Regressive Measures

As the Oxford economist Paul Collier points out in his book The Bottom Billion, Africa has been subjected by European governments to one form of "befuddled romanticism" after another, from campaigns against GM foods and low-wage produce to "save the peasant" farm reform. Africa, says Collier, has less commercial agriculture than it did at the end of the age of empire, half a century ago.

.....While antagonism to science merely impedes progress, antagonism to economics is regressive.

Simon Jenkins, The cost of green tinkering is in famine and starvation
Guardian, April 16








..........Then we need to say what we mean by democracy. After all, everyone pays lip service to it: the Egyptians, the Chinese, Vladimir Putin, Robert Mugabe. But they mean something different. This does not and cannot imply a single rigid template. Europe is immunised against what one might call the American temptation by the simple fact that Europe's democracies are themselves so diverse: constitutional monarchies and republics, unicameral and bicameral, centralised and decentralised, with a strong executive and weaker legislature, or vice versa. We can hardly propagate a single model when we have none ourselves. All the more reason, however, to spell out the shared essentials without which there is no democracy worthy of the name. That does not just mean regular, free and fair elections. The emerging European definition of democracy will be multidimensional, including the rule of law, independent media, respect for both individual human rights and minority rights, sound public administration, civilian control over the military and a strong civil society.



Timothy Garton Ash, We need a benign European hydra to advance the cause of democracy
Guardian, 17 April