however.

In an increasingly rare moment of solidarity, the New York Senate and Assembly unanimously passed an autism insurance bill. I am uncertain of the details, but the press blurb is that it should "require coverage of evidence-based treatments like speech therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy and applied behavior analysis. S7000B also insures that coverage for behavioral therapy cannot be denied because it is deemed educational or habilitative in nature." Gov. Paterson became the second governor after Mark Sanford to veto such legislation. Sanford was overridden. There's some good money on the second and soon to be former governor being overridden as well.

On the difficulty of trying to please everybody, or the problem with being a pragmatist, or The Obama Paradox.

Cato (via Newmark) on the impacts of McCain-Feingold:

Kenneth Vogel offers an unexpected insight into the nature of campaign finance regulation:

“[Wisconsin Senator Russell] Feingold faces an uphill battle against a novice opponent, who, perhaps ironically, has been the beneficiary of hundreds of thousands of dollars in ads attacking Feingold that would have been prohibited had McCain-Feingold remained intact.”

In other words, if Feingold’s campaign finance law had not proven to be contrary to the U.S. Constitution, he might well not be facing “an uphill battle” to serve a fourth term in Washington. The political speech that is causing Feingold problems would have been prohibited in that situation.

"Satellite dishes amid the tin-roofed shacks of El Salvador. So much for Maslow's hierarchy."


Courtesy Mankiw, Hennessey fights Goolsebee's statistics with other statistics. It makes me want to see Iron Chef Statistician: Whose descriptive methodologies will reign supreme? Video below the fold:

Banning Harry Potter to Reduce Obesity

A proposed San Francisco law (done in other CA cities) wants to outlaw giving away a toy (like Harry Potter figures) with food that has too many calories, fat, salt, or sugar. In other words, take the happy out of the happy meal because it may condition children to unhealthy eating.

The proposed law not only bans restaurants from including toys with unhealthy meals, it stipulates that entrees must come with fruits and vegetables in order to offer a toy. Junk food purveyors use kid-friendly characters for evil, but there's no reason these same characters can't incentivize healthy eating. In many cases, youngsters want Chicken McNuggets and an order of fries because that meal comes with a shiny, new Hot Wheels car. If that same car came with, say, a grilled chicken sandwich, apple slices, and sauteed asparagus, kids could have their toy and eat healthy meals, too.

1 - Grilled chicken, probably. Apple slices, definitely. Asparagus? Who are you trying to fool?

2 - A less invasive law would stipulate that, if you choose to give a toy with a meal, you need to give it with healthy foods as well. That preserves greater freedom of choice and still accomplishes most of whatever minuscule, secondary effect this has on obesity.

3 - Is there any way to separate kids' choices from parents' choices in this discussion? If any other options are available, you don't go to fast food in order to get something healthy (though I appreciate and order less-bad-for-me alternatives), and it's the parents who choose to go to MickeyDs or whoever. ... On the other hand, I do recall whiningly encouraging my parents to Pleeeeeeeeeeeeease stop at Arby's to try to complete my collection of silly characters they had.

My general rule of thumb professionally is to answer the secondary question: Assuming we go ahead with something like this, is there a better way to do it? This is what points 2 and 3 discuss. There is though the broader question of if this is really a public good we're talking about and if the government should be involved at all. My kneejerk reaction says this will have almost no effect and shouldn't be done on those grounds alone. My two other hands (or knees?) point out that (1) the freedom being infringed on - the freedom to sell or buy a cheap toy with less nutrition food - is really quite minor compared to the culture of infringement we have so that those opposed have bigger breaded fish to deep fry; and (2) this is a local matter and locals and states are given very wide latitudes in our Constitution. Part of it being a local matter is trusting that San Fransiscans can decide for themselves what policies they want without some Cornell post doc trying to butt in. ...

And that's why I developed my rule of thumb! Okay, so you want to do this, how could you get equivalent results better? Allow more substitutions so parents can enforce healthier choices than children are liable to make. Kids won't ask for the salad, but parents may. It preserves more choice.

Democracy Works Despite Us

Yglesias links to a fairly standard report on American ignorance. 2/3 of Americans can't name even one member of the Supreme Court. Somehow our republic (we're not technically a democracy*) functions anyway. After all, we're a republic in part because the Founding Fathers bet we wouldn't keep track of such things, so they turned approving Supreme Court nominees over to Senators who were originally appointed by governors. Three degrees of separation built in. Well, economic progress does come from specialization, right?

Anyway, only 1% of Americans can name all 9. Can you?

I managed 7. One of the two I missed has been on the court for 16 years and is the least-recognized justice. I don't feel so bad being part of 97%.

What worries me a little more is that THE decision Justice was the second-least known. Below the fold, allow me as a public service to introduce to you one of the least-known, most-important justices on the bench today

Questions for Kagan

George Will is in the house and Newmark's at the Door:

If Congress decides interstate commerce is substantially affected by the costs of obesity, may Congress require obese people to purchase participation in programs such as Weight Watchers? If not, why not? . . .
If Congress concludes that ignorance has a substantial impact on interstate commerce, can it constitutionally require students to do three hours of homework nightly? If not, why not?
Can you name a human endeavor that Congress cannot regulate on the pretense that the endeavor affects interstate commerce? If courts reflexively defer to that congressional pretense, in what sense do we have limited government?

Should proper respect for precedent prevent the court from reversing Kelo? If so, was the court wrong to undo Plessy v. Ferguson's 1896 ruling that segregating the races with "separate but equal" facilities is constitutional?

First Ammendment and Baby Food

M. Nestle discusses her concerns with an Enfagrow toddler supplement that, in the company's words, has minimal added sugar - most of the sugar is lactose from the milk - and to which they added some nummy nutrients in the hopes of getting better nutrition to picky eaters. Getting more nutrients into a picky eater is pretty high on my agenda, certainly, as Econolad gets sick just looking at most foods.

But the company makes a number of other claims beyond "your picky toddler will eat and get some nummy nutrients." They claim (in those bright bubbles on the left) it's brain food, stimulating growth and immune system development.

Claims that are largely unsubstantiated.

And the FDA does nothing.

The main reason for FDA inaction is because companies defend their ... decorative choice of words as Protected Free Speech, and so:

a D.C. District Court judge ruled that the FDA cannot deny health claims that link selenium supplements to reduced risk of several diseases, or require those claims to be qualified, just because the claims lack adequate scientific substantiation. In other words, supplement makers can say anything they want to about the benefits of their products—on the grounds of free commercial speech—whether or not science backs up the claim.

She then argues:

I am not a lawyer but I thought that intent mattered in legal cases. Surely, the intent of the founding fathers in creating the First Amendment was to protect the right of individual citizens to speak freely about their political and religious beliefs. Surely, their intent had nothing to do with protecting the rights of supplement, food, and drug corporations to claim benefits for unproven remedies, or to promote sales of sugary foods to babies.

I think it is time to give these First Amendment issues some serious thought

One commenter added:

I think the First Amendment protection of claims not scientifically backed is correct. Having the government decide whether the conclusions of scientific studies are correct, or whether the study was properly executed or relevant to authorize a manufacturer’s claim is not what I want bureaucrats doing for me. If producers make a false and fraudulent claim, you and a bunch of attorneys general can sue the retailer and the manufacturer. Fair enough. Having the government decide what should be protected speech and what should not be is a slippery slope that will eviscerate the First Amendment.

Democracy Works: No Quote Mark Edition

A friend of mine recently argued that democracy would “work” if only the “right people” were elected. Happy belated birthdays, Mr. Washington and Mr. Lincoln. Because my friend isn’t alone in expressing something like this, I wanted to address it as a follow-up to the Easterly post I reblogged.

To my mind, if that is the best that can be said of democracy – and it’s the best thing I’ve heard him say about it – then it seems at first glance to have very little to recommend it as a system of government above anything else that has been tried. (Cue Winston Churchill.) Monarchy “works” if you have the “right people.” I’d even grant that communism and fascism “work” if you have the “right people.” I think the United Order is the best system that could be devised, but turned out not to be sustainable because we didn’t have the “right people” trying to live it (a critique of the citizens rather than the leaders).

I argue that even if we are forced to accept his null hypothesis, democracy still looks pretty good.

The headline writes itself...

which must be why everyone is using the same one: Goodluck, Mr. Jonathan.

Mr. Goodluck Jonathan is now the acting president of Nigeria. Nigeria's president has been out of country the last three months in a Saudi Arabian hospital. The Constitution says he ought to have let the National Assembly know he would be indisposed and unable to govern so they could appoint a successor. He didn't. The National Assembly is only supposed to appoint a successor if they impeach the old one. They didn't. It's a bit of a rule of law mess.

Pres. Jonathan's story is quite interesting. A professor of zoology, he ran for state legislature, only to be chosen as the vice-governor. When the governor was impeached for corruption, he became governor. Two years later, he was selected to be the vice-president, and he is now president.

I recall watching an engaging interview with Nigeria's foreign minister (Ojo Maduekwe) on BBC's Hardtalk. The reporter kept trying to get him to say, "Yes, our country is in shambles and everyone is running around like a chicken with her head cut off because our leader isn't here." Instead he repeated how long he had worked with the former president and claimed that he was familiar with the president's views on foreign policy. They would stay the course until new instructions arrived.

I found myself wondering if an African journalist would quiz Hillary Clinton like that on foreign policy if (Heaven forbid) Pres. Obama were out of commission for a few months. Reviewers kept describing the foreign minister and uncomfortable and fumbling. I thought him professional in a very difficult situation and patient with a hostile interviewer. You can watch it for yourself here. It starts about -11:20 minutes (out of -14:50). Hat tip: Africa is a Country

The Newnited States

Neil Freeman proposes (hat tip: Blattman) one possible system to bring the House and Senate closer together by making the Senate a far more democratic institution. That is, the Senate was formed in the US Constitution under the federalist ideal that the individual states were themselves sovereign, so senators were chosen by state governments. This brought no end of concern to big-state founders, like Benjamin Franklin, who argued this was no democracy.

So what if the state boundaries were redrawn on occasion - as the House seats are - to create 50 states of roughly equal population (5.6 million)? The thought experiment leads to this:
The main problem he recognizes is that local governments would have to adjust to new state rules.

One of the things I like about it is the re-emergence of a few city-states, an idea I enjoy playing with. Here, New York City is in two (Long Island and New York), Los Angeles, San Francisco, "Orange County," Chicago, and Detroit, plus the greater Dallas and Houston areas. The larger city-states tend to dominate their state's politics, but simply splitting this into New York and (rural) Empire states exacerbates the Senate's rural bias problem. This proposal reduces it significantly.

Of course, it would not be strictly necessary to actually move state boundaries in order to change the notion of "Senate districts" to 50/100 equally-sized districts.

Feasibility? Probably 0. The senators from the lower-population states have a lot to lose.