Henry Farrell

The Folly of Decoupling From China – with Abraham Newman

On May 14, U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to break the United States’ economic relationship with China. “There are many things we could do,” he told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo. “We could cut off the whole relationship. Now if you did, what would happen? You’d save $500 billion.” It was Trump’s most extreme anti-China rhetoric to date, but it wasn’t out of step with the mood in Washington. Both Republicans and Democrats agree that China has transformed from a competitor into an adversary, and perhaps even an enemy.

As tensions have mounted as a result of the

Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman, “The Folly of Decoupling From China,” Foreign Affairs (online), June 3, 2020.

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Other Writing:

Chapter in an Edited Volume

Privatization as State Transformation

December 11, 2018 Nomos 60
Privatization is an ambiguous term covering many loosely related phenomena. In this essay, I focus on one specific aspect of privatization-the privatization of governance. This sidesteps arguments about the presumed efficiency gains of, e.g., turning state-owned entities into for-profit corporations, and highlights the political consequences of privatization-how it takes decisions which had once been within ...
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Essay

Do the Right Thing with – Cosma Shalizi

November 5, 2011 New Scientist Slate with Cosma Shalizi
Benevolent meddling won’t help us make good decisions. We have all cringed watching friends and family make terrible decisions, and been tempted by visions of the pain spared if we could only make them follow our advice. The same feeling motivates well-intentioned technocrats to take charge of the public: People are plainly making sad blunders ...
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