Zoned (On the European Union)

European integration is boring, even when it is exciting. Over the past eighteen months, crisis has piled upon crisis in the European Union’s single-currency area, the so-called eurozone. The European project of creating an ever closer union among its member states may be about to crash, crippling America’s economy as well as Europe’s. The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein has argued that Europe’s decisions over the coming weeks will probably determine President Obama’s re-election chances. Even so, it is hard to read about EU politics without wanting to fall asleep.

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Other Writing:

Chapter in an Edited Volume

Privatization as State Transformation

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

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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