The Duck of Minerva

Mlada Bukovansky

Mlada Bukovansky is Professor of Government at Smith College.Her research focuses on the evolving norms and institutions of the international system. She has written on revolutions and changing conceptions of sovereignty, corruption and anti-corruption regimes, the World Trade Organization and agricultural trade, and U.S. responsibilities in a changing world order. Her current work focuses on international ethics and on the challenges to the liberal international order. She has a longstanding interest in the intersection between the study of history, especially the history of political thought, and that of international relations.

Recent Posts

Social Construction and Deceit

by Mlada Bukovansky | 17 April, 2010 |

I'm fascinated by the narratives of the financial crisis that basically cast it as a mass deception. Clearly we need to develop a scale of deceptive practices and think about how this all relates to the social construction(s) of reality(ies). At the simple end there are the flat-out lies, for example those told by the peddlers of certain types of mortgages, but things quickly get more complicated. There are the accounting tricks used by big banks to understate their risk exposure (for example, a Wall Street Journal headline on April 9, "Big Banks Mask Risk Levels", tells much of that story)....

read more

Is Sovereignty the Worst Organizing Principle — Except for All the Others?

by Mlada Bukovansky | 20 February, 2010 |

The IMF has changed course and legitimated capital controls (under certain circumstances). Former IMF chief economist Simon Johnson (among others) bemoans Greece's inability to devalue its currency (given that it is locked into the Euro) in light of its balance of payments difficulties:"If Greece still had its own currency, everything would be easier. Just as in the case of the United Kingdom since 2008, the Greek exchange rate would depreciate sharply. This would lower the cost of labor, restoring competitiveness (as in Asia after 1997-98) while also inflating asset prices and thereby...

read more

Financial Lobbies and State Capture (or why IPE is now so much fun)

by Mlada Bukovansky | 11 February, 2010 |

I liked Virginia Haufler's post on Canadian Banks, and in a related vein wanted to point out some interesting research on lobbying by the financial industry in the US. In a brief about their latest research posted on VOX EU, Deniz Igan, Prachi Mishra, and Thierry Tressel, three IMF economists, basically conclude that the US financial industry has lobbied its way out of regulation.They note:"The Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 requires lobbying firms and companies with in-house lobbying units to file reports of their lobbying expenditures with the Secretary of the Senate and the Clerk of the...

read more

Defining Corruption

by Mlada Bukovansky | 23 January, 2010 |

So the U.S. Supreme Court has decided that limits on direct corporate spending for political campaigns violate the First Amendment rights of corporations (hey, corporations are people too!). The New York Times has a good overview, plus links to the actual decision. Since I've done some work on corruption in the past, and regularly teach a seminar on Corruption and Global Governance, this decision has resonated with me and I can't help being shaken up.Let's consider a commonsense definition of corruption: the abuse of public power for private gain, or the use of private means to shape public...

read more

Susan Strange was (mostly) Right

by Mlada Bukovansky | 30 December, 2009 |

I just re-read Susan Strange's article, "The Westfailure System" in the Review of International Studies 25, 3 (July 1999). In either early 1999 or late 1998 (depending on the editorial schedule of RIS), she wrote:"I have put the financial failures of the state-based system first because my current research has convinced me that it is the most acute and urgent of the current threats-without-enemies. If we do not find ways to safeguard the world economy before a succession of stockmarket collapses and bank failures eventually lands us all in a 20-year economic recession -- as the history of...

read more

A Seat at the Table

by Mlada Bukovansky | 21 December, 2009 |

In a scathing analysis of the Copenhagen summit, The Financial Times published the following side-bar vignette:Barack Obama’s meeting on Friday evening with the leaders of the major developing economies was perhaps the most farcical event in two weeks of mayhem. At 7pm, the leader of the world’s biggest economy was due at a meeting with Wen Jiabao, Chinese premier, in a backroom barred off from the rest of the conference with heavy security.Mr Obama strode in, according to US accounts, discovering as he did so that his planned interlocutor was already there – deep in conversation with...

read more