Oxford University Press's Blog, page 659

Progressivism, Presbyterianism, and the White House

Surely no President epitomized the Progressive Era like Theodore Roosevelt, from trustbusting to conservation. Oddly, we rarely remember him as his contemporaries often did: “the greatest preacher of righteousness in modern times” (Gifford Pinchot); “essentially a preacher of righteousness” (William Loeb); “a veritable preacher of social righteousness with the irresistible eloquence of faith sanctified by work” (Jane Addams); “always ready to appeal for justice and righteousness” (Henry Cabot Lodge).

Deeply religious and moralistic, Roosevelt came from the same mold as most other Progressive Presidents. From Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland, who oversaw the first antitrust law, railroad regulation, forest reserves, and expansion of national parks, to Woodrow Wilson, who implemented the Federal Reserve Act and authored the League of Nations, they tried to restrain avarice and self-seeking for the common good — for justice and righteousness, really. Moreover, Harrison, Cleveland, Roosevelt, and Wilson had all been raised Presbyterian (and Cleveland and Wilson were sons of ministers). They appointed mostly Presbyterian Secretaries of Interior and Agriculture (the conservation agencies) as well as State. The administrations of Methodist William McKinley and Unitarian William Howard Taft were relatively conservative interludes.

What was the significance of Presbyterianism? Turn-of-the-century Presbyterians had a well-deserved reputation for moralism, censoriousness, and preachiness. Presbyterianism gave Progressivism moral urgency, righteous indignation, intolerance for greed and corruption, defense of the common good, love of nature, and drive to proselytize the nation for higher principles. And Roosevelt, who famously loved having such a “bully pulpit” to preach from, epitomized the Presbyterianness of Progressivism.

Check out our infographic below to see how Progressivism’s political success vividly coincided with Presbyterian domination of the national government.

Featured image: “White House (LOC)” by The Library of Congress. Public domain via Flickr.

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One-handed economics

Once again, one of President Obama’s major legislative initiatives is being battered by a hostile Congress. Only this time, it is not Republicans standing in the way of the Administration’s plans, but the Democratic minority in the US Senate holding up the president’s Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal.

The TPP is an ambitious trade deal currently being negotiated between eleven countries: Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, United States, Singapore and Vietnam. The goal is to lower tariffs and other trade barriers—which are quite high in some of these countries–and to boost investment flows and economic integration.

What do economists think about the TPP?

President Harry S. Truman is reputed to have said “Give me a one-handed economist. All my economists say, ‘on the one hand… on the other hand.’” Although I have been unable to find concrete evidence that Truman actually uttered those words, I wish that he–or some other statesman–had.

Politicians like clear, definitive resolutions. Taxes? Nope, not gonna raise ‘em. Regulations? Never much cared for them. Entitlements? Not going to touch them. And that is understandable: it is a lot easier to rally support for a clear, unambiguous position. Face it: “Let’s go to war,” is a much more effective slogan than: “If our adversaries continue with their current belligerent actions and our national security interests are threatened, and we can get enough support from our partners in the region to join a coalition, we will take appropriate measures, which is to say, all options are on the table, military-wise…” Yawn.

Unfortunately, economics usually doesn’t make for good sound-bites and rarely lends itself to clear-cut, one-handed policy recommendations. Sometimes, it is a good idea to raise taxes. And some regulations do improve aggregate welfare, despite the unintended consequences that many of us two-handed economists will warn of. And one day, we really will have to get a handle on entitlements.

On a few issues, however, economists are “one-handed.” And “free trade,” the reduction or elimination of barriers–such as tariffs and quotas–on the free movement of goods and services across national borders, is one of those issues.

“Economics usually doesn’t make for good sound-bites and rarely lends itself to clear-cut, one-handed policy recommendations.”

According to Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman, “If there were an Economist’s Creed, it would surely contain the affirmations ‘I understand the Principle of Comparative Advantage’ and ‘I advocate Free Trade.’” And although Krugman and other economists recognize that the economic case for free trade is not absolute, freer trade is generally viewed by economists as being more desirable than its alternative: Whaples’s (2006) survey of PhD economists found that 87.5 percent agreed the US should eliminate all tariffs and barriers to trade.

Support for free trade is not limited to professional economists. According to a 2014 Pew Research Center survey of 44 countries, the median country support for free trade was 81 percent.  The rapidly growing developing countries of Asia and Africa are particularly enthusiastic about free trade, viewing it as a way to boost wages and create jobs. And even in the United States, which is far more wary of the effects of free trade on jobs and wages, the Pew survey found that more than two-thirds of those surveyed view free trade positively.

The economic argument for free trade was articulated as early as 1776, when Adam Smith wrote that trade barriers were “… either a useless or a hurtful regulation”: if domestic products were competitive with imports, tariffs were useless; if they were not competitive, tariffs were costly because they would force consumers to buy more expensive domestic goods instead of inexpensive imports.

Economists are pretty solidly behind free trade. Americans seem to be generally in favor of it as well. So why the push-back from Congress?

The TPP is forecast to benefit the US, however, the effects are not expected to be so large that voting against it would be disastrous for most members of Congress. More importantly, although the TPP will help the US economy as a whole, the bounty will not be evenly distributed. The manufacturing sector–and with it, organized labor–will suffer due to increased competition from low-cost foreign goods. And nothing makes a member of Congress spring into action like a threat to a factory in his or her district,

We still don’t know all the details of the TPP. The text has not yet been finalized, so it is premature to predict the exact costs and benefits for the US economy. Nonetheless, there are many economies across the Pacific region that are not especially hospitable to American imports. Despite the costs the TPP will impose on some parts of the US economy, a well-crafted agreement will be a net plus for the United States.

Even from the vantage point of a two-handed economist.

Featured image credit: Leaders of TPP member states, by Gobierno de Chile. CC-BY-2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

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Misunderstood: The FIFA scandal and the extraterritorial reach of US law

In some quarters, the recent indictment by the United States of a number of individuals associated with FIFA has led to an outcry as to the extraterritorial reach of US law. Implicit in the outcry is the suggestion that the United States is unique in the application of its criminal laws. Though defense counsel can be expected to challenge US jurisdiction and to interpose various rationales for fighting extradition for many of the defendants, by no means was this a situation where an isolated event or contact with the United States served as the basis for territorial jurisdiction.

A careful review of the 164-page “FIFA indictment” does not support a claim of overreach on the part of the US Department of Justice. Two of the 14 individuals indicted were US citizens, another was a permanent resident of the United States, and three others owned residences in the United States. The use of the US banking system to facilitate the questionable conduct was extensive. Furthermore, many of the activities involved CONCACAF, which represented organized “soccer” in North America, Central America, the Caribbean, and three South American countries. The administration offices of CONCACAF were initially located in New York and later in Miami, Florida. Based on these and other allegations, the indictment simply does not support a claim that contact with the United States was incidental.

The manner in which the United States applies territorial jurisdiction is not unique to the United States. Indeed, most of the major common law jurisdictions apply their criminal laws extraterritorially in the same manner as the United States. This includes the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Moreover, unlike the United States, for each of these countries, no statute of limitations applies to indictable offenses or what are generally referred to as felonies in the United States.

While most countries now have statutes similar to the anti-bribery provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, often overlooked is the existence of parallel statutes addressing private or commercial bribery in various forms, including kickbacks. Most countries have statutes that apply to situations involving private bribery. For example, the United States has the Travel Act and Canada has its Secret Commissions Offence. But in most situations, such as with the Travel Act and the Secret Commissions Offence, the application of the statute is limited to territorial jurisdiction.

Some countries, like the United Kingdom and South Africa, have statutes that are far more aggressive in addressing private bribery. Unlike the United States, they provide for both nationality and territorial jurisdiction. Moreover, for entities under the UK Bribery Act, the mere act of engaging in limited activity within the United Kingdom has the potential of triggering criminal liability of both public and private bribery taking place in other parts of the world. In this context under the UK Bribery Act, it does not matter whether any act in furtherance of the questionable conduct takes place within the territory of the United Kingdom.

In reality, the statutory scheme of the United States and the jurisdictional reach of US law are not terribly unique, especially among common law countries. Nor are policy considerations necessarily the critical factor. Far more mundane factors are involved in situations like those involving the recent FIFA indictment.

FIFA headquarters, Zurich. © Rafael_Wiedenmeier via iStock.

First and foremost, the resources available to US enforcement officials are far more substantial than most counties. This is in part due to the size of the United States and its relative wealth. But an overriding factor is the vast experience of the US Department of Justice and the various investigative agencies in prosecuting complex white-collar crime. On a comparative basis, the combination of vast experience and extensive resources is what really sets the United States apart from most countries.

An inherent but related factor is the central role that the United States plays in terms of banking and international commerce. Within the Americas, it also serves as the major hub for air travel. As a result, the likelihood of there being substantial activities within the United States that might support territorial jurisdiction is almost a given for a large international organization.

It must also be kept in mind that these gaps between the United States and many countries in terms of experience and relative resources are quickly narrowing. In addition to facilitating much greater cooperation among member countries, one of the many benefits of the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention, the United Nations Convention Against Corruption, and the other anti-corruption conventions adopted in recent years is the buildup of capacity in terms of expertise and resources to address sophisticated white-collar crime. While the focus may be public corruption, those same resources and expertise apply equally as well to other forms of white-collar crime. In this regard, already in conjunction with the FIFA indictment, a number of investigations relating to FIFA in other countries have come to the fore.

In short, reasonable people may differ as to how the United States should employ its resources in addressing various forms criminal activity. But the suggestion that the United States is unique in the extraterritorial reach of its criminal laws is without basis.

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The prophet and the reformer

Brigham Young is well known in history as the founder of Salt Lake City, the first governor of the Utah Territory, and a leader in the Latter-day Saint movement. Thomas L. Kane, on the other hand, is not quite as known; he was an attorney born in Philadelphia. However, some would say Kane is the most important non-Mormon in the history of the Church of Latter-day Saints.

Over the course of more than 30 years, these men corresponded on matters both personal and political. We sat down with Matthew Grow and Ronald Walker, co-editors of The Prophet and the Reformer: The Letters of Brigham Young and Thomas L. Kane, to learn more about these two men, why their letters are important, and what these letters reveal about American history.

How did the correspondence between Brigham Young and Thomas L. Kane begin?

Brigham Young and Thomas L. Kane first met in July 1846 after Kane had traveled to the Mormon refugee camps in Iowa to visit the Mormons who had been forcibly expelled from Illinois that year. Intrigued by the Mormons’ sufferings, Kane had drawn upon his family’s extensive political connections to assist a Mormon representative in Washington, D.C., in persuading President James Polk to commission a regiment of Mormon soldiers for the Mexican-American War. He then traveled to the Mormon camps to help raise the regiment and soon met Young, the forceful leader of the Mormon emigration. Kane soon became deeply impressed by the Mormons’ sincerity and concerned about their long-term prospects for peaceful coexistence within the United States. Encouraged by Young, who saw him as a potential ally, Kane began to envision a permanent relationship with himself as the Mormons’ self-appointed defender to the nation. Their correspondence began in August 1846, shortly before Kane left the Mormons’ camp to return to his native Philadelphia.

Why are these letters important?

The correspondence between Kane and Young reveals the strategies of the Latter-day Saints in relating to American government and culture during the crucial decades when controversy over the “Mormon Question” was a major political, cultural, and legal issue. The Kane-Young letters demonstrate the campaigns against the Mormons as well as the shifting tactics taken by the Saints in response. Kane’s position as the Saints’ unofficial lobbyist and image-maker on the East Coast additionally demonstrates how debates over Mormonism intersected with other national controversies over the development of the west, popular sovereignty, American Indians, government of the territories, and the sectional crisis. Indeed, with its focus on national concerns and the Saints’ relationship with the federal government, the Kane-Young correspondence illustrates that the “Mormon Question” was a major national issue that can be fully understood only within the context of these other national political debates of the mid-nineteenth century. In addition, the correspondence gives insight into most of the major controversies surrounding the Latter-day Saints between the late 1840s and the late 1870s.

What kinds of things were they writing about?

While the men also shared observations regarding American politics and news of their families, their correspondence centers on news relating to the Mormons’ political, legal, and economic challenges in the Utah Territory.

What do these letters reveal about the men?

Young and Kane are a study in contrast. While Young was born into poverty, Kane was born (in his own words) “with the gold spoon in my mouth, to station and influence and respectability.” While Young was regarded as a prophet by his fellow Mormons, Kane was a religious skeptic. They were in many ways an odd pair: the pragmatic prophet and the quixotic reformer, the millenarian who spoke in tongues and the skeptic of organized religion, the Yankee from humble origins and the aristocratic Pennsylvanian. Even their writing styles show their differences; Kane’s sentences can be learned, polished, and sometimes written in a complex manner. In contrast, Young’s style is more direct and pulsates with energy.

Nevertheless, for three decades, Young relied on Kane, 21 years his junior, as his most trusted adviser outside of the Latter-day Saint community. As a result, Kane became the most important non-Mormon in the history of the Latter-day Saints. At the same time, Young deeply influenced Kane’s life. Kane’s wife Elizabeth commented that both men “had great magnetic power” and “each influenced the other strongly.”

What do these letters reveal about the history of the Mormons?

The correspondence opens a window into the inner workings of the new religious movement. Historians cannot understand such events as Utah’s troubled history with the national government, leading to the celebrated “Utah War” of 1857-58, without studying these letters. Nor can they understand Mormon efforts to build an ideal social order, which included their celebrated polygamy. For almost thirty years, Young and Kane talked and maneuvered, planned and plotted. No one can fully understand nineteenth-century Mormon history without reading this material.

Image Credit: “Utah” by Moyan Brenn. CC BY 2.0 via Flickr. 

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Religion and environmentalism: a Q&A with Mark Stoll

In Inherit the Holy Mountain: Religion and the Rise of American Environmentalism, Mark Stoll explores the religious roots of the American environmental movement. We sat down with him to find out a bit more about his process researching the book, issues in the field, and some tips for aspiring authors.

What led you to this particular field of study?

Originally, I was curious about John Muir’s religious and intellectual journey from his religiously strict childhood and youth to his adult career as founder of the Sierra Club and prominent voice for national parks. Also, my own religious upbringing and my environmentalist convictions and love of the outdoors got me interested in the ways religious background shapes ideas and attitudes towards nature. The more I explored the link between religious background to adult ideas about nature and environment, the more it impressed me as fundamental to so much of the history of environmentalism.

US President Theodore Roosevelt (left) and nature preservationist John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, on Glacier Point in Yosemite National Park. In the background: Upper and lower Yosemite Falls. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Was there anything that you found surprising when researching for this book? If so, what?

There were three things that surprised me.

First, I was surprised to find that nearly all the leading figures in the 19th-century conservation, forestry, and parks movements were no further that one generation removed from a Congregational Church in a New England town. This led me to discover the vital role the values and landscape of the New England town played in inspiring those movements.

Second, contrary to what the literature on the origins of environmentalism would lead you to expect, hardly any of these figures acknowledged any significant influence from those great environmental heroes Emerson and Thoreau. Their influence came later, and for Thoreau, much later. 19th-century love of nature owed more to Calvinism than Transcendentalism!

Last, I was quite surprised that the great leaders in the Progressive conservation movement were nearly all raised Presbyterian: John Muir of the Sierra Club, President Theodore Roosevelt, Chief Forester Gifford Pinchot, and Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes, as well as the lesser known but quite important President Grover Cleveland and Secretaries of Interior John W. Noble and Franklin Lane. The “Presbyterianness” of the Progressive movement is very striking. They were all very moralistic, and sometimes censorious and preachy.

Do you think there are many misconceptions regarding the topic of your book? If so, what?

The most common misconception is that religion has nothing to do with environmentalism, or is hostile to it. Inherit the Holy Mountain shows how tightly the two have been bound together. So many important environmental figures had a minister as a close relative, or even once considered becoming a minister or missionary him- or herself.

What was the most challenging part of your research?

It was a challenge to understand what it means to grow up in various religious traditions, both in the past and today. What does it mean, for example, to have grown up Presbyterian, Congregationalist, Baptist, Jewish, Methodist, Catholic, or black Baptist? A strong religious upbringing leaves distinctive traces in everything people do as adults, no matter what religious beliefs (or none at all) they adopt later.

It was also challenging to dig up the childhood religion of many important and interesting figures. Often biographers and memoirists have not thought it an important thing to record.

How do you think your book influences research today in your field of study?

Hopefully, my book will show other scholars what a fruitful and mostly unexploited field lies at the intersection of religious history and environmental history. There is much work to be done, both in American environmental history and especially in world environmental history, to uncover those subtle, often hidden connections.

Can you give us a fun fact about your field of study?

It’s fun to meet with environmental historians. Most share interest in nature, the outdoors, hiking, birding, climbing, and all that. Environmental history meetings usually have field trips, including historical tours of parks, hikes, and birding trips, or sometimes something like a visit to a local organic winery. The meetings also feature tours of nearby environmental justice sites or toxic waste or other environmental problem, whether historic or contemporary, so they also have their more serious side.

What is your next project?

I have been invited to write on religion and the recent environmental movement in a book for Cornell University Press.

What would be your top tips for an aspiring academic author?

First, pick a topic that inspires passion and relates to your own experience. “Follow your bliss,” as Joseph Campbell advised. Don’t worry whether anyone else is working in the field. Hardly anyone else was working in mine, for example. If your work shows how interesting and significant your subject is, others will follow and your work will be more noteworthy than if you follow a trail that others blazed.

Second, listen to your evidence. It will tell you the story you will want to tell. You may hear a narrative you hadn’t ever suspected.

Image credit: “Muir Woods” by Ernest McGray, Jr. CC BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr.

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A century of British cinema

Film is little over 120 years old, and lives in film seem to fall into three phases. The first comprises those who were born before the era of film, and whose different experiences and expectations helped shape the young medium. The second comprises those who grew up with film, in the era of the studios and mass cinema-going. The third consists of those who saw the bastion of the film world assailed by new technologies, from television to video games, which divided the audience’s attention and changed professions. All three phases are reflected in the latest batch of film lives to be published in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

The first film exhibitions in Britain took place in the mid-1890s, so it was the Victorians who could have had no imagining what direction their professional careers were to take, who form the first phase. They include William Haggar (1851-1925), a Welsh fairground showman who ended years of penury when he added the cinematograph to his shows, then discovered a gift for dramatic film construction with films such as The Life of Charles Peace (1905), which made him a pioneer of the chase film. George Pearson (1875-1973), an unassuming school headmaster, threw up his career in his mid-30s to become a film director at a time when those of his class generally shunned the lowly cinema, becoming one of Britain’s leading film producers for the next two decades. Joseph Brooke Wilkinson (1870-1948) trained as a scientific instrument maker, got involved in the early film industry through an interest in projectors, and ended up becoming a leading figure in managing the British Board of Film Censors. Albert E. Smith (1874-1958), son of a market gardener from Kent, who took up magic tricks as a precarious profession when his family emigrated to the USA in the 1880s, added motion pictures to the entertainment, and within fifteen years was head of the leading film company in America before the First World War. The freshness and invention of the early film business derives from these diverse experiences.

The second phase was made of those who determined from the outset to make film their profession. For actors such as Ivy Duke, Moore Marriott, Alma Taylor (1895-1977), or John Gregson, this was on obvious choice – if the screen liked them, then they were obliged to like the screen. Ida Lupino (1918-1995) appeared on film from the age of 14, moved to Hollywood, and then found further success behind the camera as a director on film and television. Others turned from the careers their parents might have chosen for them to pursue this exciting new art form: Robert Stevenson (1905-1986), a president of the Cambridge Union who went on to flourish as a director of family entertainments, most notably Mary Poppins; Arthur Woods, who studied medicine at Cambridge but discovered his gift as a director making low-budget thrillers; or Pen Tennyson (1912-1941), great-grandson of the poet Alfred Tennyson, who quit Oxford without a degree to pursue film, making a handful of imaginative works such as The Proud Valley (1940) with Paul Robeson, before – like Woods – being killed  during the Second World War. Other filmmakers had established careers outside of Britain but came to leave their mark on its industry: Erich Pommer and Max Schach were fugitives from Nazi Germany, Conrad Veidt had been lured over to Britain before the rise of Nazism, while Cecil Parker – seemingly the epitome of the English gentleman – was born Schwabe, the son of a German hotel manager in Hastings. Director Marcel Varnel (1894-1947) came from France, Gabriel Pascal, who dedicated himself to bringing Bernard Shaw’s plays to the screen, hailed from Romania; Carl Foreman (1914-1984) escaped the Hollywood anti-communist witch-hunt to script Bridge on the River Kwai and The Guns of Navarone. All of these lived their lives in film.

Film strip by Bart from New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. CC-BY-2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

The film industry today is being challenged by other industries and other screens, but perhaps it has always been this way. The first generation of screen actors either transferred from the stage (often disdainfully, but welcoming the extra money) or shared their working lives between stage and screen. Radio and then television came in to widen the range of opportunities – Kenneth Connor (1918-1993), star of the Carry On comedies, first found success as a radio performer; Harry H. Corbett (1925-1982) veered between stage, film, and television, the latter giving him his greatest fame as the star of Steptoe and Son. Oliver Reed (1938-1999) was too large a presence for the television screen, but his final performance in Gladiator, posthumously realised through digital ingenuity, shows how a performer can now be literally translated into new media.

Film itself is disappearing as a medium, replaced by digital production and digital projection. What was previously immortalised through celluloid is now a row of ones and noughts in DVDs, Blu-Rays, and Digital Cinema Packages. Lives in film were a twentieth-century phenomenon, but lives on the screen will endure.

Featured image: Film strip by Bart from New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. CC-BY-2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

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Tales of two Europes: sameness and difference at the Eurovision Song Contest 2015 Vienna

Already during the heady years after European reunification (from 1989 into the 1990s), visitors to Vienna were greeted by billboards and posters announcing that “Wien ist anders” (Vienna is different). Part advertising slogan, part imperial nostalgia about the multicultural past of the Habsburg Monarchy, part recognition of Austria’s willingness to accept a higher percentage of refugees amid its population than any other European nation, the claim that “Vienna is different” became a source of self-identity and tolerance during a quarter-century of European transition, in which nations across Europe sought to repair their differences and to embrace their sameness, becoming more than the sum of individual parts on a global stage.

The negotiation of sameness and difference seemingly moved to Central Europe again with the 60th Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) in Vienna, which took as its motto “Building Bridges.” Austria became the host of the 2015 Eurovision after the sensational victory at the 2014 ESC in Copenhagen by Conchita Wurst, whose winning entry, “Rise like a Phoenix,” ascended to continent-wide popularity as an anthem for the diversity of sexual identity. Transgender and transsexual performance was not new for the ESC in 2014—the transgender Dana International had famously won for Israel in 1998—but Conchita Wurst’s performance as a drag queen opened a more expansive and inclusive meaning for the Eurovision at a moment of disintegrating political and humanitarian conditions in Europe, the Russian annexation of Crimea and support for rebel forces in eastern Ukraine, and the growing wave of refugees from the Middle East and Africa crossing the Mediterranean in search of asylum in Europe. If European governments and the European Union increasingly struggled to find ways to resolve the crises at its peripheries, the Eurovision bridge to the shores of the Danube promised an alternative Europe, in which differences of all kinds would be fully embraced and celebrated for their sameness.

The organizers of ESC Vienna left nothing to chance: Difference was everywhere. Public spaces were covered with images of difference; streetcar and subway announcements employed the voice of Conchita Wurst; a Euro-Village was built on the square in front of the Vienna City Hall, a twenty-first-century addition to the historicizing architecture of the Ringstrasse; and most popular of all, pedestrian traffic lights in the central districts were replaced to show same-sex couples waiting with red or crossing the street with green. Austria’s investment in the display of difference didn’t come without significant cost to the Austrian public, perhaps as high as 120 million Euros (ca. $140 million).

It might have been easier to forgive the costs to Austria as investment in tourism had the Eurovision not occurred at a moment of growing financial, cultural, and moral crisis. Whereas the Euro-Village in central Vienna hosted 25,000 guests at a party during and after the Grand Finale on Saturday evening, the Austrian Interior Ministry was resisting the European Union request to build tent cities outside of Vienna for the unrelenting flood of refugees. Whereas no costs were spared in bringing musicians from throughout Europe (and the Middle East and Australia) to sing for three minutes on the Eurovision stage, discussions were ongoing about the ability of one of Austria’s most venerable symphonic ensembles, the Tonkünstler Orchestra (founded 1907), to survive.

The message of the Eurovision Song Contest 2015 couldn’t have provided clearer evidence for the return of the two Europes: one imagined through sameness, the other divided by difference. Would it be possible for the ESC to build bridges between them, or would the 60th Anniversary be one more grand show for the longest televised music competition in history? Could a song contest reconcile difference, or must it simply survive for another year as a spectacle of panem et circenses, bread and circuses, that even the two Europes could enjoy together?

The dissonance and interplay between the two Europes emerged the moment the contestants and fans (myself among them) arrived in Vienna and the Eurovision week began to unfold with the first Semi-Final on 19 May. The 2015 entries—40 in total, this year including Australia as a special guest, the first time a non-member of the European Broadcasting Union would compete—brought a broad range of songs with them, notable especially because of the density of titles and lyrics that juxtaposed self and other, the personal pronouns that joined I, we, and you in common purpose. Austria’s The Makemakes would compete with “I Am Yours,” Slovenia’s Maraaya would sing “Here for You,” and Russia’s Polina Gagarina established the collective selfness of her title, “A Million Voices,” with the opening lines: “We are the world’s people / Different yet we’re the same.”

Polina Gagarina – A Million Voices (Russia)

The musical styles of the 40 entries were remarkable for their differences—and no less so for their sameness. Anyone familiar with the history of the Eurosong would be hard-pressed to identify a song in 2015 that broke new stylistic ground or experimented with sound and sense. Throughout the history of the ESC it has been common for songs to emulate and expand upon the successes of the previous year. Echoes of Conchita Wurst’s “Rise like a Phoenix,” firmly in the genre of Eurovision female power ballads, were abundant in Vienna. Some suffered the fate of look-alike imitators, but others were able to capture some of Conchita’s artful delivery. Latvia’s Aminata Savadogo, with family heritage from Burkina-Faso and Russia, placed sixth with “Love Injected,” and Polina Gagarina’s “A Million Voices” concluded the evening in second place. National styles and genres were sparser this year, but by no means absent. Montenegro’s Knez sang “Adio” in Montenegrin Serbian in the folklike style of sevdalinka, and France’s Lisa Angell packaged her call for remembering the destruction of World War I, “N’oubliez pas,” unequivocally as French chanson. National signifiers were more generally universalized, at least to the extent this was possible. Armenia’s vocal sextet, Genealogy, wore costumes that were undeniably Armenian for their “Face the Shadow,” the highly political song calling for acknowledgment of the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire. For Italy’s tenor trio, Il Volo, national style needed but weave the signature Sanremo style to convey the apolitical message of “Grande Amore.”

Genealogy – Face The Shadow (Armenia)

Il Volo – Grande Amore (Italy)

More than in recent years, the gap between winners and losers at ESC 2015 was quite considerable. Only three countries were ever really competitive: Sweden (1st place); Russia (2nd place); and Italy (3rd place). These were the favorites entering the contest, and they remained the favorites through the final vote tallies from the national committees. Another group of competing nations accumulated a respectable number of votes—Belgium (4), Australia (5), Latvia (6), Estonia (7), Norway (8), and Israel (9)—largely because these were favorites of a different kind; for example, the sentimental favorite was Australia’s Guy Sebastian (“Tonight Again”), the special guest from the non-European nation (and continent) most devoted to the ESC. Below the top six, the bottom simply fell out, with most votes coming through regional bloc-voting or because of the special interests of political and musical interest groups. Hungary’s Boggie (20th place) attracted a bit of attention with the eco-ballad, “Wars for Nothing,” and Romania’s Voltaj (15) performed “De la capăt,” a song narrating the problems Romanian children faced growing up without parents who had been forced to work in Central Europe, particularly Austria. Armenia’s call for recognition of the genocide, “Face the Shadow,” fell roughly in the middle of the field (16th place) at the end of the evening, achieving its most important goal, recognition on a European stage. More than in the years since the introduction of semi-final competitions—thirteen entries did not reach the Grand Finale—there were several big losers in 2015, notably Germany and the host country, Austria, both of whom received the infamous “nul points,” zero votes. Just ahead of them at the bottom of the voting were France and the United Kingdom, with four and five votes respectively. More than anything, such poor showing had less to do with song and performance than with a lack of interest, the turn of Eurovision voters to the issues that were for them most critical.

Those issues arose from the resurgence of the two Europes and the struggle to reconcile sameness from difference. The Europe formed from sameness was clear, but therefore virtually unachievable: music in general, and the Eurosong in particular. Time and time again, we heard the mantra from musicians and media commentators that the Eurovision was about the songs and the singers. “There’s no place for politics,” proclaimed announcer after announcer, even during the tally of the votes after the Grand Finale. The “place for politics,” however, was everywhere, despite the fact that many wished not to see it. Ultimately, ESC 2015 was reduced to a fierce competition between Sweden and Russia, between Gagarina’s “A Million Voices” and Måns Zelmerlöw’s “Heroes.” Both songs were heavily favored; both were imagined to suppress political differences; both failed to do that on the way to securing their success. During the course of the voting, the two Europes could not have been in tighter competition. At the halfway point in the voting—20 of 40 voting countries had submitted their decisions—Russia was in the lead, and comfortably so. The countries of Eastern Europe, many again with tense relations with Russia, overwhelmingly gave Russia the coveted douze points, the highest tally of twelve points from the range from one to twelve that each nation is able to award. As Western Europe began to vote more frequently in the second part of the voting, the douze points accrued increasingly to Sweden, and Russia received increasingly fewer votes, sometimes none at all.

Måns Zelmerlöw – Heroes (Sweden)

As the final national votes were announced, it was clear that, at least at ESC 2015, despite the narrowness of the waters separating the two Europes, any bridge capable of mediating difference would be built only on the Swedish side. It was Måns Zelmerlöw who chronicled how “we are the heroes of our time,” singing “the greatest anthem ever heard.” When interviewed after the final reprieve of the winning song at the end of the broadcast, Zelmerlöw struggled not to lose sight of the sameness reconciled through difference, feebly paraphrasing his winning song: “We are all heroes, no matter who we love, no matter who we are.” As we looked back on the Eurovision Song Contest 2015, there were very few heroes left in the wake of the Pyrrhic victory for the two Europes still unconnected by the bridges of history.

Headline image credit: Måns Zelmerlöw celebrates his win on stage. Photo by Elena Volotova (EBU). © Eurovision, European Broadcasting Union.

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Government by contract: Who prods the procurers?

When Roman censor Appius Claudius Caecus commissioned the city’s first aqueduct in 312 BC, he started a network which would grow to some 500 kilometres and sustain a population of one million. There is no record of the contract awarded, but it likely specified that the Aqua Appia be built mostly underground to protect it from contamination and sabotage. It was kept in use for over 250 years, undergoing various renovations and expansions.

Between 1933 and 1938, the Public Works Administration set up as part of Roosevelt’s New Deal awarded $6 billion worth of contracts to private construction companies to build roads, bridges, dams, hospitals, and schools. Much of this infrastructure remains in place today – in some areas it has never been matched by subsequent levels of public investment.

Since the reunification of Germany in 1990, more than €1.5 trillion in “Solidaritätszuschlag” has been transferred to the former East Germany to help develop its economy and infrastructure. This has been subject to criticism both by those who resent the tax and those who preferred East German architecture. Despite this, its effect in bringing living standards in the east and west of the country closer together cannot be doubted.

None of these feats of public administration could have been achieved without the procurement of goods and services from the market. The way in which the state procures, and its ability to manage contracts, underlies much of what we expect from it. Beyond construction, the operation of schools, hospitals, and prisons requires a constant supply of goods and services. Not to mention what is spent on defence procurement and various IT projects. So who pays attention to how all this is done? Like many technocratic chores, we have outsourced it to the European Union.

Bonn-EU flag, by R/DV/RS. CC-BY-2.0 via Flickr.

Procurement law is typically more concerned with the process of buying than what is bought. It aims to ensure a level of accountability in the award of contracts by requiring them to be advertised publicly and defined procedures to be followed. It also provides remedies for infringements of the rules, which may be enforced by disgruntled bidders. At a basic level, procurement law makes it more difficult to award a contract corruptly. But it may also make it more difficult to award a contract well. The EU procurement rules are sometimes accused of this, and not only by those who have failed to win a contract.

In the European context, procurement law is primarily concerned with the free movement of goods and services across the 28 Member States. If it had existed in Roman times, commissioners of aqueducts would have been obliged to consider materials from Germania or an engineer from Gaul. The basic principles are simple enough: bidders should be treated equally, contracts should be advertised and awarded in a transparent manner, and the rules applied by public authorities should be proportionate to the requirements of the contract. If that were the sum of EU procurement law, it might easily be inscribed on a tablet. Instead we have directives running to hundreds of pages, and judgments of the Court of Justice running to thousands.

Some of the concepts which have emerged from this proliferation of law have a metaphysical flavour. The criteria applied by public authorities “must not confer an unrestricted freedom of choice” upon them. This does not mean that procurement decisions should be formulaic, but rather that authorities must define in advance how they propose to exercise their discretion. This is achieved through the publication of criteria and specifications and the requirement to notify bidders of the reason for decisions. If a bidder wishes to challenge a procedure, a common cause of action is that an authority has departed from the rules or criteria, or applied them in a way which the bidder could not have anticipated.

To judge when complaints of this nature are valid, the EU Court of Justice devised a further concept – that of the ‘reasonably well–informed and normally diligent tenderer.’ This fictional character has been likened to the famous man on the Clapham omnibus as a standard of reason and common sense – although in reality few bus journeys are long enough to allow a passenger time to wade through voluminous tender documents. Nevertheless the English courts have embraced the reasonably well–informed and normally diligent tenderer as a foreign–born but naturalised personage. Applying the hypothetical common sense of such a character saves much time which might otherwise be spent in determining each bidder’s personal views of what a particular set of words in a tender document meant.

The desire to use public contracts to achieve broader environmental and social goals has lead to some further metaphysical developments in procurement law. Directives from 2014 – which are currently being transposed into 28 legal systems – inform us that specifications may concern ‘factors which do not form part of the material substance’ of the goods or services being bought. This is taken neither from Plato nor Thomas Aquinas but from the idea that public authorities should be able to insist on sustainable production methods being applied, for example by specifying energy from renewable sources or food from organic agriculture. All of this adds to the complexity of procurement, and it is hard to imagine commissioners of the Appian, New Deal or German reunification projects being delayed by such concerns. However the idea of looking beyond the surface of what is being purchased would surely have found favour amongst those tasked with such colossal and instrumental schemes.

Featured image: “CJCE – European Court of Justice”, by Cédric Puisney. CC-BY-2.0 via Flickr. 

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President Obama, the Senate, and state private-sector retirement laws

In a letter addressed to President Obama, 26 members of the United States Senate expressed their support for the private sector retirement savings laws adopted in Illinois and California, and also being considered in other states. In particular, the senators asked that the United States Treasury and Labor Departments resolve three legal issues clouding the prospects of these adopted and proposed state laws.

In important respects, the California statute and the Illinois law are similar. Both mandate that small, private sector employers lacking a workplace pension—such as a 401(k) plan or an IRA deposit arrangement—will automatically be enrolled in a state-run, private sector retirement savings program. These state-managed plans will establish an account for each employee of an enrolled employer. Retirement savings will be withheld from an employee’s paycheck, and will be deposited and invested in the employee’s account, unless the employee affirmatively elects out of the state-run retirement savings plan. The employee accounts established under the California and Illinois laws indicate how far America has come as a defined contribution society that utilizes individual accounts for retirement, education, and medical savings.

There are, however, important differences between the Illinois and California statutes. For example, the California law mandates state-sponsored retirement coverage for firms with five or more employees unless such firms maintain their own retirement savings plans for their employees. The Illinois law only applies to employers with twenty-five or more employees who lack their own 401(k) or similar employer-sponsored plans. The California law provides detailed rules for an employer to supplement employees’ savings contributions with the employer’s own additional contributions. The Illinois statute lacks such rules for supplemental employer contributions.

The senators asked for three specific legal opinions from the Treasury and Labor Departments to facilitate the implementation of these adopted and proposed state private sector retirement laws. The legal questions posed by the senators are more complex than the senators suggest. As I argue in a forthcoming article in the Illinois Law Review, the Illinois statute is, from a legal perspective, better designed to comply with federal law than the California act.

The senators first asked President Obama for a ruling that would ensure the California and Illinois plans “and similar IRA-based programs enacted in the future, are not preempted by ERISA,” the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974. The absence (or presence) of employer contributions distinguishes plans that trigger ERISA coverage from plans that do not. Since the Illinois statute contains no rules to implement employer contributions, the Illinois state-run, private sector retirement plan does not face the prospect of ERISA preemption. However, the California plan will be subject to ERISA preemption whenever employers supplement employees’ retirement contributions with additional contributions.

The senators’ second request to President Obama overlaps the first. In particular, the senators sought a ruling that the California and Illinois private sector retirement savings plans, as well as “similar IRA-based vehicles created by the laws of other states in the future,” will not be “plans” governed by ERISA.

Again, the legally critical factor is the presence or absence of employer contributions. When California employers make supplemental contributions to California’s state-run private sector plan, those employer contributions will trigger ERISA’s coverage. For this reason, in an earlier article, I urged California to repeal the ability of employers to make supplemental contributions to the Golden State’s private sector retirement arrangement.

Finally, the senators asked for a ruling ensuring that the California and Illinois accounts will be individual retirement accounts (IRAs) for purposes of the Internal Revenue Code. Here, once again, the Illinois law is more compliant with federal law than is the California statute.

“Justice Louis Brandeis famously said that the states are laboratories for experimentation.”

The accounts under the Illinois plan qualify as IRAs for purposes of the Internal Revenue Code. Under the Illinois law, the state-managed accounts will be credited with employees’ contributions and investment earnings, and will be debited with investment losses. An Illinois employee’s retirement balance will be whatever amount these contributions, earnings, and losses have grown to (or fallen to) at the time of retirement. Thus, for purposes of the Internal Revenue Code, the Illinois accounts will be IRAs which directly benefit from investment gains and decrease from investment losses.

In contrast, the California law uses what is today known as a “cash balance” formula. The accounts established under the California statute will be governed not by actual investment gains and losses, but by a predetermined formula that will operate independently of the actual investment experience of the state-managed program. As a matter of retirement policy, compelling arguments can be made for the kind of “cash balance” formula promulgated by the California statute. However, under ERISA and the Internal Revenue Code as read today, “accounts” must be directly credited with actual investment gains and charged with actual investment losses. This does not occur under the formula-based California law. Consequently, the cash balance retirement savings arrangements established by the California law will not qualify as IRAs for purposes of the Internal Revenue Code.

Congress could amend the Internal Revenue Code and ERISA to expand the statutory definition of an IRA. Perhaps this would be a wise idea. However, without the amendment of the Code and ERISA, the federal government cannot rule that California’s law creates IRAs within the meaning of the Code since that law uses a “cash balance” formula, rather than actual investment experience, to determine employees’ account balances.

Hopefully, the senators’ letter to President Obama will contribute to an important national debate about a serious problem—namely, the failure of low-income Americans to save for their retirements. The California and Illinois laws represent one possible approach to mandate private sector retirement savings with a state-run plan as the default option. Another state, however, might mandate employers to provide retirement coverage, but require such mandated coverage to be obtained privately, not through a state-managed program. This is the approach President Obama’s budgetary proposals have embraced, thereby mandating private sector IRAs without the government itself managing retirement funds.

But these are not the only options that exist for federal and state lawmakers. Alternatively, a state could choose to supplement, with its own tax credits, the Internal Revenue Code’s tax credits both for employers establishing plans and low-income retirement savers. On the other hand, a state could argue that the subject of private sector retirement savings is exclusively a matter of federal concern. A governor or legislator adopting this approach would elect for his state to do nothing and thereby defer to federal policy.

Justice Louis Brandeis famously said that the states are laboratories for experimentation. The subject of private sector retirement savings is well-suited to such experimentation. To the extent that the senators’ letter to President Obama provokes discussion and experimentation on this important subject, the letter will have performed a useful public service.

Image Credit: “President Obama Talks to the Crew of Atlantis” by NASA HQ PHOTO. CC-BY-NC 2.0 via Flickr.

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Heart Rhythm Week 2015: detect, protect, and correct arrhythmias

Do you know what a heart rhythm disorder is? What it means and how to help prevent it? This year, Heart Rhythm Week takes place from 1-7 June and continues its mission raise awareness and understanding of arrhythmias.

To show our support for Heart Rhythm Week, organized by Arrhythmia Alliance, we asked Editor in Chief of EP-Europace, Professor John Camm, and expert in atrial fibrillation, to answer some questions on the topic.

It is said cardiovascular diseases are the number one killer in Europe, with one in four people developing a heart rhythm disorder (cardiac arrhythmia) in their lifetime. Can you briefly explain what is meant by a heart rhythm disorder?

About one in 1,500 die of sudden cardiac death, largely due to an arrhythmia. One in four develop atrial fibrillation at some time in their life – a potentially dangerous arrhythmia but not directly life-threatening. A heart rhythm disorder is when the rhythm originates from a part of the heart which is not the natural pacemaker, and is usually abnormally too fast or too slow.

What are the key symptoms of heart rhythm disorders?

The patient may feel palpitations – awareness of the heart beating in the chest – rapidly, slowly, forcefully, or irregularly. Dizziness or loss of consciousness may occur. Sometimes chest pain or breathlessness may be the most prominent symptoms. When the heart rhythm disorder remains for a long period the outstanding symptoms can be tiredness or fatigue.

How we can reduce our own risk of developing a heart rhythm disorder? 

Heart beat by PublicDomainPictures. CC0 via Pixabay.

Some rhythm disorders can be avoided by reducing the chance of developing other heart diseases, such as coronary artery disease or high blood pressure. In some situations potentially toxic substances (alcohol, coffee, coke) should be avoided to prevent rhythm disorders.

What is the latest progress in the field of heart rhythm disorders?

There is a lot of progress being made in this area. For instance, the use of heart rhythm monitors, which are implanted under the skin to diagnose arrhythmias, the ability to map the electrical system of the heart to identify and then destroy or isolate the trouble spots from which the abnormal rhythm originates, and the discovery of genetic causes of rhythm disturbances.

What do you see as the priorities for future cardiology research? Where will the next great advances be?

Again for rhythm disturbances – the development of drugs that prevent rhythm disorders, the identification of patients at risk of suffering from sudden cardiac death, and the use of medications that stop the heart muscle being converted into scar tissue.

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