Legalisation of abortion and decline in crime

By Jori Korpershoek

In the 1970s and 80s New York was a dangerous, dodgy city. In the early 90s this suddenly started to change. Many claimed Mayor Giuliani's policies had done the trick. But then people noticed it was not just New York, it was in all of the United States that was becoming safer. Homicide and crime rates dropped dramatically. John J. Donohueand Steven D. Levitt agreed with Giuliani that a policy change lay at the heart of the decline. Just not a recent one; they pointed to the 1973 Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade, which had made safe abortions legal and accessible all over the country.

Structural determination is when there is a causal link between two events, but with a temporal separation between these events. How? Before 1973, it was especially underprivileged women who did not have access to safe abortions. So if a poor, single woman became pregnant at an unwanted time, she would have no choice but to have the baby. These are the same women who often lack a support network and access to government services. This obviously does not mean all children in poor families are destined to become criminals, but growing up in poverty or in a single parent household are very strong predictors of having a criminal future. When these women gained access to safe abortions, they could delay their pregnancy until a better time or opt out of having children at all.

From 1973 onward, many children that would have been raised in difficult circumstances were simply not born. In the early 90s, the first wave of children born after Roe v. Wade was starting to reach maturity. And for the first time since abortion became illegal in the 19th century, among them were not “the children of mothers who did not want to bring a child into the world.”

Marx’s theory of history through the scope of structural determinism

By Onno Blom

Structural determination is a causal process with an inevitable, determined, outcome. This process, once started, can fluctuate in all kinds of directions, but will always have to end with a particular outcome, as this outcome is irreversible and does not lead to anything else. This outcome can be caused by other causes, which may also be irreversible. A telling example of a famous theory which can be seen through the scope of structural determinism is Marx’s theory of history.

Marx divides history into six stages: primitive communism, slave society, feudalism, capitalism, socialism and pure communism. In his theory, Marx finds that all of these stages necessarily lead to each other. All of these stages fall short in some way or another, often because of exploitation of the lowest class, and therefore, through revolutions and development led by the lowest class, this evolution of stages will naturally occur. Marx didn’t specify how long this would take, but he did state that all of this is a historical necessity: “the conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.”

Marx believed that once the stage of primitive communism had begun, his theory of history would always occur. We can identify this stage as the beginning in the structurally determined process: it triggers the process to start. The four stages following the start can be seen as the part where (irreversible) causes show up, each necessarily showing up sooner or later, and leading to the next stage of the process. The last stage of the process is pure communism and does not lead to anything else; it was the determined outcome since primitive communism began. It seems that through a Marxist view, structural determinism is not only a helpful analytical tool, but also a predictor of the future.  

New Shipping Routes and its Causal Processes

By Robin Vroom

On 11 September 2015, the Arctic sea ice reached its fourth lowest minimum in satellite records. This follows the long-term downward trend in Arctic ice coverage, which causes the Northern Sea Route (NSR) to currently be ice-free. The forecast of possible ice-free summers in a matter of decades has launched –among other consequences- the use of the lucrative NSR for high volume commercial traffic (see Figure 1).

Consequently, the NSR will increase the economic and political importance of the Arctic, which has prompted many nations to reassess their commitments and strategic interests towards the region. China, for instance, has already shown political interest in the Arctic by signing a free-trade agreement with Iceland in April 2013. Most recently –together with Japan and South Korea– China gained an observer status in the Arctic Council, which is the leading institutional forum for cooperation in the region.

These consequences suggest the presence of a causal chain. Within the chain, there are self-reinforcing mechanisms. Rising global temperatures – initiated by a cumulative cause of increased emission levels - have caused the Arctic sea to warm, resulting in reduced ice cover. Furthermore, this decreasing sea ice triggers a positive feedback process as sea ice has a much higher albedo compared to the surrounding ocean. That is, sea ice reflects 50 to 70 percent of the incoming solar energy –keeping the surface cooler- whereas the surrounding ocean only reflects about six percent and absorbs the rest. Ergo, the absorbed heat causes more ice to melt.

Although one can identify a causal chain of events around the Arctic, this does not mean that the story has ended. There is high level of uncertainty in terms of what an increase in commercial shipping in the Arctic could lead to. Investigating these paths and outcomes is out of the scope of this web post, but a logical avenue for more research.

How to go viral

By Lexi Rowland

The Law of the Few, explained in Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point, is the notion that certain types of people can cause a social epidemic due to the certain skills or connections these people have with their peers. These types of people are called the Connector, the Maven or the Salesman. Each type of person has a specific role in creating a social epidemic which in the past has caused fashion trends, the spread of sensational stories or a successful marketing campaign for a certain type of product. How then could any one blogger use this framework to go viral?

Not everyone falls into one of the categories described by Gladwell and in the past perhaps one person could not be solely responsible for the spread of an idea or trend. Social media however, has made the spread of ideas much easier for those who are not naturally part of the Few.

The Connector: In the past, the Connector has been someone who is influential in any given community and can easily talk to the right people in order to get a message out to the community. For example, a politician is highly influential in their communities as they have many friends, allies or acquaintances who are highly receptive to their ideas. Today, such a position need not be held by an individual in order to spread an idea. Many social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, allow easy connection to a community who are receptive to the thoughts or ideas of the person they are following. 

The Maven: A person recognized as a Maven is someone who has deep knowledge of a subject and is willing to share such knowledge with people who are willing to listen. Indeed, a Maven has been aided by the rise in social media as it provides a platform from which one can share such knowledge. The fashion industry is an extremely pertinent example of the reach a Maven might have in a community. In the context of today, a Maven is aided by social media as people who are interested in a certain topic may follow a perceived Maven's platform and therefore be highly receptive to said Maven's ideas.

The Salesman: Almost quite obviously, the Salesman is a persuasive individual who is able to successfully engage a community and sell an idea convincingly. This can be done in a variety of ways however, the most common way may be seen in the many successful marketing campaigns of big companies around the world. Again, social media makes persuasion much easier as the idea or campaign is much easily spread; all the Salesman needs to do be a clever marketer. 

Therefore, should someone want to go viral on a social media platform today, he needs to be a combination of the above people. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and others make connections a lot easier to forge between people within a virtual community. The Maven still needs to be knowledgeable about his subject, but spreading his ideas need not be as difficult as in the past. The Salesman still needs to be persuasive however, he needs not to persuade every person he meets. Creating a receptive following, a legitimate idea and social media will do the rest.

Oil, Islam, women and Pierson

By Lisa Staadegaard

In his paper Oil, Islam and Women Ross argues that oil can be held accountable for inequality in resource rich countries. Part of this theory is that the effects that resources, and in particular oil and minerals, have on the economy causes women to refrain from entering or leave the labour force.

In his explanation of this theory he portrays women’s influence on the labour force, and the influence this has on society.  He states that more female participation in the labour force will cause fertility rates to drop which will then in turn cause for a decline in population growth.

If we apply this example to Pierson’s theories about long term processes we can pin point several aspects of this example that break down its process. The female participation has an immediate effect on fertility rates, once one woman enters the labour force her fertility drops. Therefore this process can be seen as cumulative, more and more women entering the labour force will result in lower and lower fertility rates, which directly relates to a decline in population growth.  

However there is a clear relationship between women entering the labour force and this causing population growth to decline. So this cumulative process leads to an inevitable outcome, making this process according to Pierson; structural determination.

However the process described can have several different explanations, in line with Ross his paper this could be moving away from an economy solely based on the nontradable sector.  Once this is included in the model we might relate the process to an entirely different long term process as described by Pierson. Therefore I think that Pierson’s way of analysing processes, is mainly helpful to break down the entire process of cause and effect. This instead of pin pointing whether one process necessarily belongs to a certain type. 

A Threshold? Germany Enforces Border Controls

By Geerte Verduijn

“This step has become necessary.” Where Germany’s leaders recently offered refugees arriving from Eastern Europe the ability to travel freely across its borders, last Sunday Thomas de Maizière announced the end of this era. Border controls were carried out immediately after German officials claimed that the amount of refugees had ‘stretched the system to breaking point.’ The term ‘’breaking point’’ in this context instantly reminds of the causal theory of threshold effects. According to Paul Pierson, in certain processes tension can gradually increase until a certain boiling point is met, with changes being completely non-linear from then on.

However, is Germany’s recently unstable refugee-policy indeed substantially affected by such a threshold? And if so, is this a boiling point that was fixed or could its limits have been higher, postponed, maybe even prevented? Imagine that, instead of Viktor Orbán stating that ‘the migration crisis is a German problem, not a European problem’ more countries had followed Germany’s example – what would have happened? Or, if it is true that Germany’s decision is ‘supposed to discourage refugees from rushing toward Germany,’ could this have been accomplished in other ways?

Though my knowledge about Germany’s economic and political situation is too basic to know whether this decision is justified, the decision has at least one clear result: last Sunday, Germany ‘sparked a domino effect of border closures’ in Europe. If a threshold is predetermined, it is difficult to argue that all European countries following Germany’s example met their individual boiling points simultaneously. Was this mass-movement of border control indeed the inevitable result of a threshold being met last weekend, or was it more of a useful political term, arbitrarily created by politicians and media reports? In other words, if we were to look back at the decisions made this week in several years, which theory would we need to apply to indeed confirm the necessity of Germany’s decision?

Evolution of slavery

By Jan Bogaarts

Paul E. Lovejoy explains about the three timeframes of slavery expansion in history. In the first chapter of “Transformations in Slavery” Lovejoy describes these three periods 1350 - 1600, 1600 - 1800 and 1800 - 1900. The last of these three stages is the transatlantic slave trade. At the time, the U.S was the main importer of slaves. The end of the american civil war was the end of the last expansion of slave-trading. However, this did not conclude the existence of slavery in the world. Today I ask myself and all the readers of this blog what happened between the years 1900 and 2000 and what stage of slavery we are in today?

The institution of slavery has been outlawed in all countries. Perhaps the most famous of all abolitionist movements is the one that caused the American civil war. The Thirteenth amendment to the constitution was passed in 1865 and since then many countries have followed. The last nation to outlaw slavery was Mauritania in 2007. On paper slavery was beaten between 1900 and 2000 but in reality it persists in smaller numbers. Many forms of modern slavery can be found today in countries that seem to have outlawed it.

Bonded labour and forced migrant labour are two modern types of slavery prevalent in Asia. People who are supposedly free workers are in a situation where the alternative to working is death. In many European countries sex-workers are blackmailed into working their whole lives as prostitutes. According to the OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe), human trafficking has increased in the last years.

Are we then in a fourth period of slavery expansion? Is it possible that after the decline of slavery between 1900 and 2000, it is picking up again? What can we do to stop slavery besides outlawing it?

The influence of time on revolutions' outcomes

By Lorraine Besnier

In his book, Pierson states that “organization A was successful because it ‘fit’ well in that particular context.” In other words, he explains that one has to examine whether or not precise features can foster self-reinforcing processes in a given situation. This claim made me think about social revolutions and how their success are mostly based on the context in which they happen.

In this post, I will attempt to show that time has an important role in the outcomes of revolutions.

The French revolution started in a context of increasing international conflict, but also inside economic, political and social crisis. With the help from the philosophers of the Enlightenment, the population of France took over the power and instated democracy. Indubitably, this considerable change was achieve throughout years of instability, different governments, and series of dilemma.

However, France eventually accomplished the change, and developed to become an integral part of the international relations actors, and a leading economic power.

The Arab Spring, in contrast, had different conditions. In a completely different situation, it is hard for a country to grow, and accomplish changes, like France for instance, because all the international organisations have an increasing role to play in the national conflicts.

It is quasi impossible in such a situation to make the needed, but mostly wanted, adjustments when an external factor is included in the equation. With essential humanitarian help from the outside comes the inevitable administration of the political challenges. The decades that France required to stabilised are not offered to the Arabic countries, and democracy is, in certain cases, forced upon them, and expected to work in only a couple of months.

Time matters, not only in terms of timing but in terms of duration. Both the context in which an event happens, and the length in time which it is allowed to rise, climax and resolve are essential factors to the outcomes of those events.

The Scottish referendum and the UK general election

By Lisa Day

The 2015 UK General Election revealed that the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) took 50% of the vote within the Scottish Borders, which is up by 30 points from 2010. Labour, on the other hand, dropped 17.7 points from 2010. The SNP completely obliterated the Labour Party out of Scotland by gaining 56 out of the 59 seats. The causes behind the SNP’s victorious outcome, which has been hailed as a "historical watershed", may be down to the particular sequencing and timing of the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum.

According to Pierson, the “timing and sequence of particular events or processes can matter a great deal. Settings where event A precedes event B will generate different outcomes than ones where that ordering is reversed.” As mentioned above the main difference between this election and the last is that a Scottish Independence Referendum was held just before the 2015 vote. Although the SNP ended up 'losing' the referendum with a majority vote of “No” to independence, the Labour Party seems to have lost Scotland altogether. The referendum campaign seems to have left the SNP stronger than ever. “Indeed, the SNP is no longer just a party, it is a movement — and one boasting, per capita, more than twice as many members as the three main unionist parties combined.” Since the referendum the nationalist party gained 1/50 of all adult Scots in members. It is clearly evident that this huge increase in members and support for the SNP triggered such a historical victory for the party.

In addition, the SNP can also be seen as a party filling up political space - a particular feature of sequencing that involves a first mover advantage. “Labour’s hegemony in Scotland needed an opposition and the SNP was happy to fill that void.”

The timing of the Scottish Independence Referendum appears to have materialized the SNP’s election victory within the Scottish borders whilst the party also acted with a first mover advantage by providing the Scots with an alternative, optimistic and conceivable future. 

Trapped in the institutional matrix

By Jori Korpershoek

When he was accused of not having enough experience in politics, 1992 presidential candidate Ross Perot claimed that “I don’t have any experience in gridlock government … I don't have any experience in creating the worst public school system in the industrialized world. ... [But unlike my competition] I’ve got a lot of experience in not taking 10 years to solve a 10-minute problem.” Much like the social scientists Pierson describes in the introduction of "Politics in Time", Perot only looked at a snapshot of the problems of government. Not the moving picture. Nobody would consciously design the American public school systems like it is today, but that is not how politics work. It has been pieced together from legislation to legislation.

Steven Teles borrows an analogy from technology to describe this process; he calls it “kludgeocracy.”  A kludge is an “an ill-assorted collection of parts” put together to solve a problem. This can be compared to an old software program to which additions and patches have been made for decades and decades. It might still technically work, but it is probably not pleasant to use and it is impossible to add new functionality.

In technology, the slate can be wiped clean. The introduction of iOS and Android kept many of the useful aspects of their desktop predecessors, but also removed a whole lot of the weird workarounds that accumulated over the years.

In a political democracy, such a reset button is harder to push. The question is whether this is a bug or a feature. Designing a new starting point and breaking away from history has given us The Weimar Republic,  Soviet Russia and Revolutionary France. But increasing complexity, indecipherable laws and a lack of choice is also a threat to democracy. It slowly shifts the power from the people to the thousands and thousands of pages ofaccumulated legislation. We become trapped in the “institutional matrix.”

Putin’s power

By Reinout Huizer

Russia’s political landscape is changing and the political asymmetry shifting. Over the past decade Vladimir Putin has been expanding his power and he has been redesigning the institutions in order to do so. Putin has served two terms as prime minister and currently is in office as the president of Russia for the second time. It has been argued that the increase in power of an actor is closely related to path dependence. Vladimir Putin is paving a one-way street with him leading its direction, his direction.

The allocation of political authority to particular actors, Vladimir Putin in the case of Russia, is a key source of positive feedback. In Politics in Time Paul Pierson argues that positive feedback can be seen as a form of path dependence and that one should focus on the dynamics of self-reinforcement in political processes. Looking at the self-reinforcing dynamics in Russian politics the focus is directly on the changes and decisions Putin has made.

Putin has been trying to strengthen the federal government. He has tried to change the balance between the center and periphery by shifting the power to the Kremlin. By reducing the political asymmetry regional power will be reduced. This change has had serious effects on local communities because they lost power and with that their voice to speak up. The centralization of the Russian government has reduced the influence of smaller political entities (or opposition) something that is favorable for Putin.

To conclude, due to its current leader Russia’s power relations are becoming more and more uneven. Based on the theory of positive feedback these power asymmetries will continue to increase and power relations will become less visible. In other words, Putin will gain more power and use it in order to sustain and strengthen his position. 

British small coal wagons

By Casper Gelderblom

In 1900, Britain’s industrial railway system, characterized by its small coal wagons, was completely outdated. Modernization would have led to enormous savings in operating costs. However, the railways’ regulating system, designed to protect wagon owners against railway companies, discouraged stakeholders from pursuing modernization. The small coal wagons that persisted in British railway traffic until the late 1940s offer a strong example of how positive feedback processes can lead to inefficiency in path dependence. At the same time, however, these processes cannot convincingly explain the eventual replacement of these small wagons.

The four features Brian Arthur identified as drivers of positive feedback help explain the persistence of the small wagon system. Firstly, replacing the outdated regulating system was discouraged by the large set-up costs associated with establishing a new system. Secondly, all stakeholders had become skilled in operating within the inefficient system. These learning effects discouraged stakeholders from replacing their wagons, which would largely render their skills useless. Thirdly, under the old system coordination effects had made small wagons the only accepted wagon type. These effects formed a coordination problem in replacing the existing system, as savings could only be realised if a large number of railway companies changed their facilities. This, however, was discouraged by the regulating system. Lastly, since coordination effects supported the existing system, stakeholders’ adaptive expectations were such that they feared ‘picking the wrong horse’ by investing in new technologies that did not match with the existing infrastructure.

Arthur’s approach implies that the old wagon system could only change if the set-up costs of a new system were lower than its prospective gains. Although this never happened, the small wagon system was eventually replaced through an institutional change instigated by a variable Arthur left out of his equation: the role of ideas. The British government that decided to nationalise the railways and so replace the outdated regulatory system, pursued “radical” leftist policies. Ideas, not prospective gains, thus led to the end of the British small coal wagons.   

The importance of learning and competition for institutions

By Rens Edwards

In class we discussed three characteristics that make path-dependency effects in politics intense. We touched upon the shorter time horizons and the strong status-quo bias in politics extensively, but we skimmed over the absence of efficiency-enhancing mechanisms of competition and learning. The latter could use some clarification through an example.

Competition and learning as efficiency-enhancing mechanisms can appropriately be applied to economics. In financial markets, firms contend with each other to become the leader in a particular sector, which creates competition. Due to the existing competition, more efficient firms develop which eliminate the firms that cannot keep up. This process causes “auto correction” within the financial sectors. Learning processes also stimulate companies to strive for the highest efficiency. Firms learn from other firms and from themselves to become more efficient.

In politics however, competition and learning are not as straightforward as in economics. Competition does occur during elections, but generally political institutions do not compete with each other to become more efficient. Learning processes occur sometimes when institutions receive feedback on newly implemented policies, but this happens much less frequently than efficiency corrections in economics.

Political institutions in the world of football are a good illustration of inefficient organizations. The FIFA is the main organization, which consists of six sub-organizations including the UEFA. Despite the existence of multiple organizational bodies, almost no corrections have taken place to make the FIFA (or its subdivisions) more efficient. The FIFA simply stayed on the same unethical path, until finally an intervention occurred recently forcing the FIFA to make drastic institutional changes.

The absence of competition and learning is clear in “permissive” political environments like the FIFA. Political institutions generally lack auto-corrective mechanisms, making them more susceptible of pursuing the wrong track.

The 4G Network's Path Dependence

By Josh Treacher

What drives growth in the mobile and wireless Internet markets is consumer demand for high network performance and good value for money, according to an info-graphic by Commscope. By exploring the evolution of wireless networks from 3G to 4G, we can apply increasing returns to exemplify how this quick growth was an endogenous process.

While the majority of mobile phone networks were still providing customers with 3G connection in 2009, some providers began to invest large amounts of capital in upgrading their services to 4G, a mobile internet service much faster and more efficient than before.  W. Brian Arthur's theory of increasing returns can be applied here upon four factors: 1) large set-up costs, 2) learning effects, 3) coordination effects and 4) adaptive expectations.

1) According to AT&T, arguably the mobile phone provider in the USA with the largest market share to date, may owe its success not only to being the exclusive vendors of the iphone, but also to being one of the first providers to have heavily invested in a 4G network.

2) For consumers, understanding the benefits of 4G over 3G increases the demand for the technology and thus increase the likelihood of further innovations in the development of 4G.

3) As more mobile phone providers adopt 4G, the higher the competition is and so the more likely customers are going to receive value for money. The risk of losing customers for a phone provider to another that already adopted 4G played a strong role in this snowball effect of all providers upgrading their infrastructure.

4) Although other infrastructure options different to LTE 4G may have provided better internet for consumers, all phone providers now adopt LTE carrier technology in anticipation (and realisation) that it will be the dominant technology for providing 4G service.

Path dependency = positive feedback?

By Lisa Staadegaard

Pierson defines path dependence as "referring to social processes that exhibit positive feedback and thus generate branching patterns of historical development”. From this definition we can derive that Pierson uses path dependency and positive feedback interchangeably. Here positive feedback is defined as a process that generates increasing returns, its inflexible,  unpredictable, non ergodic and suffers from potential path inefficiency. However, are these concepts always the same?

The concept of positive feedback mechanisms is not only used in political science. It is especially popular in economics but can even be used to explain behaviour and biological processes. An example of this is given in a paper by Baker, where he claims that addiction is an instated positive feedback loop. Stating that appetitive drug actions increase appetitive stimuli resulting in an increase in drug use. This example perfectly fits the above given criteria for positive feedback, however can we call this a path dependent process?

This really depends on the definition used, if we look at the narrower definition proposed by Margaret Levi, path dependency is supposed to involve countries. Then, we could easily argue that the addiction example is not a path dependent process.

Path dependency in social sciences is used to describe a sequence of events, and should point out the importance of historical processes. In many other sciences we can see a similar pattern where A causes B which then leads to ‘increasing returns’, as portrayed by the drug example. However these examples often do not include such a heavy reliance on history, and are often not as irreversible as processes in politics or economics. Therefore the terms path dependence and positive feedback processes may be used interchangeably in political science, but cannot be used interchangeably in many other sciences. 

Why basic income policy is implemented precisely now

By Onno Blom

The first appearance of the idea of a basic income can be traced back to the enlightened thinkers of the 18th century, but was introduced to the Western world most successfully in the 20th century by Milton Friedman. What Friedman proposed as a “negative income tax”, the idea of giving people unrestricted subsidy, has been ignored for most of history when it comes to policy. Interestingly, recently politicians have started giving in and momentarily 28 municipalities are experimenting with basic income. What factors can explain the current policy adaptation and why did it take so long?

Although the idea of basic income has been around for long, the popularity of it fluctuates. If we look at when the discussion on basic income increased, we see that this was particularly during times of recession. For example, during the 1980’s many politicians proposed social welfare based on a basic income, but large scale policy was never implemented due to lack of support. Comparably, the current rise in popularity started in 2013, when the consequences of the 2008 crisis were strongly felt.

Even when policy ideas are present and support is sufficient, implementation can sometimes lag behind. Pierson ascribes this to the “opacity of politics”: what the voters want is not always clear for politicians, and voting is only sporadically used. This means that even if their might have been public support for the idea of a basic income before 2013, politicians were simply not aware of it. It took a long list of publications and quite some media attention for left-wing parties to realize that there was major backing, on which they could respond to ensure political capital. A combination of both the fluctuation of popularity and opacity can explain why policy has lagged behind for many years, but is now catching up. 

The two faces of slavery

By Lorraine Besnier

Although there are proofs that Europeans did not invent slavery but simply changed its face, some questions remains concerning the extent of this statement. The way Europeans reinvented not only the definition of slave, but also reorganised societies around it, suggests that they did create an entirely new structure.

In this post, I will try to show that by redefining slavery, Europeans completely changed the existing institutions, based on their own perception of the matter.

Lovejoy explains in “Transformation of slavery” how slavery in its basic definition of one person owning another existed long before the Europeans first came to Africa. Indeed, indigenous slavery was based on the survival of the fittest. A man, to protect himself, would enslave his adversary for if he failed to do so, he himself would have to submit. But some rules were informally enforced. For instance, there was no idea of class, and tribes did matter.

After the arrival of the Europeans, the rules changed. Indeed, with the importance given to slaves, the indirect implantation of new institutions, and the creation of an entire market, the incentives were increasing for individuals to pay attention to this “business”.

However, the effects were not the same for everyone, and as the Europeans transposed their own beliefs abroad by solely approaching people whom had some kind of authority in the communities, only a small number of individuals could benefit from it. Lovejoy's example of the Oracle “swallowing” people to sell them perfectly illustrates the idea. Thus, native chiefs and religious guides had the monopoly on slave trafficking.

With their “contribution” of a new system, the Europeans succeeded in creating an unprecedented organisation within Africa. Slavery was no longer a matter of safety, but one of money.

Can Slavery in the Islamic World be justified by the Quran?

By Kelsey Bischot

As Lovejoy and Acemoglu and Robinson have made apparent in their works, slavery didn’t truly end in the 19th century with the abolition. Modern slavery still persists today in the form of child slavery, forced marriage, trafficking, bonded labor and more. I will briefly try to uncover why the institution of slavery continues to gain strength and power across the Islamic World.

When the Islamic world became the heir of slavery, it was a means of converting non-Muslims (Lovejoy). This institution has now distorted into ISIS enslaving thousands of innocent people, especially Yazidi women and children. ISIS claims that rape and sex slavery is admissible because the Yazidis are not Muslim. They blame this on the fact that the Quran accepted the existence of chattel slavery as a fact of life at the time of its revelation (CNN). ISIS uses many of the Quran’s verses to justify its violence and celebrate sexual assault and enslavement. Koran 23:5-6 says: Allah the almighty said: '[Successful are the believers] who guard their chastity, except from their wives or (the captives and slaves) that their right hands possess, for then they are free from blame (Memrijttm). ISIS interprets this to able to rape innocent women as a prayer to God in accordance with Halal.

The institution has gained more followers as ISIS has started using the institution as a recruitment tool to lure men from conservative Muslim societies where casual sex and dating is forbidden (New York Times).

As the institution of slavery continues to gain ground in Islam with the power of ISIS, it is important to realize that the Quran does not actually justify slavery and instead exhorts believers to free their slaves as an exemplification of their piety and belief in God (CNN). Studying history has revealed that the institution justifies its acts based on its initial intent of converting non-Muslims, but has changed in its role from production to the exploitation of women.

Conscription: a modern case of slavery?

By Robin Vroom

Although slavery has been outlawed in all countries, there are modern forms of slavery that still exist to this day. The means through which modern forms of slavery operate differ greatly and do not only come in the obvious form in which one person takes ownership of another. Some forms of modern slavery are: debt bondage, serfdom, forced labour, and human trafficking. Yet one prevalent practise is often disregarded, namely military conscription. With this blog post I address a controversial topic – does conscription as an institution qualify to be labelled as a form of slavery?

The authors of the 1930 Forced Labour Convention – which is ratified by 177 countries - fully realised that military conscription fulfils the characteristics of forced labour. As it defines forced labour as “all work or service, which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily,” but exempted “any work or service exacted in virtue of compulsory military service.”

Now, whether one supports military conscription or not, one cannot argue against its substantial persistence in our current world. More than half of the world’s countries currently employ military conscription in one form or another (see figure 1). These forms of conscription are by definition involuntary servitude and restrict freedom of movement. Cooperation is institutionally enforced with punishments like imprisonment, exile, and in some cases even execution.

The main effect here probably is that the connotation attached to slavery evokes different emotions than conscription. Slavery is often regarded not solely as involuntary servitude, but as low-status involuntary servitude. Conscription on the other hand receives honour and provides a deep pool of manpower in the event of a national emergency. Notwithstanding, one ought to be careful when cost-efficiency compromises individual’s freedom. 

World War II: path dependence or autonomous choice?

By Anique Zwaan

One of the most iconic events in modern history is the Second World War (WW II). This event is still carved into many minds, and has left its marks on today’s society. Many scholars have debated and explained the origins and causes of this war, but in this blogpost we will look at it from a different perspective: was the occurance of WW II path depent or caused by choice?

The theory that WW II was path dependent would mean that the start of this war cannot be explained in terms of short-term processes and that multiple relatively small events have led to the war commence. In this case, one of the “relatively small events” would be the Treaty of Versailles, which stated Germany had to pay a great deal of money to various countries (e.g. the UK and France) in order to make up for the damage they had caused with World War I. This led to little to no economic growth in Germany in the interwar years; the country became poor, and an easy target for radicalization (i.e. Hitler and his beliefs). This would mean that once Hitler became powerful in Germany, WW II was bound to happen.

On the other hand, it could be argued that WW II was caused by decisions that had been made consciously, such as Churchill deciding to not interfere with Hitler’s propaganda before it was too late. Or Hitler’s decision to ignore the Treaty of Versailles and invade Poland, in order to realize his dreams of the Third Reich.

From this information, one could still not draw a conclusion whether WW II was indeed a path dependent event, or if it was caused by human made choices: it is up to the reader to decide.