Böll-Stiftung: The Italian constitutional referendum: a victory for democracy and civil society

First of all, with 68,48 percent the participation rate was astonishingly high, both with respect to previous constitutional referendums (34,05 percent in 2001 and 52,46 percent in 2006) and also compared to the recent European election in 2014 (58,69 percent). This is surely an important signal for the ‘health’ of our democracy, which had been eroded by an alternation of ‘technical governments’ and government reshufflings. It underlines the desire of people to be part of the political debate, especially when relevant  topics such as the constitution are on the table. [...]

On the one hand, there was Renzi and his coalition of centre-left and centre-right parties; on the other hand, a diverse group made up of antifascist partisans, trade unions, constitutionalists, radical left movements, Lega, Forza Italia and the 5 Star Movement. The convergence of extremely different political positions and the temporary closeness of various political groups on this topic was something completely new for the country. Obviously, behind this ‘muddle’, as the opposition was contemptuously named by Renzi, there were noble and less noble political motives An example for the latter is, typically, Berlusconi who became a ‘No’ supporter after having signed an agreement on structural reforms (Patto of Nazareno) with Renzi in 2014. [...]

If we look at the regional distribution of the votes, it is interesting to see that ‘Yes’ reached the majority only in Emilia Romagna, Toscana and Trentino Alto Adige, whereas ’No’ won in all the southern regions and also reached the 63,32 percent of votes in Lazio. Particularly interesting is the result in the southern regions (all governed by Renzi’s Democratic Party), where Renzi attempted to collect votes and gain support through several visits during the last weeks. Moreover, if we link the regional outcomes with the first provisional data on the age composition of the vote, we get further interesting insights. It shows that young people, the ones who should represent the ‘new’ according to the rhetoric of Renzi, have been the strongest opponents of the reform. [...]

These examples show that Renzi, the leader of the biggest left-wing party of the country, was (and formally still is) running a government which embraces a neoliberal ideology, even if pretending to act for the wellbeing of the nation.

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Vox: Russia's role in this year's presidential election, explained by a media historian

The Kremlin’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election became apparent during the Democratic National Convention this summer. WikiLeaks, which now operates as a de facto Russian front, released a trove of stolen emails from the server of the Democratic National Committee. The leak served two purposes: to raise doubts about the legitimacy of Clinton’s nomination and to give a subtle boost to her Republican rival, Donald Trump. [...]

A specialist in Russian media history, Gatov is currently working on a book about the re-emergence of totalitarian censorship in Putin’s Russia. He has reported extensively in Russia for more than two decades and, more recently, has focused on the political and technological implications of mass media.

His perspective on Russia’s propaganda campaign is more measured than most. While he doesn’t deny Russia’s involvement or subversive intent, he believes their impact has been wildly overstated. Russia benefits from the surplus of fake news, Gatov concedes, but often they don’t create it so much as amplify it. By inflating Russia’s role, he told me, we “create the impression that they’re more powerful than they are.” [...]

Putin is not a strategist; he's a reactive and opportunistic tactician. For him and for many people in Russian government, Trump is unpredictable; they don't know what he'll do. He's a black box. For diplomats, a black box is much worse than a known evil.

In my view, the apparent support of Trump from Russia is nothing more than trolling. They want to distort the process rather than achieve a particular result. [...]

Russian ideology today is nonexistent. This is not ideology. The goal of current Russian politics is to be left alone. They don't want other states meddling in what they consider regional or domestic affairs.

On top of that, Russia wants to receive more respect as a global power, which means more respect for its interests beyond its national border. This is quite different from the Cold War. Russia doesn't want to destroy the United States as the Soviets did.

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The Atlantic: Jews and the Social Construction of Race

“Race” is a historically contingent and subjective category that is used to justify violence against minority groups. I specifically wrote about American Jews because their experiences—which are incredibly diverse and varied—show the hypocrisies and limits of these racial categories. Looking at the historical experiences of this one particular group, and the present-day tensions its faces, is a means of critiquing the way “whiteness” is used to delineate who is and isn’t considered powerful and valuable in society. [...]

Here’s what I’d say to these objections: Racial categories exist in American society. Everyone—including and especially Jews, a group that is arguably constructed not just around religious identity, but also ethnicity—has to grapple with their relationship to those racial categories. As I argue in the piece, racial categories are flawed, socially constructed, and ultimately premised on control and power. But ignoring questions about race is not a way of bringing about racial justice or overturning white supremacy. It’s a way of stifling understanding, debate, and awareness. [...]

Asking, “Are Jews white?,” is a way of questioning the lack of racial awareness among some American Jews. It’s meant to highlight all of the things that challenge the notion that Jews are un-complicatedly white—including the experiences of Jews of color. It’s a point made memorably by the scholarship of Lewis R. Gordon, the former founder of Temple University’s Center for Afro-Jewish Studies and current professor at the University of Connecticut, who’s prominently featured in the piece, and who is himself a Jew of color.

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Foreign Affairs: Nigeria’s Window of Opportunity

The commonly held view of Boko Haram is that its emergence stemmed primarily from widespread destitution in northeastern Nigeria. But Babagana was a middle-class man with secondary education. Indeed, recent research—conducted by Mercy Corps with support from the Ford Foundation and based on interviews with 47 former members of Boko Haram—found no patterns between recruits and their level or type of education, self-described socioeconomic background, or employment status. What united many recruits was their frustration at a lack of opportunity in an environment of massive inequality, along with their communities’ anger toward poor governance. [...]

But now, having failed to prove itself to be any better than the government it decries, Boko Haram is suffering from the same discontent that brought it to power. A strong, locally grown counternarrative about its corruption and hypocrisy has damaged its reputation, possibly beyond repair. The Nigerian government must seize this window of opportunity, given Boko Haram’s unpopularity and recent military setbacks, to regain—or in some cases, gain for the first time—the people’s trust in the Nigerian state and to establish a stronger foundation for governance and long-term development. [...]

Still, whereas poverty has clearly contributed to Boko Haram’s rise, government and civil society actors should avoid overemphasizing its role. Available data generally suggest that Borno State, the epicenter of the Boko Haram movement, had better socioeconomic indicators than many other states in northern and central Nigeria before the current insurgency. Indeed, a 2010 survey by Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics found the absolute poverty rate in Borno to be lower than in the other 12 states that make up the northeast and northwest geopolitical zones. Although neighboring Yobe State, another major theater of the Boko Haram conflict, appears to have suffered greater levels of economic deprivation, its inhabitants were no worse off than those living in Sokoto, Kebbi, or Katsina, which have, for the most part, been left untouched by Islamist violence.  

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Quartz: Brace yourself: the most disruptive phase of globalization is just beginning

When there wasn’t massive trade, every city and every village had it’s own butcher, baker, candlestick maker, and the bonfire of innovation in modern growth couldn’t get going. For a millennium, incomes for human civilization were stagnate. It wasn’t until 1820 or so, when you could move goods over long distances, that we started to see big factories and industrial clusters happening. But it was hard to move ideas over distance so those ideas stayed in the North. That was the Great Divergence. The North, the G7 more or less, had knowledge-driven growth that took off sooner and faster than the developing countries. [...]

For almost two centuries, basically all of what we call globalization. The G7 share rose from about a fifth to two-thirds in 170 years.

By the end of this whole thing, around 1990, there was a massive imbalance between know-how per worker in the rich countries and in the nearby poor countries. The information and communication technology revolution allowed the firms to move the knowledge across borders. This was transformative in rich countries, where it led to deindustrialization, and a wonderful thing in nearby developing countries, which saw rapid growth, rapid industrialization, and 650 million people rise out of poverty. [...]

Absolutely. The rage is rational but the reaction is not. My story of knowledge-driven globalization has technology at the heart of it. American workers are competing with robots at home and China abroad, and neither one is going well. [...]

Absolutely. There are jobs for people, even in manufacturing these days, but not for the low-skilled people who have been dispossessed by this. Their jobs were routine and the easiest to replace with automation. The first thing to do is accept the 21st–century reality that no matter what you do, these jobs aren’t coming back.

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Quartz: Definitive data on what poor people buy when they’re just given cash

It is increasingly common for governments to give poor people money. Rather than grant services or particular goods to those in poverty, such as food or housing, governments have found that it is more effective and efficient to simply hand out cash. In some cases, these cash transfers are conditional on doing something the government deems good, like sending your children to school or getting vaccinated. In other cases, they’re entirely unconditional.

For decades, policymakers have been concerned that poor people will waste free money by using it on cigarettes and alcohol. A report on the perception of stakeholders in Kenya about such programs found a “widespread belief that cash transfers would either be abused or misdirected in alcohol consumption and other non-essential forms of consumption.” [...]

A recently published research paper (paywall) by David Evans of the World Bank and Anna Popova of Stanford University shows that giving money to the poor has a negative effect on the consumption of tobacco and alcohol. Evans and Popova’s research is based on an examination of nineteen studies that assess the impact of cash transfers on expenditures of tobacco and alcohol. Not one of the 19 studies found that cash grants increase tobacco and alcohol consumption and many of them found that it leads to a reduction.

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World Economic Forum: California has the same size economy as France. How do other US states compare?

The US has the largest economy in the world. Its GDP for 2015, according to World Bank data, is over US$18 trillion. This is $7 billion more than China’s, which is in second place.

To put this into perspective, here are three maps.

Some US states have GDPs the size of countriesThe first map shows seven areas of the US that have the same GDP as entire countries. [...]

The next map matches the economies of metropolitan areas of the United States to entire countries. [...]

This final map shows how America’s economic output is concentrated in metropolitan areas. It shows that just over half of the $18 trillion in GDP comes from the country’s 23 largest metro areas.

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Independent: Texas 'faithless elector' becomes first Republican to pledge to vote against Trump

Christopher Suprun, a paramedic and former firefighter who was among the first responders at the Pentagon on 9/11, said he would vote instead for a Republican “alternative” the country could unite behind, naming John Kasich as a possibility.

He becomes the eighth so-called “faithless elector” from across the US to declare publicly that he will go against the mandate given to him by the result of the presidential election.

Members of the electoral college, of which there are 538 in total and Texas has 38, are largely expected to vote in accordance with the majority of voters in their state. Mr Trump beat Hillary Clinton by 52 per cent to 43 per cent.

But writing in the New York Times, Mr Suprun cited Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist Papers, the founding documents behind the electoral college system, and insisted that “electors of conscience can still do the right thing for the good of the country”.

“Federalist 68 argued that an Electoral College should determine if candidates are qualified, not engaged in demagogy, and independent from foreign influence,” he said. “Mr. Trump shows us again and again that he does not meet these standards.”

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Independent: Hillary Clinton could have legal right to challenge electoral college system and be next US president, says law professor

Ms Clinton currently has 2.6 million more votes than Donald Trump in the popular count, but lost the election in November because of the idiosyncratic workings of the United States' Electoral College system — a result which academic Lawrence Lessig has said could be ruled unconstitutional.  [...]

Almost all states operate a "winner-takes-all" system, which ignores voter margins. So for instance, Ms Clinton got 44 per cent of the vote in Georgia, but because Mr Trump got a larger percentage, none of the state's six representatives in the Electoral College are set to vote for her.

In an article published by Medium, Mr Lessig said he and a number of other legal experts believed this could be illegal because it defies the constitutionally enshrined principles of "equal protections" and "one man, one vote". It means not all votes are treated in the same way and some people do not get a say at all.  [...]

"What about the unfairness being felt by the millions of voters whose votes were effectively diluted, or essentially disenfranchised?" he said, suggesting the Attorney Generals of large states such as New York or California could easily walk into the Supreme Court and ask them to hear a case.

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