Economic Growth: R. Barro - Xavier Sala-i-Martin

A very important book, for students of all social sciences. Paulo Roberto de Almeida 

Economic Growth
Robert J. Barro and Xavier Sala-i-Martin
2nd Edition; Cambridge, Mass.; The MIT Press, 2003

This graduate level text on economic growth surveys neoclassical and more recent growth theories, stressing their empirical implications and the relation of theory to data and evidence. The authors have undertaken a major revision for the long-awaited second edition of this widely used text, the first modern textbook devoted to growth theory. The book has been expanded in many areas and incorporates the latest research.

After an introductory discussion of economic growth, the book examines neoclassical growth theories, from Solow-Swan in the 1950s and Cass-Koopmans in the 1960s to more recent refinements; this is followed by a discussion of extensions to the model, with expanded treatment in this edition of heterogenity of households. The book then turns to endogenous growth theory, discussing, among other topics, models of endogenous technological progress (with an expanded discussion in this edition of the role of outside competition in the growth process), technological diffusion, and an endogenous determination of labor supply and population. The authors then explain the essentials of growth accounting and apply this framework to endogenous growth models. The final chapters cover empirical analysis of regions and empirical evidence on economic growth for a broad panel of countries from 1960 to 2000. The updated treatment of cross-country growth regressions for this edition uses the new Summers-Heston data set on world income distribution compiled through 2000.

About the Authors
Robert J. Barro is Robert C. Waggoner Professor of Economics at Harvard University and a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

About Robert Barro:
"He has changed the way economists think about everything from the long-run effects of government deficits to the forces that favor economic growth."
--Sylvia Nasar, New York Times

Xavier Sala-i-Martin is Professor of Economics at Columbia University, and visiting professor at the University of Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona.

Table of Contents

Economic Growth, 2nd Edition
Robert J. Barro and Xavier Sala-i-Martin

Preface
Download Chapter as PDF Sample Chapter - Download PDF (24 KB) xvii
Introduction
Download Chapter as PDF Sample Chapter - Download PDF (167 KB) 1
1. Growth Models with Exogenous Saving Rates (the Solow-Swan Model)
Download Chapter as PDF Sample Chapter - Download PDF (341 KB) 23
2. Growth Models with Consumer Optimization (the Ramsey Model) 85
3. Extensions of the Ramsey Growth Model 143
4. One-Sector Models of Endogenous Growth 205
5, Two-Sector Models of Endogenous Growth (with Special Attention to the Role of Human Capital) 239
6. Technological Change: Models with an Expanding Variety of Products 285
7. Technological Change: Schumpterian Models of Quality Ladders 317
8. The Diffusion of Technology 349
9. Labor Supply and Population 383
10. Growth Accounting 433
11. Empirical Analysis of Regional Data Sets 461
12. Empirical Analysis of a Cross-Section of Countries 511
Appendix on Mathematical Methods 567
References
Download Chapter as PDF Sample Chapter - Download PDF (80 KB) 627
Index
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Endorsements
"Barro and Sala-i-Martin have done a superb job of synthesizing much of the existing theoretical and empirical research on the mechanisms and determinants of economic growth and convergence. Though it incorporates much new material, this updated version is fully accessible to a third year undergraduate student, while remaining of invaluable use to any research scholar seriously interested in growth and development economics."
--Phillipe Aghion, Department of Economics, Harvard University

"This is an invaluable book for a first graduate course in economic growth. The exposition is clear and easy to follow, but also rigorous. It is an excellent stepping stone for research in the field."
--K. Daron Acemoglu, Professor of Economics, MIT

"Barro and Sala-i-Martin provide an outstanding and comprehensive treatment of growth theory and empirics--an instant classic! I learn something new every time I pull my copy from the shelf."
--Charles I. Jones, Department of Economics, University of California, Berkeley

O Imperio paranoico: USA as security State - book by David C. Unger

Fear Factor

By JONATHAN TEPPERMAN

The New York Times Sunday Book Review, March 16, 2012

THE EMERGENCY STATE

America’s Pursuit of Absolute Security at All Costs

By David C. Unger

359 pp. The Penguin Press. $27.95.

With Osama bin Laden dead, American troops leaving Iraq, the economy still sputtering and Congress locked in yet another budget showdown, one thing that seems clear is that Washington will very likely cut military spending sometime soon. This will come as welcome news to David C. Unger, author of “The Emergency State” and an editorial writer for The New York Times. In this angry new book, Unger deplores what he sees as Washington’s obsession with security and overreliance on military and intelligence capabilities, arguing that they are dangerous perversions of the country’s Jeffersonian traditions.

Presidents since Franklin Roosevelt, in Unger’s view, have inflated external threats in order to build up a vast and unaccountable national security machine that runs roughshod over the framers’ design for a modest government with plenty of internal checks and few international obligations. This emergency state, as Unger calls it, not only expands presidential powers, wastes money and tramples the rights of Americans and foreigners, but it also fails to guard the country from today’s real dangers.

In a narrative familiar to anyone who’s leafed through the growing library of books on Imperial America, Unger takes up his tale in 1941, when Roosevelt — whom Unger calls “the godfather” of the emergency state — maneuvered an isolationist Congress and an indifferent American public into siding with Britain in its fight against Germany. Setting a disturbingly familiar precedent, Roosevelt also relied on extralegal means to track domestic “subversives” — who were sometimes just political opponents.

From there, in Unger’s opinion, things just got worse. Truman borrowed Roosevelt’s tactics and made a terrible blunder by initiating a strategy of containment against a Soviet Union that need not have become America’s enemy in a globalized cold war. Running this worldwide campaign required a large and permanent defense establishment and the creation of a whole new set of executive branch institutions like the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council.

Unger draws a line from the policies of Roosevelt and Truman straight to the worst abuses of the George W. Bush administration — think of Iraq, enemy combatants, torture and illegal wiretaps — with only a few zigzags in the 1970s and ’80s, when Congress temporarily pushed back against presidential overreach. Even Barack Obama gets lumped into this dark company. He came into office with a powerful mandate to roll back abuses, Unger argues, but reneged on some of his promises, like shutting down Guantánamo, while extending such questionable Bush policies as targeted killings of suspected terrorists (including American citizens). But then not one president in the last 70 years escapes Unger’s scourge.

All of this may prove persuasive to many of those already opposed to the nation’s high level of military spending or prone to see sinister motives behind the secretive conduct of its diplomacy and intelligence. But “The Emergency State” is unlikely to win new converts. For one thing, Unger never really explains how he thinks the presidents he looks at should have dealt with the enormous international challenges of the past 70 years, from the Nazi and Soviet threats to global jihad. For another, Unger’s proposed solutions range from those that are correct but vague (less secrecy; a foreign policy that concentrates more on long-term problems) to those that are implausible. He concludes his book with 10 specific recommendations that amount to leaving more of international affairs to Congress: the same Congress that can’t agree on a budget today and has blocked Obama’s attempts to shut down Guantánamo.

Worse, Unger overlooks the fact that the costs of America’s postwar strategy, while real, have been relatively minor compared with its successes, which have created a generally open, peaceful, rule-bound international order allowing the United States, its allies and developing states like China, India and Brazil to thrive as never before.

That order is looking pretty creaky right now, and budget constraints may nudge Washington in the direction Unger wants. We can only hope the results of a less forceful America are as benign as he expects them to be.

Jonathan Tepperman is the managing editor of Foreign Affairs.

Brazil and Argentina: a book by Werner Baer and David Fleischer

The Economies of Argentina and Brazil: 

A Comparative Perspective

Werner Baer(ed.) ; David V. Fleischer (ed.)

€ 30.21 (+ VAT)

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Edward Elgar Publishing; December 2011
512 pages; ISBN 9781849809979
Read online, or download in secure PDF format

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This book compares the successes and failures of the development and growth processes of Argentina and Brazil. It provides important insights into the different performances of these economies through a series of comparative essays written by Argentinian and Brazilian economists. In the last 60 years Argentina and Brazil have both undergone a dramatic process of urbanization and industrialization. While there are similarities between the two, each country has dealt with the side effects in a different manner. In this insightful book, Argentinean and Brazilian economists expertly analyze their country's experiences with processes of industrialization, the performance of the agricultural and service sectors, the impact of foreign investments, the distribution of income, the roles of the state and the privatization experience, and inflationary and stabilization experiences. The contrast of the two emerging countries addressing these challenges will offer students, economists and other social scientists significant new insights into the economic development process.Many of the articles will also appeal to individuals in multinational corporations and banks that have to deal with emerging market economies. 

International Relations: The Great Debates: reading selection book

O preço é salgadíssimo, mas o livro é ideal para bibliotecas diplomáticas
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
International Relations: The Great Debates
Rainer Baumann , Peter Mayer , Bernhard Zangl

Edited by Rainer Baumann, Assistant Professor of International Relations, Peter Mayer, Professor of International Relations, Universität Bremen, Germany and Bernhard Zangl, Professor of Global Governance and Public Policy, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany
December 2011 2,312 pp Hardback
Price $1138.50
Series: Elgar Mini Series
Description
The history of international relations has been shaped by a sequence of ‘Great Debates’, in which leading scholars of the field advanced, challenged, and defended views about the assumptions that should inform the study of world politics. In this authoritative collection, the editors bring together for the first time the most important contributions to these inspiring intellectual exchanges and provide an excellent overview of the discipline’s development since its inception in the early 20th century. Students and scholars in international relations as well as neighboring disciplines will find these volumes to be an indispensable and highly informative source of reference.
Contents
86 articles, dating from 1910 to 2006 Contributors include: H. Bull, R.W. Cox, R.O. Keohane, S.D. Krasner, T. Pogge, J.G. Ruggie, I. Wallerstein, K.N. Waltz, M. Walzer, A. Wendt


The history of international relations has been shaped by a sequence of ‘Great Debates’, in which leading scholars of the field advanced, challenged, and defended views about the assumptions that should inform the study of world politics. In this authoritative collection, the editors bring together for the first time the most important contributions to these inspiring intellectual exchanges and provide an excellent overview of the discipline’s development since its inception in the early 20th century. Students and scholars in international relations as well as neighboring disciplines will find these volumes to be an indispensable and highly informative source of reference.


Full table of contents
Contents:

Volume I: Substantive Debates
Acknowledgements
Introduction Rainer Baumann, Peter Mayer and Bernhard Zangl
PART I SUBSTANTIVE DEBATES
A. First Debate: Realism vs. Idealism
1. Norman Angell (1910), ‘Outline of the Psychological Case for Peace’ and ‘Unchanging Human Nature’
2. Edward Hallett Carr ([1939] 1940), ‘The Beginnings of a Science’ and ‘Utopia and Reality’

3. Leonard Woolf (1940), ‘Utopia and Reality’ 4. John H. Herz (1950), ‘Idealist Internationalism and the Security Dilemma’ 5. Hans J. Morgenthau (1954) [1985], ‘A Realist Theory of International Politics’ B. The Inter-paradigm Debate: Realism vs. Pluralism vs. Globalism 6. Graham T. Allison (1969), ‘Conceptual Models and the Cuban Missile Crisis’ 7. Robert Gilpin (1971), ‘The Politics of Transnational Economic Relations’ 8. Immanuel Wallerstein (1974), ‘The Rise and Future Demise of the World Capitalist System: Concepts for Comparative Analysis’ 9. Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye (1977), ‘Interdependence in World Politics’ and ‘Realism and Complex Interdependence 10. Michael W. Doyle (1983), ‘Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs’ 11. Kenneth N. Waltz (1990), ‘Realist Thought and Neorealist Theory’ C. Neo-Neo Debate: Neorealism vs. Neoliberalism 12. Robert Axelrod and Robert O. Keohane (1985), ‘Achieving Cooperation under Anarchy: Strategies and Institutions’ 13. Robert D. Putnam (1988), ‘Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games’ 14. Joseph M. Grieco (1988), ‘Anarchy and the Limits of Cooperation: A Realist Critique of the Newest Liberal Institutionalism’ 15. Duncan Snidal (1991), ‘Relative Gains and the Pattern of International Cooperation’ 16. Stephen D. Krasner (1991), ‘Global Communications and National Power: Life on the Pareto Frontier’ 17. John J. Mearsheimer (1994/1995), ‘The False Promise of International Institutions’ 18. Robert O. Keohane and Lisa L. Martin (1995), ‘The Promise of Intuitionalist Theory’ 19. Andrew Moravcsik (1997), ‘Taking Preferences Seriously: A Liberal Theory of International Politics’ D. Statism vs. Global Governance 20. James N. Rosenau (1995), ‘Governance in the Twenty-first Century’ 21. Jessica T. Mathews (1997), ‘Power Shift’ 22. Anne-Marie Slaughter (1997), ‘The Real New World Order’ 23. Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink (1998), ‘Transnational Advocacy Networks in International Politics: Introduction’ 24. Stephen D. Krasner (2001), ‘Abiding Sovereignty’ 25. A. Claire Cutler (2002), ‘Private International Regimes and Interfirm Cooperation’ Volume II: Epistemological and Ontological Debates Acknowledgements An introduction to all three volumes by the editors appears in Volume I PART I EPISTEMOLOGICAL DEBATES A. Traditionalism vs. Science 1. Morton A. Kaplan (1966), ‘The New Great Debate: Traditionalism vs. Science in International Relations’ 2. Raymond Aron (1967), ‘What Is a Theory of International Relations?’ 3. Hedley Bull (1969), ‘International Theory: The Case for a Classical Approach’ 4. J. David Singer (1969), ‘The Incompleat Theorist: Insight Without Evidence’ B. Third Debate: Positivism vs. Post-Positivism 5. Robert W. Cox (1986), ‘Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory’ 6. Richard K. Ashley (1988), ‘Untying the Sovereign State: A Double Reading of the Anarchy Problematique’ 7. J. Ann Tickner (1988), ‘Hans Morgenthau’s Principles of Political Realism: A Feminist Reformulation’ 8. Mark Neufeld (1993), ‘Interpretation and the “Science” of International Relations’ 9. John Lewis Gaddis (1996), ‘History, Science, and the Study of International Relations’ 10. Michael Nicholson (1996), ‘The Continued Significance of Positivism?’ 11. Mervyn Frost (1998), ‘A Turn not Taken: Ethics in IR at the Millennium’ 12. Alexander Wendt (1999), ‘Scientific Realism and Social Kinds’ PART II ONTOLOGICAL DEBATES A. The Agent-Structure Debate 13. J. David Singer (1961), ‘The Level-of-Analysis Problem in International Relations’ 14. Alexander E. Wendt (1987), ‘The Agent-Structure Problem in International Relations Theory’ 15. Walter Carlsnaes (1992), ‘The Agency-Structure Problem in Foreign Policy Analysis’ 16. Martin Hollis and Steve Smith (1994), ‘Two Stories about Structure and Agency’ 17. Roxanne Lynn Doty (1997), ‘Aporia: A Critical Exploration of the Agent-Structure Problematique in International Relations Theory’ 18. Colin Wight (1999), ‘They Shoot Dead Horses Don’t They? Locating Agency in the Agent-Structure Problematique’ B. Rationalism vs. Constructivism 19. John Gerard Ruggie (1983), ‘Continuity and Transformation in the World Polity: Toward a Neorealist Synthesis’ 20. Duncan Snidal (1985), ‘The Game Theory of International Politics’ 21. Friedrich Kratochwil and John Gerard Ruggie (1986), ‘International Organization: A State of the Art on an Art of the State’ 22. Robert O. Keohane (1988), ‘International Institutions: Two Approaches’ 23. Alexander Wendt (1992), ‘Anarchy is what States Make of it: The Social Construction of Power Politics’ 24. Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink (1998), ‘International Norm Dynamics and Political Change’ 25. James G. March and Johan P. Olsen (1998), ‘The Institutional Dynamics of International Political Orders’ 26. Thomas Risse (2000), ‘”Let’s Argue!”: Communicative Action in World Politics’ 27. Friedrich Kratochwil (2000), ‘Constructing a New Orthodoxy? Wendt’s “Social Theory of International Politics” and the Constructivist Challenge’ 28. James Fearon and Alexander Wendt (2002), ‘Rationalism v. Constructivism: A Skeptical View’ Volume III: Normative Debates Acknowledgements An introduction to all three volumes by the editors appears in Volume I PART I NORMATIVE DEBATES A. Competing Perspectives on International Ethics: Moral Skepticism vs. Communitarianism vs. Cosmopolitanism 1. Charles R. Beitz (1983), ‘Cosmopolitan Ideals and National Sentiment’ 2. Marshall Cohen (1984), ‘Moral Skepticism and International Relations’ 3. George F. Kennan (1985), ‘Morality and Foreign Policy’ 4. David Miller (1988), ‘The Ethical Significance of Nationality’ 5. Robert E. Goodin (1988), ‘What Is So Special about Our Fellow Countrymen?’ 6. Avishai Margalit and Joseph Raz (1990), ‘National Self-Determination’ 7. Thomas W. Pogge (1992), ‘Cosmopolitanism and Sovereignty’ B. Human Rights 8. The Executive Board, American Anthropological Association (1947), ‘Statement on Human Rights’ 9. Henry Shue ([1980] 1996), ‘Security and Subsistence’ 10. Alan Gewirth (1981), ‘The Basis and Content of Human Rights’ 11. Maurice Cranston (1983), ‘Are There Any Human Rights?’ 12. Richard Rorty (1993), ‘Human Rights, Rationality, and Sentimentality’ 13. Susan Moller Okin (1998), ‘Feminism, Women’s Human Rights, and Cultural Differences’ 14. Peter Jones (1999), ‘Group Rights and Group Oppression’ 15. Joshua Cohen (2004), ‘Minimalism About Human Rights: The Most We Can Hope For?’ C. Coercion, Deterrence, and the Use of Force 16. Thomas Nagel (1972), ‘War and Massacre’ 17. Gregory S. Kavka (1978), ‘Some Paradoxes of Deterrence’ 18. David Luban (1980), ‘Just War and Human Rights’ 19. Michael Walzer (1980), ‘The Moral Standing of States: A Response to Four Critics’ 20. Gerald Dworkin (1985), ‘Nuclear Intentions’ 21. Joy Gordon (1999), ‘A Peaceful, Silent, Deadly Remedy: The Ethics of Economic Sanctions’ 22. George A. Lopez (1999), ‘More Ethical than Not: Sanctions as Surgical Tools: Response to a “Peaceful, Silent, Deadly Remedy”’ 23. Jeff McMahan (2005), ‘Just Cause for War’ D. Poverty and Distributive Justice 24. Peter Singer (1972), ‘Famine, Affluence, and Morality’ 25. Garrett Hardin (1974), ‘Living on a Lifeboat’ 26. Charles R. Beitz (1975), ‘Justice and International Relations’ 27. Henry Shue (1988), ‘Mediating Duties’ 28. John Rawls (1993), ‘The Law of Peoples’ 29. Thomas W. Pogge (1994), ‘An Egalitarian Law of Peoples’ E. The Global Polity 30. David Held (1992), ‘Democracy: From City-states to a Cosmopolitan Order?’ 31. Michael Zürn (2000), ‘Democratic Governance Beyond the Nation-State: The EU and Other International Institutions’ 32. Andrew Moravcsik (2004), ‘Is there a “Democratic Deficit” in World Politics? A Framework for Analysis’ 33. Allen Buchanan and Robert O. Keohane (2006), ‘The Legitimacy of Global Governance Institutions’

Haiti: uma historia tragica - livro de Laurent Dubois

Haiti’s Tragic History

U.S. Marine Corps/National Geographic Society, via Corbis

A U.S. Marine inspecting a troop of Haitian soldiers, 1920.

By ADAM HOCHSCHILD

The New York Times Review of Books, December 29, 2011

For the better part of two centuries, outsiders have been offering explanations that range from racist to learned-sounding — the supposed inferiority of blacks, the heritage of slavery, overpopulation — for why Haiti remains the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. None of these work: nearby Barbados has a greater population density, and about 90 percent of its people are descended from slaves, yet it outranks all but two nations in Latin America on the United Nations Human Development Index. Neither Barbados nor any other country, however, had so traumatic and crippling a birth as Haiti.

HAITI

The Aftershocks of History

By Laurent Dubois

434 pp. Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt & Company. $32.

Related

• Times Topic: Haiti

Enlarge This Image

Robert W. Kelley/Time & Life Pictures — Getty Images

François (Papa Doc) Duvalier, foreground, relied on the violence of the Tontons Macoute to hold on to power.

As a French possession, it was once the most lucrative colony on earth, producing nearly one-third of the world’s sugar and more than half its coffee. All, of course, with the labor of slaves. And slavery in the Caribbean was particularly harsh: tropical diseases were rife, there was no winter respite from 12-hour workdays under the broiling sun, and the planters preferred to replenish their labor force by working their slaves to death over a decade or two and then buying new ones. In 1791, what today is Haiti became the scene of the largest slave revolt in history. Over the next 13 years, the rebels fought off three successive attempts to re-enslave them. The first was by local planters and French soldiers, aided by arms from the United States, whose president and secretary of state, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, were both slave owners horrified by the uprising. The second was by the British, at war with France and eager for fertile sugar land and slaves to work it. And finally, after he took power, Napoleon tried to recapture the territory as a French colony and restore slavery.

Ill-armed, barefoot and hungry, the rebels fought against huge odds: Britain dispatched an armada of 218 ships to the Caribbean, and its troops battled for five years before withdrawing; Napoleon sent the largest force that had ever set sail from France, losing more than 50,000 soldiers and 18 generals to combat and disease. The former slaves lost even more lives defeating these invasions, and no country came to their aid. This blood-soaked period also included a horrific civil war, periods of near famine, and the massacre or flight into exile of most educated people and skilled workers of any color. By the time Haiti declared independence in 1804, many of its fields, towns and sugar mills were in ruins and its population shrunken by more than half. The Haitian Revolution, as it is known today, was a great inspiration to slaves still in bondage throughout the Americas, but it was devastating to the country itself.

For a gripping narrative of that period, there are few better places to turn than “Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution,” by Laurent Dubois, a Duke University scholar of the French Caribbean. Now Dubois has brought Haiti’s story up to the present in an equally well-written new book, “Haiti: The Aftershocks of History,” which is enriched by his careful attention to what Haitian intellectuals have had to say about their country over the last two centuries.

The history is a tale of much misery, shot through with flashes of hope and bravery. Both the United States and the colonial powers in Europe were profoundly threatened by the specter of slaves who had successfully battled for their freedom; the United States didn’t even recognize Haiti for over 50 years. Still worse, France in 1825 insisted that Haiti pay compensation for the plantations taken from French owners. In case the Haitians did not agree, French warships lay offshore. The sum the French demanded was so big that a dozen years later, paying off this exorbitant ransom, and paying the interest on loans taken out for that purpose, was consuming 30 percent of Haiti’s national budget. The ruinous cycle of debt continued into the next century.

Seldom, however, can outsiders be blamed for all a country’s troubles. More disastrous than foreign interference was that Haiti’s birth was such a violent one. Democracy is a fragile, slow-growing plant to begin with, and the early Haitians had experienced none of it, not as subjects of the African kingdoms where many of them were born, not as slaves and not as soldiers under draconian military discipline for over a decade of desperate war. In Haiti’s succession of constitutions over its first hundred years, the president sometimes held his post for life, and it’s no surprise that one leader began calling himself king and another emperor. Furthermore, the revolution itself had seemed to show that any change in government could take place only through military force. As Dubois sums it up: “The only way for an outsider to take power — one that would be used again and again over the course of the 19th century — was to raise an army and march on the capital.”

Brute force still ruled in the next century, climaxing in the three-decade reign of the Duvaliers, father and son. Their militia, the dreaded Tontons Macoute, spread terror on a scale exceeding anything before, murdering as many as 60,000 people. François (Papa Doc) Duvalier banned any civic organization that could threaten his control, even the Boy Scouts.

HAITI

The Aftershocks of History

By Laurent Dubois

434 pp. Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt & Company. $32.

Related

• Times Topic: Haiti

The family’s close ties with the United States were immortalized by a famous photograph of Papa Doc and the presidential envoy Nelson Rockefeller waving from the balcony of Haiti’s National Palace. During the cold war, a strongman like Duvalier, no matter how brutal, could usually count on American support as long as he was vocally anti-Communist. Father and son understood this well and shrewdly used that knowledge to retain power, as did petty tyrants across Latin America, Africa and Asia.

Deep American meddling in Haiti did not end with the cold war. Dubois, however, devotes only a few pages to the quarter-century since Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier was overthrown, and doesn’t really tell us what he thinks about the controversial progressive Jean-Bertrand Aristide and the degree to which the United States played a role in his ouster as Haiti’s president in 2004. In an otherwise authoritative history, this is a disappointing omission.

Part of this book does feel chillingly up to date, however: its account of the United States Marine occupation of Haiti for some two decades starting in 1915. The occupation was accompanied by high-flown declarations of benevolence, but the real motive was to solidify American control of the economy and to replace a constitution that prevented foreigners from owning land. The Marines’ near-total ignorance of local languages and culture sounds all too much like more recent expeditions. American officials declared, accurately enough, that the Haitian government was in bad shape and needed reform. But as the troops on the ground discovered, like their counterparts in Iraq and Afghanistan, no one likes to be reformed at the point of a foreigner’s gun. “We were not welcome,” wrote one private Dubois quotes. “We could feel it as distinctly as we could smell the rot along the gutters.” The Americans soon found themselves fighting off waves of rebellion against their rule. United States troops burned entire villages accused of sheltering insurgents and ruthlessly executed captured rebels or — does this sound familiar? — men who might have been rebels; often there was no way to distinguish them from local farmers.

When they finally pulled out, the Marines did leave some roads, clinics and schools behind them. But the occupation’s death toll, humiliation and theft of resources, Dubois makes clear, loom far larger in Haitian memory. Even with the best of intentions, which the Marines certainly didn’t have in 1915, nation-building is no easy job. Administered less arrogantly and in cooperation with Haitians themselves, aid from abroad can sometimes help, as with the work of the estimable, Creole-speaking Dr. Paul Farmer and his Partners in Health program, which brings health care to the poorest rural areas and helps train Haitian medical workers. But the real freeing of Haiti from the burdens of its past — a task now made immeasurably greater by the catastrophic earthquake of 2010 — can be done only by Haitians themselves.

Adam Hochschild is the author of seven books, most recently “To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918.”

A version of this review appeared in print on January 1, 2012, on page BR1 of the Sunday Book Review with the headline: Tragic Island

Liu Xiabo, premio Nobel da Paz: prisioneiro da China - livro

The Freedom Writer

By ELLEN BORK

The Wall Street Journal (Bookshelf), 30/12/2011
Writings on Tibet, Tiananmen Square and Chinese society by Liu Xiaobo, the imprisoned dissident who won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize.

No Enemies, No Hatred

By Liu Xiaobo
(Harvard, 366 pages, $29.95

When the dissident Liu Xiaobo won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize from his prison cell, the Chinese government reacted hysterically—denouncing the Nobel Committee, retaliating against Norway diplomatically and trying to intimidate foreign governments out of sending representatives to the ceremony. Mr. Liu had been arrested nearly two years earlier, just before the release of Charter 08, a declaration of democratic principles for China inspired by Charter 77, the Czechoslovak initiative led by the playwright (and later Czech president) Václav Havel that, 31 years earlier, led to the Velvet Revolution and inspired people throughout the Soviet bloc.

China's leaders should feel just as aggrieved by "No Enemies, No Hatred," a collection that shows why the Communist Party fears this 56-year-old intellectual-turned-activist and his ideas. In essays on China's rise, Tibet, the impact of materialism and nationalism on morality and sex, the 2008 Olympics, and much more, Mr. Liu advances the antithesis to the Party line, writing "free from fear," as co-editor Perry Link puts it in his valuable introduction.

The essays appeared mainly in publications based in the U.S. and Hong Kong and found their way back to China via the Internet, which Mr. Liu celebrates, perhaps only half-jokingly, as evidence of a divine being. Interspersed throughout are poems, often searing, that attest to Mr. Liu's intellectual as well as emotional partnership with his wife, Liu Xia, an artist currently under house arrest. Rounding out the book are documents including the text of Charter 08, Mr. Liu's poignant statements at his 2009 trial and the verdict sentencing Mr. Liu to 11 years in prison.

The title "No Enemies, No Hatred" is taken from the June 2, 1989, announcement by Mr. Liu and a few comrades of a hunger strike at Tiananmen Square. Several essays and poems, and his final statement to the court, reflect the profound influence on Mr. Liu of the Tiananmen protests and massacre—events the Party still distorts and denies. In 1989, Mr. Liu, then a visiting professor of literature in New York, came home to join the protesters, consciously rejecting what he saw as the passivity of most Chinese intellectuals. On the night of June 3-4, as troops advanced, killing indiscriminately, Mr. Liu saved lives by persuading students to leave Tiananmen and negotiating their safe passage. He survived but retained a burden of guilt about his comparatively mild prison experience ("deathly bored . . . but that's about it"), his forced "confession" and the disproportionate attention "luminaries" received for their role in the protests.

Mr. Liu's writing is most personal when writing about Tiananmen, but all of the essays display a distinctly humane spirit. He takes evident pride in the changes that ordinary Chinese have brought about despite the Communist Party's tight grip on power. "Moral authority, in the popular view, lies increasingly with the people," he writes in an essay that was later cited at his trial as evidence of subversion. Repression is the only element of totalitarianism still in place in China, and even it, Mr. Liu says, has unintended consequences, no longer turning people into "political leper[s]" but "actually helping a person to achieve spiritual wholeness."

Reforms for which the Communist Party takes credit and is lauded abroad originated in pressure from "the bottom up," he writes in "Xidan Democracy Wall and China's Enlightenment." Xidan is an area in central Beijing where, in 1978, brave souls hung posters on a "Democracy Wall" criticizing the Party and arguing for liberalization. This movement, he argues—not Party-sponsored debate—triggered official reforms, fostered a new solidarity among dissidents that influenced the wei quan ("rights defense") movement of the past decade, and transformed the language of dissent from "Maoist cant."

Mr. Liu has a keen eye for the cynicism and hypocrisy that warps Chinese society, fed by propaganda extolling wealth, power and national pride. Youth turn their "patriotism" on and off like a switch, he writes. "When these students are cursing America, they are filled with righteous indignation; when sitting on a plane headed for Boston, their hearts are even more wild with joy." Intellectuals who bend with the political winds come in for no less scorn. Chinese Leaders' embrace of Confucius—a "mediocre" thinker—signaled "the moment Chinese intellectuals arrived in hell on earth, because now they were nothing more than handmaidens to power," he writes in "Yesterday's Stray Dog Becomes Today's Guard Dog."
But Mr. Liu is not a purist. He urges tolerance and respect, including for those working inside the system. Nevertheless, he distinguishes between tolerance and compromising on principle, warning that "when the 'rise' of a large dictatorial state that commands rapidly increasing economic strength meets with no effective deterrence from outside, but only an attitude of appeasement . . . the results will not only be another catastrophe for the Chinese people but likely also a disaster for the spread of liberal democracy in the world."
When Mr. Liu won the Nobel, Havel wrote to him of being "touched" but not surprised that Charter 08 drew inspiration from Charter 77 (a compliment Havel returned by working to free Mr. Liu and defend Charter 08 until his death earlier this month): "There simply exists a sort of moral minimum that is common to the entire world and thanks to which people from countries as different and far apart as the Czech Republic and China can strive for the same values and sympathize with each other, thereby creating the basis for true—not simply feigned—friendship." Mr. Liu already shares a great deal with Havel, chiefly a faith in individuals and the impact they can have on a totalitarian system. One day, we can hope, Mr. Liu will also join him in having brought about the end of a communist regime.


Ms. Bork is director of democracy and human rights at the Foreign Policy Initiative.

Hemisoheric Giants: US-Brazil relations

Hemispheric Giants: The Misunderstood History of U.S.-Brazilian Relations

by:  Britta Crandall Hardcover: 230 pages Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers (January 16, 2011) Language: English ISBN-10: 1442207876 ISBN-13: 978-1442207875 Tracing the full arc of U.S.-Brazilian interaction, Hemispheric Giants thoroughly explores the enigmatic and often-misunderstood nature of the relationship between the two largest countries in the Western Hemisphere. Britta Crandall asks the crucial question of why significant engagement between the United States and Brazil has been so scarce since the inception of the bilateral relationship in the late 1800s. Especially, she critically examines Washington's so-called "benign neglect"—a policy often criticized as unbefitting Brazil's size and strategic importance. Drawing on a rich array of archival sources and personal interviews, Crandall pinpoints the key examples through time of high-level U.S. policy attention to Brazil. Her comprehensive analysis of the ebbs and flows of policy engagement allows Crandall to tease out common threads among her cases. In so doing, she shows that the label "neglect," implying a one-sided, fitful relationship, is far from the reality of a mutual, ongoing policy engagement between the U.S. and Brazilian governments. To be sure, their different relative power positions and foreign policy traditions have limited high-level bilateral engagement. However, Crandall argues convincingly that the diminishing power disparity between the United States and Brazil is leading to closer ties in the twenty-first century—a trend that will bring about growing cooperation as well as competition in the future. Table of Contents Preface and Acknowledgments p. vii Introduction: The Importance of Dual Priorities p. 1 1893 to World War II The 1893 Naval Revolt and the Rio Branco Years: Origins of the "Unique Alliance" p. 17 World War I: Widening Power Disparity p. 35 World War II: Engagement during the Roosevelt-Vargas Years p. 47 The Postwar Era: Drop in Policy Attention p. 59 The Cold War The 1950s: Bilateral Distancing p. 75 The 1960s: Brazil in the Fight against Communism p. 93 The Carter Administration: Human Rights and Nuclear Tensions p. 119 The Reagan Administration: Atomic Bombs and Foreign Debt p. 133 Post-Cold War Presidents Bush and Clinton: An Economic Agenda p. 149 After September 11: Signs of Convergence p. 159 Looking to the Future: Equal Partners? p. 179 Conclusion: U.S.-Brazilian Relations in Perspective p. 191 Selected Bibliography p. 195 Index p. 201 About the Author p. 211 Review A stimulating and analytically powerful study of Brazilian-U.S. relations. Arguing against the idea that the United States 'neglects' Brazil, Britta Crandall refocuses the bilateral relationship over time and offers fresh and important guidelines for the future of the relationship as Brazil, in the twenty-first century, will play an increasingly important regional and global role. (Roett, Riordan ) Hemispheric Giants directly and cogently attacks the mainstream whine that the United States has forever neglected Brazil, marshalling strong evidence that U.S. officials—both at the senior and middling levels of the bureaucracy—have in fact recognized Brazil's relative weight, but more often than not have had their aspirations dashed by Brazil's own reluctance to engage constructively with Washington. We are fortunate to have this sophisticated and balanced framework for assessing past and present U.S.-Brazilian relations. (Richard Feinberg ) Much of what is written on U.S.-Latin American relations relies on media reports or recycles other academic works. Crandall, in contrast, took the time to interview U.S. policymakers and career diplomats. Her discovery: the mainstream complaint that the United States has forever neglected Brazil is way off the mark. In fact, U.S. officials—at both the senior and the middle levels of the bureaucracy—have recognized Brazil's relative weight and have repeatedly sought to engage its Foreign Ministry. But hung up on fears of being overwhelmed by U.S. power, or driven by their own dreams of Brazilian hegemony over South America, Brazilian diplomats have often turned their backs on U.S. advances. In this well-researched and balanced treatment, Crandall foresees the potential for bilateral cooperation on emerging global issues, ranging from financial stability to energy supplies, on which U.S. and Brazilian interests may converge. But will Brazil sufficiently redefine its strategic posture to pick up these gains? (Foreign Affairs ) About the Author Britta H. Crandall is adjunct professor of political science at the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies.