THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MEDICAID EXPANSION AND OPIOID OVERDOSE MORTALITY

Hannah Klukoff

Abstract: Approximately 500,000 people died from an opioid overdose between 1999 and 2019. Despite the 2017 declaration by The Department of Health and Human Services that the opioid crisis was a public health emergency, projections suggest that at least another 500,000 opioid-related deaths will occur between 2020 and 2032. In recent years, states have had the option to expand their Medicaid programs, including increased access to treatment for all substance use disorders, particularly treatment for Opioid Use Disorder (OUD) , as part of those expansions. A small literature has examined the relationship between Medicaid expansion and factors related to opioid mortality, such as access to OUD treatment.  These studies have yielded varying results. This thesis uses state-level opioid overdose data to add a new data point to this otherwise unsettled body of literature.  I also make a novel contribution by exploring the question of whether there is variation in the relationship between Medicaid expansion and opioid overdose mortality according to states’ racial composition, workforce composition, and unemployment rates. I find evidence of a positive and statistically significant relationship between Medicaid expansion and opioid overdose deaths. I further find that Medicaid expansion may be more closely related to opioid overdose mortality in states with larger Black populations, smaller American Indian and Alaska Native populations, smaller Hispanic populations, lower unemployment rates and lower numbers of blue-collar workers. My results may indicate the need to reconsider the ways that Medicaid policy is being leveraged to combat the opioid crisis.

I. Introduction

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (2021), approximately 500,000 people died from opioid overdoses between 1999 and 2019. In 2017, the Acting Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency after death rates reached an average of 91 deaths per day (HHS, 2017). Today, an average of 136 people die from an opioid overdose every day (CDC, 2021). However, despite the increased attention toward the opioid crisis, projections suggest that at least another half of a million people will die from an opioid overdose between 2020 and 2032 (Lim et al., 2022).

Numerous facets of life in the United States have been impacted by the destructive effects of the opioid crisis. In the 2020 Economic Report of the President, the Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) estimated that the opioid crisis amounted to costs of $2.5 trillion during 2015 to 2018. This estimate accounts for healthcare, treatment, criminal justice costs and forgone labor productivity. The crisis has also harmed child well-being. Opioid use and dependency among pregnant women (both prescribed by a doctor and illicit) increased by 127% between 1998 and 2011 (Maeda et al., 2014). Studies have shown that children who are exposed to parental opioid misuse are at increased risk of developing mental health problems and substance use disorders later in life (Winstanley & Stover, 2019); are more likely to experience trauma from the loss of a parent due to an overdose (Brundage & Levine, 2019); are more likely to have contact with the foster care system (Ghertner et al. 2018); and are more likely to struggle academically (Darolia & Tyler, 2020). Further, evidence suggests that the opioid crisis has particularly acute implications for vulnerable and historically disadvantaged populations such as racial and ethnic minorities (Larochelle et al., 2021), poor pregnant women (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2017; Brundage & Levine, 2019), poor children and adolescents (Ghertner et al., 2018) and formerly incarcerated people (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2017). 

Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT), usually in combination with cognitive behavioral therapy, is the standard treatment for Opioid Use Disorder (OUD), the clinical phrase used to refer to misuse of opioids (American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2013). Access to treatment and other forms of addiction-related services is often limited among lower income and more vulnerable populations (Priester et al., 2016). While states are required to cover certain mental health services and Substance Use Disorder (SUD) treatments — such as medically necessary inpatient hospital stays — under their Medicaid programs, there is wide variation in which (if any) additional services states choose to cover (Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission [MACPAC], n.d.). In recent years, states have had the option to expand their Medicaid programs and have included increased access to SUD treatment (particularly treatment for OUD) in these expansions. 

Using state-level opioid overdose mortality data from the CDC, this paper examines state Medicaid expansions and opioid overdose death rates between 2010 and 2019. I add a new data point to a body of literature that is otherwise unsettled, as existing literature on the relationship between Medicaid expansion and opioid overdose mortality has produced varying results. Additionally, this study is, to my knowledge, the first to explore variation in the relationship between Medicaid expansion and opioid overdose deaths according to states’ racial composition, workforce composition, and unemployment rates.

II. Background

Medicaid was first established in 1965 as Title XIX of the Social Security Act. When Medicaid was first established, it was meant to provide health insurance to those receiving cash assistance — i.e., the lowest-income families, low-income elderly and people with disabilities. Since its inception, Medicaid has been expanded several times by Congress and state governments, broadening the base of individuals who are eligible for coverage. Since its inception, Medicaid has been an entitlement program, meaning anyone who qualifies for coverage is eligible for benefits. There are no waiting lists and no caps on enrollment and the program is designed to take on more people in times of economic downturn. 

Each state shares the costs of its Medicaid program with the federal government. States have broad leeway to design and implement their own Medicaid programs within federal guidelines and their Medicaid spending is reimbursed based on a formula called the Federal Medical Assistance Percentage (FMAP) which is dependent on the state’s per capita income. Though participation in Medicaid is voluntary, all states participate. Arizona was the last to opt-in in 1982 (Center for Health Care Strategies [CHCS], 2019).

Despite Medicaid’s reputation as a popular and effective safety net program, its stringent eligibility categories and income limits have historically been designed to ensure that only very low-income children, families, pregnant women, people with disabilities and some elderly people were eligible for benefits (Congressional Research Service [CRS], 2021). The program’s structure has left a large swath of people uninsured. Typically, these were adults with no dependent children who were not offered employer sponsored insurance through their jobs and whose incomes were not low enough to make them financially eligible for Medicaid, but who also could not afford to purchase insurance on their own (Tolbert & Orgera, 2020). The closing of this “coverage gap” was one of President Barack Obama’s primary goals when he signed into law in 2010 the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or more commonly known as the Affordable Care Act (ACA) (Silvers, 2013). The ACA sought to make health insurance more affordable and accessible through the creation of state and federal health insurance marketplaces, tax credits intended to offset insurance premiums, cost-sharing mechanisms designed to lower the cost of purchasing private health insurance and expansion of the Medicaid program (Silvers, 2013; CHCS, 2019).

The phrase “Medicaid expansion” refers to the part of the ACA that increases the program’s eligibility thresholds to include all adults whose incomes are below 138% Federal Poverty Level (FPL), effectively ending the previous categorical eligibility system (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services [CMS], 2021; Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, 2013). The original ACA sought to make Medicaid expansion mandatory and to penalize non-compliant states by taking away their federal match dollars (Kaiser Family Foundation [KFF], 2012). However, several states declared Medicaid expansion to be unconstitutional and filed a lawsuit challenging this provision of the ACA (National Federation of Independent Business [NFIB] v. Sebelius). On June 28th, 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Medicaid expansion in and of itself was not unconstitutional, but that the federal government could not take away FMAP money as a punishment for a state’s failure to expand coverage (KFF, 2012). This ruling effectively changed Medicaid expansion from a sweeping national policy reform to a state option (CHCS, 2019).  

Scholars have observed stark differences in a variety of health outcomes between low-income populations in states that have chosen to expand their Medicaid programs and those that have not (Han et al., 2015; Bellerose et al., 2022; Bauchner & Maddox, 2019). One such outcome is the provision of treatment for OUD. Because the federal government requires that Medicaid expansion benefit packages include mental and behavioral health services and treatment for all SUD, Medicaid programs are theoretically well positioned to provide OUD treatment (Orgera & Tolbert, 2019). Some studies have found that Medicaid expansion is associated with increased access to coverage for prescriptions for buprenorphine (one of the three most commonly used medications for OUD treatment) (Wen et al., 2017) and increased access to MAT for formerly incarcerated people (Khatri et al., 2021). 

In 2018, President Trump signed the Substance Use Disorder Prevention that Promotes Opioid Recovery and Treatment for Patients and Communities (SUPPORT) Act, which included many Medicaid-specific provisions (Musumeci & Tolbert, 2018). Additionally, states have the flexibility to offer added services and treatment for OUD as part of their Medicaid programs through “1115 demonstration waivers,” or through the more recent enhanced federal matching rate for crisis intervention services approved under the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) (Guth, 2021).  However, researchers at the Pew Charitable Trust (2022) find that low-income individuals are less likely to be able to access these services and may be less able to afford treatment for OUD on their own. I posit that this dynamic is likely to be even more pronounced for low-income people who live in states that have chosen not to expand Medicaid.

III. Literature Review

There are two competing theories in the literature on the relationship between Medicaid expansion and opioid overdose mortality. The first is that greater access to health insurance through Medicaid expansion means that more people will potentially have access to prescription opioids, increasing their likelihood of becoming addicted and dying of an overdose. The second is that Medicaid expansion increases access to treatment for OUD, resulting in fewer overdose deaths (Figure 1 below illustrates these theoretical links). There is a considerable body of research that examines the relationship between Medicaid expansion and both opioid prescriptions and treatment accessibility. There is also a substantial amount of literature on the relationship between Medicaid expansion and opioid overdose mortality, though the results of these studies vary.

The Relationship Between Medicaid Expansion and Access to Prescription Opioids

The general consensus in the literature suggests that Medicaid expansion is not strongly related to the rate at which opioids are prescribed to Medicaid beneficiaries. In their analysis of Medicaid prescription reimbursement data for 2011 through 2016, Sharp et al. (2018) conclude that there was an increase during this period in the number of prescriptions for opioids that were covered by Medicaid, but that the difference between expansion and non-expansion states was not statistically significant. Swartz & Beltran (2019) analyze data from 2008 through 2016 and find that opioid prescription availability was at its peak in 2010 (well before many states opted to expand Medicaid in 2014).  They also find that Medicaid expansion is positively associated with opioid overdose deaths overall, but not with an increase in prescription-overdose-related deaths specifically. Thus, this study does not support the theory that higher rates of opioid overdose mortality in states that have expanded Medicaid are being mediated by increased prescription opioid availability. 

Baicker et al. (2017) collected experimental data related to Oregon’s early expansion of their Medicaid program to ascertain the impact of expanded Medicaid coverage on the use of prescription medications. The authors’ results suggest that Medicaid coverage did not cause a significant increase in the possession of prescription opioids or of analgesics overall, and that coverage resulted in a significant reduction in the use of medication originally prescribed to someone other than the beneficiary (Baicker et al., 2017). The latter finding has implications for Medicaid’s role (or lack thereof) in the opioid crisis because the sources of misused pharmaceutical drugs are most often friends or family, according to a review of the literature (Hulme et al., 2018). 

The Relationship Between Medicaid Expansion and Access to OUD Treatment 

Several studies show that Medicaid expansion is associated with increased access to treatment for people with OUD (Sharp et al., 2018), but that this relationship may be conditional upon provider location (Wen et al., 2017; Gertner et al, 2020). In the same study discussed above, Sharp et al. (2018) find that the prescription rates of buprenorphine and naltrexone (two of the three medications used in medication assisted treatment for OUD) increased by less than 50% in non-expansion states but by more than 200% in expansion states between 2011 and 2016. In combination with the finding previously discussed, this study suggests that Medicaid beneficiaries are no more likely to be prescribed opioids after expansion than they were before, but that the expansion of Medicaid may increase access to MAT for people with OUD. 

Until recently, qualified practitioners were required to obtain a Drug Addiction Treatment Act (DATA) waiver (also called an “X-Waiver”) to prescribe buprenorphine to individuals with OUD. Wen et al. (2017) use quarterly drug utilization and spending data from CMS for the years 2011 through 2014 to investigate the impact of Medicaid expansion on utilization of buprenorphine for OUD treatment and provider capacity to prescribe it. The results of this study suggest that Medicaid expansion is associated with a 70% increase in buprenorphine utilization for MAT covered by Medicaid and that an observed 10% increase in the number of physicians who had waivers to treat up to 100 patients for OUD was associated with a 45% increase in the number of Medicaid-covered buprenorphine prescriptions (Wen et al., 2017). 

Gertner et al. (2020) use panel data from the Drug Enforcement Administration on methadone and buprenorphine dispensed between 2006 and 2017 to assess the impact of Medicaid expansion on MAT using these two medications. This study finds that, within their sample as a whole, Medicaid expansion is not significantly associated with an increase in the amount of methadone or buprenorphine dispensed.  However, the authors also found that Medicaid expansion was positively associated with the dispensing of buprenorphine, in states with high concentrations of DATA-waivered practitioners (Gertner et al., 2020). This finding supports Wen et al.’s (2017) assertion that the requirement of DATA waivers may be stunting the effect of Medicaid expansion on OUD treatment.

The Relationship Between Medicaid Expansion and Opioid Overdose Mortality

Some studies find no evidence of a statistically significant relationship between Medicaid expansion and opioid overdose deaths (Averett et al., 2019; Ibragimov et al., 2022; Auty & Griffith, 2022). For example, Averett et al. (2019) use state-level data from 2010 through 2017 and find that a state’s Medicaid expansion status is not significantly related to its opioid overdose mortality rates. Ibragimov et al. (2022) build upon this work by using county-level opioid overdose mortality data from 2008 through 2018 and limiting their sample to individuals with low educational attainment as a proxy for Medicaid eligibility. The authors find that there is not a significant relationship between Medicaid expansion and opioid overdose deaths when they control for sociodemographic and policy-related variables in one and two-year lagged models (Ibragimov et al., 2022). Auty & Griffith (2022) use state-level data from 2013 through 2020 to assess whether Medicaid expansion impacted opioid overdose mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors found that both expansion and non-expansion states experienced significant increases in opioid overdose deaths since pre-pandemic years, but that these increases were not statistically different from one another (Auty & Griffith, 2022). 

More fine-grained analyses sometimes detect a stronger relationship between Medicaid expansion and opioid overdose mortality. Kravitz-Wirtz et al. (2020) analyze disaggregated county-level opioid overdose mortality data on deaths involving each opioid class from 2001 through 2017. The authors find that Medicaid expansion is associated with a 6% reduction in overall opioid overdose mortality rates and in deaths related to the use of each class of opioids except for methadone (Kravitz-Wirtz et al., 2020). For example, heroin overdose rates were 11%  lower among counties in states that expanded Medicaid than among counties in states that did not expand Medicaid (Kravitz-Wirtz et al., 2020). 

Abouk et al. (2021) use county-level data from 2007 through 2017 to investigate the relationship between Medicaid expansion and opioid overdose deaths, but they also control for trends in the market for manufactured illicit fentanyl. The authors study Eastern and Western states separately and find that Medicaid expansion is associated with an increase in opioid overdose deaths only in Eastern states and only from synthetic opioids and heroin overdoses (those most likely to be mixed with manufactured fentanyl). Additionally, the authors find no evidence that overdose deaths attributable to natural/semisynthetic opioids or methadone (the types that one would be most likely to gain access to through a prescription via Medicaid eligibility) increased more quickly in Eastern expansion states than in Eastern non-expansion states. They also find no evidence of an association between Medicaid expansion and opioid overdose mortality in the Western states. 

The Present Study

A review of the literature suggests that Medicaid expansion is not directly related to an influx in new opioid prescriptions and may help low-income people with OUD to access treatment (Sharp et al., 2019; Swartz & Beltran, 2019; Baicker et al., 2017; Wen et al., 2017; Gertner et al, 2020), but that the relationship between expansion and opioid overdose mortality is nonetheless unclear. Some studies find evidence of a negative relationship (Kravitz-Wirtz et al., 2021), some find that there is no relationship at all (Averett et al., 2019; Ibragimov et al., 2022; Auty & Griffith, 2022), and Abouk et al. (2021) finds that the relationship varies geographically and may be mediated by state-specific conditions such as the illicit fentanyl market. The present study includes a more comprehensive set of occupational, demographic, and policy controls than did previous studies. For example, most research on this topic accounts for the two most popular opioid related laws, Good Samaritan laws and Naloxone Access laws, but does not control for other potentially relevant policies and programs such as:

•  states’ MAT licensure requirements,

•  Opioid Treatment Program (OTP) operation regulations,

•  and additional state training regulations, which could influence the ease with which Medicaid beneficiaries receive treatment. 

I control for all of these policy variables in my regressions. Additionally, I add to the literature by investigating potential variation in my relationship of interest according to states’ unemployment rates, workforce composition and racial composition.

IV. Conceptual Framework

Based on my review of the literature, it is unclear whether there is a positive or a negative association (or none at all) between Medicaid expansion and opioid overdose mortality. As discussed above, there are competing theories about the nature of this relationship.  For instance, some scholars emphasize the fact that expansion may lead to increased access to opioid prescriptions via Medicaid expansion, which could lead to higher mortality rates (Sharp et al., 2018; Swartz & Beltran, 2019; Baicker et al., 2017).  Other studies focus on the increased access to MAT after Medicaid is expanded, which could decrease deaths by overdose (Sharp et al., 2018; Wen et al., 2017; Gertner et al., 2020). The literature also highlights other state-level opioid-related policies that may be related to overdose mortality rates. My model accounts for these policies and for economic conditions and demographic characteristics whose omission might otherwise bias my estimates of interest. These factors are represented graphically in Figure 2 and are described in the sections that follow.

Policy Factors

Independent of whether a state expands its Medicaid program, many states have laws on the books that are meant to increase the likelihood that someone experiencing an overdose receives medical attention in order to prevent death (GAO, 2021; Abouk et al., 2019; Abouk et al., 2021). In addition, all states have licensure requirements for practitioners who administer medication for MAT (Wen et al., 2017; Gertner et al., 2020). 

• Good Samaritan Laws: Good Samaritan laws are one of two kinds of measures that attempt to increase the likelihood that medical attention is provided to someone who is experiencing a drug overdose by protecting the individual who calls in the medical emergency from drug or other criminal charges. These laws vary by state in terms of the protections offered, but according to a 2021 report by the GAO, 48 states and Washington D.C. currently have some form of a Good Samaritan Law related to opioids on their books. 

• Naloxone Access Laws: Naloxone Access laws are meant to increase the availability of this drug – which counteracts the effects of opioid overdose – to people who may be in a position to need to administer it (e.g., shelters, first responders, and the family and friends of those who use opioids).  Naloxone access laws can authorize providers to prescribe naloxone to anyone who may have need of it, authorize pharmacies to provide naloxone without a prescription, or both. All 50 states and D.C. have Naloxone Access laws in place: 45 use both methods of providing access, five authorize direct access through a pharmacy but not through a provider, and one authorizes access through a provider but not directly through pharmacies (GAO, 2021).  

• State MAT Licensure Requirements: As discussed above, in order to prescribe buprenorphine to individuals with OUD, qualified practitioners were also required to obtain an X waiver until very recently. Waivers allowed practitioners to treat either 30, 100 or 275 patients at one time for OUD and required varying levels of training and certification (SAMHSA, 2022). Some states still impose additional requirements for licensure for practitioners to provide services or have additional regulations in place for the operation of OTPs beyond what was required by the federal X waiver. The availability of physicians and other waivered practitioners who can prescribe buprenorphine varies by state and may influence whether people are able to receive the treatment to which they theoretically have access through their insurance (Medicaid or otherwise) (Auty & Griffith, 2022; Stein et al., 2015; Dick et al., 2015; Jones et al., 2015; Knudson et al., 2015). 

Economic Factors

As previously discussed, Medicaid is an entitlement program that is meant to support more people during times of economic downturn. Lower socioeconomic status is also associated with a higher risk of opioid overdose death (Ghertner & Groves, 2018). Many aggregate-level studies (Averett et al., 2019; Kravitz-Wirtz et al., 2020; Abouk et al., 2020; Gertner et al., 2020; Wen et al., 2017; Auty & Griffith, 2022) account for this factor by controlling for unemployment rate, poverty rate, and income. Additionally, there may be a correlation between opioid overdose deaths and employment in occupations that result in higher rates of musculoskeletal injury and chronic pain – for example, work that involves manual labor or in service occupations (Shaw et al., 2020). 

Demographic Factors

The opioid crisis has been shown to be disproportionately concentrated among certain demographic groups (CDC, 2022). White non-Hispanic males are often presented as being the most affected by the opioid crisis (Kravitz-Wirtz et al., 2020; Abouk et al., 2020; Auty & Griffith, 2022; Ibragimov et al., 2022), but studies have shown that opioid overdose death rates have risen significantly in recent years among both American Indian/Alaska Native and Black people, and that American Indian/Alaska Native males had the highest overdose mortality rate in 2020 (Larochelle et al., 2021; CDC, 2022).

V. Data and Methods

My empirical analyses use state-level panel data for all 50 states and the District of Columbia from 2010 to 2019. Data for my key independent variable are drawn from the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Status of State Action on the Medicaid Expansion Decision table (KFF, 2022). The data for my dependent variable are drawn from the CDC Wide-ranging Online Data for Epidemiological Research (WONDER) database. Specifically, I obtain data on opioid overdose mortality rates for the years 2010 through 2019 from the CDC WONDER Multiple Cause of Death (1999-2020) database. My dependent variable accounts for deaths among those who are 64 and under (and who are therefore not eligible for Medicare), in order to focus on the population for whom Medicaid expansion would have the greatest impact, and whose underlying cause of death was coded using any of the following International Classification of Disease, Tenth Revision (ICD-10) codes: X40-X44 (overdose-unintentional); X60-X64 (overdose-suicide); X85 (overdose-homicide); and Y10-Y14 (overdose-undetermined). Among these underlying cause-of-death codes, the type of opioid was identified using the following ICD-10 codes: T40.0 (opium); T40.1 (heroin); T40.2 (natural and semisynthetic opioids); T40.3 (methadone); T40.4 (synthetic opioids other than methadone); and T40.6 (other and unspecified narcotics). My measure of opioid overdose mortality accounts for deaths that are attributed to more than one type of opioid, so these categories are not mutually exclusive.

As discussed in the previous section, I also control for certain state-level demographic characteristics, economic factors and state-specific policies. Data on state population demographics come from the United States Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) 1-year estimates. These include the percentage of the population that is White, Black, or American Indian/Alaska Native, the percentage of the population that is Hispanic and the percentage of the population that is male. Data on economic factors including the share of the population living below the poverty line, median inflation-adjusted household income (expressed in $2019) and the percentage of the population working in a blue-collar job also come from ACS 1-year estimates. Data on state unemployment rates come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Data on opioid-related state policies are taken from the Prescription Drug Abuse Policy System (PDAPS), a database funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse to track state laws regarding drug abuse and access to treatment. Specifically, I extract data on the following programs and policies: Good Samaritan Overdose Prevention Laws; Naloxone Overdose Prevention Law; and Requirements for Licensure and Operations of Medications for Opioid Use Disorder Treatment. 

To investigate the relationship between Medicaid expansion and opioid overdose mortality, I estimate a two-way (state and year) fixed effects regression model. State fixed effects control for state characteristics that are unchanging over time, but that vary by state. For example, cultural norms and social stigma regarding the seeking of treatment for substance use are likely to be relatively unchanging over my period of analysis, but to differ by state. Year fixed effects control for characteristics that change over time but are fixed across states at a given point in time—for example, changes to federal Medicaid policy or the declaration of the opioid crisis as an official public health emergency by HHS.  The inclusion of state and year fixed effects in my regression substantially reduces the extent of bias in my coefficients of interests.  I therefore estimate the following regression model, with the state-year as the unit of analysis:

OVERDOSEit=0+1MedEx+it+it+it+ t+ i+it,

where i  is a state index, t is a year index, it represents my policy control variables, ∝it represents my demographic control variables, it represents my economic control variables,t represents year fixed effects, i represents state fixed effects, it is an error term and 1 is my coefficient of interest. My dependent variable measures the opioid overdose mortality rate per 100,000 population members in a given state in a given year. My analytic sample consists of 508 state-year observations (50 states and D.C. * 10 years for all states except North Dakota, for whom the state-years 2011 and 2012 were dropped). Overdose mortality rate data were not available for North Dakota for the years 2011 and 2012 due to CDC data suppression rules, so those observations were dropped from my dataset. Other than the aforementioned observations, there were no other missing values in my dataset. Definitions for all variables included in the model are provided in Table 1.

VI. Descriptive Statistics

Table 2 presents descriptive statistics for my dependent and key independent variables, as well as demographic, economic and policy control variables. All estimates are weighted by average state population size over the period of analysis. The weighted average opioid overdose mortality rate in my sample is 12.04 per 100,000 population members, although there is substantial variation across state-year observations. The lowest opioid overdose mortality rate was 1.8 per 100,000 people (North Dakota in 2013) and the highest was 55.6 (West Virginia in 2017). During my period of analysis (2010-2019), 36% of state-year observations expanded their Medicaid programs at some point. This corresponds to 34 of 50 states; see Appendix Table A1 for an overview of the timing of states’ expansions.

Table 3 reports descriptive statistics disaggregated according to the Medicaid expansion status of the state-years in my sample. Expansion states are more likely than non-expansion states to have laws on the books that are meant to decrease opioid overdose deaths, which demonstrates the importance of controlling for these factors in my regressions. During the period of analysis, 88% of states that expanded Medicaid had also passed a Good Samaritan law compared to 33% of non-expansion states. Additionally, 95% of expansion states had a naloxone access law on the books compared to 49% of non-expansion states. Despite these policy differences, expansion states have significantly higher opioid overdose mortality rates than non-expansion states (16.42 compared to 9.56 deaths per 100,000 people in a state). However, non-expansion states appear to be worse-off economically, with significantly higher poverty and unemployment rates on average and lower median household incomes than expansion states. Non-expansion states also have higher proportions of workers in blue-collar occupations.

VII. Regression Results

My main regression results are presented in Table 4, and the results of a set of subgroup analyses are reported in Table 5. I report robust standard errors in parentheses beneath each coefficient, and all regressions are weighted by average state population size over my period of analysis. In Table 4, Model (1) is a simple bivariate regression of dependent variable (opioid overdose mortality) on my key independent variable (Medicaid expansion). Model (2) introduces time-varying controls that account for demographic, economic and policy characteristics. Model (3) adds state fixed effects to control for unobserved characteristics that remain fixed over time but vary by state. Finally, Model (4) layers on year fixed effects, which control for unobserved characteristics that change over time but are fixed across states at a given point in time. 

In Table 5, I report the results of specifications that build upon model (4) to test whether my relationship of interest varies according to the share of the state’s population that falls into various race categories, state unemployment rates, or the share of the population that works in blue-collar occupations. All of these subgroup analyses are based on initially continuous control variables. I dichotomize each of these moderating controls to indicate whether a state is above or below the within-sample median each year. I then interact the dichotomized moderating variable with my key independent variable. 

Main Regression Results

The results of models (1) through (4) suggest a positive and significant relationship between Medicaid expansion and opioid overdose mortality, although the magnitude of this relationship shrinks considerably with the addition of state and year fixed effects. This finding is consistent with the Swartz & Beltran’s (2019) and Abouk et al.’s (2021) findings of a positive and statistically significant relationship between these two variables. Model (1) indicates that Medicaid expansion is associated with an increase of a little more than six and a half deaths per 100k in opioid overdose mortality. In Model (2), which includes time-varying and state-level controls, the Medicaid expansion coefficient remains significant, but its magnitude is reduced by about a third. With the addition of state and year fixed effects in models (3) and (4), this coefficient’s magnitude decreases considerably, but the relationship remains positive and significant. Model (4), which is my fully specified regression and includes all covariates and state and year fixed effects, suggests that Medicaid expansion is associated with an increase of a little less than two deaths per 100k in opioid overdose mortality and is statistically significant. As indicated in Table 2, the weighted average opioid overdose mortality rate is 12.04 deaths per 100k, so a 1.98 deaths per 100k increase represents a somewhat modest, but nonetheless notable, proportional shift relative to the mean (an increase of approximately 16%).

Subgroup Analyses Results

As previously discussed, models (5) through (9) in Table 5 incorporate a set of interaction terms to test whether the relationship between Medicaid expansion and opioid overdose mortality varies according to dichotomized versions of a subset of my covariates. These subgroup analyses are motivated by the prevailing perception in the United States that the opioid crisis is concentrated among White people of relatively higher socioeconomic status (Hansen, 2016).  

Race Interactions

In model (5), I interact my Medicaid expansion indicator with a “high Black population” dummy variable. The results of this specification suggest that there is indeed a difference in my relationship of interest between states that have Black populations above versus below the within-sample national median. Specifically, Medicaid expansion is associated with a decrease of about 1.7 deaths per 100k in states with small Black populations; this estimate’s p-value is close to conventional thresholds of statistical significance (p = 0.138). In states with large Black populations, Medicaid expansion is associated with a just under five deaths per 100k increase (-1.705 + 6.414) in opioid overdose mortality. As indicated by the results of the F-test located at the bottom of Table 5, this relationship is statistically significant. These results thus indicate that there is a different relationship between Medicaid expansion and opioid overdose mortality in states with higher versus lower Black populations. This finding is further corroborated by the statistically significant coefficient on my interaction term, which specifically measures the difference between states with high and low populations of Black people. 

In model (6), I interact the Medicaid expansion dummy with the “high American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) population” indicator. My results again suggest that there is a difference in my relationship according to the racial composition of states’ populations. Specifically, Medicaid expansion is associated with a statistically significant increase in opioid overdose mortality of almost 6 deaths per 100k in states with low AIAN populations but about a 1.6 deaths per 100k decrease (-7.41 + 5.775) in mortality among states with large AIAN populations. The results of the F-test for this model indicate that the latter is just above the cut-off for conventional significance. Further, the Medicaid-High AIAN interaction is statistically significant at all levels. 

In model (7), I interact the Medicaid expansion indicator with a “high Hispanic population” dummy variable. The results of this specification provide suggestive, but not definitive, evidence that there is a difference in the relationship between Medicaid expansion and opioid overdose mortality for states that have large Hispanic populations versus small Hispanic populations. Specifically, the association between my dependent and key independent variables is not statistically significant among states that have small Hispanic populations, but in states with large Hispanic populations, Medicaid expansion is associated with a statistically significant increase of just under one death per 100k (-2.963 + 3.867) in opioid overdose mortality. These results would appear to indicate that my relationship of interest varies according to the size of states’ Hispanic populations. However, the coefficient on my interaction term, which specifically measures the difference in this relationship between the two groups of states, is not statistically significant. Taken together, these results provide mildly suggestive evidence that Medicaid expansion may be more closely related to opioid overdose mortality in states with lower Hispanic populations than those with higher Hispanic populations. 

Other Interactions

In model (8), I interact my Medicaid expansion variable with a “high unemployment” dummy variable. Again, my results provide suggestive, but not definitive, evidence that there may be a difference in the relationship between Medicaid expansion and opioid overdose mortality according to states’ unemployment levels. Specifically, in states with low unemployment, Medicaid expansion is associated with a marginally significant increase in opioid overdose mortality of about two and a half deaths per 100k. In states with high unemployment, Medicaid expansion is associated with an increase in opioid overdose deaths of a little over 1 death per 100k (-1.269 + 2.634), but this relationship is not statistically significant. These results also appear to indicate that there is a difference in the relationship between Medicaid expansion and opioid overdose deaths in high versus low unemployment states. However, the coefficient on my interaction variable, which measures this difference, is not statistically significant. Overall, these results hint at the possibility that Medicaid expansion may be more closely related to opioid overdose mortality in states with low unemployment than in states with high unemployment. 

Finally, in model (11), I interact the Medicaid expansion indicator with a “high blue-collar” dummy. These results also offer suggestive, but not definitive, evidence that there is a difference in the relationship between Medicaid expansion and opioid overdose mortality between states with high versus low proportions of blue-collar workers. Specifically, Medicaid expansion is associated with a marginally significant increase in opioid overdose mortality of a little over one and a half deaths per 100k among states that have a low proportion of blue-collar workers. In states that have a high proportion of blue-collar workers, Medicaid expansion is associated with an increase in opioid overdose deaths of approximately 2.4 per 100k (1.627 + 0.803), but this relationship is not statistically significant. While these results appear to suggest a difference in the relationship between Medicaid expansion and opioid overdose mortality for high-and-low-blue-collar states, we see once again that the coefficient on my interaction term is not statistically significant. Overall, these results thus suggest that there is a limited amount of evidence to suggest that Medicaid expansion may be more closely related to opioid overdose mortality in states with low numbers of blue-collar workers than in states with high numbers of blue-collar workers.

In summary, the results of my fully specified regression suggest that there is a positive relationship between Medicaid expansion and opioid overdose mortality. The results of my subgroup analysis suggest Medicaid expansion may be more closely related to opioid overdose mortality in states with larger Black populations, smaller AIAN populations, smaller Hispanic populations, lower unemployment rates and lower numbers of blue-collar workers. In the following section, I discuss the limitations of my analysis and the implications of these findings for policy and future research.

VIII. Conclusion

My results suggest that there is a moderate, positive, and statistically significant relationship between Medicaid expansion and opioid overdose mortality at the state level. This finding is generally consistent with those of Swartz & Beltran’s (2019) and Abouk et al.’s (2021), although the latter study finds that these two variables are only related in Eastern states. 

It is important to note that my results are likely affected by omitted variable bias, as some potentially relevant factors are difficult to measure and were therefore excluded from my regressions. For instance, I do not control for the physician-to-population ratio. I hypothesize that this variable is negatively correlated with opioid overdose deaths, given that easier access to primary care physicians may reduce the incentive to substitute prescription opioids with heroin or other illegal drugs and may increase incentives to seek professional help among those suffering from OUD. However, I suspect that the physician-to-population ratio is positively correlated with Medicaid expansion, as studies tend to find that Medicaid expansion states have more primary care physicians (Saloner et al., 2018) and MAT providers (Meinhofer & Witman, 2018) than non-expansion states. Thus, the omission of this variable is likely exerting downward bias on my estimate of interest. This means that my fully specified regression may understate the magnitude of the positive relationship between Medicaid expansion and opioid overdose mortality. 

The above discussion of the physician-to-population ratio highlights another limitation of my study: even if I had access to data on this variable, it would not necessarily be a useful measure for a state-level analysis, given that there is substantial geographic variation in physician-to-population ratio within states (Naylor et al., 2019). Previous studies of opioid overdose mortality use county-level data (Abouk et al., 2021; Ibragimov et al., 2022; Kravitz-Wirtz et al., 2020) to allow for a more fine-grained analysis than I was able to conduct.  I was constrained to perform my analysis at the state level because county-level data on opioid overdose deaths were not available due to CDC data suppression rules.

Perhaps the strongest source of bias in my regression stems from the omission of a control for the size of a state’s illicit fentanyl market. The contribution of illicitly manufactured fentanyl to drug overdoses in general—but to opioid overdoses in particular—has increased considerably in the past decade (Jones et al., 2018). However, the relationship between the size of a state’s fentanyl market and its Medicaid expansion status is unknown. Therefore, the sign of any bias resulting from my omission of any control for this factor is also unknown.

My analysis may also be affected by measurement error in my opioid overdose data. The specific drugs that lead to an overdose death are often not listed on death certificates, which leads to an undercount in opioid overdose mortality rates (Rhume, 2018). One study suggests that the true number of annual opioid-involved overdose deaths is between 20 and 35%higher than that suggested by official estimates (Rhume, 2018). Future research should attempt, either through more sophisticated statistical methods or the inclusion of more accurate measures, to correct for this undercount.

The policy implications of this study are a mixed bag. My results could signal the need for a reconsideration of the way that Medicaid policy is being leveraged to combat the opioid crisis on a state-by-state basis. Medicaid expansion may allow for greater access to MAT practitioners and to OUD services, but this increased access may have a limited impact if it does not result in broadly increased use of those services, if they are of low quality, or if those who access these services do not use them properly (e.g., if they fail to complete recommended programs).  Thus, additional research is warranted on the efficacy of opioid-related services that are offered to Medicaid beneficiaries. Although X-Waivers are no longer a federal requirement (SAMHSA, 2023), many states still mandate varying levels of additional training for practitioners and impose various regulations on OTPs; these requirements have the potential to act as barriers to treatment. Further research should focus on the ways in which Medicaid policy can be strengthened to improve access to, and the quality of, MAT as a way of combating our growing opioid crisis.

While this thesis found a relationship between Medicaid Expansion and opioid mortality for some populations, this thesis does not conclude that expansion was bad for health outcomes overall. As mentioned, expansion allowed for increased access to opioids, but also aimed to increase access to MAT practitioners and to OUD services. Thus, if states increase focus on these programs, Medicaid expansion could potentially provide better support for improved health outcomes.

Diagnosing Concerning Reluctance of Ethnic Korean Russians to Migrate

Won Seok (Eric) Lee

I. Introduction

South Korea continues to suffer from a demographic standstill caused by the OECD's lowest fertility rate of 0.65 in the fourth quarter of 2023 (Cho 2024). A much-discussed policy option within South Korea is to encourage individuals of Korean descent abroad to remigrate to South Korea. Russia in particular maintains a large population of ethnic Koreans known as the  Koryo-Saram (or Koryoin). The Koryoin are descendants of migrants from northern Korea who settled in the Russian Far East during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1937, Soviet Leader Joseph Stalin deported the entire community of 171,781 ethnic Koreans to agricultural communities in Central Asia (J. Kim 2016, 4). Following the USSR's collapse, many ethnic Koreans were forced to resettle in the Black Soil region of southern Russia. Volgograd Oblast, located in the lower Volga region of southern Russia, currently hosts the largest concentration of ethnic Koreans, totaling around 50,000 people or 100,000 when including neighboring Rostov and Astrakhan oblasts (B. H. Kim 2017, 18; J. G. Kim & Lee 2006,  238). Although ethnic Koreans reside in other parts of Russia (e.g. Moscow, Far East), this study focuses on the Volgograd-Rostov region as it contains the largest portion of Russia's roughly 200,000 Koreans (B.H. Kim 2017, 15-16).Efforts by the South Korean government to encourage remigration of descendants of Korean emigrants living abroad took its modern form in 1999 with the passage of the Act on the Immigration and Legal Status of Overseas Koreans, which created the F-4 Overseas Korean visa (Brownfield 2024). The terms of this visa are much more favorable than the ordinary H-2 visa offered to foreign workers due to the fact that the H-2 only lasts for three years, while the F-4 can extend residency status after every three years. As foreign nationals of Korean ethnicity, the Koryoin qualify for the F-4 visa. However, relatively few Koryoin have taken advantage of this eligibility so far even though the Ministry of Justice granted F-4 visas to all Koryoin students currently attending primary and secondary school in South Korea in 2022 (Shin, 2022). Given South Korea’s strong economic standing compared to that of most Koryoin in southern Russia, it seems surprising that more Koryoin have not taken advantage of the easy path to remigration which current South Korean law offers.

II. Theoretical Considerations: Why No Mass Migration?

Despite the existence of certain laws and conditions that could help foster the mass return migration of the Koryoin back to South Korea, such a phenomenon has not occurred yet. According to traditional neoclassical economics, which asserts the complete rationality and profit-maximizing nature of humans, we should expect to see large numbers of ethnic Koreans moving back to take advantage of South Korea’s economy and laws that give them an edge in the labor market over non-ethnic Korean foreigners (Goldbach & Schlüter 2018, 132-134; Huber & Nowotny 2020). To explore this discrepancy, this article draws upon concepts from behavioral economics that offer a more nuanced picture:people’s risk preferences and loss aversion are also crucial factors behind the decision to migrate  in addition to purely economic considerations (Heitmueller 2005). 

In order to estimate a quantitative breakdown of people’s risk preferences, Halek & Eisenhauer in their study on life insurance (2001, 21) offer a novel method of quantitatively evaluating individuals’ risk preferences. In this study, between a choice of 0 (preferring to gamble by not selecting insurance) and 1 (not choosing to gamble and selecting insurance), those with a risk aversion measure of 0.5 or less means that they are more likely to be risk-averse and choose the insurance rather than vice versa (p. 21). . The study concluded that around 25%of the studied population were ‘risk-takers’ (risk aversion > 0.5). In other tests, this percentage varies from 23 to 30% (Halek & Eisenhauer 2001,  17-20). We can use this finding that between 23 and 30% of a given population tends to be risk-accepting as our baseline for examining the empirical case of the Koryoim.

Another useful tool from behavioral economics is the concept of prospect theory. According to prospect theory, individual experiences are measured relative to an initial reference point or benchmark, and individuals experience losses relative to this reference point more acutely than they experience quantitatively equal gains relative to the reference point. For example, taking an individual’s current income as a reference point, losing one dollar of income relative to current income causes a loss of utility (i.e., happiness or wellbeing) which is greater the increase in utility from gaining one dollar. According to some behavioral economists (e.g., Kahneman et al. 1991, 199-200) this ratio of utility decrease from a loss to utility increase from an equal gain can be as much as 2 to 1.

III. Diagnosis: Korean Russians Differ from Usual Migrant Groups

Experiences of Mass Displacement from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan

As we move to apply these concepts from behavioral economics to the individual case of the Koryoim, it is critical to note that the mass exodus of Korean communities from Central Asia during the 1990s was not a selective, voluntary movement of the kind behavioral economics conventionally studies. Rather, these communities were forcibly uprooted, regardless of individual risk preference. Therefore, risk-averse ethnic Koreans—individuals who would not have otherwise migrated—were included in the population forced out of Central Asia. For example, the Korean population in Tajikistan dropped by a staggering 87% due to the Tajikistan Civil War, which lasted from 1992 to 1997 (Lee 2012, 152, 160). Even if we assume that all the non-risk-averse or risk-accepting people (between 25 to 30 percent as noted by Halek & Eisenhauer) the much higher proportion of ethnic Koreans who left Tajikistan in the wake of its civil war, indicates that those with other risk levels also needed to migrate during the Civil War. 

Uzbekistan also witnessed a forcible depopulation of its ethnic Korean population (J. G. Kim & Lee 2006, 253). Uzbek government statistics reported that the ethnic Korean population in Uzbekistan plummeted from 230,000 to 155,900 during the 1980s,  a decrease of over 30% (Yoon 2006). Many of these migrants ended up in Russia; it has been estimated that 45% of all ethnic Koreans living in Russia and 62% of all ethnic Koreans living in the Volgograd Oblast came from Uzbekistan (J. G. Kim & Lee 2006, 248).

A prime example of the mass depopulation process occurred in Karakalpakstan, an autonomous republic located within Uzbekistan. During its heyday, Karakalpakstan hosted the second largest Korean population within Uzbekistan with populations of around 10,620 out of 75,000 total deportees to the country (Lee 2014, 209). However, between 2000 to 2011, the Korean population plummeted by 39%, with many moving to Volgograd (Lee 2014, 210-211). Even if we hypothesize that all of the risk-loving people who comprise between 25-30% of the population left, a substantial proportion must have included risk-averse people forced to move against their will.

The Tashkent Region, which is the province that hosts the largest concentration of Koreans in Uzbekistan, experienced similar demographic changes (Lee 2014, 209). In one local kolkhoz (collective farm) the Korean population collapsed from 16,000 to 2,500, and in another kolkhoz the population also dropped by about half (Lim 2007, 44). The story of Koreans in Volgograd is more one of forced displacement in which personal preferences did not play as much of a determining role than one of voluntary migrants who moved according to their personal preferences.

Although Uzbekistan avoided all-out civil war, Koreans in the country also suffered their fair share of civil strife that inflicted trauma that could influence their level of risk-aversion. The environmental degradation of the Aral Sea as a result of excessive cotton farming and the addition to ethno-political turmoil between ethnic Karakalpaks and Uzbeks caused many Koreans to flee Karakalpakstan (Lee 2014, 207-208). In the Tashkent Region, resurgence of ethnic nationalism meant ethnic Uzbeks took control over Korean-run kolkhozes that formed the nucleus of ethnic Korean communities. Economic turmoil coupled with the protectionist banning of crop exports dealt further blows to the kolkhoz-centered Korean community (Lim 2007, 44-45).

Factors Influencing the Choice of Southern Russia as a Destination for Ethnic Korean Refugees

As ethnic Koreans were forced to flee their homes and communities in Central Asia, their choice of southern Russia as a destination reflected a profound risk aversion and desire for community and familiarity. In the late 1950s, restrictions on movements of the Korean population was lifted (B. H. Kim 2017, 2, 32, 58). This allowed Korean farmers in Central Asia to work as seasonal laborers in other agricultural regions across the USSR, including the North Caucasus, Ukraine, and the Rostov-Volgograd region (B. H. Kim 2017, 18, 26, 34). Rather than moving as individuals, the Korean seasonal migrants moved collectively via an economic arrangement that also doubled as a social support network: the kobonjil (고본질/Кобонди). Korean farmers formed groups (known as a Brigada/бригада) and found work across various kolkhozes spread across the USSR, frequently taking family and relatives along with them (B. H. Kim, 2017, p. 6-7). Profit-seeking, entrepreneurial-minded Korean farmers thus frequently left their residences in Central Asia 1960s onwards and worked seasonally in agricultural regions of south Russia as the kobonjil system proved to be quite a lucrative endeavor (B. H. Kim, 2017, p. 7). By the time of the civil strife which forced ethnic Koreans to flee Central Asia in the early 1990s, , Volgograd was already a popular destination for the resettlers as many of them had familiarity with the region from past seasonal farming experiences. In addition, neighboring Rostov Oblast already had a substantial Korean population (B. H. Kim 2017, 17). From these details, we can conclude that for the Korean settlers, resettling in Volgograd was not an entirely alien or unfamiliar move. As a transnational people who were forced to have their ties to the ancestral homeland cut, the Korean farmers were merely taking advantage of the same political-economic system which they were familiar with despite the changes in political boundaries which were occuring during this time.

A survey conducted between 2003 and 2004 on 611 ethnic Koreans in Russia supports these findings. 35 out of 119 respondents in Volgograd stated that they left Central Asia due to economic reasons. This supports the historical finding that both the initial settlers and later newcomers were composed of entrepreneurial-minded individuals seeking to develop their agricultural career. However, the next largest reasons, ethnic discrimination and political reasons, were much more common responses proportionally compared to Koreans living in other reasons (Choi 2004, 301). This supports the contention that many Koreans in Volgograd were pushed out of Central Asia due to socio-political problems caused during this transition period. Another survey on why they chose Volgograd specifically as their destination again supports these findings: a large percentage said they chose Volgograd to make economic profit, but the largest contingent said their reason was to seek security (Choi 2004, 301). The existing connections and sense of community and familiarity made Volgograd the preferred destination for tens of thousands of ethnic Koreans displaced from Central Asia in the aftermath of civil conflict in the early 1990s. It is reasonable to theorize that the same preferences which led ethnic Koreans to choose southern Russia today lead them to stay instead of taking advantage of the opportunity to remigrate to South Korea represented by the F-4 visa, which was introduced less than a decade afterward.

Risk Preferences Change due to Trauma

While such extreme population movements lend support to the argument that more risk-averse as well as non-risk-averse/risk-accepting individuals ended up in Russia compared to other migrant communities, the psychological effects of such events might have inflicted must also be considered. Contrary to orthodox neoclassical economics, which argues that people’s preferences are stable over time, there is a growing body of research suggesting that this is not the case (Dohmen et al. 2017, F103; Sahm 2012; Schurer 2015, 482-483; Schildberg-Hörisch 2018, 148). Because the experience of war is found to increase risk-aversion, Tajikistan Koreans who formed the pioneer group of the Korean community in southern Russia could have experienced a change in their reference point towards more risk-averse behavior. Having finally regained some sense of security after traumatic forcible mass displacement, prospect theory would suggest that these ethnic Koreans would weigh the risks of remigration to that regained security much more heavily than the possible economic benefits of remigration (Y. Kim & J. Lee 2014; Lee 2012, 150). Language laws established in Russia in 1989 further assimilated the Korean population as many Koreans grew up speaking only Russian under Soviet education (Lee 2012, 157). According to Chaimun Lee (2012), Tajikistan Koreans deliberately chose Volgograd rather than neighboring Muslim countries due to the belief that Russia would treat ethnic Koreans better (158). This suggests that even when making the initial movement to southern Russia, Tajikistan Koreans were careful, selective, and probably risk-averse in their approach.

Agricultural Lifestyle Affects Risk Aversion and Time Preference

During the Soviet period, ethnic Koreans in the Soviet Union enjoyed a reputation for emphasizing education (Lim 2007, 45). While first- and second-generation Koreans remained agricultural workers, by the third generation, the community produced numerous engineers and other urban professionals across Central Asia (Lim 2007, 34). Unfortunately, as newly arrived refugees in Russia, many Koreans found themselves having to revert back to the agricultural work of their parents and grandparents (J. G. Kim & Lee 2006, 258-259). This might have caused formerly risk-accepting third-or-later-generation Koreans to become risk-averse due to agricultural labor. Most studies find that farmers tend to lean towards risk-aversion (Nainggolan, Rahmanto Moeis, & Termansen 2023, 10) compared to the general population.

IV. Lessons from this Policy Challenge: The Importance of Fostering Community Identity

As the South Korean government continues to pursue efforts to encourage ethnic Koreans in Russia to remigrate, it must accept that favorable immigration laws and strong economic incentives are not sufficient to produce the intended levels of remigration. If South Korea is to be successful in promoting remigration, it must take into account the traumatic historical experiences of ethnic Koreans abroad and those experiences’ continuing influence on those ethnic Koreans’ risk preferences.

Policies aimed at rebuilding the identity of ethnic Korean populations in Russia might help alleviate if not resolve the historical and cultural predicaments of ethnic Korean populations in Russia. Language acquisition (or rather reacquisition) could be an example. Hayakawa et al. (2019, 20-39) found that learning a foreign language reduces risk aversion. Because Soviet Koreans are now mostly in the third-or-later generations and grew up under Russian-first Soviet language policies, they can understand or speak only basic phrases of Korean and are not bilingual (Lee 2012, 157).

Working with the Sejong Institute, a government-run organization responsible for promoting the Korean language, could help promote language proficiency among ethnic Koreans in Russia. However, an imbalance currently exists as most Sejong facilities exist only in Moscow., Rostov-on-Don and Astrakhan only have one Sejon Facility each and Volgograd has none (King Sejong Institute Foundation n.d.). Sejong’s focus on Moscow is understandable since having a firm presence in the capital is the best way to capture a large audience of prospective Korean-learners. However, the institute must also consider the fact that struggling ethnic Koreans in the countryside also need Korean education in addition to Slavic Muscovites. Because learning a foreign language helps psychologically reduce risk-aversion, learning Koreanboth decreases risk-aversion and erodes linguistic barriers for living in Korea. The two mutually reinforce the other since the reluctance of moving to a country is likely to decrease once you gain the ability to speak the local language. The Sejong Institute should thus focus more of its resources on reaching out to neglected Korean farmers in the southern countryside. One possible method could be to close a facility in a rural city that lacks Koreans such as Yakutsk or Ulan-Ude and reopen in Volgograd, if resources are too stretched to add a new facility (King Sejong Institute Foundation n.d.).

V. Conclusion

The unique circumstances of Koreans in the Volgograd-Rostov region must be taken into account in order to consider their reluctance to remigrate to South Korea. Unique demographic circumstances, collective memory of hardship, and a changing of preferences brought by a transition to an agricultural lifestyle contributed to the reluctance among the ethnic Korean community to leave  their present territory, even when promising economic opportunities are available elsewhere. Improving educational access to the Korean language can help reduce their risk-averse tendencies and aid the Korean government in stimulating greater migration in the face of mounting demographic challenges.

Are Reparations for the Descendants of Enslaved Africans Just?

An analysis of reparations as an ethical issue using the consequentialist and distributive justice ethical framework

Anthony Shaw

Abstract: This essay explores the ethical dimension of providing reparations to Black Americans as a policy solution to the racial wealth gap in America through an application of the consequentialists and distributive justice ethical frameworks. Today, Black Americans possess 2.6% of the nation’s wealth while making up 13% of the country’s population. Additionally, the average white household has a net worth of $800,000 more than the average Black family. Reparations for the descendants of slaves as a policy solution to the wealth gap that exists between Blacks and Whites in America is not a new idea. Activists, academics, and politicians alike have advocated for reparations to the descendants of slaves as a necessary and critical first step towards genuine atonement for slavery and the hundreds of years of structural racism, and discrimination that followed. This paper contributes to the national discussion on reparations by analyzing this policy solution through the ethical frameworks of consequentialism and distributive justice – the very political philosophies that influenced America’s founding fathers – and finds that distributing reparations to the descendants of slaves is just. The essay concludes with a list of policy recommendations for a robust reparations policy aimed at eradicating the racial wealth gap in the United States.

I. Introduction

Reparations as a policy solution to the Black-White wealth gap is being debated in legislative sessions, on college campuses, during sermons at Black churches, and even neighborhood barber-shops. This essay contributes to the discourse by examining reparations against utilitarian consequentialism and distributive justice ethical frameworks. The ethical frameworks of consequentialism and distributive justice would classify the racial wealth gap between Blacks and whites in America as an ethical conundrum. Although the current strength of the American economy is based in free market capitalism – characterized by private ownership of businesses, freedom of competition and the price of goods and services determined by supply and demand – the American economy was birthed out of the free labor provided by enslaved Africans between the 15th and 19th centuries. After slavery ended, Black Americans were further restricted from achieving their full earning potential and building wealth due to legalized discrimination and racial oppression.

With an estimated GDP of more than $25 billion in 2022, the United States of America retains the status of wealthiest country in the world (IMF 2023). However, despite contributing hundreds of years of labor to the American economy, American descendants of slaves – Black Americans directly related to an enslaved African in America – did not accumulate wealth on par with white Americans. According to data from 2016 Survey of Consumer Finances, Black Americans only possess 2.6% of the nation’s wealth despite making up 13% of the nation’s total population (Blazina and Cox 2022). In 2009, 24% of Black households surveyed reported having no assets compared to 6% of White households (Fry et al. 2011). Today that translates into Black households having an average net worth of around $800,000 less than white households (Darity 2021). In more simple terms, Black households only possessed $15 in wealth compared to every $100 for white households (Donoghoe et al. 2024). Darity and Mullen, coauthors of From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century, argue that eradicating the racial wealth gap between Blacks and whites in America requires the direct payment of reparations (Darity and Mullen 2020). While many studies have found a positive association between educational attainment and earnings, this economic theory does not hold true when comparing the earnings of similarly educated Black and White Americans. Darity and Mullen assert that despite educational attainment being touted as the great economic equalizer, it is not a panacea and will not close the wealth gap between Blacks and Whites. For example, Black heads of households with a college degree, on average, have two-thirds of the net worth of White heads of households without a high school degree (Darity 2020). Extending Darity’s findings, Geary (2022) found that the Black-White racial wealth gap increased at every level of educational attainment between 2000 and 2018 with White workers earning more than Black workers at every education level. While these indicators are significant, it is important to note that they represent only a few data points on a long list of statistics highlighting the economic disparities slavery and its vestiges imposed on Blacks in America. Several political commentators, cultural figures, and academic scholars have made the case for reparations as a potential solution to the racial wealth gap between Blacks and whites (see Congresswoman Jackson Lee 2023; Coates 2019; Darity and Mullen 2020).

The racial wealth gap that exists in America can be traced back to slavery. In fact, the legal enslavement of Africans by Whites in America and the implicit and explicit racist practices that followed undergirds the economic disparity between Black and white Americans. Understanding the historical context that contributed to the racial wealth gap is necessary because it elucidates the concept of reparations as an ethical policy solution to address the racial wealth gap that persists between Blacks or American descendants of slavery and whites in America. To that end, this essay analyzes reparations as a policy solution to the racial wealth gap, a byproduct of the enslavement of Africans in America.

II. Background

The institution of slavery was deeply embedded into the American economy and as such, had a positive cascading effect on the wealth and income generated by white businesses and families alike. Since the nation’s founding in 1776, the institution of slavery bolstered the American economy and established the United States as a global capitalist powerhouse (Beckert 2015). Legalized slavery in the United States infused the economy in a myriad of ways. The most observable were through transactions such as the direct selling and transporting of slaves and the free labor they provided their slave-owners. For example, as property and assets, slaves could be transferred to other people through contracts, the execution of wills, or simply to pay off accumulated debts. Slavery was also profitable for whites who did not own slaves themselves. These business transactions included: lawyers overseeing transfers of slave ownership, insurance companies insuring slaves as property of their owners, newspapers and printing presses that profited from advertising slave auctions, sales, and posting “wanted” ads for run-away slaves, and low-skilled whites who served as slave catchers (Thomas 1997).

Interestingly, poor southern whites, especially farmers and uneducated workers, fiercely opposed the institution of slavery and blamed it for their economic condition because it excluded them from participating in the labor market and earning wages (Brewer 1930). Thus, poor whites were perhaps one of the biggest beneficiaries of ending legalized slavery, as they capitalized on the new opportunities during the Reconstruction era that Jim Crow prohibited for former slaves. Craven states, “only the institution of slavery, which in so many ways did damage to the poor White, saved him from competition from his darker fellow. Freedom for the Negro thrust forward a labor problem, tinged with the more bitter race problem” (Craven 1930, 11). The underclass of underemployed and unemployed poor southern whites were no longer forced to compete with rich white plantation owners and slaves for work in the antebellum south (Merritt 2017). The institution of slavery, however, fostered resentment among many poor whites. This resentment, rather than directed at the system itself, became a tool to solidify white supremacy and further marginalize Black Americans. Lastly, Northern whites also benefited from slavery through the use and trade of goods produced by slaves such as cotton and tobacco, as well as the savings associated with conducting business with entities that did not pay their labor force.

Furthermore, Blacks did not gain access to mainstream American livelihood after the abolition of slavery in 1865 under the 13th Amendment, which outlawed slavery and involuntary servitude except as punishment for breaking the law. Newly freed enslaved persons faced discrimination in almost every facet of life after the Civil War ended in 1865. In fact, they faced another century of legal discrimination until The Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964. Although Blacks were no longer forced to work for free after slavery was abolished, they were not afforded the same rights, opportunities, and protection as whites under the law. This was done officially during Reconstruction through the enactment of discriminatory laws, such as the Black Codes that only allowed newly freed Blacks to hold notoriously low-paying and unstable farming and domestic service jobs (Brewer 1930). The state of Mississippi, the first and most severe state to pass Black Code legislation, made it illegal for newly emancipated Blacks to own firearms, sell alcohol or groceries, or travel freely outside of their home county. They were also excluded from civic activities such as voting, serving on juries or testifying in cases involving white parties (Graff 1990). Black Americans in the antebellum south were excluded from the workforce, limited to menial low-wage and low-skilled jobs, or received a fraction of the pay of whites when they did gain employment (Derenoncourt et al. 2022). Blacks were also oppressed after slavery was abolished through violence, terrorism, and harassment by groups such as the Ku Klux Klan that were formed specifically to “keep the Negro in his place” and ensure they did not accumulate too much political, social, or economic power (Brewer 1930, 4).

In the rare instances when successful Black businesses and families did achieve prosperity, such as Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma or Rosewood in Florida, their businesses, homes, and land were destroyed or taken by racist white mobs (Barclay and Lewan 2001; and Blieberg 2023). The Tulsa Race Riots of 1921 resulted in the destruction of the Greenwood District which contained Black Wall Street, a thriving business center and prosperous Black residential community. Although the massacre lasted less than 24 hours, the destruction estimates include: 35 blocks burned to the ground; 300 dead; over 70 businesses destroyed; and more than 1,400 homes looted or destroyed (Burch et al. 2010). Scholars estimate the total cost of lost property in the Greenwood District after the Tulsa Race Riots to be around $100 million at today’s current values (CA Reparations Report 2023). The Tulsa Race Riots are infamous due to the amount of damage dealt to the predominantly Black community of Greenwood in such a short period of time; however, white mobs have terrorized Black communities across the nation for centuries.

While Blacks were struggling to gain a financial foothold post-slavery, whites benefited from federal programs such as the Homestead Act of 1862, which provided 1.5 million white families with 160-acre land grants during Reconstruction if they lived on the land for 5 years and paid a $10 filing fee (CA Reparations Report 2023; and Rosalsky 2022). In 1865, newly freed slaves and Blacks were promised 40 acres of reclaimed confederate territory and a mule under General Sherman’s Special Field Order No. 15. However, Andrew Johnson reversed Special Field Order No.15 after the assassination of President Lincoln (Rosalsky 2022). President Johnson also instituted a “restoration” program that removed formerly enslaved Blacks from the lands they acquired and returned them to former enslavers (CA Reparations Report 2023). These discriminatory federal arrangements further relegated Blacks to second class citizenship by precluding them from acquiring land and home ownership, making their ability to build wealth in America impossible. It is estimated that the federal government gave 246 million acres of land “essentially for free” to white Americans between 1868 and 1934. Today, those acres and associated wealth benefits are enjoyed by around 46 million white descendants – a quarter of the American adult population (CA Reparations Report, pg. 482, 2023). Although the end of slavery should have sparked the beginning of prosperity and freedom for Blacks, it did not. Instead, it ushered in a new era of oppression and racism that continued to stifle the economic advancement of Blacks in America and still persists to this day. While Conservatives may argue that social programs like Medicaid and SNAP contribute to the income gap, historical events like discriminatory Black Codes and Jim Crow laws, the Homestead Act which favored white settlers, the reversal of Special Field Order No. 15 that promised formerly enslaved people land, and the destruction of Black-owned businesses during Reconstruction all point to a much longer history of racial economic disadvantage directly tied to slavery.

Contextualizing the racial wealth gap as the result of over 200 years of slavery repositions it as arguably the most pressing ethical issue facing America today. The institution of slavery in America and the racist practices that followed enabled white Americans to earn incomes, build wealth, and accumulate assets that carried over across generations. Ultimately, this continued to reinforce the racial wealth gap that exists between Blacks and whites today. Inversely, Black Americans suffered generations of missed opportunities; effectively unable to build and pass on wealth to their future generations. Although reparations as a policy solution to the racial wealth gap is gaining momentum, it is not supported by every American. A 2021 Pew Center for Research survey found that most Americans view reparations negatively; only 3 in 10 Americans favor giving reparations (land or money) as repayment for slavery to the descendants of slaves, while the remaining 7 out of 10 Americans said they should not receive reparations. The survey responses varied more greatly across racial lines, with 77% of Blacks saying they favor some form of repayment to descendants of slaves while only 18% of white respondents favored repaying descendants of slaves (Blazina and Cox 2022). This essay will explore if providing reparations is the right thing to do through the lens of consequentialism and the distributive justice frameworks. The question it will answer is: “Are reparations the right and best policy solution to address the racial wealth gap between Blacks and whites in America?”

III. Framework Application 1

Utilitarian Consequentialism

Jeremy Bentham, the founder of utilitarianism, believed that the right thing to do required maximizing utility or producing the greatest amount of happiness. Towards that end, actions would be judged as right or wrong depending on if they produced more pleasure than pain. An application of the utilitarian philosophy would prompt the following question: “Did the choice, act, or action simply produce more good than bad?” Interestingly, Bentham also did not believe in natural rights (Sandel 2010). To get a better understanding of utilitarianism, we will review Bentham’s beggar’s proposal (Sandel 2010). Viewing the presence of paupers as a public problem because it could lead to sadness or disgust, Bentham proposed removing paupers from the streets and confining them in self-financing “workhouses.” He thought that this was the right solution to the problem, as he believed that their presence produced too much sadness or pain for the other citizens. Although this proposal appears cruel, it is important to note that Bentham was not attempting to penalize the beggars. He was singularly focused on increasing social utility and, in this example, removing the paupers from the public view at no cost to the citizens provided the route to achieving that particular goal.

With regards to American slavery, it can be argued that Bentham would have been in support of it due to the amount of good that slavery ultimately produced for America as a nation. Slave labor and the industry of cotton in the United States helped America establish itself as a global leader in an era of free market capitalism (Beckert, 2015). Therefore, American slavery, while not ideal, would have been just according to Bentham because it established the United States as a world power at the expense or pain of a small subset of the population who were viewed exclusively as property. American slavery juxtaposed to Bentham’s beggar’s proposal also insinuates that his likely reaction to slavery may have been to keep the enslaved out of the view of the public as much as possible to prevent the general public from having to see them.

Thus, viewing slavery as a national economic and industrial necessity and the enslaved persons exclusively as property, it can be further deduced that Bentham, as an individual, would not be in favor of reparations for the descendants of slaves. Given the low public support for reparations as a policy among the American populace, reparations might not fall under the happiness maximizing framework of utilitarianism. As we seek to analyze the ethical case for reparations, we must view Bentham’s framework as singularly focused on maximizing utility and minimizing pain. In her influential paper, Philosopher Phillipa Foot argued against utilitarianism as an appropriate ethical framework as it conflicts with common sense morality. She used the trolley car analogy to demonstrate that if presented with two options that result in either one person being killed or more than one person being killed, a consequentialist may justify killing one person instead of the group. However, Foot argued that killing one person violates our natural moral code because some acts are always wrong. Foot then proposes that morality is not just about maximizing happiness, but also about acting in accordance with virtues like honesty, courage, and justice. These virtues, she argues, are independent of utilitarianism and provide a framework for moral action. Foot’s framework of moral action would support providing reparations to the descendants of enslaved Africans because compensating their descendants for the institution of slavery and the racist injustices that followed is the morally right act due to the honoring of justice and fairness.

Overall, utilitarianism does not lead to support of reparations. Yet, some scholars like Foot question utilitarianism as a just ethical framework. Thus, reparations as redress for the institution of slavery and the subsequent years of racial terror that Blacks suffered appears the morally right thing given Foot’s framework of morality even if utilitarians may not agree.

Consequentialism

Consequentialism, an extension of utilitarianism, judges if something is morally right or wrong based on “the effects that the outcomes produce” (Goodin 1995). In other words, consequentialism is an ethical theory that evaluates the morality of actions and choices based on its consequences. This means that an action would be considered just or unjust by the good or bad consequences that it produces. Unlike utilitarianism, consequentialism also considers the long-term consequences and not just the immediate outcomes. An application of consequentialism would answer the question: “What choice or act would lead to the outcome that is most good over time?” An example of consequentialism in practice would be stealing food (assuming you could not pay) to feed your starving family. In this example, stealing food, the good consequence, could lead to the better outcome than the bad consequence, which could be death from starvation. Consequentialists would also say that lying to save someone’s life is right because the good consequences of lying, saving a life, would outweigh the bad or the lie.

An ethical analysis of reparations using the consequentialist framework would answer the question “Do the good consequences of reparations outweigh its bad consequences?” Opponents of a reparations policy would likely point to the following three areas – political backlash due to lack of support among a subset of the population, social programs disincentivizing work, and reparations increasing U.S. national debt – where the impact of a reparations policy would outweigh any potential benefits. Recalling the Pew Research Center’s 2021 Reparations survey statistic that 70% of white Americans oppose a reparations policy for the descendants of slaves, it is important to note that reparations for the victims and survivors of the Holocaust had an even lower approval after World War II ended (Blazina and Cox 2022; and Neiman 2020). Wiedergutmachung, or reparations as retribution for Germany’s role in the Holocaust was supported by only 11% of Germans in 1953 when Germany made their first reparations payment to the state of Israel (Neiman 2020). Germany, the first nation to voluntarily pay reparations as atonement for past human rights injustices sanctioned by the government, sets a precedent for the United States. Despite the lack of German support for the Wiedergutmachung, the Bundestag legislated a reparations project in 1951 to ensure that Germany would pay “collective compensation” for oppressing and plundering the Jewish people during the Holocaust that amounted to approximately $61 billion in reparations payments by the German government 70 years later (Darity et al. 2023). Many argue that the act of providing reparations after World War II helped with the healing process of the War (Neiman 2020). Thus, future stability outweighed low support. Reparations towards descendants of enslaved persons could help establish a critical initial step towards healing and addressing systemic racism in America. Progress towards closing the racial divide could outweigh the lack of support.

The second bad consequence associated with reparations concerns its potential negative impact on the incentive to work. However, there is no evidence that American government aid programs disincentivize work. Citing multiple studies on the impacts of Medicaid expansion, Currie and Duque (2019) argue that Medicaid access has not had a statistically significant impact on employment or earnings. In a study conducted by the Center on Budget Policy and Priorities, Rosenbaum (2013) found that the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) – a government benefit program that ensures low-income families can purchase food – did not negatively impact workforce participation by creating work disincentives. Data analyzed by Rosenbaum reveals that over 80% of SNAP recipients hold employment either in the year before or after receiving benefits. This suggests a high rate of participation in the workforce among able-bodied SNAP recipients. As Rosenbaum herself succinctly states, “the majority of SNAP recipients who can work, do so.”(Rosenbaum 2013). Finally, the consequence of reparations increasing the U.S. national debt fails to hold merit. The American Government has consistently identified money and resources to fund operations abroad. The United States gave an estimated $60 billion in global aid in 2022 alone (Wolf 2023). Between January of 2022 and January of 2024, the United States government gave approximately $75 billion in aid to Ukraine for their war with Russia (Masters and Merrow 2024). The United States has also given Israel an estimated $260 billion since World War II and an average of $3 billion annually in recent years (Wolf 2023). A review of the United States government’s historical international aid budget appropriations to Israel and the more recent aid given to Ukraine would not indicate that lack of funds and increasing the national debt is a valid counterargument to a reparations policy for descendants of enslaved Africans in America.

A consequentialist would likely view the racial wealth gap and slavery as two distinct ethical problems. However, since the institution of slavery instigated the racial wealth gap, it is important to analyze slavery as well under the consequentialist framework. This requires an answer to the question: “Did the good consequences of slavery in America outweigh the bad consequences of slavery?” The good consequences of slavery include fueling the Industrial Revolution in the United States and Europe and spreading western culture and technology to other parts of the world. The bad consequences of slavery are: the subjugation of Blacks as less than human, segregation, and violence (Coates, 2014). The modern response to slavery as an ethical dilemma would be to say it was unequivocally unjust. However, consequentialists would argue that slavery, while not ideal, did increase the general welfare of the nation to the detriment of the enslaved. With regards to the issue of providing reparations to the descendants of slaves, consequentialists would not support it as a policy solution. Despite the litany of negative consequences it created for Blacks, they would oppose giving reparations to the descendants of enslaved Africans for the following reasons. First, consequentialists would not think that slavery was unjust because the good consequence, economic prosperity for the nation, outweighed the bad consequence, maltreatment of Blacks. Therefore, they would not endorse repayment to Blacks or the descendants of slaves as the right thing to do. Second, consequentialists would be concerned with the consequences of funding reparations because the enslavers who should be penalized for slavery and pay the reparations are not necessarily the people who would fund the reparations. Instead, that financial burden would likely fall on people that neither participated in, nor profited from the enslavement of Africans in America.

An application of the utilitarian ethical framework indicates Jeremy Bentham, the founder of utilitarianism, would have supported slavery. Many consequentialists that came after Benthem would be in agreement. On the other hand, some consequentialists like Goodin, would argue that the deleterious effects that slavery and its vestiges had on Black Americans in the long-term were not justified by the economic prosperity it created for some Americans over time. In other words, the consequences of slavery did not justify the wealth it produced. For example, Goodin may take issue with how racism, which sustained slavery, created a divided American society laden with inequity. Police brutality and mass incarceration, two of the most horrific racist practices endured by Blacks are carried out by present day police forces, which started as slave patrols charged with finding and returning enslaved fugitives to their masters (Bailey et al. 2021). Second, the economic condition of Blacks today is a direct consequence of their enslavement and the free labor they provided. Their inability to earn equal pay, become homeowners, accumulate savings, and pass on wealth negatively affects the American economy as a whole. If Blacks are not able to achieve economic mobility by accumulating and transferring wealth, then a portion of Black Americans who descended from enslaved Africans will continue to be dependent on government programs to sustain themselves.

Consequentialism is more complex than utilitarianism and asks a different question to arrive at the right thing to do; an application of the consequentialist framework would support reparations as a policy solution. Especially, consequentialism might support reparations if future benefits of reparations outweigh costs or when applying Goodin’s view of consequentialism. Interestingly, in the case of slavery, it is initial suppression of the individual rights of the slaves which sets off the chain of consequences that allows consequentialism to support reparations (Sandel, 2010).

IV. Framework Application 2

Distributive Justice

Although John Stuart Mill’s ethical philosophy was influenced by Bentham, Mill was a major proponent of individual autonomy. Mill stated, “the liberty of the individual must be thus far limited; he must not make himself a nuisance to other people” (Mill 2003). Mill believed that one person’s rights ended once they started to infringe upon the rights of someone else. This libertarian concept known as the “harm principle” encapsulates the core belief of libertarians and is also a central concept of distributive justice. Libertarians also favored the free market and thought that any government actions beyond enforcing contracts, protecting private property and keeping the peace were unjust. According to Sandel, libertarians specifically opposed state policies that were paternalistic, moral, or required people to help others through the redistribution of income or taxation (Sandel 2010). An application of the libertarian ethical framework would ask the question: “would the choice or act harm or infringe upon the individual rights of a third party?” Libertarians would be opposed to slavery because it infringed upon individuals’ rights and caused tremendous harm to others. However, libertarians would view reparations as an overstep of state power. Thus, reparations as a policy solution would not be supported by libertarians.

Libertarians also subscribed to the distributive justice ethical theory. The distributive justice ethical framework is a libertarian tenet that prioritizes individual rights and looks to the state to protect those rights through enforcing contracts, protecting private property from theft and keeping the peace (Sandel 2010). As Rawls states in A Theory of Justice, “the principle for society is to advance as far as possible the welfare of the group, to realize to the greatest extent the comprehensive system of desire arrived from the desires of its members’” (Rawls, 1999). Rawls would go on to say, “one reaches the principle of utility in a natural way: a society is properly arranged when its institutions maximize the net balance of satisfaction” (Rawls 1999). To Rawls, justice equaled fairness. He rejected consequentialism because it did not take into account how benefits and burdens or pleasure and pain were split among the people, making a consequentialist society unjust by Rawls’ standards.

Robert Nozick modifies Rawls’ theory of distributive justice by adding two additional questions: “Were the resources used to make income rightfully yours at the start? And if the wealth made was through exchanges in the free market or through gifts (Sandel, 2010)?” With regards to the question of origin, profits earned from slavery would be deemed illegitimate because it was initially gained through the unjust enslavement of Blacks in America, which was an abhorrent infringement upon individual rights. An application of Nozick’s version of the distributive justice ethical framework would support redistribution of income or taxes if the original income or subsequent transactions were unjust or illegitimate. Recognizing that Nozick may make the more conservative argument that all American wealth is not the product of slavery, we provide the following counterarguments. First, it may be true that not all of the wealth possessed by Americans is the result of slavery; however the government allowed the institution of slavery to persist despite it being an immoral and unjust practice because of its economic benefits. Moreover, the American government has appropriated taxes to provide military and economic aid for issues that neither transpired on American soil, nor was sanctioned by the United States government.

Second, contrary to what many believe, American slavery originated in Puritan New England and New Amsterdam, the Dutch settlement that would later become New York City (Delle and Nassaney 2019). The Amsterdam Stock Exchange, the world’s first stock exchange, was created specifically to help finance the slave trade and sold shares of shipping companies such as the Dutch East India Company, that invested in and profited from the slave trade (Chen 2022). In fact, “the same Dutch who founded New Amsterdam created the world’s first stock exchange and invented many of the building blocks of capitalism, upon which New York rose” (Thomas 2019). Enslaved Africans not only produced wealth for slave owners, they were also assets themselves whose value further contributed to the wealth of their master’s families. New York City’s Wall Street, the financial center of the world, was also the northern center of the slave trade where recently arrived Africans would be auctioned off and sent to other parts of America. American banks were culpable as well, since they funded the expansion of slavery, accepted deposits from slavery profiteers, and counted enslaved people as assets when determining a person’s wealth (Thomas 2019). Thus, while all American wealth is not a result of slavery, the fact that the stock exchange, America’s oldest companies and numerous banks were either funded by slavery, prospered directly because of slavery or built by slave labor is also true. Wall Street was literally built by enslaved Africans while simultaneously serving as a marketplace for slave auctions, whose profits helped perpetuate the institution of slavery (Thomas, 2019). The economic impact of slavery on the American economy is complex; however, it is also significant as it helped the American economy establish itself as a global financial leader and supported the primary industries that were in America at the time. It is not a coincidence that America surpassed Britain in terms of Gross Domestic Product in the 18th century. The free labor provided by enslaved Africans in America made it impossible for Britain to compete with the global economy.

As for Nozick’s question of trades made in the open and fair market, the answer to this question is also “no” since the economic conditions and practices experienced by slaves were not fair and equitable. As noted earlier, much of the wealth and assets currently possessed by whites in America that account for the wealth gap can be traced back to slavery. The free labor provided by slaves served as the impetus for the financial divide that would be reinforced through discriminatory practices even after slavery was abolished in 1865. Therefore, it could be argued that Nozick’s theory - even if Nozick himself does not support it - would be in favor of reparations or the redistribution of profits made from slavery because the incomes earned by white families during slavery and its aftereffects created the wealth gap that exists between Blacks and whites today. This policy position by Nozick, while altruistic at first glance, is not. Sandel cautions that reparations for Nozick would be a corrective action to redress the past wrongs of slavery not an attempt to create economic equity for its own sake (Sandel 2010).

Framework Reconciliation

Responses to the ethical framework of reparations vary for different ethical schools of thought. Utilitarians reject the idea of reparations for descendants of slaves as a policy solution. Consequentialists, however, have a more nuanced approach, with some viewpoints supporting reparations. The distributive justice ethical framework when applying Nozick’s framework unanimously supports reparations, despite Nozic himself leaning towards a more conservative argument. Therefore, an ethical case can be made for reparations to descendants of slaves.

The more difficult question of “how?” remains unanswered. Specifically, neither theory would condone private property being taken by the state or individuals being coerced to help others. This point of convergence is an important one as it is also shared by libertarians such as Mills, who believed in a person’s right to do what they wanted with their possessions as long as they did not harm others, and Nozick who believed in distributive justice as fairness on limited occasions. As discussed, Nozick’s two pronged test for distributive justice considers: 1) the origins and; 2) the environment or conditions for the subsequent transfer of resources to determine if redistribution would be right or wrong. Using this as the test, profits gained from slavery and the intergenerational transfer of those assets would not be viewed as just and would necessitate redistribution or reparations to the wronged parties. Which, in this case, are the enslaved Africans. In order to reconcile these parallel views and answer the question of “Are reparations the right thing to do?” We will apply the consequentialist and distributive justice frameworks as they are the most strict ethical frameworks available and relevant to this analysis. Both of these frameworks would propose some form of reparations as a policy solution to resolve the racial wealth gap that exists between Blacks and whites. Ultimately, consequentialists would be in favor of reparations due to its potential to increase utility. Disciples of Nozick, would point to justice, equity, and fairness to reach the same outcome.

V. Recommendations

While reparations as a redress to past injustices committed against oppressed groups is controversial, it is not new (Hassan and Healy 2019). Over 70 years have passed since the signing of the Luxembourg Agreements, the reparations settlement through which the German government has paid and continues to pay Holocaust survivors and their families for the atrocities committed by the Nazis in the first half of the 20th century (Grieshaber 2022). The case of reparations for the survivors of the Holocaust and their families is extremely relevant and applicable to the case for reparations for the descendants of enslaved Africans in America. The World War II reparations were the first reparations paid by a post-war nation as a recognition of wrongdoing. More importantly, according to Susan Nieman, Director of the Einstein Forum in Berlin, reparations for the treatment of Jewish people by the German government were only supported by 11% of Germans and white Americans prior to the signing of the Luxembourg agreement (Nieman 2020).

Precedent for reparations in the United States has also been established. The United States government provided land and monetary compensation to Native Americans as restitution for pushing them off of their lands in America through years of genocide (Hassan and Healy 2019). The United States government also paid to support the restoration of Europe following World War II through the Marshall Plan. These United States payments, while typical for post-war agreements among participating nations, were significant because of the actions of Germany leading up to the Second World War. World War II was fought to stop the campaign of genocide and implicit enslavement of Jewish families by Adolf Hitler and his fascist Nazi regime (Grieshaber 2022). The United States government paid an estimated $37 million in 1948 and $1.6 billion in 1988 to Japanese-Americans as compensation for their mass internment during World War II (Hassan and Healy 2019). In August of 2022, New York State Governor Kathy Hochul created a Holocaust Claims Processing Office and committed an estimated $183 million dollars to compensate victims and their beneficiaries for lost assets as a result of the Holocaust (State of New York Governor’s Office 2024).

Today, as it stands, Black Americans are the only historically marginalized group in America to not receive reparations for the injustices they suffered. However, past reparations policies in the United States provide several models to consider when designing an appropriate reparations program for the descendents of enslaved Africans. Beyond those templates, a multitude of scholars, historians, and political activists have propagated additional reparations tenets for Black Americans. Figure 1 (above) provides a list of transformative recommendations germane to a well designed reparations program aimed at closing the racial wealth and opportunity gap experienced by Blacks in America as a result of slavery and racial discrimination.

Economists have struggled to reach agreement on a number that represents the actual cost of enslavement to Black Americans. However, William Darity, economist and Distinguished Professor of Public Policy at Duke University estimates that the racial wealth gap caused by slavery and the following decades of structural racism would cost approximately 11 trillion of structural racism would cost approximately 11 trillion dollars to resolve (Darity 2021). Noting the United States government’s recent multi trillion dollar response to the Covid 19 pandemic, he continues, “The resources can be found. Correcting the historical racial inequities in the United States is surely worth the cost” (Darity 2021). Consequentialists and distributive justice proponents alike, would certainly agree.

A More Global Approach to Education Policy

Low-Income Student Performance in Chile, and Potential Applications for the American Inner City

Michael Saunders

I. Introduction

In attempting to define the commonly deployed term ‘inner city’, we can stumble upon a variety of interpretations. Merriam-Webster defines the term as, “the usually older, poorer, and more densely populated central section of a city” (Inner City Definition & Meaning, 2024). Wikipedia interprets the phrase as the following: “The term inner city has been used, especially in the United States, as a euphemism for majority-minority lower-income residential districts that often refer to rundown neighborhoods, in a downtown or city center area.” (Inner City, n.d.) One can easily see a similarity in description emerging from these two sources – a pattern of perception. If we continue on with Dictionary.com and Cambridge English Dictionary, we find the following respective definitions: “an older part of a city, densely populated and usually deteriorating, inhabited mainly by poor, often minority, groups” (INNER CITY Definition & Usage Examples, n.d.); and “the central part of a city where people live and where there are often problems because people are poor and there are few jobs and bad houses” (Inner City Definition, n.d.). Although the definitions change slightly between sources, the overall pattern remains the same.

The conditions in the core of American cities have become active examples of the potential dangers and pitfalls that can await the most vulnerable – even in the dynamic incubators of innovation that the modern global city could rightly be characterized. As the multinational urban-centered discourse evolves, it is increasingly filtered through the cosmopolitan aspects of the modern global city. As the development trajectory of the global south continues on, major geopolitical shifts, such as the wars in Ukraine and Gaza and the emergence of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) as advanced emerging economies on the world stage, influence the conversation around the increasingly multipolar shift in global power. Additionally, the rising multipolarity also places policy priorities and successes from a greater number of actors into the mainstream. Through careful analysis of the factors, successes and failures behind various forms of international urban policymaking, American policymakers can better equip themselves with a toolkit designed to address their cities’ most pressing problems. Furthermore, by learning from their counterparts, the US can gain valuable insight from nations addressing similar issues from a less resourced position.

Violent crime in American cities has been on the decline consistently for the past few decades (Reported Violent Crime Rate in the U.S. 2022, 2023), and the rate of incarceration of most groups has fallen over the same time period (US Correctional Population Continued to Decline in 2021, 2023), which suggests progress. Despite these positive developments, poverty and all the social problems that go along with it, including low educational outcomes, underinvestment and heightened rates of violence, continue to persist. This article provides a cursory view of problems in education in the American city of Baltimore and then provides policy frameworks that found success in improving low income student outcomes in Chile. By placing these elements side by side, it is the hope that these successes can be culturally and contextually adapted to meet the pressing needs of the people in these environments.

Baltimore’s education system has long been a point of critique, concern and overall contention. Recent data shows that at the elementary, middle and high school levels, less than 10% of students score as proficient in math. On the reading side, outcomes are a bit better, but still leave a lot to be desired with proficiency at 12, 14 and 27% (elementary, middle and high school respectively) (Baltimore City Public Schools - U.S. News Education, n.d.). Even more troubling is that while advocates correctly point to chronic underfunding or lack of resources as catalysts to low educational outcomes, recent budgetary changes mean that Baltimore City Schools spend greater than $20,000 per student – some of the highest in the nation (Papst, 2020). The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated educational obstacles with the often failed or lackluster implementation of distance learning (Moscoviz & Evans, n.d.). This is combined with a 50% rate of students who are economically disadvantaged and often coming from environments beleaguered by trauma (Baltimore City Public Schools - U.S. News Education, n.d.), as well as a chronic absentee rate that climbed as high as 58% in 2022 (Papst, 2023). The numbers show us that students are not getting the education they need or the connection and sense of belonging that they desperately desire within schools as an institution.

The Sociedad de Instrucción Primaria (SIP) is a network of private voucher schools that serve primarily low income students in Chile. These schools have gained renown due to their ability to produce students performing at or above – sometimes nearly a full standard deviation higher – than nearby schools, which are more well resourced and have a higher concentration of pupils from middle class or wealthier families. (Henriquez et al., 2012,) A study examined SIP performance to deduce if any unobservable factors contribute to this success. After controlling for qualitative variables, results were both robust and consistent, finding that students in the SIP program still performed better compared to students of similar characteristics not participating in the program. When interviewing staff to further investigate the factors leading to successful outcomes, a consistent theme emerged among interviewees: SIPs placed “children’s learning as a central and permanent goal, an aim that is shared and that drives the community’s efforts” (Henriquez et al., 2012,). These results seem to be bolstered by Will Dobbie and Roland Fryer’s study of charter schools, which found that:

“Traditionally collected input measures – class size, per-pupil expenditure, teacher certification and teacher training – are not correlated with school effectiveness. In stark contrast, we show that an index of five policies suggested by qualitative research – frequent teacher feedback, the use of data to guide instruction, high-dosage tutoring, increased instructional time and high expectations – explains approximately 45 percent of the variation in school effectiveness,” (Dobbie & Fryer, 2013).

These findings suggest that simple fixes in the form of increased spending will not increase performance in a significant (or, at least not efficient) way. While more studies, data and further policy exploration is necessary before fully committing to the depth of action that reform requires, these aforementioned studies can serve as foundations of new mental models around which we can frame new approaches to tackling the issues in urban education, both in Baltimore and potentially beyond. From this standpoint, I present the following policy frameworks:

II. An upstream model of development: students, schools, households and neighborhoods

The discussion around urban education should be focused on the interconnected nature of development with the environment that it resides in, and should seek not only to maximize the development in each of these sectors, but also to focus on how success in one can reverberate to others. The studies show that community buy-in and stakeholding in educational success can not only improve school performance, it can reduce neighborhood violence, improving prospects for attracting necessary investment. Examples include: student tutoring initiatives that feature resource information for parents or guardians; educator-community dialogue which features complimentary childcare; or school-sponsored events which feature neighborhood targeted joint projects which rally community members around pupils.

III. Expanding teacher and administrator capacity: data skills as essential to educational development

Given the findings of the Dobbie/Fryer study, the persistence in traditional metrics of school performance can potentially represent stagnation (Dobbie & Fryer, 2013). However, heavy handed interventions by policymakers who may be unfamiliar with the day-to-day nuances of education may exacerbate current issues or create new ones. Instead, data literacy, and skills including analysis, modeling, and visualization among others must become as essential to teacher and administrator training as mastery of curriculum or management. Similar to how Fryer’s team discovered a litany of performance indicators that were more correlated to performance than traditional ones, so too can America’s teachers uncover other variables that correlate more closely with successful outcomes, allowing for a more efficient deployment of resources, quicker adaptation to changing circumstances, and easier pivots in strategic planning.

Interview: How Has AI Pixelated the Regulatory Landscape?

Methods to Clarify the Future of AI Regulation

Emma Ford & Alisha Parikh

Picture this: it’s the early 1900s and an American family eagerly packs into their new Ford Model T to embark on a family outing. The car has no seatbelts. The roads are bumpy and unpaved. There are no stop signs or speed limits to guide the family to their destination. Americans today might describe the scene as a Wild West, a rough, lawless frontier in need of regulation to clean up the chaotic landscape.

The disruptive effects of the Model T and more broadly the automotive industry coupled with the uncertain regulatory landscape parallels the explosive and potentially hazardous effects of AI technology today.

“I think [AI is] similar to cars, really,” said Joseph Jerome, a Tech and Public Policy Visiting Fellow at the Georgetown McCourt School and assistant professor at the University of Tampa. “... very rapidly we went from people having to ride on horseback and a maximum speed limit of like 12 miles per hour to cars. …Driving is this crazy complicated, multitasking thing…initially you literally had police running people off the road early on because nobody knew what a police car was. Instead you’ve got this unmarked car speeding towards you and you’re like ‘what’s going on?’ And so… the early days of cars was a Wild West of just destruction and unsafe vehicles. So pretty quickly we had a combination of hard regulation and safety rules put in place.”

In 1908, Ford’s innovative advancement of the assembly line to an automated system made car ownership a real possibility for the average American. According to the Census Bureau, car ownership rates grew from 200,000 in the first year of the Model T to over 23 million by the end of the 1920s. Similarly, with the introduction of ChatGPT and other copycat generative AI chatbots, the average American can now access a plethora of instantaneous information with only a few keyboard commands. Over 13 million unique users make requests to ChatGPT daily.

Like the early days of driving, AI technology faces a blurry regulatory landscape. It took over a century for federal and state governments to implement regulation and infrastructure projects that both protected car owners against the dangers of driving and encouraged standardized driving practice. For example, the Federal government did not begin construction on the highway system until 1956, and only passed the first federal national speed limit law in 1974.

Unlike with cars, Congressional members have improved their regulation response time, in that multiple members have introduced regulations to standardize technological practices in the creation and use of these generative AI models. United States House Representative Don Beyer (D-VA), who is currently returning to school at George Mason University to receive a Masters in Machine Learning, serves as Vice Chair of the Congressional Artificial Intelligence Caucus. In 2023, Beyer sponsored the AI Foundation Model Transparency Act, which directs the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to set standards on the type of information the FTC must receive regarding high-impact foundation models and what information the public must receive, as well. The intended goal of the act is to address potential biases in the training algorithms and datasets used to create the technology.

“One of the reasons why I introduced the AI Foundation Model Transparency Act was to make consumers and consumer protection agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) aware of what data is used to train AI models and to avoid this bias,” Beyer said in writing. “At the same time, companies need to protect their intellectual property so that they can continue to innovate, which is why this bill would not mandate that companies disclose all their training data, but only high-level information about the sources and composition of the training data.”

In January of this year, the Biden-Harris White House also announced an executive order addressing AI technology around topics of “Managing Risks to Safety and Security” and “Innovating AI for Good”. In particular, the executive order aims to protect competition and consumer interests like privacy and equity concerns while maintaining flexibility for technological innovation.

This balancing act between consumer protection and technological innovation is a central concern of tech policy in the United States. This begs two critical questions:I: (1) can the political landscape promote the societal benefits of this new technology while mitigating risk and (2) unlike the early days of driving, can the red tape, bureaucratic federal governance structure keep pace with the evolving technology?

Consumer Protection - Privacy and Equity

Privacy in the United States is not a constitutional right. However, various court cases have established a right to privacy over the years. Generally, this right to privacy was specific to privacy in one’s home and one’s person. As such, there are no blanket federal protections guaranteeing a digital right to privacy. Instead, unlike the European Union which guarantees the right to privacy, including digital privacy, in the EU Convention of Human Rights, American citizens maintain sector-specific privacy rights. The Health and Information Portability Protection Act (HIPPA) for example, specifically guarantees the right to privacy regarding one’s sensitive health data.

The dawn of the digital era led to the monetization of individuals’ personal information, which created this dynamic landscape of collecting, using, selling, and sharing individuals’ personal information without limitation and for a time without individuals' knowledge of such activities.

Jerome, an expert in privacy policy as it pertains to technology, has witnessed first hand the changing definitions of privacy and consumers’ attitudes toward the idea of privacy in the digital age. Prior to teaching at the University of Tampa, Jerome served as legal and policy counsel for the Future of Privacy Forum. He notes a substantial shift in Americans’ views on privacy and privacy rights today as compared to twenty years ago. Initially, privacy concerns centered around government surveillance. These concerns peaked in 2014 following former government contractor, Edward Snowden’s leak of classified NSA documents revealing a government surveillance program that monitored the communication records of American citizens generally.

But these days, Jerome notes, the privacy conversation is dominated by concerns over data collection practices, algorithmic bias and transparency.

“I think this ping pong between concerns about how governments are using data to how companies are using data has led to this ecosystem where everybody is just concerned about tech,” said Jerome. “… and artificial intelligence supercharges all of these issues.”

Another impediment to regulating AI is its conflict with First Amendment rights, like free expression. For example, in 2021, local civil rights activist groups in California sued Clearview AI for violating the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA, formerly known as the California Consumer Protection Act). Under the CPRA, it is illegal to collect, share, use, or sell California residents’ data without their consent. Clearview AI is a facial recognition program designed to support local, state, and federal law enforcement. However, their facial recognition database was created by scraping publicly available photos of individuals from the internet without their consent or knowledge. Clearview AI, in their argument, claimed their actions from the app’s inception to execution, including scraping images of people’s faces from social media, were protected by their First Amendment right to freedom of expression.

What has resulted, Jerome remarks, is a patchworked privacy landscape in the U.S. littered with political compromises that act as band aids, not solutions, to a growing need for more privacy regulation. In contrast, the European Union continues to move forward with comprehensive privacy protection like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which is hailed as the most stringent and comprehensive privacy and security law globally.

Victoria Houed, another Tech & Public Policy Visiting Fellow and current Director of AI Policy and Strategy at the Department of Commerce flagged the monetization of data as another barrier to comprehensive privacy reform.

“Data is being sold off to people and being utilized and consumers are not seeing a dime of that money,” said Houed. “Data is kind of king. It’s like the most valuable asset in our society today but again consumers are fully unaware of this … there are members who benefit off of the money that the companies make off of that data and those people also donate to their campaigns, and I think that a lot of members are trying to hit this kind of sweet spot of like again innovation, but also protecting consumer protection.”

Houed also discusses the equity implications of AI technology. For example, Houed points out that for consumers to even benefit from the positive aspects of AI, they first must have access to broadband in order to utilize AI technology, like Chat-GPT. Therefore, regulation should account for these limitations and ensure that best practices encourage improved access to technology and protect Americans from unsafe or inequitable uses of data in the development of these technologies.

A central element of Houed’s work at the Department of Commerce is around how to promote the use of good data by the tech companies to ensure accuracy of models.

“In the past, if you looked up like ‘tell me the population or like demographic data of Suitland, Maryland’ … like 80% of the data that it would give about the population and different types of people who live there would all be incorrect because it was taken from a website that came from a landscaping company in Suitland, Maryland that was fully out of date,” said Houed.

Beyer shares that in addition to legislating the tech companies, legislation needs to better educate the public to become more digitally literate so that they can better identify mis and disinformation and concerns around privacy. For equity, Beyer explains that his CREATE AI Act would establish the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR), “a shared national research infrastructure that provides complex resources, data, and tools needed to develop safe and trustworthy artificial intelligence.”

According to Jerome, improved privacy protections could be around the corner. He predicts society is a scandal away from galvanizing enough support and attention to privacy to push legislation through Congress. But identifying that threshold is hard to define, especially since data breaches like that of Equifax did not move the needle toward comprehensive privacy protection. He concedes that perhaps state-level reform may need to continue before Congress enacts legislation.

“I think you’re going to need another news story that really captures the people, captures the public or the media’s attention about some sort of data abuse,” said Jerome. “AI could generate that, frankly. But you need that sort of perfect storm.”

Governance Structure

With an engineering background, experience in the private tech space, and as a former TechCongress fellow to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Houed has a unique vantage point of the tech policy regulatory landscape. With this experience in both the government and private space, Houed identifies a handful of difficulties Congress faces when regulating in this sphere.

For starters, the average age of a Senator in the 118th Congress is 64 and the average age of a member in the House of Representative 57. The internet became publicly available in 1993,, which means that the average Congressmember was 35 years old when they began to familiarize themselves with technology. Given the speed of technological innovation and the lack of tech familiarity in Congress threatens the potential for regulation in the AI space. . Given this, Houed explains, tech experts, like TechCongress Fellows, on the Hill often have to start at the beginning to bring members up to speed on the AI landscape.

“It’s really hard to develop a full understanding of [AI technology] within a couple months, especially as they’re trying to do a lot of other things,” said Hoeud.

As a result, legislators often focus on elements of regulation that they can more easily understand and for which sector-specific privacy laws already exist like focusing on the harms of AI for children, which is regulated by the Children Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). COPPA prohibits unfair or detective practices regarding the collection, use, and disclosure from and about children (13 and under) on the internet. The rising influence of political polarization, Jerome adds, also leads to difficulty in the regulatory space and limits what type of information Members might focus on. Additionally, the structure of Congress, in general, creates hurdles with regulation needing support and involvement from a wide variety of different committees before ever reaching the floor for debate and approval.

Beyer, however, emphasizes that his Caucus makes it a critical objective to keep the rest of the Members updated and informed from experts in the field.

"These conversations have been extremely productive in helping Members understand the benefits and challenges of AI and how it is interconnected with various other policy areas such as health and labor,” Beyer said.

Second, Houed believes that the Hill needs to continue focusing on growing and retaining tech staffers to help close the knowledge gap between Congress and the tech community.

“It is my belief that in the future, as we kind of get a new generation of younger people who grew up with the technology and have just a different, more personal understanding of it and its harms and have more personal anecdotes …I think that that will make a huge difference,” said Houed. “My hope also is that more technically competent people actually just start running for Congress instead of just having them be at the staffer level, which I think has also been an issue.”

However, Beyer provides a hopeful note. Unlike the early days of social media, Beyer finds a greater willingness from major tech companies to collaborate on protective regulation. Yet Beyer also shares that the social media frontier has taught Congress a variety of lessons that they must address when legislating the AI landscape.

“There are a couple notable differences between the discourse on AI and on social media,” said Beyer. “The first difference is that, when it was first taking hold, we had no understanding of what impacts social media could or would have. We learned as things unfolded, which has hindered the passage of any meaningful legislation to date. Reflecting on that lack of success and the missed opportunities, we learned that we need to act seriously and swiftly from the outset.”

Jerome echoes Beyer’s sentiments that companies seem willing to work toward reform. However, he cautions about their intentions.

“Almost all of these commentators, including trade associations and companies, are calling for the passage of a federal privacy law,” said Jerome. “So like, everybody wants this. The problem of course is that the devil is in the details. And as soon as we start talking [about the] details, I think everything breaks apart.”

Sketching the Current Frontier

The current regulatory landscape of AI technology remains hazy, as politicians struggle to balance consumer protection with innovation. With political polarization and knowledge gaps, it is unclear if Congress can keep pace with this emerging frontier. As the technology progresses, consequences like data breaches could push toward the development of a regulatory safety net.

“There are many aspects to AI that make it very different to anything we have seen before,” said Beyer. “It’s evolving more rapidly than many other technological advancements have, in the sense that models are quickly improving upon themselves, and innovators are exponentially spawning new models. AI will create major labor market shifts, as well as affect and disrupt larger aspects of society, tech, business, and privacy. It creates challenges to our security and our democracy. And although this is not my most immediate concern with AI’s development, AI does potentially pose an existential risk to humanity. Finally, there is both more wariness and more interest, both from the public and policymakers, in AI regulation than we have seen with other aspects of tech.”

In a way, we can almost compare ourselves to that family in the 1900s – engaging with AI in a regulatory landscape that has yet to establish seatbelts, pave bumpy roads, and put up stop signs and speed limits as guidance.

On a hopeful note, however, as Jerome said, “Society adapted to cars.” Perhaps we will adapt to AI as well.

Beyond Ukraine: How Russian Disinformation Campaigns in Africa are an Expression of its Revisionism to a US-led International Order

A Qualitative Content Analysis on Russian Disinformation Campaigns in Africa

Patrick Weimert

I. Introduction

In the last decade, Russia has re-emerged as a significant player in the African geopolitical landscape, marking a departure from its declining presence since the collapse of Soviet soft-power. The multifaceted nature of Russia's renewed involvement, which spans normative strategies, economic ventures, and military deployments, calls for a nuanced analysis of its intentions and their implications on the African continent. The resurgence of Moscow's influence in Africa became evident in the period between 2017 and 2019, culminating in the Russia-Africa Summit of 2019 (Siegle, 2023). At the summit, President Putin articulated Russia's normative strategy: cooperation in combating neocolonialism; promotion of a multipolar world order; and exchange in various sectors such as security, education, and health (Putin, 2023). However, beneath this diplomatic façade lies a disruptive engagement strategy characterized by a clear goal to undermine the U.S.-led world order, especially one element of the order that the Putin regime fears the most – democracy. Originally, Russia lacked the material resources to exert influence on the African continent through traditional means like trade and investment; Ultimately, this led to Russia’s contemporary reengagement in Africa relying more on disinformation, a relatively cheap geopolitical instrument by comparison (Siegle, 2023). The Wagner Group, a hybrid warfare entity, serves as the main disinformation tool of the Russian state, playing a central role in expanding Russia's geopolitical footprint on the continent.

Through a qualitative content analysis, this article investigates the tactical and strategic goals of Russian disinformation campaigns. In particular, it explores their impact on world order narratives and electoral processes, and discusses their support for authoritarian regimes across the continent. This analysis draws on Gerlinde Groitl’s (2023) concept of destructive revisionism, in which a state may seek to disrupt, corrupt, or undermine the existing international order without necessarily proposing a coherent alternative. Groitl defines destructive revisionism in terms of four key elements: the disruption of the order-building narrative, the disruption legitimacy of the status quo, the sowing and exploiting divisions, and the spoiling of collective goods and rule enforcement. By addressing these elements, this paper endeavors to provide a nuanced understanding of Russia's strategic objectives in Africa and evaluate the extent to which its actions align with destructive revisionism. The comprehensive analysis seeks not only to contribute to the broader academic debates surrounding neoclassical realism, world order theory, and revisionism; but also to shed light on the implications of Russia's contemporary role in Africa.

II. Theory and Methodology

Theoretical Framework

The International Order

When scholars of International Relations (IR) speak of the international order, they refer to the overall framework and structure that governs relationships between states on the global stage. It is characterized by the rules, norms, and institutions that shape the behavior of states and other actors, but also shapes the actions of its actors (Cox, 1992, 167-168). Some IR scholars argue that the current international order derives from a system of anarchy. According to this conception, states are units within the system. A state can make decisions, cooperate with other states, or impose its will on other states, but there is no ex ante international system of hierarchy that puts one state in front of another or all states under an overarching organization (Waltz 1993).

However, theorists of the anarchic nature of international politics argue that powerful states, known as ordering powers, establish rules and enforce them, creating a structured environment within an otherwise chaotic system. These structured environments are international orders, and they can introduce a degree of hierarchy to the anarchic international system. An ordering power is conventionally defined as a state which surpasses other states in “size of population and territory, resource endowment, economic capability, military strength, political stability and competence” (Waltz 1979, 131). In other words, whether a state can act as an ordering power depends upon that state’s capability to achieve its economic, military, political and social goals on a global scale.

Since there is no global hierarchy to hold states responsible except for other nations, a state’s power can only be measured relative to that of other states. Therefore, the distribution of power in the international system determines the number of the ordering powers and consequently, the so-called polarity of the international system. If there is a single ordering power shaping the system, the system is referred to as unipolar. Two ordering powers create a bipolar order, and with more than two powers the system will be multipolar (Haas, 1970).

Even though the underlying condition of anarchy remains throughout history, relative power relations can change over time. Which country holds more power is dynamic and can fluctuate over time, as well (Foot and Walter, 2013, 184). After the end of World War II, the international order was shaped by two competing ordering powers with strong economic, military, and political influence on the world. With capabilities unmatched by any other state except each other, the United States and the Soviet Union shaped the world into a bipolar system with two competing spheres of influence (Wohlforth, 1999). After the Soviet Union’s collapse in the 1990s and the end of the Cold War, the United States emerged as the sole ordering power of a new unipolar international system (Krauthammer, 1991). Today, debates continue among scholars of international order over whether this unipolar system is eroding or whether the United States’ leadership remains unchallenged. The rise of China leads some to make the case for a return to a bipolar system, while the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the rise of the BRICS causes others to predict a multipolar world (Bianchini 2022, 17).

Neorealism and Revisionism to the International Order

The conceptualization of every international order—be it unipolar, bipolar, or multipolar—derives from the assumption of anarchy. No entity is above the state, so the states create their own ordering system. This assumption was popularized by the so-called Neorealist school of International Relations theory. Kenneth Waltz in the Theory of International Politics is generally recognized as the first IR scholar to fully conceptualize the anarchic structure of the international system as the main factor influencing inter-state relations (Waltz, 1979). Waltz’s conceptualization can be split into three main assumptions of the international system: First, states exist in a system of anarchy in which only power delivers a protection against other states’ aggression; second, states are the primary actors in the international system and behave autonomously from internal conditions; and finally, power only exists relative to the power of other agents, and it can reach from the minimum of survival to the ultimate level of world hegemony (Waltz,1979).

Waltz proposes the definition “that an agent is powerful to the extent that he affects others more than they affect him” (Waltz 1979, 192). Larger material capabilities, like higher military numbers, give an actor more possibilities to be less affected by a weaker state, but deliver no guarantee of complete security.

One of the most well-known iterations upon Waltz’s structural realism was made by John Mearsheimer (2001), sparking a debate within the structural realist tradition between Mearsheimer and so-called ‘offensive realists’ on the one hand and the so-called ‘defensive realists’ who hewed closer to Waltz’s original ideas on the other. Even though Mearsheimer agrees with Waltz that the underlying anarchic structure of the international system constitutes the main influence on state behavior, they disagree on the amount of power that is needed to ensure state survival (Mearsheimer 2013, 75). In Waltz’s model, states seek to have the appropriate amount of power in order to not be perceived as a threat by other states, whereas Mearsheimer proposes that states have a limitless desire for power which derives from an inescapable ‘security dilemma’ (Mearsheimer 2013, 75).

Constructive and Destructive Revisionism

When it comes to polarity of the world order, neorealism depicts states as relentless balancers that fear ordering powers, leading to a globalized world of complex interdependencies. According to Waltz, unipolarity is extremely rare to witness and most likely short-lived, since states have an incentive to work together against an emerging hegemon, creating a balance of power (Waltz 1993). Such balancing efforts are also referred to as revisionist practices, as states seek to shift the current distribution of power to their benefit (Groitl, 2023). The world has experienced countless examples of rising and declining ordering powers, power-hungry hegemons imposing their will on others, and the never-ending balancing efforts of weaker states (Groitl, 2023)—from Thucydides' account in the ‘History of the Peloponnesian War’ of established city-state power Athens being replaced by the rising power Sparta, to the United States replacing Great Britain as global hegemon (Crawley 2007, I:18; Kagan 2022, 14).

According to structural neorealist thought, all weaker states should have an interest in balancing against the United States in a post-Cold War and unipolar order. However, the balancing only occurs from specific actors like China, Russia, or Iran and among those to specific degrees. Gerlinde Groitl in China and the Revisionist Assault on the Western Liberal International Order outlines the limitations in neorealism's understanding of international power dynamics and explains the emergence of revisionist states. First, she criticizes offensive realist overestimation of power. Contrary to Mearsheimer, Groitl argues that the expected outcome of an ordering power’s actions matters almost as much as their actual capabilities (Groitl, 2023). An ordering power might have the capabilities to impose its will on others, but that does not necessarily deliver a guarantee of succeeding to do so. Vice-versa, a weaker state sometimes succeeds in imposing its will on a state with more capabilities like in the case of the U.S.’ withdrawal from Vietnam (Baldwin 2013; (Record 2005, 17)).

Second, Groitl questions the universal applicability of neorealist ‘unit-like’ understanding of states. Both offensive and defensive realists describe states as ‘black boxes’, whose individual ideological orientations do not matter next to the exigencies of international anarchy (Groitl, 2023). In other words, the Soviet Union’s and the United States’ ideological politics could not have been further apart, yet they both behaved identically when it came to power-maximization. Neorealist determinism views balancing and revisionist state behavior as inevitable. It neglects the idea that state-specific interests of an ordering power matter. However, neoclassical realism argues that whether a state has an incentive to balance against a unipolar system not only depends on what the ordering power is capable of doing, but also on the expected outcome of its actions (Legro, 2011). This explains why some states fear the United States’ capabilities less than others, as the success of the United States in imposing its will on some states may actually be in the interest of other states.

While neorealism is useful in conceptualizing power and the international order, it has struggled to explain individual states’ balancing behavior. Therefore, Groitl introduces “a model that understands states as strategic actors in an anarchic world and acknowledges both international systemic stimuli and unit-level processes for their behavior—such as international order building and revisionism ” (Groitl 2023, 70). Breaking-up the state as a ‘black-box,’ Groitl’s ‘neoclassical realism’ emerged as an effective theory to explain the current world ordering policies more than structural realism. It rejects the determinism found in structuralist models like neorealism, without denying the considerable influence that the anarchical structure of the international system has on state behavior (Groitl, 2023). Its ability to analytically connect domestic and international levels makes it a more useful analytical tool for examining the stability of the international order and the occurrence of revisionism. This allows it to not only explain why certain states engage in revisionism, but also delivers explanations for different kinds of revisionism among states.

According to neoclassical realism, revisionism as a policy choice is influenced by strategic needs and opportunities. Subordinate states are likely to embrace an international order if it protects their vital needs. Ordering powers can minimize security concerns and collective action problems, providing security, stability, economic prosperity, and development to those that follow them. Hence, successful hegemons exercise restraint and inspire followership among some states (Groitl, 2023). However, if the international order is preventing states from achieving their unit-level goals, conflict can occur. Sometimes, domestic politics make it difficult or even impossible to conform to an ordering power, leading to resistance and defiance. States with conflicting interests and enough capabilities may choose revisionism, trying to alter the international order according to their own domestic politics instead of bending their domestic politics according to the exigencies of the international order (Bendiek, 2017).

Within neoclassical realism’s conceptualization of revisionism, strategic options are diverse and dynamic; targeting either the enforceability, functionality, or legitimacy of a current international order (Groitl, 2023). Revisionist states can act as spoilers, sow discord among stakeholders, argue fundamentally against the justice of a given order, or even propose an alternative that is more in their favor. They can try to undermine an existing order or build alternative ordering structures. While undermining an existing order can be disguised or denied in order to avoid retaliation by the ordering power, openly promoting alternative ordering structures requires more far-reaching efforts. Therefore, revisionist states with the necessary capabilities can practice “constructive revisionism” by building alternative orders, while weaker actors have to resort to “destructive revisionism” (Groitl 2023, 315-370; 371-430). According to Groitl, Russia is a prime example of a destructive revisionist, with the power to challenge the U.S.-led international order, but not enough capabilities to engage in alternative order building. China on the other hand, with its Belts and Roads Initiative (BRI), trade power, and growing political influence, is engaging in constructive revisionism.

Methodology

In order to determine whether a state is behaving as a destructive revisionist, four questions have to be answered. First, is it trying to disrupt the prevailing order-building narrative, rather than altering that narrative? Second, does it dispute legitimacy and merits of the status quo, instead of formulating alternative principles? Third, is the revisionist sowing and exploiting divisions, without rallying supporters themselves? Finally, does it attempt to spoil collective goods and rule enforcement without making any attempt to get others to subscribe to an alternative order (Groitl, 2023)? While Groitl examines Russia’s revisionism vis-à-vis the West, this paper applies Groitl’s approach to understanding Russia’s behavior on the African continent.

The unipolar world order extends beyond the northern hemisphere, and we can discern a clearer picture of Russian revisionism if we do not view it solely from the perspective of the United States and the West. Given its history and recent political isolation, it is conceivable that Russia might have better chances to engage in constructive revisionism in Africa than in Europe.

Russian disinformation campaigns are, by their very nature, revisionist and anti-West. However, in order to determine whether it is an expression of destructive revisionism, the following analysis will draw from relevant literature, independent NGO and Think Tank reports, and official statements and speeches from Russian and African officials in order to determine whether Russia is acting as a destructive revisionist.

Finally, much of Russian disinformation campaigns are conducted through the deployment of the Wagner Group, which early literature often describes as a private-military company (PMC). Given the more recent facts and developments, this paper rejects the definition of Wagner as PMC, independent of the Russian military apparatus. Wagner’s actions are assumed to be equivalent to actions of the Russian state.

III. Case Study: Russian Disinformation Campaigns in Africa

To answer whether Russia behaves according to destructive revisionism and neoclassical realist theory in Africa, it is important to connect Russia’s theoretical interests with its tactics as employed in the African context. To this end, this section presents a historical overview of Russia’s engagement with Africa since the fall of the Soviet Union and empirical details of Russian involvement—both diplomatica and covert—in the affairs of several African states.

Russian Reengagement in Africa: 2017-2019

In 2017, almost thirty years after the collapse of the USSR, the Russian Federation began its early attempts to return as a great power on the African continent. This early engagement culminated with the Russia-Africa Summit in October 2019, where Vladimir Putin officially unveiled his vision for the continent. During his speech at the summit, President Putin highlighted Russia’s role in the fight against colonialism and Africa’s role in a multipolar world order, as well as referenced using the UN to create a fairer model of the modern world, and offering cooperation in the field of security, education and health (Putin, 2019). The 2019 summit marked a turning point for Russia’s engagement in Africa from an actor on the margins acting through barely maintained Soviet-era relationships to a major player whose tactics align with Groitl’s vision of a destructive revisionist.

Before the 2019 turning-point, the change of leadership in strategic African states like South Africa and Ethiopia led to a renewed focus on the continent by key stakeholders, but this list scarcely included Russia. Russian influence in Africa during this period was dwarfed not only by traditional partners like the United States and France, but also by emerging Chinese influence (Siegle 2023). During Russia's pre-2019 reengagement, Russian Foreign Affairs Minister Sergey Lavrov conducted a tour through multiple African countries. In March 2018, he visited Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Namibia, and Ethiopia—all states which had once enjoyed a close relationship with the Soviet Union. The fact that the docket of African states on Lavrov’s tour reflected past Soviet-African relationships more than it reflected any contemporary geopolitical reality reveals one key tactic of Russia’s strategy in Africa: rebuilding networks and partnerships from the past (Ramani, 2023).

Russian Disinformation Campaigns in Africa: 2019-Present

In the aftermath of the Russia-Africa Summit in 2019, Russia's renewed engagement with the continent gained momentum. President Putin's speech delivered insight into the ideological strategy: A disruptive engagement aligned with his pursuit of a multipolar international system. Without being able to offer many tangible benefits, Russia's initiative depended primarily upon soft-power influence. The strategy included the spread of anti-Western, anti-democracy sentiments, and a resistance to multilateral institutions (Ramani 2023), and it was directed toward isolated authoritarian regimes, such as Sudan, Eritrea, and Guinea, rather than at attempting to convert pro-Western states. In the aftermath of the Russia-Africa Summit in 2019, Russia’s renewed engagement with the continent gained momentum. In 2023, Putin wrote off $20 billion of African debts, but the paltry size of this gesture indicates Russia's inability to offer much more future investment (Czerep, 2018) and points to the fact that Russia’s reengagement efforts were led by ideology and ‘soft power.’ President Putin's speech at the summit offers insight into Russia’s ideological strategy, a disruptive engagement aligned with the pursuit of a multipolar international system. Later on, the Russian soft-power offensive was expanded to include disinformation campaigns and election interference aimed at undermining traditional relationships, particularly with France. These campaigns placed the blame for challenges faced by former colonies on the former colonial power (Guiffard, 2023).

Following the Syria handbook, Russian strategy in Africa aims at disrupting democratic transitions and popular movements across the continent. It is an elite-based strategy that tends to engage in deal-making with repressive regimes, jeopardizing democratization on the continent. Its focus lies on consolidating power around isolated subordinate states. In Russia’s new partners, disregard for democratic principles, the rule of law, participatory government, and human rights is not merely tolerated but actively encouraged (Eriksen, 2017).

From 2019 onwards, Russia has employed a variety of methods to expand its influence in Africa. One such method which sets Russia apart from other foreign actors on the continent is its disinformation campaigns. Russian disinformation campaigns in Africa have emerged as one of the most successful propaganda victories in history, paralleling the historical propaganda endeavors of the Soviet Union. In 2019, the Guardian leaked official Russian documents which revealed the extent of the Kremlin’s disinformation efforts in Africa, largely conducted through hybrid entities like the Wagner Group. (Walton 2019; Harding and Burke 2019).

If the purpose of propaganda campaigns is to win the hearts and minds of the people, then Russian disinformation has been extremely successful in doing so in the Central African Republic (CAR) where large parts of the population appear to have fully embraced the Russian narrative of an exploitative French regime and a benevolent Russia as a new partner. The Wagner Group has expanded Russia's influence in the CAR, deploying an estimated 1,200 to 2,000 military personnel at the request of CAR President Faustin-Archange Touadérain in 2018 (Neethling 2023). Since then, Wagner has guaranteed Touadéra remains in power through tactics of intimidation employed against Touadéra’s political opponents (Siegle, 2023).

According to investigative reports by the African human rights NGO, The Sentry, Russia’s information war in the CAR has been successful in state capture, by infiltrating political, military, and economic information channels. Most notably, information surrounding the CAR’s mining sector has been widely shared between government and Wagner officials (Dukhan, 2020). Even though Wagner’s track record in the CAR is bloody—an estimated 52% of individuals killed by Wagner forces in the country have been civilians—Wagner’s influence remains extremely high, showcased by the military personnel directly advising the president. (Serwat et al. 2022). Furthermore, the pro-Russian sentiment in CAR and Francophone Africa is rising, with countries rejecting involvement of former colonial power France and seeking an anti-neocolonial partnership with Russia (Guiffard, 2023).

Beyond CAR, Russia has employed bots and troll machines to disseminate fake news, contributing significantly to the oppression of political opposition, spreading of anti-French sentiments, and manifesting the support for authoritarian leaders. In 2014, during the Second Libyan Civil War, Russia tried to install a figurehead as leader of the country. Militia leader Khalifa Haftar attempted to fill the power vacuum resulting from the death of Muammar al-Gaddafi, and during Haftar’s attempted occupation of the Libyan parliament in 2014, Russia supported him by inundating a population freshly introduced to social media with a flood of pro-Haftar Twitter and Facebook bots (Lefèvre 2017).

Infiltrating Egyptian media, Russia-owned Sputnik Arabic signed a media cooperation agreement with the Egyptian state-owned Al-Ahram newspaper, jointly blaming the Muslim Brotherhood for the mass protests in 2019 (Siegle, 2023).

Surrounding the democracy movement in Sudan, Wagner trained personnel of Omar al-Bashir’s National Intelligence and Security Services, which was involved in suppressing Sudan’s pro-democracy protests. Disinformation by Russian bots on Facebook framed the pro-democracy movement as an LGBT movement (Denisova & Kostelyanets, 2022).

Additionally, Russia influenced the 2018 Madagascar election by spreading false information, bribing journalists to spread propaganda, and recruiting youth to join rallies (Akinola & Ogunnubi, 2021)

Today Russia tightens its grip on the Sahel region, with Western peacekeepers withdrawing, placing Mali in the hands of Russian control. Russian misinformation floods Burkina Faso’s social media and Niger has recently fallen victim to another Russia-backed coup d’etat. The battle over hearts and minds in Sahel states has already been won. Protesters waved Russian flags and displayed Wagner logos in Niamey, the capital of Niger, after the recent coup. Likewise similar events have occurred in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo (Ramani, 2023).

In summary, although disinformation is a recurring instrument in Russia’s Africa strategy, its methods and shapes vary wildly, ranging from cooperation between authoritarian state-owned media channels with Russian state media to the intimidation of political opponents by a Russian PMC to social media manipulation.

Analysis of Disinformation Campaigns as Strategic Method of Revisionism

Over the course of less than a decade, Russian influence in Africa has evolved from little more than a relic of its Soviet past to an intimidating force, characterized by a demonstrated history of disinformation campaigns and forcible election interference in more than a dozen African states (Siegle, 2023).

The countries that Lavrov chose for his visit in 2018, when Russian reengagement with Africa was in its infancy, offer the following insight into Russia’s approach to the world order: Russia does not have a positive alternative order to offer to Africa. Opportunism alone drove Russia’s decision to rebuild long-eroded Soviet relationships. While this seems compatible with the Groitl’s destructive revisionist paradigm, the true test of whether Russia’s engagement in Africa as a whole comports with this paradigm requires examining Russian disinformation campaigns in terms of Groitl’s four key elements of destructive revisionism: Are Russian disinformation campaigns trying to disrupt the order building narrative, rather than changing the narrative? Does Russia dispute legitimacy and merits of the status quo, instead of formulating alternative principles? Is Moscow sowing and exploiting divisions, without rallying supporters? Finally, do they attempt to spoil collective goods and rule enforcement, but not to get others to subscribe to an alternative order (Groitl, 2023)? Furthermore, since revisionism focuses on the ‘effort’ to achieve something against an ordering power rather than the actual outcome, this analysis will focus on the strategic goals rather than incidental tactics regardless of their success.

Nearly every Russian disinformation campaign shares at least one of three characteristics. First, Russia disrupts the narrative of the U.S.-led world order. As a reaction to the Arab Spring and the color revolutions, it has become one of Russia’s top priorities to obstruct ongoing democratic transitions globally. It is not by coincidence that the Kremlin’s disinformation campaigns primarily target countries with relatively weak democratic institutions. Whether it is their efforts in preventing credible elections in Libya, framing the Algerian Hirak protesters as radical Islamists, or framing pro-democracy activists as pro-LGBT in Sudan; Russian disinformation has always found a way to give democracy a new name—but rarely the same one (Lefèvre, 2017; Grewal, 2023; Denisova & Kostelyanets, 2022). With the United States being one of the main promoters of democracy in the region and democracy being one of the main normative elements of the U.S.-led order, Moscow’s campaigns have attempted to disrupt this element of the order-building narrative by renaming it. While the Soviet Union offered communism as an alternative system and world order to subscribe to, post-Soviet Russian influence disrupts the narrative surrounding democracy while calling itself a democracy. In further deviation from order-building narratives, Russian disinformation efforts are not consistent about how they reframe democracy. Sometimes advocates for democracy are Islamists, and sometimes they are gay rights activists, depending on what resonates more effectively with the target population.

Second, Russia spoils the collective goods which a continent of liberal, rule-of-law democracies might afford. Russian fear of democracy goes further than preventing democratic revolutions. Whenever possible, the Kremlin does not only try to prevent democratic transition, but also supports turns toward authoritarian rule. Contrary to the United States or European powers that often link their engagement in Africa to democratic conditions, Russia is promoting its anti-democracy narrative through elite engagement. Moscow has become the champion of regional elites at the expense of the democratic masses. Russia has intimidated opposition leaders in the CAR, hired Sudanese citizens to discredit civil society actors criticizing Sudan’s 2019 coup d’etat on social media platforms, and flooded Guinean Facebook with content favorable to then-President Alpha Conde’s attempt to extend his term in office beyond its constitutional limit (Guiffard, 2023; Denisova & Kostelyanets, 2022; Siegle, 2021).

In perhaps its magnum opus, Russian disinformation has contributed significantly to the wave of military takeovers which engulfed the entire Sahel region. In Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, Russia used disinformation campaigns to denounce democratically elected leaders, promote military juntas and advocate for a military ‘revolution’ (Ramani, 2023). The weakening of democratic institutions and installation of authoritarian regimes is more an effort to spoil collective goods than it is subscription to an alternative order. Democracies are portrayed as weak and inherently flawed, but the case for turning to authoritarianism is always implied and never formulated explicitly. This is in contrast to Soviet engagement in Africa, which explicitly promoted a communist dictatorship of the proletariat as a positive alternative to existing institutions. Contemporary Russian disinformation campaigns nominally frame Moscow’s involvement as promotion of democracy even if the same disinformation in its substance seeks to undermine democracy at every turn.

Third, in an attempt to balance its relative economic weakness relative to the ordering power, Russia sows divisions by undermining Western influence in Africa. Former colonial powers like France have especially been the target of Moscow’s disinformation campaigns in Africa. Given the complicated and unresolved history of European colonialism in Africa, it is no surprise that anti-Western disinformation resonated well in Francophone Africa. Including the dissemination of anti-UN and anti-French sentiments through fake social media accounts in the CAR, and the framing recognized Sudanese civil society actors as agents from the United States, Russian anti-Western campaigns have been most effective in the Sahel region (Guiffard, 2023; Denisova & Kostelyanets, 2022; Ramani, 2023). Facebook pages promoting the ousting of Western stabilization missions led Malians to cheer at the deployment of the Wagner Group despite the Group’s brutality – an estimated 71% of all individuals killed in Mali by the Wagner Group were civilians (Serwat et al. 2022). The spread of anti-Western disinformation fit into Groitl’s framework as disputing the legitimacy of the status quo (with United Nations peacekeeping being an expression of the U.S.-led world order) and as sowing and exploiting divisions. Either way, Russian disinformation is more focused on undermining Western influence than on formulating alternative principles. Wagner’s interventions are not portrayed as something entirely new or revolutionary, but as more capable of delivering the stability and prosperity which the West has promised. It is feasible to argue that this tacit or explicit emphasis on the West’s broken promises also constitutes the fourth element of destructive revisionism: undermining legitimacy.

Russian disinformation campaigns correspond to at least three out of the four key elements of destructive revisionism. It is even feasible to argue that Russia’s undermining of Western influence could account for two elements: disputing the legitimacy of the status quo and exploiting divisions. Altogether, the evidence presented above paints a clear picture of the Kremlin’s efforts to disrupt, spoil, and undermine the current world order instead of building an alternative one.

One could argue that pro-Russian disinformation and the support for authoritarian leadership are, in a sense, Russia’s vision for a new multipolar order, but its campaigns are more focused on corrupting than building. While some have tried to make the case that Russian support for authoritarianism and opposition to the West constitute an alternative order, the details of Russia’s engagement betray the fact that its strategy does not go beyond a fear for democracy, the undermining of Western influence, and bare opportunism. A Russian vassal-state like the CAR has no grand perspective for a role in a larger Russian strategy. There are no alternative multilateral institutions Russia offers to African countries beyond good bilateral relations. Furthermore, the opportunistic nature of the disinformation campaigns reveals that there is no coherent value-based framework states could subscribe to, aside from authoritarian rule. Russian disinformation campaigns are anti-LGBTQ or anti-Islamist depending on the audience. However, it lacks to deliver what values they are not against. Usually, the goal of a campaign is to rally support for an authoritarian leader. It does not seem to matter what values the leader subscribes to except a support for Russian influence and a desire for authoritarian rule. Many of the elements of constructive and destructive revisionism overlap, but an essential element of the former is to offer an alternative order that could replace the status quo, something that Russia fails to offer. This lack of a coherent alternative is epitomized by the irony of Russia spreading anti-UN sentiments in African countries while at the same time using the UN as the primary forum for the very Russia-Africa Summit that marked the takeoff of Russia’s anti-Western and anti-UN disinformation efforts in Africa (Putin, 2019).

IV. Conclusion

In conclusion, the examination of Russia's disinformation campaigns in Africa reveals a congruence with Groitl’s theory of destructive revisionism (2023). The evidence derived from the qualitative content analysis illustrates a strategic employment of disinformation campaigns to influence political narratives, electoral processes, and foster support for authoritarian regimes across the continent. By showing that Russia’s destructive revisionism can be observed beyond the Global North, this article hopes not only to inform the research agenda for further investigation of Russia’s motives and tactics outside such research’s traditional geographic purview, but also to contribute to larger theoretical debates within IR realism over how to understand revisionist powers’ interests and incentives. The paper encourages further research surrounding four recurring issues.

First, the most recent killing of Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of the Wagner Group and alleged mastermind behind Russia's Africa campaign, raises critical questions about the implications of his death on Russia’s most important provider of disinformation campaigns. How will this event impact the trajectory of Russia's strategic engagements in Africa? Will it lead to a decrease of Russian influence on the continent or perhaps deliver a window of opportunity to further its national interest by removing Wagner as an intermediary?

Second, this article should serve as a further call for research into the weaponization of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter in Russia’s disinformation campaigns. Especially when not in collaboration with an established authoritarian regime, Russia relies heavily on U.S.-based online platforms for its efforts. Additional research should investigate the ways in which the American corporations which manage these platforms bear responsibility for the repression of democracy in Africa and elsewhere. Is there a need for increased regulation by the United States, considering the geopolitical implications of such weaponization?

Third, the success of disinformation campaigns in countries with weak democratic institutions, low GDP per capita, and limited foreign investments raises questions about the inclusiveness of the US-led world order. Has the U.S.’s commitment to democracy and development failed these countries in delivering the promised benefits? This demands a critical assessment of the impact and reach of the U.S.-led order in different contexts, with a focus on identifying shortcomings, especially in the Global South.

Finally, the instrumentalization of the Soviet Union's anti-colonial past and the exploitation of Europe's inadequately addressed colonial history form recurring themes in Russia's disinformation campaigns (although these recurring themes do not rise to the level of a consistent decolonial world order narrative). The lack of convincing reconciliation by former colonial powers invites reflection on the role of colonial legacies in creating opportunities for Russian disinformation. What are the policy implications of these historical shortcomings, and how can former colonial powers rectify their failures to contain the influence of Russia’s destructive revisionism?

In essence, the analysis has expanded on the debates surrounding revisionism, international order, and Russian disinformation, but in doing so opened the floor for sustained academic discussion and policy considerations in a variety of other relevant fields, urging a deeper exploration of these questions to improve the understanding of Russian influence in Africa. There seems to be a pattern for Russian revisionism to be most successful in the countries that witness extreme poverty, weak democratic institutions and a weak civil society. These countries have not experienced many of the U.S.-led order’s benefits. Decision-makers concerned with the Russian influence in Africa should consider this when expecting countries to turn their backs on Russia.

In the Realm of Separateness: The Status Quo and Communal Control in Contemporary Israel

Samer Nammari

Abstract: The role of religion in the Jewish state was, from the start, conceptualized to create a united Jewish identity that was necessary for the engineering of the nascent Israeli society. While the status quo system was originally conceived as a successor arrangement to the religious and civic accommodations maintained under the Ottoman Empire, and later under the British Mandate of Palestine, it nevertheless became an important element within the framework of communal control in the State of Israel.

The following paper will examine why the status quo system was kept in place despite the ostensibly secular nature of the state’s founders. In essence, it will seek to argue that the status quo system was not merely a political expedience, but also a practical tool of communal control through which the Jewish nature of the state and its major constituency could be maintained and upheld in a largely Jewish ethnic democracy. At the same time, the non-Jewish communities, mainly the Palestinian Arabs, became tolerated groups under the precept of minority accommodation.

I. Introduction

Upon its founding in 1948, the State of Israel vowed to maintain what is generally referred to as the status quo, a religious and civic arrangement structured to preserve the rights of each religious community in relation to the state. The status quo arrangement has its roots in the Ottoman Millet system, as well as the administrative arrangements carried out in historical Palestine by the British mandatory authorities following the collapse of Ottoman rule in the region. Under the previous Ottoman Millet system, each confessional community could keep its own court system, as well as its autonomy over personal matters, such as marriage, death, and inheritance. In so doing, the Israeli state did not attempt to change those arrangements or force secularism on the Jewish population or, by extension, on the Palestinian Arab population remaining within the boundaries of the state. In contrast, the state co-opted this system by adopting legislation in line with the premises of the status quo, such as the Law on Marriage and Divorce (1953), which kept these civil matters within the jurisdiction of each community’s respective religious authorities.

This paper explores the question of why the status quo system was kept in place despite the ostensibly secular nature of the state’s founders. By examining this system within the framework of communal control, this paper seeks to argue that the status quo system was not merely a political expedience, but also a practical tool of communal control whereby the Jewish nature of the state and its major constituency can be maintained and upheld. It should come as no surprise that the Israeli state continues to uphold the institution of the status quo today, particularly as the Palestinian question remains open. While Israeli researchers focus on the implications this arrangement has had on Israeli Jewish society, the wider goal was to maintain Jewish identity and dominance in a largely ethnic democracy while keeping the nonJewish part of the population separate.

II. The Status Quo in Israeli Historiography

“How can we possibly vote for such a law?” – Those were the words of Israel’s Minister of Labor, Golda Meir, when the Rabbinical Judicial Courts law, commonly known as the law on marriage and divorce, was debated inside the government in 1953 (Ben-Porat 2013). Golda Meir’s words echoed that of many secular Jews at the time who felt that Orthodox Judaism and its many rules and prohibitions were irrelevant to the modern age. Nonetheless, the law was passed at the Knesset and remains the basic law according to which procedures in marriage and divorce are conducted in Israel.

The origin of the status quo can be traced to a letter from then Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Jewish Agency in Palestine, David Ben-Gurion, to the Orthodox leadership. In the letter, BenGurion promised to maintain the conditions under which Jewish life was practiced in the public sphere. The proposals in the letter also expanded beyond the state of affairs established under the British Mandate— Ben-Gurion promised that the Sabbath would be the official weekly holiday. At the same time, the other non-Jewish communities could have their rest day according to their respective traditions. In addition, Ben-Gurion promised that kosher practices would be maintained in public institutions, autonomy in religious schooling, and the state would give allotments for the establishments of yeshivas and synagogues. The letter was intended to garner political support from the erstwhile anti-Zionist Ultra-Orthodox in the run-up to the United Nations partition plan of 1947. To put it more simply, this letter is thought to have served as the basis of the relationship between the nascent state and Jewish religious institutions in the country (Levy 2013).

The letter itself, preserved at the Central Zionist Archives in Jerusalem, does not mention the preservation of the Millet system as it was maintained under the Ottomans and, later, the British. Ben-Gurion also does not explicitly mention the preservation of a status quo per se, but he does mention that until a constitution is decided upon by the state following its founding, the new state will maintain the same state of affairs concerning education and personal life. Therefore, this letter was considered later on to be the bedrock on which the status quo was built and preserved. However, Ben-Gurion explicitly mentions in the letter that the Jewish state will not be a theocracy and that it will be a state for all of its citizens.

Beyond the political expediency of the status quo compromise, there are more practical and ethnic considerations that necessitated the arrangement. It is argued that the idea of religion as the basis of national identity emerged from Zionist thinkers during the early 19th century. Therefore, Judaism became, according to the Russian-Jewish thinker Simon Dubrow, the cornerstone of a “cultural-historical type of nation” in which the Jewish religion and tradition should remain part of an otherwise secular Jewish state/secular order (BenPorat 2013). In addition, the state supports religious institutions financially because it is argued that “Israel would not be able to preserve its national character, the very raîson d’être of its existence”(Statman and Sapir 2015). To offset the influence that religious parties might have on internal politics, Ben-Gurion emphasized that the preservation of the status quo did not mean that the new state would be a theocracy, as mentioned. To put this into practice, he introduced the doctrine of mamlachtiyut, which meant the hegemony of the state over all matters of public affairs. In a more ideological sense, it meant that the “fate of the Jews […] would be taken over by the impersonal state and the bureaucracy” (Jones and Murphy 2022). The fusion of state, religion, and ethnicity made it possible to connect the individual to the act of statebuilding and to create an internal cohesion that could transcend the national or ethnic origin of the various Jewish immigrants that started pouring in during and following the war of 1948, which the Palestinians refer to as the Nakba, or the forced displacement of Palestinians by the newly-founded state.

Israeli historiography hailed this achievement as a “manifestation of a consociational democratic order” that could preserve the unity of the Jewish people while regulating the relationship between state and religion (Levy 2013). Cohen and Susser (2000) explain that, according to Arend Lijphart, “consociationalism is a method of organizing intercommunal relations so as to mitigate the effects of conflict” in a political society whose established groups are severely different from one another. It follows that the relationship between state and religion is depicted as inevitable and that complete secularization is impossible. In this sense, the place of Judaism and the Jewish ethnic identity have become ingrained in the state as the main component of Israeli citizenship and identity in an ethnicized sense. Before an Israeli citizen describes themselves as Israeli, the main question is usually whether they are Jewish or Arab. This signifies that the predominant identity is ethnic/religious before it is a collective identity of all citizens living within the borders of the state (Levy 2013).

National coherence among Jewish Israelis did not translate into total social cohesion across all sectors of Israeli society, nor did it blur the ethnic lines among the dominant Jewish population itself. For example, the approximately 160,000 Palestinian Arabs (numbering at 1.998 million in 2022) who remained within the borders of the Jewish state following the armistice of 1949 between Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon were considered an internal threat and subjected to martial rule until 1966 (Central Bureau of Statistics 2022). Among the immigrant Jewish communities, the Mizrahim (Oriental Jews) were forced to undergo cultural assimilation in order to conform to “an Israeli identity [that] was to be a fundamentally European identity regardless of the cultural or national origins of citizens” (Jones and Murphy 2022). Some Israeli scholars, such as Sami Smooha, explained the schisms in Israeli society as falling into three mechanisms of social cohesion: the consensus model, the consociational model, and the control model. To achieve political stability, the state had to employ each model (or a combination of them) to one segment of the population as it saw fit. For example, the Palestinian Arabs were subjected to a control model that saw compliance from Palestinians within the Green Line, as well as the occupied territories, until the eruption of the first Intifada in 1988. In regards to the Mizrahim, the state utilized a mixture of control (i.e. coercion), consociationalism, and consensus in order to enforce an Israeli identity on them that was inherently European-Zionist in character (Smooha 1980).

It follows that the status quo system was seen as a useful tool for the Israeli state to preserve the status of the dominant Jewish population as the major ethnic group. In this sense, Israeli citizenship was conceived as an embodiment of an ethno-Jewish identity, to which other non-Jewish groups had no direct access even though they nominally held Israeli citizenship. Within the contours of Israeli citizenship, the relationship between religion and nationalism became an inherent feature, especially in relation to the question of “who is a Jew” and how this relates to Jewish immigration under the Law of Return of 1950. The maintenance of this mechanism has helped the state to segregate the mainly Jewish population (including non-Jews from the Former Soviet Union) and the Palestinian Arabs, who also hold Israeli citizenship, as shall be explained later.

III. The Reality on the Ground

Since the status quo arrangement maintains or even creates demarcations within Arab society, and between Jews and non-Jews at large, the end result on the ground is that non-Jewish communities are disadvantaged and marginalized. This occurs both in terms of financial funding of religious and educational institutions, such as shari’a courts, cemeteries, and schools, in Arab communities, but also in terms of their political participation. In maintaining the status quo, the state hoped to keep Arab communities divided and tied to “local interests and identities, wedded to a particularism that discouraged any possibility of collective actions” on the part of the Palestinian Arabs who lived within the borders of the state (Tessler and Grant 1998). For example, the Druze, an ethnoreligious Arab minority group, were re-created as a separate nationality while Muslims and Christians remained Arab on ID cards. Furthermore, the state imposed conscription on the Druze and Circassians; Muslims and Christians were barred (Khalifa 2001).

Such ethnic division served to exclude Palestinian citizens of Israel from Jewish majority housing projects or towns for years until the year 2000 when the Supreme Court (בג״ץ (affirmed that “...the values of the [state] as a Jewish state…prohibit discrimination and demand equality between religions and nationalities” (see Supreme Court case no. 95/6698, Qa’dan vs. Israel Land Administration; Zamir 2004). The plaintiffs in the case, excluded from the Jewish town of Katzir on ethnic grounds, were finally allowed their land parcel in May 2004, nine years after petitioning the Supreme Court. Another example is the underfunding of Muslim and Christian religious authorities highlighted in a Knesset report from 2014. According to the report, the percentage of funding for Arab religious authorities out of the total government budget for all religious authorities was 12.8% in 2013. That was an improvement from 11.2% in 2012, although it should be noted that Arab Israelis constituted about 20.8% of the population in 2013 (Agmon 2014).

This paradigm of separateness, as Karayanni calls it, has been reinforced by the “nature and justification in the existing religious accommodations of the Jewish majority on the one hand and those of the Palestinian Arab minority on the other hand” (Karayanni 2007). In other words, Karayanni explains that on its surface, the status quo is meant to preserve previous accommodations, but it grants wide jurisdictions to the Jewish majority at the expense of the non-Jewish Palestinians. While religion and state are not separate, in contrast to the norm in other Western democracies, the different treatment of the Palestinian Arab population has relegated it to a different realm – that of minority accommodation. Under this principle, the non-Jewish communities, who were the majority of the population before 1948, were afforded concessions meant to be disproportionate a priori. While the religious accommodations allocated to the Jewish majority were conceptualized as part of a wider public policy to reinforce the Jewish nature of the state, the accommodations given to the Palestinian Arabs were seen as an act of granting autonomy to minority religious communities. On the one hand, the Palestinian Arabs became disparate religious minorities whom the state sought to tolerate as a group “based on the desire not to interfere in this community’s internal religious affairs.” On the other hand, the Jewish majority was the nation for whom the State of Israel became “the domain as well as the instrument for handling the [community’s] religion and state relations” (Karayanni 2006). The Orthodox Rabbinate, for instance, became part of the state apparatus while the religious school system came under the Israeli Ministry of Education, all fully funded by the state (Englard 1987).

Even though the accommodation is couched in terms of plurality, democracy, or respect for the tradition of communal autonomy, the repercussions of this separateness are obvious. First, it reinforces the notion that the State of Israel is not a state of all its citizens, despite the reassurances given in the Declaration of Independence of 1948. However, some have argued that although tension exists between the terms Jewish and democratic state, reconciliation of the terms can occur. The introduction of two basic laws in 1992, the Freedom of Occupation and Human Dignity and Liberty laws, helped guarantee the right to democratic and spiritual belief in Israel (Karayanni 2007). However, the Central Bureau of Statistics classification of population groups quickly refutes arguments of progress. For example, many immigrants from the Former Soviet Union were classified as non-Jews due to their not fulfilling hallachic standards set by the Orthodox rabbinate in Israel. Some of these “Russians,” as they came to be known in Israel, did not convert to Judaism and maintained their language and culture. To distinguish them from other non-Jews (mainly the Palestinian Arabs), they classified them as “others” for statistical purposes – albeit they were still counted with the Jewish population for demographic purposes (Central Bureau of Statistics 2022).

Second, the chasm between the Jewish and Arab communities has been reinforced by the status quo as Jewish law prohibits interfaith marriages between Jews and nonJews. In a famous incident from 2018, the Arab-Muslim broadcaster, Lucy Aharish, married a Jewish-Israeli celebrity, Tsahi Halevi, in a marriage that was seen as deeply problematic on both sides of the communal divide. Naturally, they could not marry within Israel and had to marry abroad. Their union prompted many right-wing and religious politicians to proclaim that they “need to protect the Jewish people” and that anti-miscegenation laws needed to be introduced (Sales 2018). The state could not prevent the naturalization of the marriage carried out abroad, but it was seen as a betrayal of the communal order. Taken from this perspective, the status quo arrangement was not merely a concession to religious authorities in exchange for political support, but a key element in maintaining a collective Jewish identity up to the present day.

IV. Conclusion: A Tool of Communal Control

It is possible to argue, as Karayanni claims, that the status quo arrangements, as explained hitherto, can be seen as an attempt by the state to keep the minority confessional communities out of the public sphere by relegating them to the “private” sphere. However, as this paper suggests, the separation serves a more practical demographic purpose, i.e. enforcing the ethnic separation between confessional communities. In his seminal work on the concept of ethnic democracy, the Israeli sociologist Sami Smooha argues that the Israeli ethnic state gives “legal force to ethnic endogamy…[wherein] every person belongs to a religious community which has full jurisdiction over persona; status, including marriage, divorce, wills, child custody, and burial.” In so doing, ethnic endogamy provides a legal framework that reinforces the basis of Israeli democracy as one of separateness (Smooha 1997).

Furthermore, Smooha dismisses the fact that Israel can be considered a consociational democracy because, to become so, it needs to be a binational state where resources are distributed equally between Arabs and Jews (Smooha 1997). However, an ethnic democracy like Israel recognizes that the viability of its model hinges on “the potency of the Jews as a large numerical majority, who see themselves as a people with incontestable rights over the country, […who] feel threatened by the Arabs, and regard themselves as obligated to preserve the Jewishness of the state also on behalf of the Jews of the Diaspora” (Smooha 1997). In this sense, Smooha argues that until the current treatment of Palestinians is addressed , the model of ethnic democracy, and the ethnicization of the Arab minority (i.e. as a non-national group) provides Israel the ability to maintain itself as a Jewish and democratic state.

The juxtaposition of religion, Georgetown Public Policy Review: Policy Voices, Essay nationalism, and ethnicity has ignited many debates in Israel over the years. At the 222nd session of the 11th Knesset, Shulamit Aloni, a former member of Knesset, asked why there was a nationality classification on national identity cards since technically all citizens were Israelis. Since some immigrants could not prove their “Jewishness,” they faced a classification dilemma. Was Judaism a religion or a nationality?, Aloni wondered. The conclusion on her part was that citizenship should be the cornerstone of Israeli identity, not religion or ethnicity. Naturally, this could be seen as contradictory to the idea of Israel as a “Jewish and democratic” state (Knesset Archives 1986).

In conclusion, the status quo and the maintenance of vestiges of the Millet system in Israel have served to reinforce the position of the ethnic majority in the state. The arrangement reached in 1947 between Ben-Gurion and the Ultra-Orthodoxy before the founding of the State of Israel was not a fluke of history or a necessary political compromise, but a crucial component in maintaining Israel as a Jewish state. While the state claims that the preservation of the Millet system was necessary in order not to interfere in the internal affairs of minority communities (Statman and Sapir 2015), it also served to deepen the chasm between the Jewish majority and the Palestinian Arab minority.

Controversies over the Chinese Built Kribi Deepwater Port in Cameroon

Tina Xinyuan Zhang

Abstract: This paper analyzes the complexities and issues surrounding the Kribi Deepwater Port project, a major infrastructure development in Cameroon under the Belt and Road Initiative and the China-Africa Forum. The paper delves into the background of Cameroon-China relations, major areas of tension, and specific controversies linked to the Kribi Port project. It highlights challenges such as forced migration, labor disputes, environmental concerns, and debt distress. The port’s construction, led by the China Harbour Engineering Company, faced criticism for insufficient consideration of local communities, especially regarding forced migration and labor issues. However, it also achieved some success in environmental regulations. In conclusion, the Kribi Deepwater Port Project emphasizes the importance of cultural sensitivity and engaging local communities in decision-making for international infrastructure projects, particularly those involving China.

I. Introduction

Over the past two decades, China has established numerous grand infrastructure projects in over 35 African countries (Rolland 2022; Institute of Developing Economies 2009). The Chinese-African infrastructure projects began as a result of China’s Belt and Road Initiative and the China-Africa forum. The Belt and Road Initiative specifically focuses on establishing new trade routes for China, while the China-Africa forum serves as a comprehensive framework for China-Africa relations as a whole (Yu and Wallace 2021; United Nations Development Program 2016). Although the initiative’s framework outlines the economic importance of the infrastructure efforts, these projects are surrounded by controversy globally. One project in particular, the Kribi Deepwater Port in Cameroon, remains at the center of discussion. This paper examines the Kribi Deepwater Port controversies to identify the main causes affecting public opinion around China’s infrastructure engagement in Africa. The paper begins by providing background information about Cameroon and its relations with China, and then moves to an explanation and evaluation of the controversies related to the Kribi Port. The tensions around the port include forced migration, labor issues, environmental concerns, and debt distress. Overall, findings suggest that the Chinese government and contractors have adequate capabilities to meet international standards regarding environmental and debt issues; However, they lack sufficient and thoughtful consideration of the local community when dealing with forced migration and labor issues, indicating a crucial need for cultural sensitivity in preventing conflict around China’s international infrastructure projects, like the Kribi Deepwater Port in Cameroon.II. Sources and Implications of Property Tax Regressivity

II. Cameroon and Its Engagement with China

Introduction to Cameroon

The Republic of Cameroon (La République du Cameroun) is a country located in West Africa and is home to approximately 250 ethnic groups and 270 African languages. English and French serve as the country’s official languages (People’s Republic of China Embassy in the Republic of Cameroon 2014). The history of Cameroon, like many African countries, was affected by European imperialism and colonialism. In 1884, German explorer Gustav Nachtigal arrived to annex the Douala coast. Since then, Cameroon was colonized as a German Protectorate until the end of the First World War when it was invaded by the British and French (Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development 2024). In 1948, Felix-Roland Moumie and Reuben Um Nyobe formed the first nationalist party, the Union des Populations du Cameroun (UPC). They advocated for a complete separation from France and the establishment of a socialist economic system. French authorities suppressed the UPC and endorsed alternate political leaders from outside the UPC triggering a bitter civil war (Benneh and DeLancey 1999). Independence was officially granted on January 1, 1960. Ahmadou Ahidjo, former Prime Minister of the French Cameroon, came into power in the subsequent elections as the inaugural president of the Republic of Cameroon. Ahidjo and his party, the Cameroon Union, committed to fostering a capitalist economy and maintaining strong ties with France. After the declaration of independence between France and French Cameroon, the British Cameroons in the region had to make a choice: join Nigeria or join the now independent Cameroon through a UN-sponsored referendum in 1961. The northern part opted for becoming part of Nigeria, while the southern British territory joined the liberated French Cameroons to form the Federal Republic of Cameroon (National Geographic Kids “Cameroon” n.d.). The country was renamed the United Republic of Cameroon in 1972 and the Republic of Cameroon in 1984 (Presidency of the Republic of Cameroon n.d.). Cameroon’s former French and British territories maintained distinct educational, legal, civil service, and legislative systems until a 1972 referendum established a national system along French lines (National Geographic Kids “Cameroon Country Profile” n.d.).

Cameroon is a republic characterized by a presidential system of governance. While it maintains a multiparty system, the Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement has held power and unrestricted authority across all branches of government, since its inception in 1985 (Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor 2011). The authoritarian regime of the People’s Democratic Movement ultimately led to corruption and lack of transparency within Cameroon’s political system (Fisken 2013). Bribery at different levels of the government creates financial and administrative burdens on the people of Cameroon. Agriculture and livestock serve as the mainstay of Cameroon’s national economy. Currently, Cameroon upholds trade relations with more than 120 countries and regions and has signed trade agreements with more than 30 countries.

Cameroon remains a natural resource and mineral rich country, with major resources including (People’s Republic of China Embassy in the Republic of Cameroon 2014):

• Bauxite (reserves of more than 1.1 billion tons, with a grade of 43% bauxite and 3.4% Silica,

• Iron ore (about 300 million tons),

• and Rutile (about 3 million tons, with a titanium content of 92 to 95%)

Other resources and minerals include:

• Cassiterite ore, gold, diamonds, cobalt, nickel, marble, limestone, mica, and other non-metallic minerals.

• Forest areas of more than 22 million hectares, accounting for about 47% of the country’s total area (more than 16.9 million hectares available for exploitation)

• Timber stock of 4 billion cubic meters.

• Hydraulic resources of 208 billion cubic meters, accounting for 3% of the world’s hydraulic resources.

• Oil reserves estimated at more than 100 million tons,

• Natural gas reserves estimated at more than 500 billion cubic meters. Tourism resources in Cameroon range from stunning coastal beaches to dense primary forests and crystal clear lakes and rivers.

China-Cameroon Relations

The first administration of the Republic of Cameroon demonstrated an attitude shift from hostility to cooperation between the start of the first president of the Republic Ahmadou Ahidjo’s term in 1960 and 1970 (Encyclopedia Britannica 1998). In 1949, Mao Zedong came to power as the first Chairperson of the People’s Republic of China. Zedong focused on advancing the global socialist revolutionist leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). During the course of the Cameroonian War for Independence, Mao disrupted the status quo when he supported UPC, the main opposition party to Cameroonian National Union (CNU), Ahidjo’s party. Mao provided weapons to UPC and trained them in guerrilla warfare (Weigart 1996). Upon the independence of Cameroon in 1960, the People’s Republic of China explicitly recognized the leadership of the UPC as the legitimate government of Cameroon (Sharp 2013). As a consequence, the CCP interference angered the Cameroonian government now led by Ahidjo, which caused him to establish diplomatic relations with the Taiwan authorities in January 1960 (Amin 2015). The relationship between Cameroon and Taiwan ended when China shifted its focus from a political relationship to an economic one with African countries. China and Cameroon officially established diplomatic relations on March 26, 1971 (Amin 2015). In 1972, Ahidjo approved an economic and technical agreement with China to boost trade. He later signed five other additional agreements during his term (Amin 2015). In 1987, the second President of Cameroon, Paul Biya, made his first visit to China. During his term, he further solidified China-Cameroon relations, paying for five official visits to China between 1987 to 2011 (Mpana 2021). As a result, China’s President Xi Jinping addressed him as “an old friend of the Chinese people” (Liangyu 2018). In 2000, China established the Forum on ChinaAfrica Cooperation, which made possible more projects and investments in Cameroon (Daka et al. 2021). To commemorate the 40th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two nations in 2011, the Cameroon embassy in Beijing produced a pamphlet documenting key moments in Sino-Cameroon relation (Daka et al. 2021).

Infrastructure serves as the key sector of cooperation between China and Cameroon. The projects usually receive financial support from Chinese-sponsored development banks or constructed by big Chinese state-owned companies. The main projects financed by China include the conference building, the Lagadu hydroelectric power station, the Yaoundé women’s and children’s hospital, and the Yaoundé multi-purpose stadium. Projects implemented with preferential loans from the Chinese side include the first phase of the Kribi Deepwater port and the Mekan hydroelectric power station (China Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2023).

China and Cameroon have signed agreements on trade, economic, and technological cooperation. The ChinaCameroon Economic and Trade Mixed Commission was established in 1986 and has held eight conventions thus far. China mainly imports crude oil, logs, and cotton, while Cameroon imports electromechanical and high-tech products (China Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2023). In 2022, the bilateral trade amounted to US$3.823 billion, a year-on-year decline of 11.8%. During that time, China exported US$3.167 billion, amounting to a year-on-year increase of 16.4%; They also imported US$656 million, a year-on-year decline of 60% (China Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2023).

Two growing areas of cooperation between the two countries include agriculture and mining. China launched its first agricultural project in Cameroon in 1991. Today, that number is ten. The third Forum on China-Africa Cooperation reinforced these efforts in 2006 during the Beijing conference. Featuring the establishment of the Agricultural Technologies Demonstration Center in Nanga-Eboko and the Technical Professional Agricultural Higher School in Yabassi, this forum paved the way for an increased scale of Chinese interventions in Cameroon from the scientific and technical aspects of the agricultural sector (Daka et al. 2021). Until recently, mining efforts remained consolidated around smallscale Chinese businesses. Cameroon’s government signed a $675.96 million USD high-grade iron ore mining deal with a subsidiary of Sinosteel Corporation Limited in 2022 (Atabong 2022).

Outside of infrastructure agreements, China and Cameroon also signed a cultural cooperation agreement in 2008 and a memorandum of understanding on sports cooperation in 2011 (China Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2023). The two countries had delegates visit the other for performances representative of the two nations. Additionally, China has established microbiology laboratories and computer centers at universities in Cameroon, provided scholarships to students from Cameroon, and established Confucius Institutes. Sports exchanges between China and Cameroon began in 1972, involving groups in table tennis, basketball, and soccer (China Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2023). Since 1975, China has also sent medical teams to Cameroon, amounting to around 22 groups of medical teams during this time. Currently, 24 medical team members are in Cameroon. From May to June 2016, the National Health and Family Planning Commission dispatched a team of experts to Cameroon to carry out 627 cataract surgeries as part of the “Brightness Walk” program (China Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2023).

Major Areas of Tension

As China’s economic activities increased in Cameroon, protests and dissent by local Cameroonians began to emerge. Infrastructure construction and natural resource exploitation, which required large swathes of inhabited land, led to the forced migration of many Cameroonians, whose land was taken. In 2022, in Cameroon’s mineral-rich eastern region, locals accused Chinese mining companies of expropriating their lands and of assuming that no landowners had the right to benefit from China’s economic gains (Kouam 2022).

This spurred another series of concerns regarding job creation and labor disputes between Chinese companies and local employees. In 2016, rising tensions between Cameroonian workers and Chinese companies resulted in strikes on two Chinese-led road projects in support of better pay and working conditions (Kindzeka 2016a).

Grand exploitation and construction projects brought about environmental concerns. In 2019, about 60 Cameroonian miners protested outside a Chinese-run gold mining operation. Protesters said that Chinese miners violated Cameroon laws, which prohibit mining on river beds, swampy areas, and waterfalls (Kindzeka 2019).

Lastly, Chinese companies generated business competition which may place local businesses at a disadvantage. In eastern Cameroon, tensions brew between local and small-scale Chinese gold miners. The former said that the local livelihood deteriorated because they were not able to compete with the Chinese (Kindzeka 2016b). For example, Chinese miners utilize Caterpillar tractors and machinery to efficiently sift through soil and stones, enabling them to detect gold more quickly compared to locals who rely on manual tools. In response, enraged locals have resorted to slashing tires, damaging equipment, and even assaulting some Chinese miners. Consequently, numerous Chinese individuals have sought refuge in neighboring towns for their safety, only returning periodically to supervise their enterprises.

III. The Kribi Deepwater Port Project and Related Controversies

This paper will analyze the tensions detailed above through one of Cameroon’s largest China-built infrastructure projects, the Kribi Deepwater Port project. A wide range of problems and conflicts emerged during the construction and operation of the port.

Increasing needs for imports and exports encouraged the Cameroonian government to construct a deepwater port facing the Gulf of Guinea. Cameroon serves as a critical seaport for its inland neighboring countries, such as the Central African Republic and Chad. The previous largest port located in Douala is limited in terms of capacity (Fan and DEFO FOTSO 2023). The riverport has a 50-kilometer artificial channel connecting it to the sea and is too shallow to accommodate large ships. Originally, negotiations had taken place between the Cameroonian government and the French to establish the new port (Nkot and Amougou 2021). However, the project was finally made possible by the China-Cameroon cooperation under the frameworks of the Belt and Road Initiative and the China-Africa Cooperation Forum. According to the deputy coordinator of the port project, Hand Bahiol Magloire, Cameroon expected the Kribi Port to become an economic hub that would promote growth in southern Cameroon as well as the whole country (Tiezzi 2015).

The company placed in charge of the construction was the China Harbour Engineering Company Ltd. (CHEC), which serves as a subcontractor of the leading state-owned construction company China Communications Construction Company Ltd. In 2008, the company proposed a construction plan fully sponsored by China-backed development bank fundings, and eventually signed a contract with Cameroon in 2009 to begin Phase One of the construction work. Agreements were signed on a condition of obtaining loans with preferential conditions from the ExportImport Bank of China (Kitano 2020). According to the project’s official website, between 2005 and the first half of 2020, total investment has reached USD $456 million (Port Authority of Kribi 2020). Overall, 85% of the funds were provided as a preferential loan from China’s Export-Import Bank and 15% were paid by the Cameroonian government (Tiezzi 2015).

CHEC also won a 25-year concession as part of the Kribi Conteneurs Terminal consortium (KCT), which consists of CHEC, French conglomerate Bolloré, French shipping company CMA CGM, and local Cameroonian companies. KCT is the operator and concessionaire for the container terminal of the Kribi Deepwater Port, which is different from the governance body, the Port Authority of Kribi (PAK), which is directly supervised by the Cameroonian government. The latter is a public company placed under the financial supervision of the Ministry of Finance and the technical supervision of the Ministry of Transports (Port Authority of Kribi 2020).

Although the Cameroonian authority attached great importance to cooperation, the views of the local community were poorly considered. As a result, conflict and tension regarding forced migrations, hiring, and the environment existed and some international human-rights supporters joined to voice against China.

Land Grabs and Forced Migration

To build the port, the village of Lolabé had to be destroyed. The forced migrations coupled with a lack of compensation have triggered grievances within the local community, as well as accusations by overseas pro-human rights media outlets.

According to the official reports by the Chinese authorities, the attitudes of the villagers were divided between younger and older members. The elders were opposed to moving while the young people were excited (Fan and DEFO FOTSO 2023). The young villagers hoped for more job opportunities brought by the Kribi Port. The opponents were eventually persuaded when CHEC explained the benefits of the port to the village and promised to construct roads connecting the new village and the port. However, grievances returned when the villagers realized that the port did not bring them the expected job opportunities and economic benefits originally promised (Schenkel 2018).

Many of the forced migrants failed to receive adequate monetary compensation. Widespread issues stemming from underdeveloped legal regulations and corruption exacerbated the inequality experienced by the Lolabé villagers. This challenge is not exclusive to the Chinese company but is rather a systemic issue. In part, land laws in Cameroon is a grey area and many of the former Lolabé villagers did not possess requisite paperwork to prove land or property ownership (Schenkel 2018). It is also extremely burdensome to register for land ownership in Cameroon (Andreastaeritz 2016). The process engages nine government agencies and the applicant would need to move from window to window and to bribe officials of each agency. Although the civil society leaders of the village could participate in land deals by joining the consultation board, representatives were selected by the local authority, and the consultation board had no funds to help villagers obtain the documents of land ownership. As a result, local activists continued to fight for justice and the resentment expanded as many now viewed the construction efforts as “land grabbing” by those involved in the Kribi Port Project (Andreastaeritz 2016).

Additionally, the compensation was not fully realized due to corruption embedded at various levels of the Cameroonian government. By 2013, only 23 million USD of the 38 million USD that Prime Minister Philemon Yang approved for compensation back in 2010 had been paid out to the villagers. The other 15 million USD is alleged to have been embezzled by corrupt politicians (Schenkel 2018). The promised Kribi-Lolabe Highway started construction in 2016. In order to create space for the highway, more Cameroonian citizens were forced to migrate. The US State Department in 2022 claimed that those in the second way of forced migration had not yet received full compensation (Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor 2022).

In the forced migrations process, the Cameroonian government was responsible for delivering compensations to the affected population and the CHEC facilitated negotiations with the villagers (Fan and DEFO FOTSO 2023; Schenkel 2018). Nevertheless, the local community still remains aggrieved as CHEC operated under the assumption that securing government approval and cooperation served as the sole critical element for garner support for the project, and neglected to directly engage with other stakeholders. The Chinese attitude toward the problems of forced migration are emblematic of both China’s grand noninterference policy and China’s overall approach towards economic development. Chinese companies are accustomed to a culture that pays the most attention to higher-level officials, while ignoring civil society. In the case of Cameroon, where the domestic government lacked responsiveness to the people, the Chinese companies’ strategies could only add to the suffering of the people, leading to these negative consequences. A more appropriate method to establish relations with the local community is to adequately engage them in the decision making process and ensure a reliable channel for implementation.

Job Creation and Labor Issues

Despite dissent among villagers, the Kribi Port construction did create new job opportunities as promised during negotiations. The Cameroonian government is actively engaged in the employment and protection of local workers. However, barriers for locals to work at Chinese companies still exist, leading to additional tensions with locals. Such roles usually require higher qualifications and language skills that many Cameroonians do not possess without sufficient training from Chinese companies, which was not provided.

Therefore, while the port construction did create the promised job opportunities, local villagers did not benefit as much as they expected from the port’s construction. According to China’s Ministry of Commerce, by 2019, the Kribi Port created around 2,000 local employees (Fan and DEFO FOTSO 2023). In June 2023, China Communications Construction, the contractor of the KribiLolabe Highway, reported that they trained 30 Cameroonian employees to be toll collectors for the highway (China Communications Construction 2023). It is easy to imagine hiring local toll collectors as the job requires little skill and local language proficiency. However, most jobs need higher qualifications. As a result, the roles tend to be filled by non-local higherskill Cameroonians or workers from abroad (Fisken 2013).

Mainstream Western media outlets shed light on how the jobs created by the construction failed to benefit local Cameroonians. According to the Diplomat, of the 1,125 people at work on the harbor in August 2013, only around half were Cameroonians (Tiezzi 2015). Deutsche Welle pointed out that construction-created jobs are rarely given to locals, instead going to workers from other parts of Cameroon (Schenkel 2018). Most people from villages directly neighboring the harbor apparently did not have the qualifications required to fill these roles.

“Villagers were very optimistic when they heard about the harbor project. We hoped it would bring jobs and improve our lives,” said Theodore Ivaha, Lolabe’s vice village chief. “But for the last couple of years, we have just gotten more angry because we are not profiting at all.” (Schenkel 2018)

The barriers to hiring and training local people are very likely to exist. The Chinese government published an article portraying Bruce, a French-speaking Cameroonian working as a warehouse clerk for the port (Fan and DEFO FOTSO 2023). According to the article, Bruce was able to understand labels in English and Chinese with the help of a technician, who gave him a printout listing the terms required for work and talked to him in English and Chinese to help him practice. This story reflects two evident barriers for local workers to work in a Chinese company. First, French, the native language of most Cameroonians, is not the working language for the port. Second, there is no professional language training provided for employees in need of improving their English or Chinese language skills.

Further, anticipation of Kribi’s future as a trading hub has caused an influx of migrants, which includes more competent job seekers than the locals. Scholars have assessed the urban attractiveness generated by the construction of the Kribi port as shown in Figure 1 (Tichafogwe et al. 2018). The population growth generates greater competition for job opportunities, raises the cost of living, and increases business competition - all of which harm locals’ opportunities (Tiezzi 2015).

Despite the lack of job opportunities for locals, the Cameroonian government did show a desire to protect local workers. At the beginning of the project, Issa Tchiroma Bakary, the Minister of Employment and Vocational Training (MINEFOP), and Gregoire Owona, Minister of Labor and Social Security (MINTSS) paid a working visit to the Kribi Port (Port Authority of Kribi 2020). During this visit, the ministers wanted to show their advocacy for private companies that help combat unemployment and develop a competitive human capital. The discussion covered employment, vocational training, the transfer of technologies by foreign workers to locals, and working conditions. The ministers held a working session for employees to bring forth observations and grievances. Through this action, the government voiced their intent to protect local workers, as well as balance growth and local worker rights in foreign-invested companies.

In 2017, the National Fund for Employment (FNE) signed an agreement with PAK to help the careers of local young people in Kribi (Sanchez 2021). FNE is Cameroon’s public employment service, placed under the technical supervision of the Ministry of Employment and Vocational Training, and the financial supervision of the Ministry of Finance. It was created on April 27, 1990, by presidential decree, with the mission of promoting employment throughout Cameroon (National Fund for Employment n.d.). The agreement allows PAK to communicate its human resource needs to FNE and select profiles from the National Fund database. FNE will also handle job applications for the port’s subcontractors, which reasonably includes KCT. However, FNE is only a public service so it hardly has authority over the recruitment process of the Chinese companies (Business in Cameroon 2017).

Environmental Concerns

The most prevalent environmental dispute related to the Kribi Port construction is deforestation. This paper will assess the effect of the Kribi Port on the forest in South Cameroon to evaluate the related discourse. This paper will also shed light on the port’s impact on coastline erosion and water pollution, which are of more concern in academia.

Environmentalists had voiced their worries regarding the project’s negative effect on the biosphere of the rainforest nearby (Bax 2018). The forest in Cameroon composes the northern part of the Congo Basin, the Earth’s second-largest tropical rainforest. The bulldozers started clearing trees at the end of 2010. Germany-based media, Deutsche Welle, reported the issue and claimed that tens of thousands of hectares of the jungle are estimated to be cleared by the expected completion of the port in 2035 so as to build an entirely new city around the port (Bax 2018).

However, the actual scale of deforestation may not have been as serious as estimated by Western media. By January 5, 2015, researchers discovered only a 714.05-hectare land cover change, transitioning from forest to non-forest, through image differencing. Additionally, the most affected forest areas had previously been disturbed by human activities, meaning they already had less biodiversity and lower ecological value prior to the deforestation for port construction purposes (Ngueguim 2017).

However, it is important to account for the future effects of this deforestation. The detected land cover change caused by the port construction by 2015, though small in scale, is very substantial in landscape (Foonde 2018). The concession for both the seaport and the accompanying industrial and urban area is 26 thousand hectares (Ngueguim 2017). The construction of the whole concession is expected to be completed by 2040. The project team could work on a plan that minimizes the need for significant alterations to the forest landscape. The Chinese contractor could also launch reforestation and afforestation efforts to offset possible negative impacts caused by the construction.

The increased deforestation in Cameroon, by contrast, was caused not so much by the port but logging efforts by domestic bodies (Ngueguim 2017). Prominent among these are Socaplam and Hevecam, which specialize in the production of rubber and palm oil. Hevecam holds a concession covering 70,000 hectares for its plantations, while Socaplam operates on a concession of 23,000 hectares. The other areas in this region are designated as Forest Management Units (FMUs), like the 09- 025, encompassing 88,535 hectares. In these FMUs, logging companies are authorized to conduct timber harvesting activities.

Although the Kribi Port has not created large-scale deforestation, it is worth noting that potential expansion is possible. As analyzed in the previous section, the Cameroonian government, CHEC, and third-party researchers all predicted highlevel urbanization and population flow to the area. Therefore, KCT and PAK should develop a plan to give consideration to both urbanization and rainforest protection in the region. Moreover, the government should regulate existing domestic exploitation of the rainforest near the Kribi Port concession to facilitate the holistic sustainability of the greater area.

Like other common environmental problems with port projects, coastline erosion and water pollution have been the focus of environmental scientists. Researchers found that significant erosion took place along the Kribi coast between 2015 and 2020 (Mbevo Fendoung et al. 2022). Human activities are the major causes of the rising erosion. The port construction encouraged sand mining, deforestation, urbanization, and hotel activity. Besides, the fluvial input decline due to dam construction slowed the growth of the coastline. Additionally, climate change and the rise of the sea level also contributed to the erosion process.

In terms of water pollution, no real sign of pollution is found in the seawater, though high iron concentration is found in the local underground water (Mioumnde et al. 2021). As shown on the Kribi Port official website, adequate equipment is in place to control marine pollution (Port Authority of Kribi 2020). However, given the detected pollution in some wells in the local community, the government should pay more attention to the safety of the underground water in the neighboring communities beyond the port itself. The same researcher expected that the increase of industrial and mining activities in Kribi after the port construction would place the underground water quality at risk of pollution (Mioumnde et al. 2021).

The environmental aspect of the Kribi Port is mostly regulated by KCT. Meanwhile, PAK runs an initiative to help sustainability. In 2022, KCT was granted the Green Terminal label, an environmental labeling process launched by Bolloré Ports, a leading operator of port terminals in Africa, Asia, and America (Econfin Agency 2022). The approach was validated by Bureau Veritas, a worldly reputable company in testing, inspection and certification. KCT was rewarded for the quality of its facilities, built in line with the latest international standards. The terminal boasts a treatment facility for both rainwater and wastewater, ensuring effective handling of effluents and waste. The adoption of digital systems has markedly decreased the greenhouse gas emissions from involved parties. KCT also used a hydroelectric grid for electricity supply, thereby eliminating reliance on diesel. PAK launched the Eco-sustain Project based on the existing Kribi Port Geographic Information System (GIS) to track the port’s environmental performance to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (World Port Sustainability Program 2022).

In summary, current regulations and facilities related to environmental protection at the port are generally sufficient. The construction deforested part of the Congo Basin; However, Western media may have exaggerated the effects. The impact is limited to a smaller amount of land and the cleared forests are mostly previously disturbed by other human activities. Meanwhile, KCT and PAK should pay more attention to potential risks related to coastline erosion and underground water pollution.

Debt Distress

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) classified Cameroon as at high risk of debt distress, both to internal and external lenders (2023). In 2007, Cameroon’s public debt constituted a mere 12% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP). However, by September 2020, this number had escalated to over 45% of the nation’s GDP. A significant portion of Cameroon’s foreign debt, amounting to 61%, is attributed to China, positioning it as the country’s principal lender. Kribi Port construction is the largest source of Cameroon’s debt to China (Bone 2021).

On January 11, 2023, China announced its participation in the G20’s Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) to alleviate Africa’s debt, considering case-by-case debt restructuring to safeguard its interests (Akeredolu 2023) . Johns Hopkins University’s China Africa Research Initiative notes that China forgave $3.4 billion in loans from 2000 to 2019 consisting mainly of interest-free loans to African nations. Around 23 loans were forgiven across as many countries by 2022 (Brautigam and Wang 2021). However, these loans are a minor portion of Africa’s total debt to China, indicating a need for broader negotiations.

For a sustainable solution, multilateral efforts from Western countries and China are crucial. The G20’s Common Framework for Debt Treatments, introduced in 2020 to tackle post-COVID-19 unsustainable debts, faces challenges in 2023. This highlights the need for technical revisions and stronger rule enforcement, including private creditor participation. To create a strategy that addresses unsustainable debts and prevents future excessive borrowing by African nations, all lending parties, including the G7 and China, should also initiate a comprehensive dialogue (Akeredolu 2023).

IV. Conclusion

In the 1970s, China shifted the focus of its relationship with Africa broadly, but specifically Cameroon, from political influence to mutual economic benefits. This shift in focus led to the development of one of Cameroon’s largest infrastructure projects, the Kribi Deepwater Port. CHEC, a Chinese state-owned company, received loans from China to spearhead the construction of this port in Cameroon. The project witnessed a myriad of controversies and tensions, including forced migration, labor issues, environmental concerns, and debt distress. Due to cultural limitations, CHEC failed to develop an appropriate solution to forced migration and labor issues. However, it achieved general success in environmental regulations. The Chinese government also plays an active role in helping African countries with debt distress.

The analysis of the Kribi Deepwater Port’s controversies suggests that the primary conflict source is the neglect of local communities. This issue stems from a top-down decision-making approach, deeply rooted in China’s traditional and contemporary authoritarian culture. Such cultural disparities hinder the Chinese contractor’s understanding of labor rights and the need to consider civil society and government officials as key stakeholders on an equal footing. This highlights the importance of cultural sensitivity in international infrastructure endeavors. Furthermore, this approach brings the Chinese state-owned companies’ authoritarian culture to the local economic and societal setting. The Chinese companies’ partnership with only the high officials and exclusion of labor unions and other civil society would further foster the existing corruption. Although the Chinese government did not deliberate authoritarian influence through these economic activities, it is important that both local and international communities seek proactive engagement to prevent subtle alteration of the socio-economic landscape.

Populism and Financial Crises: How Can the Financial Crises of 2008 and 2014 Explain the Rise of Populism in Brazil

Iuri Macedo Piovezan

Abstract: The present study evaluates the relevance of the financial crises of 2008 and 2014 in rationalising the recent rise of populism in Brazil after the election of Jair Bolsonaro in 2018. This paper presents the challenges academia faces in understanding the mechanisms behind the interaction between populism and financial crises. Then, it tests three different theories on the events following both the 2008 and 2014 financial crisis to understand which theory provides a better explanation for the rise of populism in Brazil. The theory suggests that the emergence of populism was driven by income loss, notably evident post-2014, coinciding with the ascent of a populist leader, which thereby supports the hypothesis. The second theory shows that people in deficit nations should move to the left of the political spectrum, which this paper – after utilizing an original system of analysis – observes is not the case in both 2008 and 2014. Lastly, the final theory suggests that disillusionment with the present government after a financial crisis makes populism more attractive to the electorate. This paper finds that the third theory is a plausible explanation for the rise of populism after 2014. It should be noted, however, that Former President Dilma Rousseff’s infamous fiscal adjustments after 2014 and the Car Wash scandal might also be relevant in explaining the rise of populism. Keywords: Populism, Financial Crises, Income, Disillusionment, Movement.

I. Introduction

Financial crises, like recessions, can uproot social and political stability, giving rise to populist movements. Although little research exists regarding the connection between recessions and other financial shocks and populism, academics who analyze these connections often reach a consensus that financial crises can potentially push people to a populist agenda. However, which elements of a financial crisis influence populist movements remain up for debate among these scholars. This paper addresses this debate by focusing on the mechanisms that might explain the surge of populism in the Brazilian political system. Particularly, this paper examines the emergence of Jair Bolsonaro as the 38th Brazilian President and the effects of the 2008 and 2014 financial crises. Overall, findings suggest that the significant dissatisfaction with the present government after the 2014 crisis served as an important factor in the acceptance of the populist narrative in 2018 and onward in Brazil.

Before this paper’s main discussion, this study explores a variety of relevant literature in the field. First, it examines the intersection between financial crises and the rise of populism and the ways in which a financial crisis facilitated the emergence of populism. Then, due to the current debate, the paper explores the question of whether economics plays any role in the rise of populism.

In the analysis section, this study re-introduces Luigi Guiso et al. and Lawrence Broz’s concepts of income loss, disillusionment with the status quo, and electoral movement after both the 2008 and 2014 financial crises. This research, then, addresses each crisis separately, analysing the relevancy of each crisis when addressing the surge of populism in Brazil after the election of Bolsonaro. Prior to Bolsonaro’s election, Brazil had not experienced populism of this degree since 1964 under the leadership of President João Goulart (Silva 2023). Brazil serves as an interesting case study for this paper for a variety of reasons. First, academia focusing on populism often pays little attention to Brazil. Instead, academics tend to focus on Eastern European nations. Second, Brazil only recently endured a rise of populism, which lasted only for a short period. Overall, this paper attempts to push forward the study of populism by using Brazil as a novel case study to explore the topic.

II. Populism, and Financial Crises

Little research exists to try to understand the factors that might explain the emergence of populism in Brazil, and less research explicitly revolves around the realm of economics. Instead, many authors choose to address the emergence of populism through different explanations, such as blaming the COVID-19 pandemic, party fragmentation, or the belief that populism remained the only solution to the problems Brazilian society faced at the time (Resente and Buitrago 2023, 1; Borges 2021, 168; Akgemci 2022, 45). Academia, however, lacks expansive research that directly analyzes the contribution of economic factors to the emergence of populism in Brazil. Some offer compelling evidence, specifically regarding the impact of globalization, automation, and financial hardships on the emergence of populism in a given country. Though still highly debatable, each topic sheds light on an important issue and the possible connection to populism in their selective case studies.

Although globalization can potentially fuel populism, research on the topic remains inconclusive. Fukuyama once claimed that “the rise of populism has been triggered by globalization” (2019, 168). The research that supports this point of view, however, is far from concrete. In their study, Autor et al. find that “trade exposure” positively impacts replacing moderate candidates with extreme ones (2020, 3139). On a similar note, Swank et al. claimed that “international integration, or the notable increases in transnational flows of trade, capital, and people in recent decades” was a driving factor for the rise of populism in Western Europe (2003, 238). Other scholars, however, are more pessimistic regarding the impact of globalization on the rise of populist movements. Bergh et al., for example, find little to no significant evidence for the emergence of populism in relation to globalization (2021, 51). Therefore, globalization might not fully explain the rise of populism in countries.

As for automation, some scholars credit it as a driving factor for the rise in populist rhetoric. Due to the increase of technological automation, an increasing number of people experience joblessness from the greater role of technology in their industry or occupation. The dissatisfaction that rises with unemployment, then, might help explain the rise of populism. In this vein, Guvercin finds a positive correlation between automation and populism (2022, 5). Using data from 82 nations, the author finds that “the adoption of digital technologies fostering automation… in highly digital and competitive sectors” increases populism (Guvercin 2022, 3). Other scholars also find promising results, showing a correlation between automation and populism (Milner 2021; Frank 2018). Automation, then, provides a compelling explanation of the rise of populism. The problem, however, rests with the fact that automation lacks discussion around a crucial aspect possessed by financial crises: the creation of winners and losers. As we can see in Guiso et al., while there are winners in automation (e.g., leaders of industry), “most people across the spectrum of the voting population” lose during a financial crisis, creating a disproportionately high loser-to-winner ratio compared to automation (2022). Trying to understand the emergence of populism in Brazil through the lens of automation, then, might not yield fruitful analysis.

Some scholars credit financial stress as one of the most important mechanisms in the emergence of populism after a financial crisis. In an analysis using data from the 1920s and 30s, Bromhead et al. wanted to understand if the rise of populism in Germany was unique to the nation or if some of its factors could be generalized to other European countries. The authors evaluate 28 different countries between World War I and II, finding “the existence of a link between political extremism and economic hard times” as evidence of trends of populism outside of the Nazi Germany context. In other words, the authors believe that “not all aspects of Germany’s unfortunate political history… generalize. But some do” and that a link can be traced between financial strain and populist rhetoric (Bromhead and Eichengreen 2013, 372, 401). Other authors, relying on more recent data, also find evidence that some consequences of financial crises drive people to align with far-right populism. The well-known populist party Jobbik, for instance, encountered significant electoral success after the 2008 financial crisis, where many Hungarians experienced financial stress that, in turn, resulted in a substantial and notorious populist agenda (Gyongyosi and Verner 2022, 2472; Becker 2020, 29; Gyorffy 2020). In addition, Guiso et al. find that income loss serves as a significant force that drives populism (2022). Another factor was disillusionment with the present government. As Guiso et al. explain, financial crises “created new classes of disillusioned voters” that provided easy targets for populist leaders (2022). In this vein, Prosperi presents that financial crises may also be used as a political weapon to draw people into their movement (2020, 951). The author explains that “by blaming the financial crisis on their political opponents, right-wing populist movements have been able to triple their voting share” (Prosperi 2020, 951). Financial stress, then, seems to be a better alternative to rationalize populism.

These explanations, however, might not stem entirely from the realm of economics. Instead of looking solely at finances, some scholars also see additional relevant factors like culture and fear of immigrants to explain the rise of populism. Some, like Broz, even claim that financial crises push people from deficit countries to the left rather than to the right of the political spectrum (2013, 78). In his study, the author analyzes the causes and effects of financial crises, finding that “crises also have consequences for partisan electoral competition” since voters – post-financial crisis – move to the left of the political spectrum in a deficit nation (Broz 2013, 78). Surplus countries, on the other hand, experience the complete opposite, with countries like Germany and the United States used as examples to show nations that punished the party in power in the subsequent elections after the 2008 financial crisis (Broz 2013, 101).

Cultural aspects might make one population more prone to populism. In their study, Doerr et al. investigate the 1931 financial crisis and the emergence of Nazism in Germany. The authors do credit the failure of banks as a contributor to the rise of Nazism, especially in areas deeply affected by the crisis (Doerr et al. 2022, 3339). They, however, also point out that cultural factors might share the spotlight with financial consequences in effecting the rise of Nazi Germany. Doerr et al. explain that linking financial with cultural factors provides a relevant understanding of the Nazi movement in Germany as the Nazi’s hate message led to greater support “in places where a history of anti-Semitism coincided with the real suffering induced by financial distress” (2022, 3342). The Nazis themselves, as the authors point out, heavily exploited the crisis as concrete evidence of the “Jewish-dominated financial system and corrupt Weimar “regime,” a notion that became especially popular in areas that already – due to cultural influence – had more adverse views towards the Jewish population (Doerr et al. 2022, 3343). On a similar note, Inglehart and Norris conclude that culture, not economic ties, mostly fuels populism (2016, 1). By using data from the Chapel Hill Expert Survey of 2014, the authors discuss two possible explanations for the rise of populism: economic insecurity and cultural backlash. Regarding the former, the authors explain that “according to this view, rising economic insecurity and social deprivation among the left-behinds has fuelled popular resentment of the political classes” (Inglehart and Norris 2016, 2). In this notion, groups become incredibly aversive of outsiders and – when feeling threatened – seek a “strong” leader to help defend their interests (Inglehart and Norris 2016, 11). As per the latter, the authors explain that cultural change, one that encouraged approval of different religions, cultures, and so forth, resulted in a “counter-revolutionary retro backlash, especially among the older generation,” who view this rejection of old values as dangerous (Inglehart and Norris 2016, 29). This, then, pushes the older generation to a populist agenda.

Immigration might also push people to populism. For some scholars, immigration plays a key role in the development of populism in a nation in two important ways. First, some groups of immigrants tend to supply populists with votes. In their study, Moriconi et al. find that a large influx of highly educated immigrants can negatively impact the development of nationalistic ideas, whereas those deemed less educated can assist in its development (2022, 30). On a similar note, Dinas et al. find that the presence of Syrian refugees in Greece in 2015 contributed to the increase in votes for the Golden Dawn, “the most extreme-right party in Europe” (2019, 244). Second, the fear of immigration itself has also been credited as a possible variable that leads to populist rhetoric among citizens of a nation (Bischi et al. 2022; Becker et al. 2017; Tabellini 2020; Funke et al. 2016).

III. Methodology

This paper aims to investigate the intersection between financial crises, mainly 2008 and 2014, with the emergence of populism in Brazil. In order to do so, it will evaluate the significance of the ideas proposed by Guiso et al. and J. Lawrence Broz that aim to explain the relationship. When it comes to Guiso et al., this research evaluates the existence and significance of income loss in Brazil and disillusionment with the status quo. As per Broz, they hypothesize that a public shift to the left after a financial crisis can explain the rise of populism. This study shall assess whether that hypothesis can be used to explain the rise of populism in Brazil after the 2018 presidential election.

In accordance with the above mentioned theories, the analysis section will be divided into three main sections. The first section reintroduces Guiso et al.’s idea of income loss and analyzes its assumed existence and significance for Brazil after 2008 and 2014. Then, the second section restates Broz’s research on the movement of the electorate in deficit nations and investigates – using an original system of analysis – the crises of 2008 and 2014 in light of Broz’s research. Since Broz mentions the movement of people after a financial crisis, this paper first discusses the system to investigate the existence and significance of said movement and then assesses whether it can be inferred that a movement from right to left occurred in the elections after 2008 and 2014. Lastly, it will return to Guiso’s research and evaluate – using unemployment and presidential approval rates – whether there was an identifiable disillusionment with Brazil’s government and if this is a significant variable that might explain the rise of populism.

IV. Case Presentation

Income Loss

The 2008 financial crisis was devastating for the world economy. With the U.S. housing bubble bursting in 2007 and considerably dropping the price of many homes, the American financial system entered a falling cascade that was difficult to recover from economically and socially (“The U.S. Financial Crisis”). In Brazil, however, the response to the U.S. market collapse, many scholars argue, was mild. Kahler and Lake, for example, explain that “although parts of the developing world that were dependent on trade” experienced a recession, markets like Brazil experienced “only brief inflection in their high rates of growth” (2023, 1). In a similar vein, Sobreira and de Paula explain that the methods by which Brazil responded to the 2008 crisis are noteworthy for two reasons. First, that “although deep, the impact did not last for a long time” (2010, 77). Second, that the Brazilian banking system “showed a great deal of resilience” during and after the crisis because of the Plano Real, a set of measures taken under President Itamar Franco in 1994 to stabilize the Brazilian economy (Sobreira and de Paula 2010, 77, 91). To tackle the reflexes of such turmoil, Sobreira and de Paula show that Brazil’s federal government acted quickly, enacting a series of actions to resolve the liquidity issue that it was facing soon after the collapse of the Lehman Brothers bank (Sobreira and de Paula 2010, 89). Most importantly, however, was the development of the Brazilian Development Bank, the Banco do Brasil (in English, Bank of Brazil), and the creation of new lines of credit at the Caixa Econômica Federal to “fund investment expenses,” “finance working capital,” and to “finance the acquisition of consumer goods” (Sobreira and de Paula 2010, 90). Moreover, when it comes to the response to the 2008 crisis in the Brazilian housing market, Cardoso et al. show that the housing market did not suffer greatly. The authors explain that since the Brazilian housing system did not adopt the American model based on mortgage securitization, the 2008 crisis only caused a relatively small impact on the Brazilian housing system (Cardoso and Leal 2010, 204). The authors also credit the “Minha Casa Minha Vida” (in English, “My Home, My Life”) Program – established in 2009 and provided affordable housing to low-income populations – for further assisting the Brazilian banking system as a whole (Cardoso and Leal 2010, 204). Overall, research suggests that 2008 did not affect the Brazilian economy drastically. However, the 2014 economic crisis that led to a recession in Brazil might tell a different story from 2008, which will be explored later in this paper.

One of the main ideas behind Guiso et al.’s “Financial Crises as Drivers of Populism” is that income loss pushes one to a far-right agenda. To analyze if there was, in fact, an income loss after 2008 and 2014, this paper gathered data about the number of people under the poverty line from 2005 to 2022 reported by Brazilian think tanks and a variety of news sources like G1 and IBGE. At first, this paper decided to rely on nominal and real wages, but since the government sets these measures, concerns around transparency and trustworthiness of the data for income loss led to a different approach. Instead, this paper observes the movement by analyzing the poverty line for two reasons. First, the poverty line clearly outlines – on a national level – the struggles that many suffer after a financial crisis by quantifying the number of people who fell from not poor to poor. Second, it is a variable that – unlike nominal and real wages – is not set by the government. Regarding the data set (see Figure 1 in the Appendix), we can see that the poor population decreased after 2008, which coincides with the available literature discussed above. After 2014, however, a drastic increase in the population under the poverty line is noticeable, going from around 20 million to 45 million. Therefore, it seems that there was an income loss only after 2014 and not 2008, which makes the income loss theory – at least when considering Brazil – helpful in understanding the rise of Brazilian populism since a populist leader did rise after 2014.

Movement of People

Financial crises have the potential to push the electorate to the left. As seen in Broz, voters in deficit nations have the tendency to align more with the left after the onset of a financial crisis (2013, 86). In order to test such an idea, this paper first relies on the World Factbook, a project devised by the CIA that categorizes nations into surplus and deficit nations by taking their GDP, showing Brazil as a member of the latter (“The World Factbook”). Then, taking into account Broz’s research, we should see a movement of the electorate to the left after both 2008 and 2014 since Brazil, as shown in the World Factbook, is a deficit nation. To test this theory, this paper has formulated a simple system that will evaluate where each party/candidate is in the political spectrum in the election before and after both crises. By knowing this, we can then infer if the electorate moved, if at all. So, for example, if the right won in an election before a financial crisis and the left won after, we would see a movement of people from the right to the left, and vice versa.

In the election of 2006, we see the left prevailing. The election was between Geraldo Alckmin and Luis Inacio da Silva, or Lula, who won with 48.61% of the votes (“Eleições 2006: Divulgação de Resultados”). Alckmin was part of the PSDB party, a party founded in 1988 deemed as centre-left (Welle 2021). While competing with the Workers’ Party, however, it was seen by many as centre-right to right-wing (Pontes 2021). Additionally, Alckmin has been described in the media as being centre-right (Tolotti 2018). In 2018, he publicly claimed that the party and himself are part of the centre of the political spectrum. However, since this interview was done years later after the election, this paper will consider Alckmin as being centre-right (“Alckmin: ‘Não existe guinada à direita, o PSDB é um partido de centro’“). Lula and the Workers’ Party were seen – and still are – as the most left-wing party in Brazil (Bianco 2022). The Workers’ Partywas founded by Lula and his acolytes in 1980 in response to the dictatorship period (that would end five years later) (Bianco 2022). The party also defends the “political participation of workers, the construction of a party aimed at the masses, and the fight against the current economic and political system,” which are commonly found in leftist parties (Bianco 2022). When it comes to Lula, not only did he establish the Workers’ Party, but he also served as the “symbol of the left” by many, clearly illustrating his leftist tendencies (Guimarães 2015). Overall, the 2006 election was a clash between the centre-right and the left. Ultimately, the left was victorious.

In the election of 2010, a similar story played out. Dilma Rousseff ran and won against José Serra with 56.05% of the votes (“Dilma Rousseff é a primeira mulher eleita presidente do Brasil”). Rousseff, also known as Lula’s “pupil,” joined the Workers’ Party in 2001 and is described by Lula and many others as leftist (Egana 2016). Serra openly labelled himself as a leftist back in 2010, despite involvement in the PSDB party (“Serra se diz de esquerda e critica relação Brasil-Irã”). As the left won again in 2010, no movement of people occurred after the 2008 crisis. If we take a look back at the results of the 2006 election, we see that Lula – and the Workers’ Party – won, which portrays an electorate more favourable to leftist ideals. Then, in 2010, we saw the Workers’ Party receive victory once more, showing that the electorate remained aligned with the left. Although, a slight increase in the percentage share of the vote for the left did occur between 2006 and 2010. Yet overall, after the 2008 financial crisis, we see little to no movement from the majority of voters in the political spectrum as most remained aligned with their party from 2006. This fails to follow Broz’s theory when looking specifically at the 2008 financial crisis.

When it comes to the crisis of 2014, the complete opposite occurred within the electorate. In the election of 2014, we see Dilma Rousseff competing against Aécio Neves, also from PSDB. While Dilma was a leftist candidate, Neves’s position in the political spectrum is up for interpretation. Some consider him part of the right, taking into consideration how the party was affiliated back in 2014 (“A morte da direita ‘civilizada’). Others, however, including himself, deny being right-wing (Lima et al. 2014). Given the competing analysis, this paper interprets Neves as a centre-right candidate. In this election, we see another victory for the Workers’ Party, with Rousseff winning with 41.59% of the votes (“Eleições 2014: Apuração de votos para presidente”). In the election of 2018, however, we see Brazil electing a populist leader. The presidential elections of 2018 were between Jair Bolsonaro, from PSL, and Fernando Haddad, from the Workers’ Party. The first, undeniably right-wing, has been notorious for homophobic, sexist, and racist comments throughout his political career. Back in 2003, for example, the then deputy would tell Maria do Rosario, a deputy from the Workers’ Party, that he would not rape her because she “did not deserve to be raped” since she was “too ugly” (“Bolsonaro pede desculpas a deputada por dizer que ela ‘não merecia ser estuprada’”). This claim, as obscene as it sounds, would then be repeated once again in 2014 (Ramalho 2016). Bolsonaro, in addition, has openly voiced his disapproval for homosexuality, claiming he would rather have a “dead son” than a “gay one” (“O que Bolsonaro já disse de fato sobre mulheres, negros e gays”). Furthermore, his party was classified by Shalders as belonging to the right of the political spectrum, even being referred to as the one that stays “furthest from the centre-right” (2017). This paper will then consider Bolsonaro as a right-wing politician. Haddad, a well-known politician who successfully ran for the first time in 2012 with the Workers’ Party, has always been seen and described as a leftist (Frazão, n.d.; Praça 2018). From 2013 to 2016, Haddad maintained his post as Mayor of São Paulo until 2018 when he ran for vice president with Lula (Frazão, n.d.). With Lula’s arrest, however, Haddad became the Workers’ Party's new candidate for the presidential post (Frazão, n.d.). Taking all of these into consideration, this paper will treat Haddad as a leftist. The 2018 election, then, presents us with something odd. Instead of a movement to the left after the crisis of 2014, the Brazilian electorate changed its course of action and moved to the right, making it possible for Bolsonaro to win the election. Therefore, Broz’s theory of the movement of the electorate to the left after a financial crisis appears in misalignment with the voting behavior after the 2008 or 2014 financial crisis.

Disillusionment

The rise of populism can also occur when voters, as a majority, are unhappy with the present government. As a response to a financial crisis, citizens of a given nation might blame the government for their doom. In the case of Brazil, this provides the best avenue to explain the rise of populism. More specifically, a careful analysis of the unemployment and presidential acceptance rates suggests that the financial crisis of 2014, not 2008, may explain the rise of populism that occurred during the election of 2018. Unemployment rate and presidential acceptance rates were chosen as variables of analysis for two reasons: (1) a financial crisis naturally leads to unemployment, which, in turn, could affect a president’s approval rates; (2) When people are unhappy with their government, one would expect to see a falling presidential approval rate overall.

In 2008, the population appeared satisfied with the president and experienced a low unemployment rate. When Lula assumed office in 2003, the former (and current) president started his career with a 43% presidential approval rating. As the years progressed, Lula maintained a somewhat positive increase in his popularity, only plummeting in 2005 but rebounding again in 2006 (“Avaliação de Presidentes: DATAFOLHA”). When the 2008 financial crisis hit, Lula not only maintained a high popularity rate of 55% but was able to end the year with a 70% approval rating (“Lula atinge aprovação recorde”). Lula achieved an 83% approval rating by the end of 2010, deemed by many as a record in Brazilian politics (“Lula encerra mandato com aprovação de 83%, afirma Ibope”). However, in terms of unemployment, the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics showed a record low of 7.9% in 2008, something not seen at the time in the last six years (“Desemprego no Brasil tem mínima recorde em 2008, diz IBGE”). The unemployment rate peaked at 8.1% in 2009 before dropping to 5.5% in 2012(see Figure 2 in Appendix) (do Brasil 2021).

One explanation is relatively simple: the 2008 crisis was not as detrimental to the Brazilian economy as it was for many others. As seen previously, Brazil did not suffer nearly as much as other nations throughout the 2008 financial crisis. It makes sense that Brazil did not experience high unemployment and also maintained a steady (or, in this case, growing) presidential approval rate.

However, 2014 tells a different story. As we see in the graphs discussed above, Brazilian workers suffered greatly, with unemployment reaching as high as 13.7% shortly after the crisis, resulting in over 14.2 million unemployed individuals (see Figure 2 in Appendix) (Silveira and Cavallini 2017). Many of these newly unemployed equated these sharp increases in unemployment to how President Dilma Rousseff was administering the crisis. Brazil under Rousseff had its 3rd worst GDP in 127 years, which was “90%” her fault, according to Professor Reinaldo Goncalves in his article on the crisis (Braga 2017). Moreover, Dilma’s relaxation of fiscal policy “by the attempt to force the devaluation of the exchange rate and the fall of interest rates… and by increasing and reinforcing a series of State intervention mechanisms in the economy” proved to be a disaster (Dantas 2015). It is worth mentioning that there are mixed interpretations of Dilma’s guilt. While some, like economist Rogerio Weneck, blame Rousseff for everything that happened in the nation post-crisis, others – like Luiz Schymura – do not blame Dilma for the onset of the crisis, only for the way it was dealt (Dantas 2015). Dilma’s failure to support the economy was so severe that the BBC listed the economy as one of the top three reasons Rousseff failed as a president (Brito 2016). In an interview, the former president herself would agree that she “took too long to notice the severity of the crisis.” (Nery 2015). The results in Figure 2 show a connection between high unemployment levels and low presidential approval levels. Notably, unemployment rose dramatically after 2014, coinciding with the collapse of Dilma’s approval rating. The high unemployment rates, in conjunction with the low presidential approval ratings, demonstrate voters' frustrations in the wake of the 2014 financial crisis in Brazil. And it is in this scenario of anger and uncertainty that Bolsonaro emerges as their saviour.

Bolsonaro embodied the desire for change in Brazilian democracy. A former military captain, Bolsonaro thrived in a period when Brazilians, especially after Dilma’s impeachment, did not align as much with the Workers’ Party as they did in the past. Bolsonaro, with his unfiltered way of speaking, grabbed people’s attention and represented – in essence – their hatred for the downfall of their nation. When voting “yes” for the impeachment of Dilma, for example, Bolsonaro exalted Colonel Carlos Brilhante Ustra, a known torturer during the dictatorship (Almeira, n.d.). However, it is worth pointing out that Ustra was not a random name that Bolsonaro decided to bring to light as he supported Dilma’s impeachment. As Altamiro Borges shows, Ustra and Rousseff had met personally in the past, her as a prisoner and him as her torturer (2020). As President, Bolsonaro granted Ustra the post of Marshall six years after his death, a title only granted to combat veterans. He also paid a monthly allowance of R$30.615,80 to Ustra’s daughters R$30.615,80 as a “pension” (Rodrigues 2021).

It should be stated, however, that there might have been other factors in play that – together with the financial crisis of 2014 – brought the rise of populism in 2018. When Dilma got re-elected in 2014, the former president publicly announced a not-so-popular fiscal adjustment, even after promising not to do so while running the campaign (Silva 2015). In it, a total of R$70 billion was cut from the federal budget, drastically impacting many popular social programs and public institutions in the country (“Governo Dilma corta R$ 70 bi do orçamento federal”). For example, SUS (in English, Unique Health System) lost R$11,7 billion, public education lost 19.3% of its budget, and Minha Casa Minha Vida (in English, “My Home, My Life”) lost R$5.6 billion (“Governo Dilma corta R$70 bi do orçamento federal”). Moreover, while the new fiscal adjustment was being set, the biggest corruption scandal in the country, the Car Wash Scandal, also took place at the time (“Os principais casos de corrupção do Brasil são os maiores do mundo. Relembre os 5 principais”). According to estimates, the Car Wash scandal led to an uncovering of R$42 billion in laundered money connected to top officials in the government; In five years, around 285 people were arrested, 42 of those being prominent politicians, including the current president (Dionisio 2015; Desideri 2012; Freire 2019). In the presence of such open corruption, Brazilians gathered on the streets to protest and ask for the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff on five major occasions from 2015 to 2016 (Rossi et al. 2016). The March 15th protest, for example, gathered around 2 million people in 22 states, the most prominent national demonstration in the nation (Coronato and Vergotti 2015).

V. Conclusion

The connection between financial crises and the rise of populism is challenging to assess. As seen, this paper took three previous ideas from two different scholars and tested them to investigate the hypothesized relationship between financial crises and populism. At first, we see that Guiso et al.’s views on income loss provides a compelling explanation for populism in Brazil since income loss was only noticeable after 2014, with a populist leader rising shortly after. When it comes to Broz, we find that this theory does not take hold since there was no movement of the electorate after 2008 and a noticeable movement to the right, not left, after 2014. As per Guiso et al.’s disillusionment idea, this theory – like the “income loss” theory – provides a logical explanation for the rise of populism after the crisis of 2014. As seen, Brazil was faced with low unemployment rates and high presidential approval rates after 2008 under Lula. After 2014, however, with Dilma and her disastrous policies, the nation became poorer and jobless, with her approval collapsing as well. This, then, would be a plausible explanation for people’s disillusionment with their government since Dilma was not proactive in protecting the nation from the crisis, costing people their jobs while she lost her office. Therefore, the “income loss” and “disillusionment” variables were able to explain the rise of populism in Brazil. There was a noticeable income loss after 2014 and greater disillusionment with the government, all of which may have contributed to Bolsonaro’s rise.

Other events, however, might also be part of this equation. As noted, Rousseff’s fiscal adjustments cost the nation a fortune, drastically impacting many social programs and institutions that were not only popular but necessary for many Brazilians. This also cost her many points in her approval rating. Moreover, the Car Wash scandal caused great turmoil in the nation. As already explained, R$42 billion reais were lost, and with it, 285 people were arrested, including Lula, Brazil’s new president, following the most recent election. As an example of the chaos that the Car Wash scandal created, there were major national protests in the nation in 2015 and 2016, the most famous happening on March 15th, 2015, bringing two million people to the streets from 22 (out of 26) different states. In the intricate web of Brazil's political landscape, amidst fiscal calamity and scandalous upheaval, the resilience of its democracy and the trust of its people hang in the balance, shaping the destiny of a nation at a critical juncture.

VI. Appendix

From Red Tape to Red Temps: How Permitting and Protectionism Weaken the U.S.’ Climate Response

Christopher Mungiello

I. Building on Regulatory Quicksand

In 2017, New England Clean Energy Connect (NECEC) released a plan to use a transmission line to supply 1,200 megawatts (MW) of clean hydropower energy from Canada to New England, which is enough to power one million homes. After four years of obtaining the proper permits, in January 2021, the state of Maine finally gave NECEC all the necessary approvals to build its $1 billion, 145-mile-long transmission line. Just 10 months later, advocacy groups who were dissatisfied with the project, challenged the legality of the permits by holding a state-wide referendum in Maine on whether this project should even undergo construction. When the votes were counted, 59% voted against the line.

Following the successful efforts to overturn the project, NECEC and other supporters of the transmission line filed lawsuits against the referendum’s outcome, with one reaching Maine’s Supreme Judicial Court. The court ruled to strike down the referendum on account of a violation of NECEC’s constitutional rights, but only if “substantial construction had been completed in good faith.” The court decided to let a jury determine if the developers had met the proper criteria – possibly to ensure the Supreme Judicial Court did not seem biased towards NECEC. On April 20, 2023, a jury of nine people decided that the company did complete substantial construction in good faith and could restart construction.

Groups on both sides of the issue spent millions of dollars in legal challenges and political campaigns, wasting two years of precious time for the company to ultimately return to square one.

This scenario in Maine is emblematic of a larger problem for building clean energy projects in the United States. Vineyard Wind, a nearby offshore wind project in Massachusetts, experienced hurdles in its permitting process after the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) expanded the scope of its environmental review, delaying the permitting process by another year. Similarly, in California, completion of a high-speed rail route has been delayed 8 years because 72 miles of land are still pending clearance under the relevant permitting agencies, increasing the ever-growing cost of this project from the original forecast of $40 billion to the updated estimate of $77 billion.

Renewable energy and cleaner forms of transportation all face permitting challenges, regulatory uncertainty, and expensive compliance costs. These burdens slow down the U.S.’ ability to reach its goal of net zero by 2050 and hamper plans to develop an additional 300 gigawatts (GW) of wind and 300 GW of solar by 2030. This is all happening while the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service confirms that the 1.5C threshold (a key United Nation’s climate change boundary) of global warming has been met for a full year for the first time. As the global thermometer continues to move into the red, the U.S. does not have more time to waste on navigating the labyrinth of public and bureaucratic red tape to build the infrastructure to fight climate change.

II. American Exceptionalisn’t

American permits and compliance significantly increase the cost and decrease the quality of clean energy and infrastructure projects. However, issues around permitting and compliance are not unique to the U.S., but the U.S. is worse in this area compared to other wealthy liberal democracies. For transportation, subways and light rail cost 2 to 7 times more to build in the U.S. than in Europe or Japan. China has constructed more than 26,000 miles of high-speed rail since 2008 and plans to build 43,000 more by 2035. Conversely, the U.S. only has about 375 miles of track approved to go more than 100 mph.

In clean energy development, the U.S. lags behind its allies. Australia and Canada have policies that ensure permitting is completed for critical energy projects in less than three years, while in the U.S., it would take these same projects 5 to 10 years. In October 2022, 24% of the EU’s electricity came from wind and solar energy, overtaking oil and gas. In comparison, U.S. wind and solar power only produced about 14% of electricity. This percentage could be higher, as the U.S. has two terawatts of renewable energy––i.e. solar, wind, battery storage, etc.–– waiting to be connected to the grid, but permitting has made this transmission connection nearly impossible.

The U.S. is not living up to its former glory –– this country was able to build the Hoover Dam in four years, the energy from which can still serve up to 1.3 million people. The George Washington Bridge, another engineering marvel, was built in four years, under budget, and ahead of schedule. These speeds would be almost inconceivable today due to inevitable lawsuits from civic groups; local, state, and federal permitting; and environmental laws, like the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

Passed in 1970, NEPA requires that federal agencies evaluate the potential environmental impacts of their proposals before issuing a permitting decision. The main deliverables of the NEPA review are either an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) or an Environmental Assessment (EA), or both. The Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) is the executive office that regulates the EIS and enforces the NEPA rules. These documents take years to craft and require extensive feedback from local, state, or tribal based agencies in order to identify environmental impacts as well as alternative federal options. Final environmental reviews can also be challenged in court if an individual is convinced that proper NEPA protocols were not followed. Ultimately, it is not the U.S.’ democratic nature that is the issue, but rather it is the permissible scope of how democratic sentiments can challenge infrastructure projects.

III. More Money, Even More Problems

One EIS can be tricky enough, but now imagine agencies, like the DOI, reviewing projects for solar, offshore wind, onshore wind, battery storage, geothermal projects, and many more all throughout the country all at once. This is exactly the situation the U.S. is headed in now that the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) will be implemented. These two pieces of legislation have some of the largest investments in clean energy in U.S. history, meaning more permitting headaches to come.

The IIJA has about $66 billion for passenger and freight rail, and $12.5 billion for transmission facilities. As for the IRA, there is over $369 billion in federal incentives to develop offshore wind, solar panels, and other forms of renewable energy. Lawmakers were aware that federal spending would place additional demands on agencies, including but not limited to the Department of Transportation (DOT), the Department of the Interior (DOI), and the Department of Energy (DOE) to perform their environmental reviews. The IRA provided $1 billion to agencies to hire necessary staff. With that said, these additional staff will not solve the slow processing times, as these organizations will now face logistical challenges on top of extensive NEPA related requirements, from hiring qualified applicants to managing new groups.

To make matters even worse, there are protectionist provisions attached to this funding. The most famous being the “Build America, Buy America” provisions, also known as the “Buy American” rules. Starting with the Buy American Act of 1933, iterations of this rule required that federal acquisition of certain manufactured goods must have a specific proportion of their content sourced and produced in the U.S. In July 2021, President Joe Biden surprisingly raised these thresholds. Previously, designated goods were required to have 55% of their content made in the U.S., but they are now scheduled to increase to 75% by 2029.

These requirements raise construction costs and slow down projects, as was the case when Buy American rules in the 2009 Recovery Act delayed “shovel ready” projects for more than a year. Furthermore, some domestic supply chains are not even equipped to handle this demand. According to a report from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the Business Network for Offshore Wind, half of proposed offshore wind projects are at risk of serious delays because of limits in port infrastructure, vessels, and domestic manufacturing capacity. While there is a desire to maximize the amount of revenue and jobs Americans can capture from this green industrial revolution, these economic priorities are adding new complexities to the overall goal of reducing carbon emissions, creating competing interests within America’s environmental strategy.

Buy American rules also do not sit well with America’s allies. Most noticeably this occurred when the IRA included tax credits for electric vehicles (EVs) that had to meet increasingly high thresholds of domestic sourcing and manufacturing standards over the 10 year span of the law. The IRA allowed countries that had a free trade agreement with the U.S. to be exempt from these requirements, but many European allies, like France and Germany, do not have a free trade agreement and are not included in these carve outs. Officials from various European countries have already complained to U.S. policymakers about how IRA tax credits for electric vehicles are too restrictive. In the long run, these protectionist policies not only hurt the U.S.’ ability to get these projects completed but also weaken the country’s alliances.

IV. Greenlight Green Projects

In order to build the clean energy projects and the infrastructure needed to take on climate change, federal elected officials, the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), the EPA, the DOI, and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and other relevant agencies need to change three things. First, they need to revise the NEPA process. This entails expediting NEPA reviews for clean energy proposals, and requiring a maximum timeline of two years to complete an EIS and a timeline of one year for an EA. Other elements include setting a page number limit on EISs and EAs and establishing a statute of limitations for the number of days to legally challenge a NEPA decision.

Second, the U.S. needs to reduce regulatory confusion by implementing new agency protocols and incentivizing states to streamline their permitting process. Agencies should release simultaneous permits as opposed to sequential ones and establish more coherent permitting plans, by improving inter-agency coordination. One agency should also review previous guidance and regulations to match standards across the federal government. For local and state level issues, the Bipartisan Policy Center has proposed that federal grants should be allotted based on if a state is harmonizing and streamlining their permitting procedures, encouraging state and federal alignment.

Third, administrative officials need to change these Buy American rules to make them more flexible. This means reducing the domestic content and sourcing thresholds, removing certain manufactured goods from the list of qualified Buy American products and distributing more waivers for these requirements so organizations can get around cumbersome rules. Ultimately, these provisions would bring in more efficient materials and be inclusive of the U.S.’ allies.

Certainly, a lot of these proposals are politically unpopular and would not contain all the avenues for the public to challenge energy and infrastructure projects. However, if the U.S. is going to face the climate crisis head on, federal lawmakers need to follow the lead of Maine’s Supreme Judicial Court and defend sustainable, environmental projects from short-term political demands by curbing the extent of public and bureaucratic input. This means changing permitting laws and protectionist policies to end a cycle of delay and budget overruns. Time is running out on the climate crisis, but the U.S. can still make the right changes to reduce these man-made delays and unlock its green growth.