Strike That

I have mentioned before that living in Quebec has changed my attitudes towards unions.  Unions are much more powerful and inconvenient up here, so they annoy me more than they ever did in the US.  I do get that they are a key player in keeping the economy from being too inhumane, so I am ambivalent about them when I think hard enough.

The big problem I tend to have is that the coercive diplomacy/bargaining between union and employer often is played out with innocent bystanders as key pieces in the game.  The TA strike a few years ago hurt profs and students even though the bargaining was between teaching assistants and McGill's administrators.

Today, as in right now, there are folks on strike at my university--the staff.  They want more money and to protect their benefits.  McGill would prefer not to pay them much more and would like to alter their benefits.  Given the economic context where McGill is in a deep, deep hole thanks in large part to Quebec's financial mismanagement and due to student unions keeping tuition unnaturally low, I see McGill's point while I appreciate the staff's concerns.  For me, the problem is that their fight is costly to me and my students.  The most important thing is that it upend plans to facilitate the flow of letters of recommendation for my graduate students on the academic job market.  Now, my grad students must rely on me to be timely, organized, and responsible.  This is really a recipe for disaster, as I have a heap of students on the market applying to many, many jobs.  I hope I don't screw up (like sending emails to places and forgetting the attachments) too much.

The good news is that I did duck one strike.  The flight attendants of Air Canada were about to go on strike right before my next trip, but they settled, apparently partly due to the threat of government intervention.  The interesting thing is this intervention is being criticized from both sides of the spectrum--for forcing businesses to compromise with unions and for forcing unions to compromise with business.  With such an array of critics, I have more confidence that the outcome is a pretty good one.  That and I get to go to London (UK, not Ontario) without having to worry about a strike.

Again, I get that both sides need to have threats, especially the unions, in order to bargain (I am teaching coercive diplomacy today in Intro to IR).  I just also understand that corporations and unions often end up being more focused on the interests of the organizations than the members, and that can be problematic as well. 

At least, we have football (but not basketball) to keep us distracted.

Social Science Proving the Obvious

I had a fun discussion with Mrs Spew today about a potential science fair project that the little Spew was pondering, but then rejected because the initial experiment suggests that the findings would be dull.  In the publishing social science business, we always want our findings to be counter-intuitive and even mind-blowing.  If they aren't, we try desperately to frame them that way.  "You see, the conventional wisdom is x, and we found y!"  Even if the conventional wisdom is pretty darned silly (hint, see my first book about this strategy).*

* The good news for my earliest academic enterprise is that people still buy into the old conventional wisdom, which means that my book is still counter-intuitive even if I should be disappointed that people have not been persuaded by it.

Why do I bring this up today?  Because a new study has come out that shows that Canadian Defence bureaucrats do NOT pay attention to studies taken by academics and other outsiders.   Just shocking.  Really.  It seems to be the case that the bureaucrats just file the studies and go ahead with whatever they were doing.  Now, this is actually an important study because it seems to prove that the folks at the Department of National Defence (yes, DND, which means decisions really depend on a twenty-sided die being rolled) are inattentive to outsiders.**  Perhaps we expected it, but knowing this means we can try to assert (at least in grant applications) that we need to do more to disseminate our findings.

** And it makes sense that they don't pay attention to outsiders, as they must respond to the incentives of their organization.  Doing otherwise can mean being frozen in position, if not losing one's position.  Political science can explain pretty easily why folks in chains of command look up and down and not outside.

But, of course, what it really means is that we need to find other folks to influence since these folks are not persuade-able.  Like politicians, maybe.  Perhaps military folks who take lesson-learning very, very seriously.  But not the media since this has been an incredibly crappy weak for the Canadian media.

Why?

1. One TV station and then the rest of the media engage in mob coverage (not research, just coverage) of the Chief of Defence Staff flying government jets.
2. The study mentioned above actually includes a big mistake--putting the Leslie transformation study into the same category as outside experts.  Why?  Because the Leslie transformation project was sponsored by the government, so it has more legs.  The bureaucrats may fight it, they may resist it, they may win, but they certainly cannot ignore it.
3. Columns that make huge mistakes about higher education, creating ignorance rather than illumination.

These have not been the best of times in American media, but the Canadian media has its own challenges.  I guess I wish Gus from the Wire had his hands on the controls. (NSFW language)

DADT

Not much blogging today.  With DADT now becoming history, it is hard for me to whine about stuff.  Just a great day for some increased consistency between the policies governing the military and what our military is supposed to be fighting for. 

If you have a great video celebrating the day, shoot me the link.

The True Dark Side

Nice video against cancer making heaps of fun of Star Wars.  How could you not like it?  The video, not the cancer.

Squirrel! Federal Style

Last week, I blogged about how language politics and such were useful distractions for Quebec parties and media, when much more important stuff is at play.  Namely, the political system and the construction industry are utterly corrupt, but not even in a semi-efficient way.  So, bridges are falling apart, tunnels collapse, and we are worried more about how best to deal with immigrants and Anglophones. 

Well, the media and politicians in Ottawa can play this game, too.  So, the tempest these days is over the head of the Canadian military, Chief of Defence Staff Walt Natyncyzk, flying in a government plane rather than commercial flights to a variety of destinations, including a family vacation.  If this is what parliamentary oversight over the military is here, then I do believe my existing assertion that there is no parliamentary oversight of the Canadian military remains quite valid.

First, the issue itself: I wonder if anyone is bothering to see how the heads of other militaries travel, given that they need to be in constant communication with political and military types, that their schedules change very quickly, and so on.  Anyone see the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff flying around the US on commercial planes?  The British head?  Aussie?  Hmmmm. 

Second, is this really the important issue facing the Canadian military?  Um, no.  Let's count how many other issues might just be more relevant for Canadian national security, budget politics, and everything else:

1. What are Canada's plans for the next days/weeks/months in Libya?  Qaddafi is still out there, and Canadian assets are still in theatre being used on behalf of the new government.  
2. Canadian submarines are still not operational.  How about we consider the security implications of having no underwater capability at the present time?
3. Other NATO countries and partners are re-considering the F35 INCLUDING the US.  So, perhaps Canada might consider whether the plane (all 65 of them) might crowd out other spending priorities.
4. What criteria will Canada have for where to build the next generation of ships, given that this is a highly political issue (jobs where?)?
5. General Leslie's report on transformation--how is that going to be implemented or not?  Perhaps parliament might consider whether un-doing the Hillier command structure makes sense or not.  Anyone studying whether CEFCOM and CANCOM made a difference than the old DCDS model?
6. How about this: can Canada actually afford three modern branches or perhaps just choose one or two?  

The point is that the media feeding frenzy is just silly but so very easy as it does not require any facts, study, comparisons, understanding.  What we need is a healthy dose of perspective sauce.  If the government jumps on this and on the CDS for these flights, I think I am going to have to hit an entirely different kind of sauce.

Profs Atwitter

I have deleted this post as it will essentially be published in the Globe and Mail as an op-ed next week apparently.  Since the G&M wants exclusivity, I felt having this post here at this moment in time would not be appropriate.  I will post the link to the piece when it is published.

Thanks for your interest.

A Zombie Ate My Homework?

Thanks to the SF Signal Z songlist, I found this.  Which is just an uber-geeky fun song and video.  Happy Saturday!

Concept Definition and Confusion Illustrated

H/T to Outside the Beltway for this wonderful video that illustrates nicely the problem of defining concepts.

I stick with seven continents because that is what I was taught.  I think the large land mass part is more important than the separated by water.  But that is just me.  How many continents do you think there are?

Mais Non! Gambling at Rick's

The study has finally come out: there is significant corruption in the construction industry in Quebec.  Shocking, yes?  Non.  Given that it apparently costs 30% more to build stuff in Quebec, and that stuff tends to fall apart, we are not surprised. 

source: http://bullandbear.musonline.com/

I think we would not mind the corruption if the stuff was built to last.  But with heaps of infrastructure falling apart, including bridges, tunnels, overpasses, and water mains (this pic is of a mini-flood at McGill a couple of days ago), the corruption is not so amusing or tolerable.

Yes, corruption exists everywhere to varying degrees, but the level seems to be higher in Quebec.  Why?  Because (squirrel!) the political system is distracted from public service and towards nationalist issues.

Will the system be cleansed or at least taken down a few notches?  Maybe, but I doubt it.  The folks in power in Quebec have been there a long time, so they are quite implicated.  Same for the folks running Montreal.  Especially since the last policy statements from the opposition parties have been about language and not corruption.

Language Politics Writ Small

For months, I have been mildly amused about a poster in the men's room near my McGill office.  The poster, put up in response to the flu threat a year or two ago, instructs people how to wash their hands.  The funny thing is that it is in French, as McGill's language of instruction is almost entirely English.  While many McGill students and faculty are bilingual, some are not so much.  Anyhow, I felt it was strange that the sign had no English on it, although the pictures made it clear what was being instructed.

Still, it bothered someone enough to write on the sign, demanding that it should be in English.  This graffiti has been up there for a few weeks, when someone else continued the conversation, demanding:

"Apprennez français calis!"   

Which means: Learn French, Chalice!  I think.  That is, it means Learn French and then I think uses the Quebec word for Chalice, as Quebeckers have taken words from the Catholic Church and turned them into curse words.  I would be surer if the person was using another Quebec-ism such as Tabernac, which I have heard far more often on frisbee fields.

This graffiti conversation is interesting to me, both because it shows the linguistic politics in Montreal, and because it illustrates the on-going Quebec conflict over religion, given the calis interpretation that I think is correct.

Of course, given that the poster shows how to wash hands (and that there is now a second poster in the same bathroom, but in English [with "francais svp" written all over it]), and given these kinds of posters are always ignored anyway since we wash our hands like we always have, this is really the epitome of a tempest in a teapot.

What is a Club?

A Club, as opposed to an association or mob, is supposed to be selective in membership.  The  joy of being in a club is to exclude some folks from joining it.  Some people get this better than others.  Full professors in certain places in Canada seem to understand this far better than the European Union.  Sure, this piece refers to just the start of a membership process for Moldova, but this process seems to be an unstoppable machine where the logic of previous promises leads to new ones, ultimately leading to membership to a country that fails to meet key conditions for membership to the organization (Cyprus anyone?). 

This is not even about map-obsession where membership is aimed at keeping the map of Europe hole-free.  Keeping out Croatia or Bosnia or Serbia would mean ugly holes in the map of the EU.  But Moldova is on the edge, so its absence should be seen as a problem.  Unless Ukraine, Belarus and Russia are down the road? 

Isn't this where the EU got into trouble?  By forgetting about standards and letting in countries in to the Euro zone even though they fell far short of admission standards (that would be Greece)?

Anyway, as a published skeptic about the EU and the power of its conditionality processes, all I can think is: hee, hee, there they go again.

Circle of Crap continued

The other day I discussed the circle of crap in honor of my family's garage sale.  I have also blogged about the Canadian submarine problem.  I cannot believe I did not put them together: that the Canadian sub procurement process was part of a high tech circle of defense crap.  The Canadians bought a set of used British subs that have remained broken ever since.  The only question about whether there are more operational subs in the West Edmonton Mall than in the Royal Canadian Navy is whether there are any operational subs at the Mall. 

Of course, even four subs is way too few for a country with three large coasts, given that even in good times, one usually has a sub undergoing training/refit/etc for each that is deployed.  Two subs at sea for three coasts?  Hmmm.  Anyhow, Canada may still pay less for these four subs and their repairs than for four new subs, but the "savings" seems to be evaporating mighty quickly.

And for those in the market for any kind of military hardware, think twice before buying from the snake oil salesman with the lovely British accents.

écureuil!

Don Macpherson has a good column in today's Gazette, discussing how the PQ is playing up the latest numbers about language and Montreal to distract from, well, that it is falling apart.  The new stats show that the number of "true Francophones" is declining in Montreal because they are moving to less expensive (and perhaps more infrastructurally sound) suburbs.  This is hardly a crisis as they are not being replaced by those nasty Anglophones (that would be me) but Allophones (immigrants) who speak multiple languages and increasingly use French at home.

So, what is going on?

Blanchet's proposal ... Its real purpose is political.  It's to prevent François Legault's new nationalist party from outflanking the PQ in the defence of the French-speaking majority against the minorities.*  The PQ learned its lesson in 2007, when it conceded that defence to Mario Dumont's Action démocratique du Québec and temporarily fell to third-party status as a result.  Two weeks ago, Legault presented a discussion paper on identity in which most of the proposals were considerably weaker than what the PQ had already proposed in its new program.
But what caught attention was a possibly coded appeal to xenophobia that the PQ hadn't thought of: a temporary, symbolic reduction in annual immigration targets.  Now the PQ has quickly matched Legault's proposal with a similar one of its own. The proposal is also intended to distract attention toward the identity question and away from the PQ's current problems.

*  I discussed this recently.

Yep, we have some ethnic outbidding going on here, with the old, fractious nationalists competing with the new kids on the block to be the best nationalists after the new kids had initially appeared to be putting this stuff behind them.  Of course they did not--playing with identity, in this case it is language, is too damned convenient.

Can I be disappointed without being surprised?

Group Identity: In School and in Life

I had a nice life imitating art (or science) today.  I was lecturing about identity and the stuff we political scientists have borrowed from social psychology to explain ethnic conflict today.  The idea is to get my IR of Ethnic Conflict class exposed to the basics before we move on to the international relations issues that are the heart of this course.

So, today, I am quite aware of my identity and how my self-esteem depends on how I see my group and how others see my group.  Then I notice a blog about Teaching Political Science which links to an article that focuses almost entirely on American Politics and a smidge on Comparative Politics.  I would not mind it if the article was not entitled "Ten Things Political Scientists Know ..."  But since it entirely ignores International Relations, I have a pretty gut level emotional response of the marginalization of the group with which I identify (even if some narrow-minded colleagues think that civil war is just for Compartivists).

One of the upsides of residing in Canada has been that the border pretty much does away with imperialist Americanists trying to define the field only in terms of their narrow subfield (one that would be considered a sub-subfield of Comparative Politics in other countries).*  Sure, I have long since realized that Americanists are pretty handy since they tend to insist that the grad students have strong quant skills which make them useful to those of us who are falling further behind on high tech skills.

* Canadian Politics is the parallel subfield up here (with Americanists considered to be Comparativists, which is really quite amusing), but Canadianists tend not to be so forceful and tend not to seek dominance (we are what we study?).

 But moments like this make me realize:

1. Americanists might still be pretty damned narrow-minded about what Political Science is, more so than the other subfields.
2. My lecture today about the logic of invidious comparisons (explicating Horowitz 1985) is not just for my class but also for understanding why I am so provoked right now.

Ups and Downs of Drone Warfare

I hesitate before trying to argue with Roland Paris about his op-ed on Drone Warfare for two reasons: a) I have not done much research on drones; and b) Roland is about the scariest sharpest person in Canada.  He argued that the US is setting bad precedents by using remote-controlled aircraft in non-wars such as Yemen and Somalia, that the US is engaged in assassinations.  Roland points out that the real escalation in Pakistan has been under Obama from 33 strikes in 2008 to 118 last year.*  He is right to point out that drones are handy precisely because there are few domestic costs (no body bags). 

*  Which might have much to do with the disillusionment with the government of Pakistan as with anything else.

Roland goes on to criticize the secrecy of the target selection, that there is no accountability involved. And I cannot say I disagree too much.  But I guess I wonder how realistic (small r) it is to expect the US or any country to provide information about targeting decisions?  Much exposure of that would reveal the means by which folks are identified--the sources of the intelligence that lead to certain folks getting attention and targeting.

I also wonder what should countries do when potential "evil-doers" hang out in failed states?  Obviously, adversaries will go where they don't have to worry about hostile governments.  Yes, they can reside in territories controlled by friendly governments, but such governments may have to bear costs for their support and betray them occasionally.  Somalia is an obviously friendly environment for those who seek to avoid potentially ambivalent host governments.  Given that the US tried it the other way before (1992-93), what could the US do now? 

The other problem I have is with the focus on targeted killings--that while they are problematic, they are better than the alternative of untargeted killings.  Drones may not be quite as accurate as the Pentagon might portray, but they are still far better at discriminating between target and others.  If the choice is bombing cities to coerce and striking individuals (and yes, this is a semi-false choice, but not an an entirely false one), I would choose the latter.  The discussion of drones reminds me of qualms that some countries have had in operations in Afghanistan when a plan is to pick up or capture a senior Taliban leader.  But the alternatives would be not fighting at all or being less discriminate in the use of force.

Still, Roland's overriding point is well-taken--that the US needs to consider all of the consequences of their actions, assess the tradeoffs, be more honest about the processes, and perhaps even make it clear who are the folks making the decisions, even if we are not privvy to the actual bits and pieces of information that lead to the selection of some targets rather than others.

Pop Phobia: Who Are the Phobes?

This post by Spencer Ackerman asserts that you will not find too many Islamophobes in the American military among combat vets.  He essentially makes the fairly standard argument that the more contact you have, the more sympathy you have, the less hate you have.  The more you interact, the less you buy into the hype:

And many, if not most, came home understanding that Muslims aren't so different. Muslims don't have heat vision. They're not implacably opposed to freedom and all that shit. They're not looking to join a terrorist group, and "proto-terrorism" doesn't lurk in their hearts.

But Ackerman does note that he "can't prove any of this.  It's all anecdotal."

Ah, but we do have some social science on your side.  And we have patterns that we see again and again that suggest that contact does not breed conflict as much as ignorance.  How so?

First, one of the consistent findings in the scholarship is that ethnic conflict is most severe when ethnic groups are concentrated.  That is, when they largely live apart, not when they are integrated.  There are all kinds of reasons this may be true, including concentration means easier to defend (which makes attacking less risky) and so on.  But one of the logics is that if groups are concentrated, members will not interact that often with outsiders, and that will help to reinforce suspicion, fear, and otherwise reinforce in-group, out-group dynamics.  And to be clear, it is not just ethnic differences or diversity but how they are situated.  Studies that focus ethnic fractionalization--how likely you are to meet someone of another ethnic group NEVER find that more diversity (which implies more contact) is a bad thing in terms of ethnic violence. 

Second, we tend to find those folks who join nativist, xenophobic movements are often those who hardly ever encounter the others that they fear.  These movements are not in urban areas but elsewhere, but the feared immigrants are in the cities.  This is not just a Tea Party kind of thing.  Here in Quebec, lots of the folks opposed to reasonable accommodation and raising fears of the various religious menaces (Muslims, devout Jews, etc) never see them, as they live in the hinterlands.  Famously, a few years ago, one town issued a declaration about what their values were, so that no immigrants with conflicting values should move there without adopting the new beliefs, but this town was not facing a wave of immigration. 

So, who are the phobic folks?  Those who hate and fear the "others"?  Those that have little experience in general. Sure, some folks who meet do continue to hate, but the recurring pattern seems to be that those with the least exposure tend to be the most xenophobic.  Folks in NY, LA, Chicago, Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, London, and elsewhere are far less likely to jump on the xenophobic bandwagon.  If I had more time (if I were not so lazy), I am pretty sure I can find voting patterns for the National Front, the Party for Freedom, the True Finn Party, the Danish People's Party and the like and see that these parties do better in the most homogeneous communities.

Anybody got some social science to suggest I am off on this?

Kabul? The New Tet

It is too soon to tell what is going on in Kabul right now, but folks are raising the Tet parallel all over the place, including on unrelated blog posts of mine. 

My first take: the Taliban aspire to Tet but are too late.  That is, Tet was a key turning point because it changed expectations about what was happening in Vietnam, forcing a series of political decisions and changes, including LBJ not running for re-election and the end of escalation.  In Afghanistan, the Taliban may be attempting to score a similar blow, but it will not affect US domestic politics in the same.  Why?  Because the US and its NATO partners have already begun the process of getting out.  In 1968, there was no end in sight, with the US commitment seemingly forever enduring.  In 2011, the clock has been ticking for a while, with 2014 very much on the horizon. 

My second take: the Tet parallel is apt in one way.  All that stuff we have been hearing about decapitation of the Taliban must be, ahem, exaggerated if the insurgents can coordinate this well.  To be clear, I am not saying that the US/NATO forces have been lying about how many middle-level managers have been getting captured or killed, just that the effects may have been overplayed.

My third take: war is bargaining by other means.  Lots of stuff lately about the Taliban meeting with the US and such.  The surge was aimed not so much at victory perhaps but stopping the insurgency's momentum--so that bargaining could proceed. This attack might be a way to re-shift the bargaining space as it shows that the Taliban's powers are not all gone. 

So, this might be Tet-esque but no more than that.  Still not good news for anyone, but we need to be careful about which parts of the analogy seem to apply.

Where is Buffy?

Stakeholders?  Why does this phrase annoy me so?  In this piece, there is a report of a general meeting with stakeholders?  Is it shorthand for people who care?  Or for people we are about who might care?  I guess it sounds better than relevant elites, but it just does not sing to me.  All I can think of when I hear this phrase are either vampires who need some staking or putting up some tents.

Any business-speak of the late 20th century annoy you as much as stakeholders annoys me?

Pie Crust Promises continued

I really do not want to appear to be taking any enjoyment out of the current Euro crisis, but I have to ask: what the hell were they thinking when Greece was let into the Euro zone?  I have said this before but let me rant a bit to compensate for some under-blogging of late: the initial intent of the Euro zone was, as I remember it, to be open to only a subset of the European Union.  That the key was a credible ability to manage one's economy via sound fiscal policy. 

So, did anyone do any research to figure out Greece's fiscal standing?  Or did the conditions not matter since the EU has been all about clean maps?  As it turns out, the promises made by the EU itself turned out to be a pie crust promise: easily made, easily broken.  And yes, this provides yet more proof that having a child has influenced how I think since I saw Mary Poppins dozens of times in the weeks my dy daughter was sick when she was 2 years old (more than 13 years ago). 

As a tribute to the European Union, I thought I would illustrate the problems with conditionality with this google search, which has a Carla Bruni song among the top links found!

All Is Well, Remain Calm

Sure, McGill has to say that the strike of the support staff is not affecting things.  That is part of the bargaining effort.  In any bargaining situation, using coercion (such as a strike) to inflict pain is a likely strategy.  Just as likely is an effort by the coerced to deny being hurt so weakness is not perceived.  But we who are affected bystanders do not have to buy it.  It is simply incredible as in not believable to say that losing the work of hundreds (thousands?) of staff folk would not have a negative impact.  Otherwise, why have them work for you in the first place?

To be clear, I really like our department's staff, but I am not entirely sure I am in love with the union or its demands.  Lots of stuff involved, but it is abundantly clear to me that we miss them, that their absence is affecting the faculty and the students.  How does it matter? 

• Well, registration for classes is always a tough issue since we have lots of students interested in our classes.  While the waiting list system is automated, the students trying to enroll are not so much.  Managing their mistakes (like dropping the main part of the class as they sign up for discussion sections) requires humans. 
• I am trying to create a team of coders from undergrads who are interested in doing research for credit.  Not easy to figure out how this works with a bunch of folks on the picket line who might be able to answer my questions.
• Work-study is at a standstill-I employ some students via workstudy.  But that seems kaput for now.
• I have several grad students (both those for whom I am the main supervisor and those where I sit on their committees) on the job market, but now the secretary who sends out the letters of recommendation is on strike.  So, the students have to depend on profs to be detail-oriented and get out tens and tens of letters on time.  The good news is that more hiring departments use online processes but certainly not half.  So, we shall see how this goes.  

Again, I get both sides: McGill does not want to suggest that the strike is costly or else it might have to make some concessions.  The strikers want the strike to hurt or else they will not get what they want.  But it is not fun to be one of the two or three groups (students, profs, neighbors, etc) who are in the middle of this.