Political Science

This paper investigates the impact of foreign direct investment on human rights in Algeria. No direct link is discovered between foreign investment and the repression of human rights. This is largely due to the peculiarities and, in the special case of Algeria, the location of the hydrocarbon sector, which together make repression less necessary. First, since the hydrocarbon sector uses relatively little labour, there are fewer occasions on which labour rights would be suppressed. Second, oil and gas reserves are concentrated in a thinly-populated region of Algeria, where there are fewer people to protest the allegedly negative effects of foreign investment and, hence, fewer people to repress. Nevertheless, case study findings indicate that FDI has indirectly sustained repression in Algeria. Explanation is attributed to the centrality of the country's hydrocarbon resources to the global economy. It is suggested that countries in demand of Algeria's oil and gas have exercised restraint in criticizing Algeria's human rights record. Buttressed by the diplomatic support of their partners as well as by large arms transfers, the Algerian government has been able to choose repression over concession as its primary response to domestic unrest. This study also points to ways in which the Algerian experience provides the grist for theoretical refinement. Specifically, it suggests that repression is more likely in industries that are more labour-intensive and are concentrated in densely-populated regions.

Recent research suggests that higher-IQ countries have significantly more atheists, supposedly because higher intelligence confers a greater ability to apprehend the assumed irrationality of theistic belief. In this quantitative study, an alternative explanation is offered to explain the apparent relationship between intelligence and theism. It is theorized that higher education in free societies brings greater exposure to, and eases the acceptance of, such unconventional views as atheism. This exposure, in and of itself, augments the likelihood that one will reject belief in God. In addition, it is argued on the basis of the Christian ascetic tradition that materialism also produces higher levels of disbelief. OLS regression analysis of 99 countries confirms both theories, while revealing no evidence of an inverse link between intelligence and theism. Findings also show that disbelief is significantly lower in countries that are traditionally Roman Catholic, as well as in those that have not experienced communist rule.

According to neoliberal theory, foreign direct investment enhances socioeconomic conditions in host countries, which in turn leads to democratization and greater protection of human rights. By contrast, the structuralist theory holds that, in interaction with domestic unrest, foreign investment fosters repression. Lesotho serves as a fitting laboratory in which to test these competing theories. In 1995, the country had experienced a huge surge in foreign direct investment. In the period leading up to and during this increase, Lesotho was among the most impoverished countries in the world, and had a relatively poor human rights record. This confluence of factors makes Lesotho a suitable case on which to test neoliberal theory. Furthermore, numerous acts of domestic unrest in the form of riots, strikes, and anti-government demonstrations have posed a recurring threat to the country’s political and economic stability. Thus, Lesotho also provides an opportunity to evaluate structuralist theory. Which theory is best supported by the qualitative data from Lesotho? Although there is evidence that repression diminished after the 1995 surge in FDI, it is argued that this reduction was not the outcome of a process initiated by FDI flows. The preceding conditions that neoliberals expect to foster greater respect for human rights – including increased living standards and growth in the middle class - were absent in the Lesotho case. In tandem with economic “growth”, living conditions for the average Basotho had begun to worsen following the surge. Remaining one of the world’s most unequal countries, moreover, Lesotho does not appear to have experienced any sustained growth in its middle class.  Further, there is evidence that, in spite of the overall reduction in Lesotho’s repression level, there was violent suppression of domestic unrest related specifically to foreign investment projects. As is thoroughly explained, the Lesotho case exemplifies the problem with interpreting such overall trends as reflecting the degree of government respect for human rights principles. In short, the Lesotho case provides greater support for structuralist theory on FDI and human rights.

Is it morally defensible to single Russian president, Vladimir Putin, out as a dictator? The popular impression that he is a dictator has been used to legitimize a dangerously adversarial policy towards what a U.S. Army general described as “the only country on earth…that could “destroy the United States.” I argue that this perception is in some ways misleading, and has contributed to escalating tensions with Russia, which is both unnecessary and harmful both to Russia and the U.S.

Intersubjective recognition of human rights abuses affirms them and exerts pressure to acknowledge them in international norms and institutions. It is in this way that the transnational memory of genocides, made part of the common lifeworld of humanity, can assert itself against the contrary interests of states and shape institutions and conduct in international affairs. Thus, human rights abuses do indeed foster the development of the international human rights regime. The Armenian Genocide, an unresolved and massive human rights abuse, contributed powerfully to the development of the current law on genocide and demonstrates how transnational memory, encapsulated in legal concepts, can transmit intersubjectively recognized norms of state conduct through time and institutions. In spite of the fact that there was no meaningful remedial action for the Armenian Genocide, and despite the fact that it is not been universally recognized and is to some extent the subject of dispute, the Armenian Genocide played a significant role in the development of the international law on genocide and, because it is still the subject of dispute, remains a focal point for discussion of the concept of genocide a century later. The Armenian Genocide offers evidence that memory of unresolved human rights abuses can drive the development of international norms, and the ways in which this historical case is remembered have played a constructive role in the development of the global human rights regime.

The moral status of secession should be a significant issue in contemporary political theory. Various secessionist movements around the globe have had a tremendous impact on world politics, and the fluidity of power relations in many parts of the world suggests that they will continue to have such an effect for some time. Moreover, secession addresses the fundamental problem of political theory: namely, the moral basis for the state's authority.

The rights to liberty championed by classical liberal and libertarian theorists may be supported as products of practical reason. The foundations for these rights rest initially on the idea that the separateness of persons is embedded in the circumstances of life that make justice a meaningful concept. We can discover the duties justice imposes on us through a procedure for identifying principles of justice based on the concept of reasonableness that supports a method for testing proposed principles for human interaction. This procedure, which I present as a contractualist method of ethical justification, vindicates principles that establish duties to others that also constitute rights to liberty and rule out some kinds of purported rights that cannot be justified through the proffered contractualist method.

Herbert Spencer and F.A. Hayek developed bodies of liberal political thought that stress the importance of evolutionary social adaptation as a type of spontaneous order. An evolutionary social theory, properly understood, can form part of a liberal theory of politics. Improperly understood, it has been employed to form defenses of the modern nation-state, and nation-states are not products of spontaneous social evolution but rather are destructive of it. Hayek and Spencer both regard social evolution as a process that is progressive in nature, producing large, complex industrial societies. Their emphasis on the importance of our lack of knowledge needed to design social norms and of the destructive nature of efforts to do so generally supports the classical liberal values of limited government and personal freedom for which they argued. On the other hand, their evolutionary arguments to explain the emergence and persistence of freedom and limited government in mass societies are deficient, because the evolutionary arguments on which they rely depend upon social rules being established and sustained in smaller societies than the mass societies they imagine as the end of social evolution. A consistent liberal evolutionist, therefore, would not also defend the nation-state.

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