Skip to main content

Christopher Coyne on After War

By Jimbo Ar

I want to start this post by apologizing to the audience for not posting in the last two weeks. However, what I have to share this. It is too important to just let it go. On Thursday February 23, 2008, I attended a book signing of, After War written by Christopher Coyne, at the Institute for American Studies (IAS) in Washington, DC. Christopher Coyne’s event was hosted by the Mercatus Center at GMU.

Coyne is alum of George Mason University. He obtained his Master and PhD degrees from GMU. In that respect Coyne and my self have the pleasure of being thought by Professor Peter Boettke. I know that Coyne’s book is set to be one of the greatest of our age, and adding the emotional connection of being a student of GMU, I knew I had to be at the event. Once we (Astrid, Ian, Bret, Triya, Rossy and I) arrived and joined other GMU students at the IAS. The environment was like being at home. GMU was well represented on that event and yet we met other interesting individuals.

Around 7:30pm Christopher Coyne took the podium and the audience went silent. Coyne staged a flawless performance. Coyne’s speech was clear and defined. He exposed his book in three main categories;

The basics of exporting democracy at gunpoint

Somalia and Haiti cases

The democratic enforcement of Afghanistan and Iraq

Solutions and consequences of exporting democracy for the future.

After Coyne’s speech there was a question-answer time period. During this time I encounter interesting how Coyne is willing to enter in the challenge of doing research in the implication of other factors in this topic. Coyne would like to engage in telling people the influence of international organization in the emancipation of democracy. Coyne expressed his interest in studying other countries which have forced or tried others into democracy.

I think that Coyne’s book is a superb piece of literature that should be read by people in the fields of economics, politics, conflict analysis, peace development, global affairs, government, and sociology. Coyne’s book I must say gives the opportunity to others to engage in further research on the topic of exporting democracy.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Wisdom from the Gossip Crowd

By
Last week, Dan Klein had met with a group of students on a draft of his recent paper. During the discussion he had raised a question that all students with the love for liberty usually ask themselves , "How come I get it? How come all these other people I know get it, but the everyday citizen does not get it?" The "it" being government intervention within our personal lives being more harmful and not as efficient as the market. Those in the room shared his agony with the question and for me coincided with the question, " Why does the battered wife not leave her beating husband? " The solution was simple when I sat around a table with my cousins and my wife and heard a discussion of a guy who felt he owned the world going out with other girls and yet his girlfriend stays by him. When the remark was made that his girlfriend was stupid for staying by him, I heard the words that made me understand why people still don't get "it". " She belie...
2 comments
Read more

Subjective Value through Non-Austrians

By
James Buchanan in his book The Reason of Rules(10.2.9) states: The individual is the unique unit of consciousness from which all evaluation begins. Note that this conception does not in any way reject the influence of community or society on the individual. The value structure of an isolated human being may be totally divergent from that of such a person described by membership in one or many social relationships. The presupposition requires only that societal or communitarian influences enter through modifications in the values that are potentially expressed by the individual and not externally. Armen Alchian and William Allen in Exchange and Production: Competition, Coordination, and Control : Groups, organizations, communities, nations, and societies are best understood by focusing on the incentives and actions of their members. A business, union, or family may be formed to further some common interest of its members, but group actions are still the results of decisions of individu...
2 comments
Read more

Saying No is hard; but in this case at what cost

By Jimbo Ar
Ecuador’s President, Daniel Noboa, called the electorate to the ballots on a National Referendum. The eleven questions established for this political process were in two main fields: security and labor market reforms. The Referendum took place on April 21, 2024.      The official results of the National Referendum are that in 9 out 11 yes-no-questions the Ecuador’s electorate gave the option of Yes a majoritarian support to the Administration’s plans. However, two questions the support leaned towards No; those questions main focus was on reforms to labor and foreign investment. The following graph show the results of the Referendum. Graph 1 Results of the National Referendum Source: CNE (National Electorate Council for it acronym in Spanish)        In the graphs, question D (3) stated that: Do you agree that the Ecuadorian State should recognize international arbitration as a method for resolving disputes in investment, contractual, or commercial matte...
Post a Comment
Read more