----- Original Message ----- From: "Gary Denton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <brin-l@mccmedia.com> Sent: Thursday, May 12, 2005 1:34 PM Subject: Re: Br!n: Re: more neocons
>I am not sure how your hypothesis is able to be proved false. By showing that countries which were less influenced/dominated by the US had a greater chance of becoming democracies. >What countries were not US dominated? The US had basically ignored Africa, for example...it had minimal influence there. It has had little to no leverage in the Middle East since OPEC. It has had tremendous influence in Latin America. It provided defence for Tawain and South Korea. It had a fair amount of influence on the Phillipeans. It has had only modest influence in SE Asia. >What do you count as expanding democracy? Governments going from dictatorships to elected goverments. Evidence of mature elected governments such as peaceful transitions between different parties. >What time lines do you have to show that it was Bush promoting democracy >that caused a rise in the number of democracies? It would be a matter of deciding the amount of leverage the US had at the time in a country vs. the state of a democracy. I don't think it was just Bush. I think that, after the Cold War, Bush I made the support of democracies a bi-partisan issue, after Carter made it an issue. In a sense it was Carter stating "we cannot support dictatorships", Reagan saying "we can if it is needed to fight Communism, and Bush I saying "now that we've beaten communism, we need not hold our noses and support brutal anti-Communists any more. Clinton supported that idea, and now Bush II does. >How do you exclude other factors? I'd assume they were fairly random. If we could reasonably control for them, that would be better....but baring that assuming that they are random is standard technique. It is possible, of course, to get a false positive or false negative....that relates to the fact that international relations is not a science. But, I'd bet with a several sigma signal instead of against it. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
