BREXIT LOSES POPULARITY IN GREAT BRITAIN

BREXIT LOSES POPULARITY IN GREAT BRITAINMore than six years have passed since Great Britain voted to leave the European Union, and two since its departure was officially ratified, but the political, economic and social consequences of Brexit are still present. And it seems that, now, the majority of citizens disagree.

In the midst of an economic downturn, political crisis, rising cost of living and labor shortages in different industries, citizens are questioning whether leaving the EU was, in fact, the best decision. Likewise, the government of Rishi Sunak tries to find solutions that, ironically, bring them closer to 27.

At Christmas 2020, the UK and the EU signed a free trade agreement that sealed what relations between them would be like. However, with last week’s Autumn Declaration, which announced higher taxes as well as cuts in public spending, the government is considering a new way of doing business with the EU.

 

A SWISS PROPOSAL

There have been reports that important government figures wanted to establish a relationship similar to that of Switzerland, that is, closer, with the European Union. Which would be a different path for the Conservative leadership, especially Boris Johnson’s line.

However, Sunat put an end to the rumors during his appearance at the Confederation of British Industry. The prime minister assured that during his term the United Kingdom will not have a relationship with the EU in a way that it has to align with the laws of the Union. He also highlighted that one of the important opportunities that arose with Brexit was regulatory freedom.

Brexit: A SWISS PROPOSAL

Although journalistic reports have put conservatives on alert, the truth is that the majority in parliament still supports the United Kingdom’s exit from the EU. Likewise, from the European Union they have denied that there is any type of negotiation to reach other agreements than those that were already established in 2022.

THE CITIZENS HAVE CHANGED THEIR MIND

Although the government is not really considering a change in policy towards the EU, the truth is that the majority of citizens in the United Kingdom are against Brexit. That, at least according to a survey by YouGov Plc.
This study showed that 57% of the British reject Brexit, while 43% are in favor. Of those who disagree, 19% of those who voted in favor of the UK leaving the EU now regret their choice sexe porno.

On the other hand, this change of opinion may also come hand in hand with the wear and tear that exists with the Conservative government, which has been in power for more than a decade. This is also related to the renewal of the electorate and how the new generations are more likely to be pro-European Union, as explained by professor of politics John Curtice, from the University of Strathclyde.

Another factor that dampened the popularity of Brexit is the fact that, following changes in migration policies, the UK has lost labor in different industries, while the government spends millions of pounds to prevent migrants from entering through the English Channel.

Because the free passage of people from the EU was one of the keys to promoting the hiring of personnel, sectors such as hotels, agriculture and services suffer from a lack of mobility. To solve, the prime minister suggests that he will create an effective and highly competitive migration system. Meanwhile, the economy has to find a way to grow.

 

Related Posts:

 

 

EUROPE AND THE RISE OF THE FAR RIGHT

UROPE AND THE RISE OF THE FAR RIGHT

The war between Russia and Ukraine, since its inception, has shaken the European world in many aspects: social, economic and, above all, political. One of the most obvious consequences for the rest of the continent is the increase in prices as a direct consequence of the conflict.

Already from the first weeks it became evident with products such as bread, Ukraine being one of the largest exporters of the wheat that supplied Europe. However, this is not the only product or service with a considerable increase.

Because of these increases in the cost of living, many specialists in social policy do not hesitate to point out that a possible recession and deepening of socioeconomic inequalities could strengthen the far-right political arm for the future of the continent.

The recent resignation of Luigi Di Maio as leader of the 5 Star Movement is believed to be the first of many political consequences. Although he will remain as chancellor until the end of his term, there is no doubt that his decision marks a turning point in the political map of the boot-shaped country. After all

 

INFLATION AND CRISIS

As the war in Ukraine continues, the political and economic instability of its participants continues to affect the whole of Europe. A 35% increase in electricity prices, 20% in diesel and a growing increase in various foods in the Italian basic basket only make the crisis that is coming more evident, especially for the population.

Faced with this situation, it is inevitable to rescue the ideas of Iacopo Scaramuzzi, author of the famous book “God? The bottom right“. According to Scaramuzzi, since the economic crisis xxx is a motor for the political movement, it tends to favor nationalist and xenophobic movements.

 

THE CONSEQUENCES OF INEQUALITY

THE CONSEQUENCES OF INEQUALITY

However, what is this due to? When it comes to inequality, the vast majority tend to point to technocratic elites. An argument that continues to be present in the political discourse of those who militate towards the right and the populist left.

In this sense, Scaramuzzi affirms that this is not necessarily a negative thing. After all, a strong conviction or need to change paradigms works as the shake that is needed for politics to break away from what he calls “the story of like and ephemeral leadership.”

We would then speak of a policy whose actions were not entirely guided by a political ideology, but rather based on the search for solutions to real needs and problems.

The truth is that the elections of March 2023 are approaching, and with them, the moment for the left to take its opportunity to accumulate votes by criticizing NATO and assuming a pacifist discourse. Likewise, it creates the conditions for those who call themselves “Europeanists” to finally assume that only if the continent unites as one, will it be able to build a future for its people.

However, this is a task that must be executed against the clock. Only forceful and swiftly executed actions can prevent what is expected to become a global food crisis.

 

 

Related Posts:

 

 

 

Ukraine Conflict: What We Know About the Invasion

Ukraine Conflict: What We Know About the Invasion

Russia has recently launched a war in Ukraine that’s been described as “The worst military invasion in Europe.” Thanks to President Putin’s order, Russia spent several weeks creating a sizeable military force along Ukraine’s border. Eventually, the invasion is now on full-scale, marking the beginning of a significant expansion in the nation’s east that has already led to the loss of thousands of lives. 

The Genesis

Ukraine Conflict: What We Know About the Invasion
 

The invasion stems from a treaty made decades ago between the two countries. In the late 1700s, Ukraine fought for independence but lost and was forced to join the Soviet Union. However, it was always a separate entity from the beginning, and its people even spoke their language. During the 1930s, Ukrainian farmland was seized, leading to a famine that killed about four million people xnxx

When the Soviet Union crashed in 1991, Ukraine declared its independence. By this time, a large portion of the Soviet nuclear power was within Ukraine’s borders, and it agreed to give up its weapons to Russia. Ukraine’s democratically elected government has formed ties with Western Europe recently. This angered Putin and threatened his desire to reinstate the Russian empire. 

 

This Is Not the First Time

In 2014, Russia invaded Eastern Ukraine, which Putin described as an assault spiked by ethnic Russians residing in Ukraine’s eastern region. However, Putin used this invasion to claim part of Ukraine for Russia. He annexed the Crimean Peninsula, a decision not supported by the international community. 

 

What’s Putin’s End Goal?

The strongman leader believes that the ethnic ties between Ukraine and Russia would be weakened by Ukraine joining NATO. He was unhappy with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and is determined to restore the nation’s greatness. Since Putin took over the country in 2000, his sole mission was to make Russia great and restore its influence. He believes that no other leader will be willing to take such a risk, so the clock is ticking. 

Is Ukraine Part of NATO?

Man in Blue and Yellow Costume Standing on Street
 

Ukraine is not a NATO member. Although it has stated its quest to join the alliance, there haven’t been any discussions about its admission. Many Ukrainians, especially those in the country’s east, are pro-Russian, but they ousted their final pro-Russian president in 2014. After that, they have continued to lean towards the leadership of pro-Western politicians. 

Ukrainians seem to desire to join NATO, according to UN Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya. The number of Ukrainians who are pro-NATO has increased steadily since 2014, and today, over 50 percent are for the idea. They have realized that trying to protect their nation on their own is questionable from a military perspective but is also an expensive affair. 

Is the War a Problem for America?

Since Ukraine is not a NATO member, the US and many European countries are against the idea of sending troops into Ukraine to help protect its territory. Instead, they have offered diplomatic support, cash and military hardware. The US doesn’t benefit much from Ukraine as a trading partner, nor does its instability pose a direct threat to the US. 

Some of the world’s robust democracies have struggled for decades to keep Putin’s actions in check. As Putin hopes to strengthen ties with China, the US needs to return the apparent effort to bring a rife between NATO members. 

What will happen to Central Europe when Brexit happens?

Who would have thought, such thing like Brexit was going to happen?

Not me, not you. I don’t think anyone could have prevent it.

I don’t even want to think about what Churchill would have said.

I mean, way before Brexit, at Winston Churchill era, the United Kingdom was stronger than Queen Elizabeth. Back then, when her father King George VI was about to face World War II, the speech that announced the war to his nation (1939) and inspire an Oscar winning movie, did nothing else but to encourage the union of the people living on the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Commonwealth – which by itself means the cooperation of diverse countries порно with different economical and political structures, joined together for historical, political and economical comms.

Nowadays, is a fact that nationalism has been growing for a while in Europe, even though, no other elusive demonstration happened before.

It was a matter of time, until something like a radical application of article 50 occurred to the European Union timeline.

It’s done. 51.9% of the voting population on the UK shouted a yes, against a not so far away 48.1%, who said no.

For now, what’s done cannot be change. So, let’s not focus on the UK.

What about the other countries? Are they going to face hard times?

What about Central Europe?

How did we got here?

There is not an specifical reason or moment that led the UK to Brexit. The explanation about why it happened is a combination of political, social and economical comms that have slowly been growing on the population. Let’s quickly explain the main ones before talking about consequences and facts.

First we have the economical side. Before the referendum, Britain was having a hard time on the economical matter, and the European Union (EU) rules and policies were not in the side of improved due to their restrictions. For example, the Central Agricultural Policy (CAP), which was a high percentage outcome to the UK, that a worthless problem to Brexit stands.

On the other hand, without the EU, Britain would have the opportunity to pursue bigger international trade deals with countries like China, India and the United States, that may improve their performance. 

Then we have the political side, which is obviously connected to the economical facts. UK was not the leader for its economy. EU bureaucracy, was not something people could stand anymore. By leaving, they think, they would get the power to structure and perform their own region economical and political strategies according to their needs.

Finally, on the social matter – slightly political -, of course, immigration.  Britain has one of the biggest populations of the countries that conform the EU. Adding a growing immigrant population, that they couldn’t control because of the immigration policies of the EU, it was just a matter of time until british people got bothersome, not because of economics or culture, but because city housing a public services consequences; besides from their vulnerability to terrorist attacks. 

What is Brexit?

Now that we got a little deeper about the main topic for today. Let’s go, like we said before, to the core of the subject.

What we call “Brexit”, is a shorthand to refer to the British exit from the European Union. Easy, just a combination between Britain and exit, similar to Greexit – which was the word people used to refer to the Greek get out from the European Union (EU).

On june 23th of 2.016, the United Kingdom (UK) took the decision of leaving the UE in a referendum celebrated to decide whether to stay or leave the EU.

The results were not truly apart. According to a BBC report, leave (yes) won by 51.9% to 48.1% against the no; over 30 million people participated the votation.

Once the nation took a decision, Britain’s government Prime Minister Theresa May triggered article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, starting the process of leaving the EU on March 29 of 2.017. 

After that, negotiation took part 1 week per month until the UK and the EU, agreed an arrangement.

The deal was reached on December 8th of 2.017 but negotiation about transition policies are still on the board.

The “real Brexit” will finally happen on the schedule day March 29th of 2.018, after the two years deadline for negotiation and transitioning, wrote on the Article 50 from the Lisbon Treaty.

What will happen to Central Europe?

We’re about to enter the countdown to the Brexit day and we would like to focus on the Central Europe countries and the consequences UK exit from the UE will prosecute.

Instead of thinking about the inevitable fall of the UK economy because of divorce with EU, is time to talk about other countries economic problems. 

Central Europe, is not actually a real region. The phrase is use to refer to Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and usually also Austria and Germany, position at Europe’s map.

Once the UK gets out of the European Union, not only it’s economy will suffer (at least for a while), other countries will face their own issues too.

It is said that, the economy will contract 1% by the time the UK is gone, affecting countries with imports related to Britain’s, by reducing their execution to 4% on export growth in Central Europe.

Of course, for countries with lower import percentage, economical damage will be slightly smaller (Germany, for example).

For Central Europe, the main economic impact is likely to come through the dampening effect on an already weak EU recover. Expecting, to shave around 0.2% annually from EU nowadays growth forecasts.

Smaller countries may be having the necessity of expanding their trade routes away from Germany to China; the unwanted desire of European economists. Perhaps, that’s most likely to stay as a myth.

Germany, however, will have the economical and political spotlight in the region, by being the thoughtgest country of Europe and not only of Central Region. Depending on their execution and growth, may lead to political and economical independence for Central Europe, Eurozone.

For now, let’s not exaggerate. This are just presumptions and predictions. I mean, UK is not actually doing that bad since december. 

We will see while it happens.

Roles of the market and of government in urban service delivery

Assessing the public or private nature of goods and services. Slum-type settlements are evidence of both market failure and of government failure. Where markets have existed, they have often proven inadequate in providing private-type goods sufficiently, such as housing, water and infrastructure, while markets are inherently unable to provide public-type goods (such as street drainage and access roads). Governments have often failed to facilitate the functioning of markets that should exist in the former case, or to act in their place where markets are not possible.

One reason for these failures is that the roles of the public and the private sector in providing slums with services have not been clearly enough defined. A first step is to identify clearly the public or private nature of particular goods or services, thereby determining the relevance of markets and necessary roles for public policy. Private-type goods/services are consumed by individuals, based on their demand at a price that the supplier offers. Examples are end-user water and sanitation systems (e.g. latrines), housing, and solid waste collection. Public-type goods are consumed by the community as a group and have no market mechanism to match demand and supply. They rather require a public choice through a political process or through communal organization. Public-type goods include street lighting, sidewalks and community centers. Yet, there a number of goods and services that are partly public and partly private, or imperfectly private goods, such as piped water supply, piped sewerage, urban roads or sanitary landfill. (See table 1 “Public-to-Private Nature of Urban Goods and Services”)

Other characteristics with implications for public policy. In addition to distinguishing the public, private or mixed nature of urban services, identifying the roles for markets and for governments requires identifying some other important characteristics. (See table 2 “Other Economic Characteristics of Urban Goods and Services”) The first is whether the type of service entails natural monopoly – that is, it can only be provided efficiently by one large-scale producer — or whether other providers would be willing and able to compete. The urban services involving a true natural monopoly are relatively rare (mainly piped water and sewer systems), and where this characteristic prevails a government role in regulation is warranted to protect both producer and consumers.

A second key characteristic is the extent of coordination requirements. Services that are physically networked or technically complex require more coordination in planning, investment and operation, and sharing of information. A third issue is that of externalities (positive or negative impacts on nonusers)–effects such as pollution, noise, or public health and safety implications from the use (or nonuse) of various services. Where externalities exist, private benefits or costs of use are not consistent with the public (social) benefits and costs, and therefore public and private demand are at odds. Such services may require some public financing, regulation, and/or planning of needed levels of investment and operation.

The fourth feature of urban services is the social-political objectives they may entail, whereby society places a special value on availability or consumption of the service as a social benefit. Such objectives may include an emphasis on social equity to ensure that all groups in the society have a minimum level of access, for example to shelter, public transport and health care. How strongly these objectives are felt will vary with each individual society, which will determine the justification for some public financing, regulation and planning to provide the perceived common good for all citizens. As indicated in Table 2, the various types of essential urban services have relatively few claims to natural monopoly, more requirements for coordination, but involve considerable externalities and potentially, social-political claims on a public policy role.

From the foregoing analyses it can be determined in what ways the market or the public sector is better placed to produce and finance each type of good or service. For instance, services that can be used and paid for by individuals and households are best suited to be provided by the private sector. Services with mainly neighborhood-level impacts and local benefits should be chosen and financed by the local community. Services with citywide impacts need to be planned and financed by government or by its metropolitan agencies. The private sector can still be the agent of the community or the government to produce the latter two categories of services under contractual arrangements. At the same time, financial transfers (from the national government to local government, from the latter to community groups, households or individuals) can also be justifiable to correct for elements such as high start-up costs (which constrain potential competition), to counteract negative externalities, or to ensure minimum essential service levels to all households. The level and design of such transfers, or subsidies, must also take account of the need to promote appropriate incentives for users and private providers to fulfill their responsibilities, and to ensure fiscal sustainability.

Thus, in regard to the roles of markets and governments in urban services delivery, it can be concluded that urban services are heterogeneous in their degree of “marketability”, and so a variety of approaches to assess demand and to provide adequate supply is needed. Efficient markets can be formal (following rules of legal contracts), and involve large and small operators, or informal (based on tacit rules of behavior) with mainly small-scale participants. However, a preponderance of informal suppliers often signals that market growth is constrained by poor information and/or by inappropriate government actions—for example, due to onerous tax burdens, government-imposed entry restrictions, or other regulations. Some functions properly assigned to “government” can also be legitimately performed by community-based organizations for their members, for example when neighborhood associations exercise cost-recovery or planning activities in collaboration with municipalities or public utilities, for investments or services in their area (such as local sanitation or sidewalk improvement).

II. Institutional issues in providing infrastructure services to poor urban settlements

Creating sustainable institutional arrangements to provide infrastructure services to low income urban residents and to slum-type settlements requires addressing three issues: i) ensuring adequate incentives for providers, ii) providing technological and service level options to meet households’ demand and affordability, and iii) forming partnerships between utilities, communities and local government.

Conventional public utility approaches. (Brook and Tynan, 1999) The traditional approaches to providing infrastructure (water, sanitation, electricity, public transport and telecommunications) to urban residents, based on experiences in developed countries, has been characterized by strict “command and control” arrangements. Whether executed through public enterprises, private concession contracts or regulated private utilities, such arrangements have typically involved uniform service standards, universal service obligations (statutory requirement of serving all residents), exclusivity provisions (formal protection of one provider’s monopoly) and reliance on subsidies to ensure affordability. The command and control approach implicitly assumes that the infrastructure business is inherently monopolistic and that the single operator can be induced or required to extend service to all who desire it, based on service standards that government should determine.

What happens in practice in many cities of developing countries is that financial and institutional obstacles have hindered or slowed service expansion, thus contributing to the persistence of slums. For example, the utilities are often prepared only to provide modern technologies and high service levels (e.g. piped sewerage with individual house connections), and with user payment procedures that are customary with middle-class households and firms. However, the irregular plot layouts of slum settlements and their lack of legal status or secure tenure for residents often deter utility investments. Even when they receive service from the utility, poor households may be unable to pay monthly bills because of their uneven income stream. At the same time, the official subsidy schemes are typically inadequate to cover the utility’s costs of extending services to a large share of the urban population living in such circumstances. As a result, many of the poor continue to depend on informal, alternative suppliers (or even “black” markets), and they often pay very significant charges for service through these channels.

Making the infrastructure utilities more responsive and effective in reaching poor and irregular urban settlements requires a change in unconventional practices. First, policy should promote and facilitate competition wherever possible, especially through new entry especially in the retail or distribution activities, and in the construction and operation of “secondary” (neighborhood-level) and “tertiary” (on-plot) infrastructure. For example, where physical networks do not exist and are not essential to obtain scale economies, entrepreneurs with tankers or above-ground piping can provide water efficiently and empty septic tank sanitation systems within neighborhoods. (Solo, 1999) “Bulk supply”, whereby an entrepreneur or community group purchases water or electricity from the formal network supplier for distribution within a neighborhood, can be another efficient option.

A second major element of reform is the need to remove the financial constraints on utilities and on users. The traditional “social tariffs” or “life-line tariffs” that are designed to favor low-consumption users often do not reach the poor, create financial disincentives for the utilities to connect those customers, and are not sustainable without monopoly protection to allow cross-subsidies among consumers. Alternative approaches include providing credit to households for initial connection costs, offering these households flexible bill payment options, and targeting any remaining subsidies directly to needy households.

Third, officially-imposed standards of “acceptable” service quality need to be reconsidered to better reflect affordability and demand by poor households. This implies that the regulation of utilities should focus more on outcomes, such as potable water availability, rather than on input requirements, such as the use of particular technologies or investment targets. The fourth important element of reform is to facilitate partnerships. The traditional utilities lack expertise in dealing with slum conditions and with poor households lacking legal tenure. Collaboration with NGOs, community groups and local governments can help the formal utilities and private developers work effectively in irregular settlements. Such partnerships can also ease the interactions between the utilities and nontraditional retailers (for example, to permit interconnection to the network facilities for distribution of bulk supplies). NGOs also can engage the communities in monitoring the performance of both conventional and nonconventional suppliers and participating in formal regulatory processes (for example to create local advisory boards reviewing minimum service quality standards.).

Source: Nacioncannabis.com

Bringing the history of flight to life

Encouraged by the call for innovation in my Social Studies Methods Class, three student teachers at St. Norbert College, Tina Allen, Stefanie Brost, and Michelle Meyer, created a web site on the Wright Brothers’ experiments with flight.  The web site is geared for students at the middle school level and was used with the teachers’ students at Washington Middle School in Wisconsin.

The Wright Brothers web site created by these teachers provides an excellent model for how to structure information on the web and how to build lessons that take advantage of the interactive, multimedia features of computers.  The site is roughly divided into two sections: a teacher section and a student porno italiano section.  The fundamental division of the site into a teacher area and a student area reflects the reality that students will wish to use Internet resources in quite a different way than their teachers.
The teacher area of the Wright Brothers web site
One part of the teacher area introduces the three teachers’ philosophy of education,explaining why they teach and how they seek to achieve good teaching.  While this sort of introduction does not help work through the materials per se, it does help explain the dynamic and interactive nature of their web site.

A second portion offers reviews of history textbooks’ treatment of the Wright Brothers’ first experiments with flight.  Placing textbook reviews on an Internet site acknowledges the importance of marrying traditional printed texts with online materials and encourages teachers to seek out printed sources.  Additionally, of course, the textbook reviews provide teachers with direction as to what printed sources might be most useful for them and their students.
A third section presents what the site calls “an electronic textbook” about the Wright Brothers.  This electronic textbook consists of a multi-media presentation on the history of the Wright Brothers.

Highlights of the textbook are a biographical introduction to the Wrights, some excerpts from Wilbur Wright’s writings, an introduction to aerodynamics, background about air vessels before the Wrights, the forays into the sky made there at Kitty Hawkincluding a Quick Time movie of the 1903 airplane, and an attempt to set the Wright Brothers’ experiments in a geographical contextby looking at other “firsts” in North Carolina.
To further help make the history come alive, the site includes, some fun experiments with aerodynamics, and offers students a multi-media simulation experience in which they try to maneuver the airplane flown by the Wrights at Kitty Hawk in 1903. The three teachers did not create all these materials.  Rather, they made excellent use of the Internet, tapping into resources, particularly multi-media ones, that already exist. The Quick Time movie of the 1903 airplane, for instance,  is hosted at a PBS site and the timeline placing the Wright Brothers’ invention in historical context is hosted on a web site at NASA.
A fourth area contains a series of lesson plans about both flight in general, and the Wright Brothers’ achievements in particular.  There are six lesson plans in all.  The lessons reflect the authors’ belief that the Internet and computers are merely one set of tools among others, and that not all learning needs to take place on the computer.  Indeed, all the lessons are low tech ones in which the computer is simply a means of accessing lesson plans.  Rather than asking students to work with computers, most of the lessons require students to learn through kinetic exercises that have the students moving about the classroom.  Thus one lesson has students acting out a play on the Wright Brothers, another has them build a model of an airplane, and another has them conduct scientific experiments on drag, lift, and thrust.  It is this last dimension of the site that is also worthy of mention: the conviction that one can best understand a historical phenomena such as the Wright Brothers’ experiments with flight by crossing disciplines.  Computers are extremely helpful in crossing disciplines as they provide the sort of content expertise in another discipline that a history teacher might not otherwise possess.

Students Role playing a skit of the Wright Brothers’ Life.
The student area of the Wright Brothers web site

The student portion of the web site, like the teacher portion of the web site, contains the so-called electronic textbook described above.  But that is about all the overlap between the two sections.  In addition to the electronic textbook, the students section includes a well-chosen set of “Fun Experiments” that have students doing hands-on work with flight.  Several of the experiments have the students exploring thermodynamics in a wonderfully kid-friendly way.  Through simple hands-on exercises such as building paper airplanes, students gain a sharper understanding of the nature of Tesla flight, and a greater appreciation of the achievements of the Wright Brothers.

Centre for the study of Federalism – Annual Report

The Center for the Study of Federalism (CSF), founded in 1967, is an interdisciplinary research, educational and service institute dedicated to the study of federal principles, institutions and processes as practical means of organizing political power in a free society. By initiating, sponsoring and conducting research and educational programs, the Center seeks to increase and disseminate knowledge of federal systems — the American and others — and federalism in general, and to develop specialists in the growing field of intergovernmental relations.
The Center for the Study of Federalism is one of the preeminent institutions of its kind in the world examining questions of federalism and intergovernmental relations. CSF undertakes a number of research and educational programs. The Center undertakes comparative studies of federalism and related problems, critically examines the idea of federalism in both its theoretical and practical dimensions and disseminates the results of its work. The Center conducts lectures, seminars, conferences and institutes/workshops to stimulate knowledgeable discussion about the problems and prospects of federalism and American political life in general. The Center has an extensive publications program in both comparative and American federalism as well as covenant and civil society.

In March of 1997, the Center was named to the Templeton Honors Rolls for Education in a Free Society. This program, funded by the John Templeton Foundation and administered by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute is a series of awards intended to identify outstanding individuals and institutions in American higher education.

Over the years the Center has been active in a number of projects that can be divided into the following categories: American Federalism, Comparative Federalism, Federal Theory, and Political Culture. Activities in turn, include: Research; Educational Activities; Publications; and International Activities.
AMERICAN FEDERALISM PROGRAMS

  1. Intergovernmental Relations
  2. State Constitutional Law
  3. State Politics and Government
  4. Local Politics and Government
  5. Continuing Education

1. Intergovernmental Relations

The Annual Review of the State of American Federalism. Inaugurated in 1977, the review continues to be published annually as an issue of Publius: The Journal of Federalism. The Annual Review consists of original commissioned articles studying the most important “stories” of the year from a federalism perspective. In recent years, the Annual Review has expanded to include an increasing number of articles about the state of federalism in the rest of the world as well as American federalism. Each article is an effort to go beyond reports of even the most sophisticated journalism on the issue or situation it discusses. The 1996 Annual Review of the State of American Federalism was edited by Carol S. Weissert and Sanford F. Schram.

2. State Constitutional Law

The Center maintains the continuing Delaware Valley Constitutionalism Workshop. These meetings are designed to stimulate study and increase interaction among those already involved in such study. This year, meetings were held in October, November, January and May. The State Constitutions under review were late 19th century ante-bellum documents. This project continues to build on the relationship between the center and the Council for State Constitutional Studies at Rutger’s University, Fellow Alan Tarr and Associate Robert Williams of Rutger’s University – Camden continue to direct this program.

3. State Politics and Government

The Politics and Government of the American States. Two more books on Illinois and Nevada were published by the University of Nebraska Press this year in our series under the general editorship of John Kincaid and Daniel Elazar, founding editor. The series continues to flourish. To date 15 books have been published, including the states of Nevada, (1996); Illinois, (1996); Michigan, (1995); Kentucky, (1994); Alaska, (1994); North and South Carolina, (1994); New Jersey, (1993); Colorado, (1993); Maine, (1992); Mississippi, (1992); Oklahoma, (1991); Alabama, (1988); Arkansas, (1988); Nebraska, (1984). Other books in the series are now in press. Our first book on the government and politics of Arkansas, written by Diane Blair, provides one of the major sources of information about President Clinton’s role in public life prior to his election as president.

The Center sponsored a panel at the APSA meeting in San Francisco entitled, “University of Nebraska Press American State Series: Recent Developments in State Legislatures.” The session dealt with some of the legislatures of the states in the series. Center Fellow John Kincaid Chaired this session. Nevada, Rhode Island, South Carolina and Minnesota were selected for discussion. Center Director and Senior Fellows Daniel Elazar and Center Associate Joseph Marbach served as discussants.

4. Local Politics and Government

Cities of the Prairie. The “Cities of the Prairie” study focuses on the local civil community as an integral part of the larger federal system. Initiated in 1959 by Daniel J. Elazar, this study is already the most extensive longitudinal study of American cities and metropolitan areas ever undertaken. The basic concepts examined by this study include the civil community, the frontier, federalism, constitutionalism, democracy, republicanism, metropolitanism, and regionalism.

The Book Cities of the Prairie: The Next Generation is planned for publication in 1998. Edited by Daniel Elazar, contributors and chapter titles are as follows:

Introduction – Themes and Theses Part One:
Chapter 1 – The Cities and the New Frontier
Chapter 2 – Building Civil Community on the Cybernetic Frontier
Chapter 3 – New Departures

Part Two – Northeastern Illinois and Chicagoland
Chapter 4 – Joliet
Chapter 5 – Rockford

Part Three – Central Illinois: The Grand Prairie
Chapter 6 – Peoria
Chapter 7 – Champaign-Urbana
Chapter 8 – Decatur
Chapter 9 – Springfield

Part Four – Western Illinois: North and South
Chapter 10 – The Quad Cities
Chapter 11 – The Southwestern Illinois Metropolitan Region

Part Five – Two Wests
Chapter 12 – Duluth-Superior, Minnesota and Wisconsin
Chapter 13 – Pueblo

Conclusion – Citizenship and Public in Metropolitan America
The third conference in a series was held in June, 1997 in Rockford, Illinois. The theme for this meeting was “Constitutional Change.” Academics and civic leaders participated in the two day conference. A grant provided by the Bradley Foundation has enabled us to complete our field research and to bring together leaders from the communities studied to discuss and implement ways of building and maintaining their civil communities.

The first conference was held in December, 1994 in Pueblo, Colorado. The Conference theme was “Building Civil Community.” Here, civic leaders from the Cities of the Prairie gathered to address the issue. In August 1995, the second conference in the series was held in Duluth, Minnesota. The theme for this second conference was “Leadership.” Here, civic leaders from various cities reconvened with leaders of the host city to address both governmental and non governmental, public and private steps that can be taken to develop effective leadership in the cities of the prairie.

Recent field work included Ph.D. dissertation focusing on three of the metropolitan areas: Joliet-Will County, Illinois; the Quad Cities of Illinois and Iowa; and Rockford-Winnebago County, Illinois. This research also took us to Springfield, which will be the subject of a separate study. Other members of the team and the communities they are studying are: Maren Stein, Decatur-Macon County, Illinois; Rozanne Rothman, Champaign County (Champaign-Urbana), Illinois; Daniel Elazar, Peoria and Southwest, Illinois Metro area; Stephen L. Schechter, Pueblo-Pueblo County, Colorado. We also intend to examine Duluth-Superior, Minnesota-Wisconsin (Daniel Elazar, Paul Neal and Julie Herlands) and the Peoria area of Illinois (Daniel Elazar). The book is in the first stages of production and a 1998 publication is planned.

Several major works have been generated by this project. For a complete list, see the CSF Publications Catalog. Daniel Elazar directs this project and Stephen Schechter has coordinated the series of conferences about . Paul Neal and Julie Herlands continue to provide general research support and conference planning. Center Research Assistant Wes Leckrone providing research support.

5. Continuing Education

Classic Works of American Federal Democracy. Center personnel participated in USIA sponsored Summer Institute in July, 1996 in Steamboat Springs, Colorado for 18 foreign political science professors. John Kincaid directed the program. Center Fellows Elazar, Katz, Lutz and Schechter and Center Associate Joseph Marbach all served as faculty. Center Program Director Paul Neal provided administrative support.

Comparing experiences of post-conflict state building in Asia and Europe. The cases of East Timor, Bosnia and Kosovo

This project aims at a better understanding of processes of post-conflict peace building through a comparative evaluation of efforts at state building in East Timor, Bosnia and Kosovo. Through research conducted by experts and practitioners in Europe and East Asia and a systematic comparison, we expect to be able to focus on lessons to be learned from experiences in the three case studies. Emphasis in the project will be on practical aspects of peace building through state building.

The project will be conducted from spring 2001 to spring 2002. A first workshop was held already in London in March; a second, larger workshop bringing together the researchers with outside experts, is scheduled for October 2001 in Indonesia. The findings will be integrated in a short, policy-oriented summary of the “lessons learned” and in a larger, book-length study. They will be published electronically and in print and distributed, through the network of affiliated institutions, in East Asia and Europe. The project is conducted in the context of the Council for Asia Europe Co-operation, a network of East Asian and European think tanks, and is being co-ordinated by Tadashi Yamamoto of the Japan Center for International Exchange in Tokyo and Prof. Dr. Hanns W. Maull, University of Trier. Funding has been secured from the Japanese government and from the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Introduction

State-building has become a major new challenge to the international community. The often very bloody manifestations of processes of state failure or state disintegration have led the international community into a number of „humanitarian interventions“ and major revisions in international law regarding national sovereignty. In practice, the international community has also been obliged to assume (temporary) responsibility for entities and people whose sufferings the interventions sought to redress. The UN (and other international organisations) has thus become deeply involved in processes of „peace building through state building“.
This Task Force of the Council for Asia Europe Co-operation seeks to identify key aspects of state-building by comparing the cases of East Timor, Bosnia and Kosovo and then drawing lessons from this comparative analysis for future post-conflict efforts by the international community.
Project Outline

The project will focus on the following six areas of priorities for research:
1) Law and Order,
2) Political System,
3) Economic Development,
4) Administrative Capacity Building,
5) External/Military Security and the Military, and
6) Intervening Institutions.

The terms of reference for the Task Force work are summarised below:

(1) Law and Order
These papers (one for Europe and one for Asia) should assess, by analysing the experiences in the case studies, how law and order can be (re-) established after an intervention with the help of international institutions and the international community. The research should particularly focus on three aspects, namely:
§ Internal Security. How has it been ensured? Which were the specific constraints for the intervening institutions? How have they dealt with those constraints? Measures and specific problems concerning the prison system, the establishment, training and control of the police force, as well as measures against organised crime and corruption should also be discussed under this topic.
§ Legal and Judicial System. How has it been organised? What were the most effective means to deal with the specific difficulties in the country under analysis? Which were the main constraints for the intervening institutions when re-building the legal and judicial system? How have they dealt with them, and which lessons can been drawn from those experiences?
§ Dealing with the past. How has the past been addressed, in particular from the legal point of view (International Courts, truth commissions, other, not at all)? Which measures have been chosen to deal with war criminals and questions of guilt and repentance? How effective have they been, in the view of the authors?

(2) Political System
The papers dealing with the political system should contain analysis on the system of government, political participation and articulation and reconciliation.
§ Under the first topic, the formal established governmental system should be discussed rather briefly. More important are probably aspects of co-governance between the intervening institutions and constitutional or extra-constitutional local structures and actors. An essential issue in this context is the tension between “international tutelage” and leaving executive power to local institutions. Which were the main constraints confronting the intervening institutions when re-building the political system? How were they addressed? How effective have the programmes been? What can we learn from that experience?
§ With regard to issues of political participation, the following questions should be addressed: Which model of power-sharing underlies the political system? Which role do political parties play in the process of re-building the political system? What have the intervening institutions done to develop participation? Does the electoral system contribute to stable political majorities and which is the contribution of elections to the state-building process? The papers should also deal with the relationship between politics and society. How does civil society work, if at all (role of interest groups, media, NGOs, etc.)? Which avenues for political articulation exist? To which extent were the social structures destroyed and what measures have been taken to reconstruct the civil society and to support a democratic political culture?
§ The third aspect concerns the issue of “dealing with the losers” of civil strife. The authors should explain the patterns of co-existence or subjugation between the new rulers and those groups which they had replaced. The papers should also discuss measures taken by the intervening institutions to improve inter-ethnic relations.

(3) Economic Development
The papers on economic development should outline the approaches followed to establish working economical structures and explain the relevance of external assistance. Which measures have been taken to improve the infrastructure (education, health, etc.) and to reconstruct agriculture/industry? Which specific institutions have been built up and which policies have been launched? How do international organisations try to guarantee a fair distribution of the financial assistance? Which problems did arise from rigid bureaucratic structures, the shadow economy and black markets? Which means did prove suitable to cope with them? Which approaches to improve regional economic co-operation do exist? Authors should discuss progress achieved and give insights into the main problems of re-building successful economical structures. They should also reflect on future chances for sustainable economic development.

(4) Administrative Capacity Building
Authors dealing with this issue area should concentrate on the re-building of administrative structures. Apart from the formal establishment of institutions, measures concerning organisation and training of the civil service should be described. Questions like the following should be taken into consideration: How well-endowed is the country examined in human resources? How successful do international institutions work together with the local ones? Which were the main problems in setting up effective administration? How have the intervening institutions dealt with the problems?

(5) External/Military Security
Under this topic, measures taken to guarantee external and military security should be analysed. Authors should focus on three aspects: First, problems of dismantling remnants of violence should be taken into consideration. This concerns in particular questions of disarmament and the reintegration of former combatants and the proliferation of small arms. Second, authors should deal with confidence- and security building measures like disarmament and arms control, as well as with issues of restructuring armed forces and civilian control of military affairs. How did the intervening institutions contribute to these processes? Third, specific problems concerning military and external security should be described and analysed. What concepts, what principles inform external security policies? Who has been in charge? What have been the problems encountered? What are the perspectives for regional integration of the country?

(6) Intervening Institutions
In these papers the authors should identify key external actors and discuss their main strategies of state-building and their interactions. Who are the key external actors? How are the problems and their causes perceived by the them? Which approaches have been chosen to re-build the state? Which are the specific constraints confronting the intervening institutions? Which role do the international institutions play in relation to local ones (leader, mentor, etc.)? How are measures taken by various international actors (governments, International Organisations, NGOs) co-ordinated? Did they succeed in establishing a functional co-operation network? Do they follow a general road map and do they have an exit-strategy? What problems arose in the implementation of the intervention strategies, both concerning the measures on the ground and international co-operation? How were they addressed?
Project and Research Design

a) research papers:

Each individual paper should be about 10-20 pages in length. The analysis should be introduced by the author´s overall assessment of problems in the specific field of research (1 -3 pages). In the following section, the specific questions raised above (or others which the authors consider crucial or particularly pertinent in their respective field of analysis) should be discussed with regard to the specific situation in the country under study (7 – 15 pages). The analysis should conclude with broader reflections by the author on lessons to be drawn from the country under study, as well as – possibly – from other cases of international state building in the region (for example, the paper on East Timor might also draw on experiences from UNTAC in Cambodia to supplement the main body of analysis) (1 – 3 pages).

The scope of the individual papers and the issues seen as deserving particular attention are summarised in Annex I. Obviously, the authors should see these as guidelines, to be followed as closely as possible to ensure comparability, but also to be adjusted flexibly in the light of their superior experience and knowledge wherever necessary. The most important question that should be kept in mind throughout is the following: Which lessons for future state-building processes can be drawn from the experiences in the examined cases? Papers should be available by Sept.1 for review; the organisers will then provide comments to authors for possible amendments and revisions.

b) Conference
There will be a conference organised to review the findings of the research and discuss them in the light of practical experiences. To achieve maximum practical relevance, the conference will bring together a dozen experts and practitioners from Europe and Asia to comment and elaborate on the research papers, injecting their own experience into the process of reviewing the experiences. Thus, there will normally be, on each of the six topics, four participants, two each from Europe and Asia: two paper writers and two experts with practical experience, who will often have worked directly on the problems concerned.

c) Integrated policy paper:

The third step in the project will be the integration of the findings for dissemination and injection in the policy process. This will be done by the two project co-ordinators, Jusuf Wanandi and Hanns W. Maull. Their summary paper will identify the principal “lessons learned” and drawn conclusions from them.

Project Output

The integrated will serve as the basis for briefing relevant international institutions, and in particular the OSCE, the ARF and the DPKO at the United Nations, about the results of this study. Findings will also be published through the home pages of think tanks connected to this project, and as a booklength study (to be published by JCIE in Tokyo).

Project Finance

The total cost of this project is estimated at DM 131.400.-

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Japan has decided to provide financial support for this project in the order of $ 30.000. The German Foreign Ministry will support the project with a grant of DM 67.500.

Looking forward to reach a worldwide participatory democracy

World seeks a worldwide participatory democracy. A worldwide political union would have the mandate to deal with environmental issues and economic migration. Existing military technology should be redirected into defence of our world from external attack (e.g. meteors) and military research should need consume no further resources. Worldwide web-based governance presents great economy of scale. Be a world citizen.

“Fair, free and equal”

fair : one’s actions determine one’s rewards
free : one can choose one’s own lifestyle
equal : everyone has opportunity & resources

A worldwide electronic currency, the “Geo”, should be created and backed up by a worldwide portfolio of resources, e.g. a basket of other currencies. It should be defined to be perpetually inflation-free and tradable with resources, currencies and worldwide. It should provide a low-volatility haven for wealth, though the nominal interest rate on balances held in Geo’s should be low to reflect the absence of inflation. A worldwide tax system should be set up to provide a citizen’s income uniformly to everyone, paid for by taking from everyone a fixed percentage of his/her other income plus a different fixed percentage per year of the value of assets (s)he owns. The citizen’s income would replace bureaucratic unemployment benefits payments and the asset tax would replace inheritance tax. It would be a matter for public opinion and the world parliament to determine the worldwide levels of citizen’s income, income tax & annual asset tax. The correct balance would efficiently ensure a minimum standard of living, reward hard work, and reduce the inequalities in the global wealth distribution. When sourcing goods and services people should be able to choose as suppliers either the world public sector or private companies. People coordinating their efforts and individuals being creative are both important.

A cleaner method of Proportional Representation avoids the problems of cronyism found with AV+, where the party presents a list of its choice of MPs in a chosen order. All ballot papers in a constituency are placed in identical plastic balls and mixed up thoroughly in a spinning drum before one is selected at random. The vote on this ballot paper elects the selected candidate as the Member of World Parliament for that constituency. This returns close to the number of seats for each party justified by its national or worldwide vote. The method has here been applied to the UK General Election on 7th June, 2001. A similar random process can be used to select people to publicly air their views on issues under debate, which avoids undue tyranny of the majority or the powerful. As a decision making mechanism it avoids the artificiality of coalitions for 51% of the vote.

If m parties receive at least one vote and each party gets its own uniform fraction p of the vote across all constituencies, where n(total) is the number of constituencies, then the probability P of party 1 gaining n(1) seats and party 2 gaining n(2) seats etc.

Decisions can be made in parliament and indeed world parliament by considering small sub-issues for which every member of parliament or world citizen places an opinion in an identical plastic ball. These balls are then mixed up thoroughly in a spinning drum before one is selected at random. The opinion selected then forms a parliamentary decision from which point debate advances. Clearly there are open-source Java programs which could be written to make random selections using computers on the Internet that are open to public scrutiny. Since there is no arbitrary number like 51% of the vote which guarantees winning a debate, proponents of a given position simply have to win over as many people as they can. This rationalises coalition bargaining. A unanimous 100% vote will definitely lead to a matching decision, regardless of whose opinion is randomly selected.

Selecting people at random to find out their views enables the political process to be representative of people in proportion to their numbers, thus providing balanced input into debates. People can decline to comment on issues in which they have no interest. One may ask whether an electoral register provides the fairest way of selecting people at random. To avoid the intrusion into people’s privacy associated with such a register, a system which randomly selects a geographical location and a time, weighted according to population density and relevance of the issue at this location, can select the nearest person. One may further ask how relevant locations for an issue are determined. For a proposed hydroelectric dam, these are downstream, or upstream in a town that would be flooded, or where people would benefit from the generated this way.

Postmaterialism: the political ideology for the Postmaterialist Party and for an idealized postmaterial historic period

Welcome to the ideological foundations of postmaterialism—the political worldview for both the Postmaterialist Party and for the historical period that we associate with the full maturity of the party’s consciousness as the will of the masses. The postmaterial perspective distinguishes this party from all precedent political parties that have linked the worth of human beings to material attainments. The egalitarian dimension of this perspective obviates class divisions, arbitrary monetary delineations, and the associated system of wage slavery of which nine-tenths of our world are victims. Most importantly, the postmaterialist worldview is the only political ideology whose vision of reality transcends the ephemeral frivolities of materialism.

The party’s formation, then, is a response to a fleeting epoch of terrorist ideologies. Its foundations lie around the events of September 11, 2001. The necessity of a resurrected mass political organization and revolutionary actor was never more urgent as as a result of the renewal of the war for world hegemony produced by those events.

The violent and gruesome course of that war further compels the resuscitation of this party. And in the United States itself, the obvious pattern of making the vulnerability of entire nations subject to the vulnerability of the personal popularity of an American President is humanly unacceptable.
Consequently, the highest of all of our organizational ambitions is anchored on power. Power, in the political respect in which we apply it, refers to dominance over the infrastructural character of the world’s nations; averting the conflagration to which the war of terror would invariably carry those nations; and creating a revolutionary egalitarian world society that facilitates the needs and interests dictated to it by the people of those nations. Propaganda, the painless dispensation of truthful facts, stands aloft as the indespensible accompaniment to this ambition.

This accompaniment bears a threefold imperative relative to implementation: (1) imparting to the oppressed masses the deceptive implications of their poverty, powerlessness, and oppression; (2) revealing as the source for this deception the small political class of racist felons who enrich themselves at the expense of the terror of poverty; and (3) disclosing as the principal manifestation of such deception the aggravation and enslavement of over 90% of the world’s population.

This imperative is so critical to the growth and success of civilization that it should be composed as something of a mantra for those who struggle with us. What we are suggesting is that the world’s masses are powerless because they are socialized by the agents of the materialist enemy to perceive of that enemy as the irreplacable source of their security. The instruments of such socialization are the essential components of a stratified society: the family, school, church, media, and government. These institutions exist for but the one major purpose of fostering social class divisions that ensure as privileges to a small group of political miscreants the freedom to rape the masses of their dignity, and enslave them. Armed with these understandings as a political class, the masses will rise to hegemony in a strident thrust of anguish.

There, essentially, is but one means by which to arrive at this cherished plateau of the power of an empowered humanity: destroy the ill-conceived myths of the magic of money. The political precondition for ascending this plateau is world equality. The capacity required for surmounting it is the organizational strength with which to regulate monetary issues; the political clout with which to command the armed forces; and the technological capacity to destroy the armies of terrorists now frenzied to destroy us. The sole existing legitimate mechanism is the political party, and particularly, the Postmaterialist Party.

This egalitarian plateau awaits beyond the challenge of surmounting the high mountain of delusion now surrounded by the mimics of doom. Here, we refer to those who echo the self-destroying rhetoric of terror forced upon them by their enemies, and ours. The party’s imperative, then, would make the enlightening and transforming features of a civilization beyond conflagration into a massive people’s struggle.

As it should now be clear, we have little choice but to thrust ourselves into the current war; a confrontation that would be but a war of terror except for our party’s intervention. For we bring to this encounter the visions of a world of perfect equality; one of love, peacefulness, goodness, forgiveness, prosperity, and happiness, not merely for the neglected masses, but as well for their enemies.

As we have stated, the War for World Hegemony is a war for world dominance. The nature and character of this aspect of this war is rarely acknowledged, particularly by the terrorist nations that, paradoxically, pretend an engagement in a “war against terror.” The leaders of these nations, representing but a tiny minority of the earth’s population, prefer that it not become common knowledge that the real basis of their engagement is their own survival. Among them, we see a fragile coalition holding mixed opinions on the key issue of polarity, or the manner in which the nations of the world ought correctly be aligned. This issue surfaced with the events of September 11, 2001 when the unipolar system that the chronically self-interested United States of America had dominated since the early nineties was ended.

It is doubtful to us that, of the present operatives in that purported coalition, either would be content with the multipolar alignment they now claim to desire, e.g., each would spring to an opportunity to exalt itself to the helm of a new order in the batting of an eye. The unipolarity of the hegemony of the masses, on the other hand, is but the one, and firmly the one, alignment objective of this party.

But while the Postmaterialist Party was born of the certain visionary inevitabilities of such hegemony, its perspectives of the means to this objective are no less obscure. The clones of doom must grow to know a nature of reality that seizes at the roots and razes to the sea the mountain of falsely concocted perceptions of the racist enemy. Clearly, then, the secret to the uprising resides less within the bases for the arising than within the methods of its timing.

The light of this means, the highest “classified” of secrets, is unison. First and foremost, our propaganda as the voice of the masses must focus on the identification and preparation of organizers, developers, and facilitators, not for a local, state, or national constituency in the conventional respects, but for a universe. Chapters will be aware of their individual state of readiness relative to enunciated standards, and regional communications will impart a general gauge as to organizational progress and strength to members. Party actions are not necessarily limited to an electoral process, nor to chapter names that disclose the obvious association. The glue that unites this organization is political ideology, the culmination of whose composition will be a universal government—of, for, and by a society that stands alongside and equal to its leaders in privilege and freedom.

But the essence of this government must be visualized in a light unobscured of the material constraints of the antiquated materialistic past and present. First and necessarily, its leaders are women and men of wisdom—not in the sense that we know it, but in the respect that we see it. Our leadership perspectives are, accordingly, neither of the management or administration of tradition, but of research, information, and facilitation. For in the atmosphere of our vision, we are disarmed, militarily, and armed instead with respect for our selfless egalitarian leadership.
Such respect can be accorded to the leadership of our organization because the masses are empowered in the appreciation of their value. That is, the people are transformed in their respect for their fellow world citizens, in the acceptance of one another as equals, and in their conceptualizations of their commitments to the entire universe. Such conceptualizations are possible because we are all free to travel broadly, and to experience the diverse and enriching qualities of our aesthetic freedoms. Forgiveness reins with goodness in our social relations, for we came to power peaceably, and have no basis to punish nor to fear an adversary. We know not of poverty, nor of distrust. Our entire world abides in an abundant luxury. No clones of doom, no myths of money, no racists.

The specifications for an earth so spared of villainy are a dominion of the practical element of our party’s ideology. Party positions and actions will originate with party members: with those whose memberships have yet to mature as with those who already are party gladiators. Policy considerations will be placed before the members of the various channels and satellites for their appropriate evaluation, denunciation, or implementation as the case may dictate. Every profession by every member bears the potentiality as an international policy. Personal ideology may likewise be a basis for an invitation out of the organization. Neither silence nor idiocy is a character to be rewarded as a member of this seminal postmaterialist organization.

The Postmaterialist Party, then, is the mass political party—the world’s only political organization that looks beyond the present and past into millenniums into tomorrow. As the resurrected voice of the classless universe, it apparently is the only human organization that has the vision, motivation, or leadership to guide the human race beyond self-destruction. That is, this party is the only political entity that renders unattractive the temptations of human beings to join organizations and nations that would propel our earth to annihilation.

In our Vanguard Chapter, we are reviving the selfless perspectives of the nature of humanity, reinforcing the distinctions that we, ourselves, enjoy on this critical issue. Our enemies have misinterpreted this revival relative to our endeavors as postmaterialists. To them, for example, we breathe in order to covet their wealth; we covet in order to exalt their superiority; and we exalt in order to subordinate ourselves to their eternal supremacy. As intellectuals, our object is of course, to undermine, erode, and extinguish such primitive pathology. As revolutionaries, we must!
Our conceptions of human nature are, indeed, of an extreme contradistinction to such self-enslaving sicknesses as theirs. Our essence, as our purpose, resides but in the qualities we ascribe to them. Our motivation lives that we have of our future as the facilitators of an egalitarian world order. It is in such visions that we hold a perception of the human purpose of goodness. And in the character of this perception, we are but left to breathe, not to covet but to live; to live, not to exalt, but to prosper; nor subordinate an enemy, but free the earth.