Welcome to Casting the net, Liberal Conspiracy’s daily blog review.

Tiny States
I thought, for a change, we’d concentrate on a debate from the mainstream. Robin Lustig is the presenter of that late-night sanctuary, BBC Radio Four’s The World Tonight. At 10pm (weeknights), when everything on TV seems to be presented by Graham bloody Norton, The World Tonight offers 45-minutes of internationally-flavoured news and comment to soothe a news junkie off to sleep. Listig also writes a rather tidy little blog too, and yesterday picked up the baton from the FT’s Gideon Rachman, who wrote on Monday about the increased success of the world’s smaller countries (roughly around 10m people or less).

Rachman had made some good points (reader comments to the story via Rachman’s blog), highlighting international league tables where small countries lead: -

Look at almost any league table of national welfare and small countries dominate. The International Monetary Fund’s ranking of countries by gross domestic product per capita shows that four of the five richest countries in the world have populations of less than 5m. (The US – placed fourth in wealth-per-head – is the exception.) The Global Peace Index, produced by the Economist Intelligence Unit, ranks nations by criteria such as homicide rates and prison populations and it too makes pleasant reading for pocket-sized countries. The most peaceful place on earth is, apparently, Norway (quite cold, though) and eight of the 10 most peaceful countries have populations of less than 10m.

Hard to argue with hard data, but Lustig provides some caveats in his post, pointing out that many small countries suffer and that the recipe for a successful state is much more complicated than Rachman suggests: -

For every successful small state (Finland, Switzerland, Ireland), I can name an unsuccessful one (East Timor, Eritrea, Equitorial Guinea). I think I’d be tempted to leave size out of it and look elsewhere when trying to work out what makes some nations work well and others not.

Having decided geographical mass is not the single deciding factor, Lustig ponders what considerations are also important: -

Is homogeneity a useful attribute? (In which case, what about the US?) Are natural resources essential? (You might think it’s obvious, but what about Singapore? Yes, I know it’s got a harbour, but what else?) Equitorial Guinea has plenty of oil, but meets pretty much all the requirements of a classic failed state.

The context for this debate is of course the planned foundation of a new small - and incredibly controversial - state: Kosovo (Lustig is worried that Rachman’s optimism about the new Balkan nation is misplaced). Yet the debate could be easily widened to include arguments in favour of all Europe’s wantaway regions. Scotland, Basque and Northern Ireland are the popular causes we know all about, but struggles for independence exist all over Europe, especially in its South East corner. Would Scotland be a success? Will Kosovo? What about puny Wales, should it too seek independence from Westminster?

Lustig is right, the factors which dictate a nation’s prosperity are many. Regional stability and development, natural resources, weather, geography, religion, and population all have an impact on how a country can be managed. However, Rachman is right to point out that population is an important consideration, as his insightful anecdote proves: -

I remember visiting Palaniappan Chidambaram, who was then India’s trade minister (he is now finance minister), some years ago. Mr Chidambaram seemed a little depressed,so I asked what was bothering him. He groaned and said that he had been visited by Finland’s trade minister. This alone did not seem like a cause for melancholy, so I pressed him further. “Do you know what the population of Finland is,” he asked? “Five million. We have 5m blind people in India.”

Elsewhere
Westminster Wisdom - Peter Franklin on Blogs
vox - Successful assimilation of immigrants (via)
Shiraz Socialist - When the Left needs to remember why it’s there
Liberal England - Karpov tried to visit Kasparov in jail
anticant’s arena - Soft Centre
John’s Labour blog - Justice for Agency Workers?
The New Humanist Blog - 15-year-old girl lured into “vampire” cult

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