International Law

People in Glass Houses

By Stan

Oops, this doesn’t look so good for the muscular democracy crowd:

Companies with a board member who has ties to a winning political party enjoy a significant bounce in their share price following an election, according to a study released on Monday.

Share prices also rise after an appointment to the board of a politically connected person, according to the study by the Berlin-based European School of Management and Technology.

Seven days after the U.S. presidential election in 2000 companies in the benchmark Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (.SPX) with board connections to the winning Republican party posted a nearly 3 percent increase in share price, the study said.

If anyone is actually surprised at this, please let me know. I would like to meet you personally and bask in your refreshing innocence.

Seriously, this is just another reason why I tend to be reticent in proclaiming the overwhelming benefits of certain countries’ political systems over others. Sure, I’d rather live under the British government than the one in Myanmar, but that’s an easy one. There are a lot of others that are much more difficult to compare.

Usually commentators fall back on ridiculous nationalistic arguments to explain why their particular country’s system is the best. This suggests the following question: why is it important to people that their country’s system is "better" than that of another country? Do you get some sort of warm and fuzzy feeling as a result?

Makes more sense to simply point out what is good and bad with a given system - the article above deals with the US. In this blog, I usually comment on the PRC government’s policies without feeling the need to make a value judgment.

From some of the comments I receive, this is apparently not good enough. "We’re number one!!!" is a preferable debating tactic for these individuals.

I chose the wrong week to give up Tequila Poppers.

Full post as published by China Hearsay on June 04, 2008 (boomark / email).