Christopher J. Coyne > Quotes

“Instead of utilizing a military government to implement policies and directives, as was the case in West Germany, the reconstruction of Japan was carried out through the use of existing government institutions and relied, to a large extent, on indigenous actors.' These individuals
had local knowledge of the language, culture, and history of the country. Given this, they were able to implement changes in a manner that was considered legitimate by most Japanese citizens.”
― Christopher Coyne, After War: The Political Economy of Exporting Democracy

“On the one hand, agencies are supposed to be united in a common goal of reconstructing the country in question, but on the other hand, bureaus are competing with one another and attempting to carve out their niche that differentiates them from other agencies in order to secure a part of the fixed budget. Each will have its own agenda, which may clash with the agenda of other agencies as well as with the overarching goal of achieving a successful reconstruction.”
― Christopher Coyne, After War: The Political Economy of Exporting Democracy

“Given that individual identity and the daily operation of society are derived from clans and the subgroups within clans, Somalis have no experience with a centralized liberal democratic form of government. Stated differently, no meta-game around a central Somali state has ever evolved endogenously.”
― Christopher Coyne, After War: The Political Economy of Exporting Democracy

“Investing scarce resources in large-scale public projects and capital goods does increase output, but it does not contribute to economic progress if these investments do not produce things people value.”
― Christopher Coyne, Doing Bad by Doing Good: Why Humanitarian Action Fails

“many U.S. citizens tolerate and justify the sweeping surveillance activities of their government by reasoning that “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.” This assumes that expansive government powers will be employed in a constrained and effective manner to combat precise threats to citizens. What is neglected is that these powers can be abused, both in the present and also in the future, in ways that threaten freedom instead of protecting it.”
― Christopher J. Coyne, Tyranny Comes Home: The Domestic Fate of U.S. Militarism

“To further support this claim, consider again the work of Michael Scheuer, the former head of CIA's Bin Laden Unit. Scheuer has provided a comprehensive analysis of Osama Bin Laden, al-Qaeda, and the war on terror as presently undertaken by the United States 42 One of Scheuer's central claims is that al-Qaeda, and other terrorist organizations, are not motivated by a fundamental hatred for the American identity and way of life, but instead by U.S. interventions and policies in the larger Middle East region. It is Scheuer's contention that these interventions are in fact the driving force behind the backlash against the United States.43 In other words, these interventions in the Middle East have generated negative unintended consequences, such as the 9/11 attacks, that in turn led to further interventions, such as the overall war on terror and the invasion of and subsequent reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
― Christopher Coyne, After War: The Political Economy of Exporting Democracy

“The assumption that foreign interventions and reconstruction can generate a preferable state of affairs overlooks several key possibilities, including the possibility that reconstruction efforts may fail and that these efforts can do more harm than good.”
― Christopher Coyne, After War: The Political Economy of Exporting Democracy

“policymakers and humanitarian practitioners often lack a basic understanding of how markets operate to coordinate activities and generate mutually beneficial outcomes to improve human welfare. In many cases, the result of this ignorance is that interventions intended to help people in the wake of crises actually end up hurting those most in need. One example of this is price-gouging laws intended to protect those already suffering from being exploited by sellers who charge a supposed “unconscionable” or “obscene” price. While the rhetoric of these laws is politically appealing, in reality they reduce the amount of goods and services available to those who are most in need because the inability to charge a higher price provides a disincentive for entrepreneurs to adapt and redirect goods to the crisis-stricken area.”
― Christopher J. Coyne, Doing Bad by Doing Good: Why Humanitarian Action Fails

“all state-led humanitarian action is political.”
― Christopher J. Coyne, Doing Bad by Doing Good: Why Humanitarian Action Fails

“David Phillips, who was involved in the early stages of planning for a post-Hussein Iraq, notes that during the postwar reconstruction efforts, "Relations between the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and the State Department became increasingly acrimonious. U.S. officials vied for control over the Iraq policy."32 Similarly, Larry Diamond, who was also involved in the reconstruction of Iraq, indicates that "A number of U.S. government agencies had a variety of visions of how political authority would be reestablished in Iraq.... In the bitter, relentless infighting among U.S. government agencies in advance of the war, none of these preferences clearly prevailed.”
― Christopher Coyne, After War: The Political Economy of Exporting Democracy

“However, it must be noted that while MacArthur had much leeway regarding how the occupation would be implemented and its day-to-day operation, the overarching policies and reforms of the effort had been debated and agreed upon by U.S. policymakers prior to the end of the war and had been approved by President Truman.21 MacArthur also kept in constant contact with Washington, D.C., through the issuance of reports regarding”
― Christopher Coyne, After War: The Political Economy of Exporting Democracy

“In sum, to a large extent, the ultimate success of the reconstruction of Japan can be traced to the existing endowment of know-how and skills related to social relations, organizational forms, and production techniques that survived the war and carried through to the postwar period.”
― Christopher Coyne, After War: The Political Economy of Exporting Democracy

“Packer notes how members of the Office of Stability and Peace Operations were excluded from meetings at the Pentagon and had their memos ignored as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz advanced their own agendas.34”
― Christopher Coyne, After War: The Political Economy of Exporting Democracy

“bureaus have an incentive to highlight “new” and “urgent” challenges that require immediate increases in their funding in order to avoid some severely negative outcome or catastrophe that will supposedly happen absent more funding.”
― Christopher J. Coyne, Doing Bad by Doing Good: Why Humanitarian Action Fails