Although complete renunciation appears to be uncommon, Saverin is certainly not alone in moving large swaths of wealth to low tax “havens” like Switzerland, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Singapore, in particular, has a no capital gains tax and a fast growing wealth management industry which continues to attract wealthy individuals in large numbers. There are few boundaries to moving money around the globe, and from the tax collection point of view, this is certainly a problem. Mitt and Ann Romney are known to have had several undisclosed bank accounts in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands.  Apple’s tax practices are just as innovative as their products – clever office relocations to low-tax states and storing billions overseas has left them with a comparatively tiny corporate tax bill. Should we blame these individuals and corporations for, in Romney’s words, “[paying] all the taxes owed. And not a penny more”?

Probably not.

The problem lies instead in a tax code that is ill-equipped to combat today’s highly mobile capital caused by technological advances. Instead of being put to work through domestic reinvestment, capital is stockpiled overseas. Furthermore, tax competition both between states and globally continues to drive tax rates downwards and exacerbates the problem of insufficient revenue.

Unfortunately, there is little recognition of this. Instead, on issues of revenue, there are constant calls for reducing tax on “wealth-creators” from the right. Forbes Magazine even hails Saverin as a hero for “de-friending” the United States. On the left, calls for higher marginal rates point to a better grip on fiscal reality, but neither solution would prevent capital outflows. On the corporate tax front, there is growing recognition that lower rates are needed to maintain competitiveness, but at the expense of what? One should not forget the seesaw effect of tax reduction – lowering tax costs for one group increases it for others (be it intergenerational or not). Given the seeming impossibility of preventing capital outflows, how can the U.S. maintain competitiveness while generating sufficient revenue?

Some would point to places like Saverin’s new home, Singapore, which may stir the envy of the U.S. budget. Constant budget surpluses contribute to already-large reserves and there is ample money to invest in defense, education, and even in foreign holdings. What may not be obvious is the simple explanation for this: lower tax rates are accompanied by an even lower federal government bill – a comparatively tiny social safety net, a small pension bill, and so on. In addition, there are large regressive consumption taxes. Basically, stuff that conservatives drool over. These same people constantly decry Obama’s policies as driving the US towards a Greek-style default, but let’s face it; the US is not southern Europe. Neither is it Asia. Perhaps taking a leaf out of the similarly highly-developed Northern European socio-economic policies would be helpful.

In Scandinavian countries like Denmark and Sweden, investments in education and training are responsible for high levels of competitiveness (third and fourth in the World Economic Forum’s competitiveness index) despite high marginal income tax rates of up to 55 percent . This leads to low inequality (smallest Gini coefficients), and fiscally sustainable welfare systems. In terms of education, Finnish students, for example, are amongst the best in the world despite their low number of school hours and public education. Furthermore, the Scandinavian countries survived the 2008 recession remarkably well, with strong consumption as a result of generally higher disposable income.

Today, America faces competing visions about how to balance its spending and revenue. Which direction will it take – the reduced spending of Singapore, or the higher taxation of Scandinavia? Hopefully, it will lean towards the latter. Unfortunately, marginal rates probably won’t increase anytime soon, widening the tax base would lead to contention over vertical equity, and closing loopholes would be fiercely lobbied against (despite many fortune 500 companies effectively paying a fraction of the supposed 35 percent corporate rate). Often lost in this debate (which can tend to center around marginal rates and social security spending) is the important question of education and infrastructure investments. If one looks just beyond the short-term, increasing competitiveness through investments in education and infrastructure is likely to be revenue-positive, Scandinavian style. Some kind of political consensus is needed on this, and the sooner that Congress takes a serious look at the tax code, the better.

photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

This is the first in a four-part series on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

“Can the government make you buy cell phones?” The question Chief Justice Roberts asked during oral arguments over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) is at the heart of fears spurred by many who oppose the bill. Those who favor repeal of the landmark health care and health insurance reform bill, especially conservatives, often cite the individual mandate as particularly problematic. The mandate requires all US residents to have “minimum essential coverage” or pay a tax penalty The penalty for failing to purchase insurance is $750 or 2 percent of income, whichever is greater, although there are exemptions for religious, financial, or legal status. In making their arguments before the Court and the public, both sides have made superficial and even spurious arguments that warrant closer examination.

Even though the idea of criminalizing inaction and compelling individuals to buy something from a private supplier does seem like a radical step, proponents of PPACA claim that the individual mandate is necessary to make the bill as a whole feasible. Without having healthy individuals paying into the system to balance those with pre-existing conditions who will no longer be denied coverage, health insurers would face financial hardship. Moreover, the status quo is conducive to adverse selection, since many individuals will simply refrain from buying health insurance until they need it, further burdening both insurance companies and taxpayers who would foot their emergency room bills in the event that they suffered a sudden illness. Critics are still unconvinced, asserting that viability should not be the primary consideration when dealing with constitutional matters.

The government’s arguments for the constitutionality of the law have generally been based on the Interstate Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause. In response to charges that the law criminalizes inaction, proponents point out that the mandate is enforced through the Internal Revenue Code, not criminal procedure. Furthermore, under the Affectation Doctrine established by the Court in Wickard v. Filburn (1942) and Gonzales v. Raich (2005), “Congress also has authority to regulate any and all economic activity that, in the aggregate, has a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce,” a standard that is easily met by health insurance. Finally, in both cases where district courts have found PPACA to be constitutional, judges ruled that the economic activity being regulated was healthcare, a field in which no one could reasonably be said to be inactive. Health insurance, according to the courts, is simply a way of paying for healthcare. As such, the courts ruled that the action-inaction distinction was moot. This raises a problematic question, however: Can individuals legally be said to have entered a market—even the healthcare market—simply by virtue of living? While difficult to predict how the Court will decide this question, it may be helpful to look at auto insurance as a partial analogy. Though provisions requiring the purchase of auto insurance are obviously contingent on the prior purchase of a car, the fact that car ownership is so widespread and in many cases pivotal makes it a similar enough case to suggest that the action-inaction distinction may not be enough to persuade the Court of the law’s unconstitutionality.

President Obama, in a rare departure from the precedent of sitting presidents withholding remarks until after the court has made its ruling, commented on the case during a press conference. He believes that the court will not rule the act unconstitutional, on the basis that doing so would be “judicial activism” and “an unprecedented, extraordinary step” since it was passed by a majority of members in the House and Senate. However, such a move would not be quite so unprecedented. The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the National Industrial Recovery Act in Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States (1935) seems analogous. In fact, the NIRA had broader public support, was passed by a larger majority of Congress and was billed as a stop-gap emergency measure. Nonetheless, the court voted unanimously to overturn FDR’s flagship legislation. Perhaps the better question to ask is, “Will the Court view this as a primarily political matter?” If so, then experience would suggest that the Court will let the bill stand, pursuant to the rational basis test. The Court established this test in Williamson v. Lee Optical (1955), in which it ruled that “[T]o be constitutional . . . [i]t is enough that there is an evil at hand for correction, and that it might be thought that the particular legislative measure was a rational way to correct it.” If this is the standard the Court chooses to apply, then it may err on the side of upholding the law because of the severability issue. Congress made it clear in a report attached to PPACA that the individual mandate was the lynchpin of healthcare reform, without which the bill cannot stand. Therefore, it would seem that the Court must either completely overturn PPACA or uphold the individual mandate.

Aside from the constitutional questions surrounding the individual mandate, there are also practical challenges. The minimum plan required under PPACA costs around $3000 per person per year. The penalty for not purchasing minimum coverage is $750 or 2 percent of income. This means that for individuals making less than $150,000, the penalty is lower than the minimum requirement. Since the individual mandate is geared towards healthy young adults in their 20s and 30s, most of whom make well under $150,000, there are obvious concerns about its efficacy.

At the end of the day, no one truly knows how the Court will rule, but not because of the reasons usually cited. Neither the president nor his conservative opponents can truly claim that legal precedent does not exist for a judgment either way. While PPACA is truly daunting in scope, there are analogous government policies and regulations. As much as both might want to hedge their bets, sequestering the mandate from the rest of the act also seems unworkable. Finally, although both sides wish to constrain the debate to legal and philosophical grounds, practical questions still abound, no matter what the Court rules. Given the strange framing of the debate thus far, it is no wonder that Justice Roberts’ question was considered both completely appropriate and completely off point.

The president has been spending much time on the campaign trail advocating for the implementation of the “Buffett Rule,” a policy named after super-wealthy investor Warren Buffett. The premise of the Buffett Rule is simple: mandate a minimum tax rate on the very wealthiest individuals so they can never end up paying a lower effective tax rate than their employees, most notably that of their secretaries. The reason this is even a topic of discussion is because the U.S. tax code treats money gained through investments and capital gains differently than the normal idea of “personal income,” specifically the salary received for traditional employment. Very wealthy individuals, such as Mitt Romney and Warren Buffett, are able to pay surprisingly low tax rates on annual incomes of millions, such as Romney’s rate of about 14 percent and Buffett’s rate of about 15 percent, because they are not “employed” in the traditional sense but instead make a living off of large investments.

However, the Buffett Rule would be an insignificant act of tax reform because its implementation would increase federal revenues by only about $47 billion over the next ten years while the overall deficit would soar into the trillions. Frankly put, the Buffett Rule is not about solving the national deficit problem at all, as its contribution to federal revenues would be like a drop of water in a sea of taxes. No, the president and the Democrats in Congress advocate for the Buffett Rule because they see it as fair. They think that the 1 percent, as they call them, should not be able to pay a low tax rate because they are so well-invested and successful that they need only to collect on investments while the rest of the workforce struggles to get by. Indeed, the middle and lower classes are suffering greatly in this anemic recovery, but it isn’t because of the wealthy. Obama’s support for the Buffett Rule leaves Americans scratching their heads and asking a simple question: “How does this help the economy?”

All the Buffett Rule would do is take a lot of money out the hands of a very small number of people. The new 30 percent minimum effective tax rate would only affect the roughly 200,000 richest Americans and in the name of “fairness” rather than any proven economic benefit. Simply put, the American people are still begging government to do something about the number one problem in this economy: jobs. If anything, the Buffett Rule would only decrease job growth due to the likely associated decrease in investment by the top income earners who underpin much of the corporate world. The president is trying to use the Buffett Rule as a tool to further divide Americans by pitting virtually the entire workforce against the allegedly excessive wealth of the richest people because the president knows that, come Election Day, everyone gets one vote, whether they be rich or poor. True, elections are, in a way, the great equalizer of wealth, but this divisive and envious rhetoric is terribly unhealthy for our country. Our capitalist system is not based on envy, but on opportunity. The success of the rich is not something to be hated, but instead a motivator for advancement in the labor market, for workers can see the wealth of the upper class as the future that can await them should they continue to build their careers. The U.S. tax code undoubtedly needs to be reformed; however, this is not the way to do it. The Buffett Rule is bad politics at its worst, because it seeks to turn Americans against fellow Americans in an unscrupulous show of class warfare that the president hopes he can use to scrape out a victory come November.

President Obama asked whether we can “muster the will … to bring about the changes we need,” concluding that the Barnard graduates and this generation “will help lead the way.” But what if our way is not his way? More importantly, what if my way differs from the woman sitting next to me in my art history class or my English class or my computer science class? What if the change I think we need is a different brand of education reform and a more conservative economic plan?

The oppressive and suffocating categorization of women as this uniformly thinking block is even more rampant at a women’s liberal arts college in New York City, where many women do hold similar political viewpoints. Barnard President Debora Spar, in an interview on MSNBC, boldly told the show’s hostess that “they’re [Barnard students] all huge fans [of Obama].”  Is that true? Can the president of Barnard College say, in good faith, that every single one of her students is a fan of President Barack Obama? Are we that unindividual? Or are we just a liberal student body, and, as women, a key component of the Democratic vote? Too often, the assumed answer is yes.

It is based on this flawed perspective that Obama chose to (and was so quickly welcomed to, even at the expense of another speaker) deliver the Barnard commencement speech.  In essence, very little about Obama’s visit today had to do with Barnard. The ceremony itself was held on the Columbia University campus, and the president left after his speech, never setting foot on our campus. It is telling that he did not have the time to cross Broadway, the street itself increasingly symbolic of the gap between Columbia and Barnard that we as students have been trying for so long to close.

But speaking at the Barnard Commencement – as opposed to that of his alma mater, as many were hurt he had not chosen to do – was the perfect political platform. Delivering a speech to an audience of female graduates presents a uniquely appropriate opportunity to speak on the so-called “women’s issues,” without sounding overtly political.

“You are now poised to make this a century where women shape not only their own destiny but the destiny of this nation and the world,” said Obama.  “Fight for a seat at the table. Better yet, fight for a seat at the head of the table.”

Speaking to women everywhere, these inspiring lines do seem authentic, free of the political agenda that was so very obviously the stage for the speech.  But this overlying context cannot be ignored. His calls to action – for us, as Barnard students and graduates, to “lead the way” – mean only so much when he has a clear way in mind. Their meanings are lessened when they are not open-ended encouragement to pursue our dreams of activism according to our personal and individual beliefs, but rather specific dictates to become the women supporters that he believes he is guaranteed.

In a trend that I find particularly distasteful, “women” has become a political issue.  Candidates are judged on their “support for women,” as if that has a clear set of policy decisions and opinions.  Certain politicians are dubbed “anti-women,” and the GOP has supposedly declared a “War on Women.”

But what can this possibly mean, in a world where women make their own decisions and form their own opinions outside the confines of their gender? Some women are pro-life; some women are pro-choice. Some women are advocates for universal health care; some women are not.  Some women support gun rights, others do not. Some women will vote for Barack Obama in 2012, and other women will not.

Truly supporting women means understanding that the opinions of one woman cannot be assumed based solely on her gender – or her choice of college. Supporting women does not mean dismissing each woman’s individual opinions for the ease of categorizing her gender. Supporting women does not mean delivering a commencement speech at a women’s college, in an election year, because it is a women’s college.

President Barack Obama believes, as does virtually every mainstream politician, that women and men are deserving of equal rights.  There is a long and complex political history to this development. But beyond the principle of equality, no one political perspective is necessarily more “supportive” of women than another.

Today, as the president delivered the Barnard commencement speech under thick political circumstances, I was pleased and relieved that the speech itself was apolitical and inspiring. But its context in this increasing political conceptualization of “women’s issues” left me, as a Barnard student, feeling stereotyped, simplified, and used.

photo by Asiya Khaki '09

Yes, he did lightly touch on hot political topics such as the debate in Washington over women’s health care, gay marriage, women getting equal pay for equal work, and high carbon emissions hurting the environment, but at the same time the president was not trying to sway the crowd to follow his political views. Instead he used these issues as examples for how and why his advice for the graduates is important. His advice was:

1)   Don’t just get involved in the world, fight for a seat at the head of the table.

1. As an educated member of this country one has an obligation to seize the opportunities one has.
2. If you chose to stay away from the limelight, you should make sure that you have a representative voice at the table.

2)   Never underestimate the power of your example.

1. Use your strength to inspire and/or encourage the young women that follow you.
2. Try to be a mentor or role model to the next generation of women.

3)   Always persevere.

1. Nothing worthwhile is easy.
2. You should go out into the world and make your mark, which is hard. Whenever the voice in your head or someone else tells you to stop trying or that you cannot achieve your goals you should look back at the history of this nation and the hard times it has faced and see that you can achieve whatever you strive for.

Over the last couple of weeks many Columbia and Barnard students have discussed the president coming to campus with a myriad of views. One common opinion was that Obama’s choice of Barnard was a purely political calculation to gain a larger amount of the women’s vote and nothing more. Now as a Barnard rising junior and political science major this always made me laugh. Every public thing a politician does purposefully is a political calculation. These calculations all have research and polls and discussions behind the decision and/or announcement, especially for an incumbent president running for re-election in a partisan political climate.

But there is also a personal reason for the president to speak at Barnard. He has two daughters and his sister went to Barnard. He clearly wanted to speak at a women’s college to support this type of institution. In part he picked Barnard because it is the women’s college to which he, as a Columbia College graduate of ’83, and his family have a personal tie. Many believed that the president was going to use this platform for a major political discussion, which he did not. Instead he gave a graduation speech full of advice and reasons why we all can hope for a better future contributed to and led by the class of 2012. He came to Barnard to give a commencement address. He did not come for a political debate or town hall, thus President Obama gave a very memorable and tasteful graduation speech, not a politically infused oration.

Yes, the whole speech was about women, as many a critic had previously mocked, but last time I checked Barnard College’s student body is 100 percent women.

This type of ideological disagreement and debate is what makes me love this publication. Since our inception, we have prided ourselves on being a “multi-partisan” magazine. People often ask me, “What does that even mean? Why don’t you just call yourselves a non-partisan magazine?” We are by no means a non-partisan magazine. Our writers hail from every political leaning and emphatically express their views without any inhibitions. That’s what makes us unique in a world of journalism in which political publications are quickly pigeonholed into one side or the other. This issue marks our 10^th year of existence and I’m incredibly proud that we have stayed true to our ideals.

This issue is especially remarkable in portraying the wide array of ideological positions that our writers hold. In A Modest Proposal, Hussein Elbakri comes out in strong support of the basic policies in Obama’s health care law but proposes a shift in the framing of the debate itself. William Parish IV takes a more critical view of the legal underpinnings of the health policies passed by the Obama administration, specifically in the case of the mandated contraceptives coverage, urging the government to refrain from overstepping its role. This very debate has exploded into a national conversation about women’s rights. As a result, we have brought together CU Democrats, College Republicans, and Columbia Right to Life to share their thoughts on what they believe the notion of women’s rights entails and whether it extends to having the right to terminate a pregnancy.

As my tenure as editor-in-chief comes to a close, I must say that it’s been quite an amazing run. I’ve been blessed to have such an intelligent, energetic, and committed editorial board, without which none of my dreams for this publication would have come to fruition. I am confident that our incoming editor-in-chief, Constance Boozer, will continue to steer this magazine forward. After all, much of our accomplishments this past year were undoubtedly the result of her hard work. I’m excited to see the places this magazine will go under her leadership.

I wish you all the best of luck on your final exams! I hope this issue serves as a good break amidst the craze of studying.

-Narayan

Illustration by Justin Walker

The Obama campaign’s direct and wide-scale efforts to mobilize the public in 2008 resulted in voter turnout rates unheard of since the 1960s. However, a report released by the Center for the Study of the American Electorate at American University predicts that there will be a drop in voter turnout for the 2012 elections due to political disenchantment among young voters. As the report summarizes, “Obama the president did not fulfill the hope invested in Obama the candidate.” Researchers at MTV also gauged this enthusiasm gap, finding that, despite electing Obama in 2008, many young people feel that they “lost anyway.” As a result, the popular television station plans to discontinue their long-time catchphrase “Choose or Lose.” The major source of this political frustration, reports MTV president Stephen K. Friedman, is the “wall of the economy,” which did much to dampen political optimism, leading 72 percent of the youth polled by MTV to report that they do not trust the government to take care of their well-being.

These sentiments illuminate the very real issue of America’s struggling economy, including concern over growing socioeconomic inequality in the United States, an issue that was highlighted by Occupy Wall Street, a movement led largely by young adults. They also reveal beliefs that the actions of the US government are growing ever more distant from the actual desires of the people. Take, for example, the public outcry against the passage of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) in 2008. An attempt to solve the financial crisis by putting $414 billion of taxpayer money into failing banks, the very hands of which caused the recession to begin with, TARP not only revealed the extent to which Americans were troubled by the government’s use of their money for corporate welfare, but also how little the American public can influence how the government uses public finances.

Concern over these issues of economic inequality and political inefficacy necessitates a search for solutions: If the system is broken, then it must be fixed. The question, of course, is how. It might be helpful to first look toward public policy elsewhere that has succeeded in reducing inequality and involving citizens more in governmental deliberations. In Belo Horizonte, Brazil, a municipal policy called participatory budgeting (PB), which has democratized the process of city budgeting, has succeeded in accomplishing just that.

Beginning in the late 1980s, several large Brazilian cities instituted the revolutionary public program. Through PB, a portion of the municipal budget reserved for new capital expenditures, such as new physical construction, is left to the deliberation of the general public. In the city of Belo Horizonte, specifically, city officials arrange public forums once every two years to establish the city’s municipal planning priorities, and citizens are invited to submit regional project ideas and proposals that fall within these previously established priorities. For example, if water and sanitation is an established goal, residents may propose to expand the municipal water system in their community. The submitted proposals are then deliberated upon through a democratic process, and the winning projects begin construction that year. By allowing residents to establish their own planning goals and to select their own public projects, PB has effectively expanded democracy into the realm of municipal finances.

PB was created in response to problems similar to those that are currently being faced in the United States – namely economic and political inequality – with the hopes of redistributing civic wealth and creating a more democratic system. From colonial beginnings, to various military dictatorships, to a frail democracy finally achieved in the 1980s, fiscally conservative elites, who funneled the majority of municipal resources toward wealthier areas, dominated Brazil for nearly 500 years. Poor neighborhoods could only gain access to city services through clientelism – a system in which city services and infrastructure improvements are exchanged for votes in indigent areas, effectively turning public works into political favors rather than rights. Brazil’s problems with inequality were further exacerbated in the 1940s when the country began to undergo a period of rapid urbanization in which city dwellers grew from 30 percent to 70 percent of the population in just 50 years. The urban poor’s lack of political accommodation prompted the formation of illegal settlements, commonly referred to as slums, vilas, or favelas, in virtually all major cities, which largely lacked access to basic amenities as a result of their rapid and informal development. During this period, Brazil’s elite-driven municipal governments only intensified infrastructural deficiencies in vilas by continuing to direct municipal funds toward wealthy districts as opposed to those in need.

PB was therefore designed with two goals in mind – to reverse the historical flow of capital and resources to the wealthy and to end Brazil’s history of elite-driven, clientelistic government. Overall, evidence suggests that PB may have been very successful in these endeavors. A study conducted by Carew Boulding and Brian Wampler, professors at the University of Colorado at Boulder and Boise State University, respectively, comparing Brazilian cities that implement PB to those that have not has shown that the program is correlated with small – but statistically significant – decreases in extreme poverty and increases in municipal spending on health and education. PB also has succeeded in reversing capital flows from the wealthy to the poor; the municipality reports that poor residents receive $5 in investments for every $1 that they contribute to the program in taxes. Furthermore, the program has served to strengthen the public’s faith in government. Participatory budgeting is the highest rated municipal program in Belo Horizonte, and the World Bank reports that the program leads to increased municipal tax compliance because citizens better understand how their tax money is spent and have greater control over its use.

So should cities in the United States begin to implement PB as a means of engaging the public and opening the process up to the community? Maybe, but that is not really the point. Instead of copying and pasting policy, it is much more productive to examine what aspects of PB make it so successful. There are important lessons to be learned from PB that are rarely seen in American legislation and might help the United States achieve the equality it supposedly values. Participatory budgeting’s method consists in viewing the public as a relevant actor in the governmental decision-making process.

America has always sought to achieve equality through a democratic state system reliant upon providing equal opportunities to all, but this model has not succeeded in creating a truly equitable society. The United States has long subscribed to the ideals of a meritocratic democracy, according to which the hardest worker with the strongest resolve would ultimately achieve success. This understanding of meritocracy, which operated and was conceived in direct opposition to the socially immobile British aristocracy, was developed behind the notion that all men were created equal. But Luigi Zingales, professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, notes that “unlike the French Revolution, which emphasized the principle of equality, [the American Revolution] championed the freedom to pursue happiness. In other words, America was founded on equality of opportunities, not of outcomes.” And indeed, the outcomes have not been promising.

While equal opportunities should logically lead to an equal chance at success, the facts prove otherwise: Social mobility has been declining in America. The Economic Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank, claims that 40 years ago in the United States eight percent of those born into the second-lowest income bracket remained in the same socio-economic position throughout their lives. As the increase from eight percent to 32 percent in the 1980s and 36 percent in the 1990s indicates, more of the poor are simply remaining poor. Furthermore, while the real household income of the lowest fifth of American earners grew by 6.4 percent from 1979 to 2000, the top-fifth’s household income saw a 70 percent increase and the top 1 percent enjoyed a 184 percent increase in household income over this 21 year period. With an ever-growing chasm between rich and poor Americans, it is clear that equal opportunities are not translating into economic equality.

Here is where we might learn from PB, which has opted to value equality in outcomes rather than in opportunities. PB is designed in a way that does not seek to dole out services equally, but rather, acknowledges that the poor require more than the wealthy in order to succeed and not the same amount. The central ideology behind this measure is that, even while providing theoretically equal opportunities, it takes those beginning at a disadvantage longer to complete the race to success.

In Belo Horizonte, 50 percent of the municipal budget reserved for PB is evenly split between the nine administrative regions, and the other 50 percent is allocated through a weighted process inversely proportional to the average income and the level of development of the region. In addition, the votes of more impoverished regions are weighted more heavily during the deliberation process. This mechanism of allocating more funds and weighting votes to regions experiencing the compounded disadvantages of poverty and underdevelopment serves to level a historically unequal playing field and ensure that city services are being delivered to marginalized populations. As already noted, the policy has resulted in significant improvements in the daily living conditions of the poor and has succeeded in reducing extreme poverty and income inequality. Given America’s failure in achieving equality by promoting equal opportunities, perhaps it is time to take a cue from Brazil and start championing equal outcomes.

Another lesson to be learned from PB is that the public often knows better than the politician. American democracy is highly representative – there are only rare instances in which direct democracy results in the formation of legislation or governmental action. It is commonly held that the public is uninformed and easily swayed. PB has produced evidence, however, that there are great advantages to including public insight in governmental deliberations.

PB is built on the premise that asking the public what they need is more efficient than the government deciding for them – a novel idea for many governments. When PB was first implemented, the public’s major demand was for paved roads, a request that was viewed as frivolous by government and community leaders and which prompted one community activist to quip that, “by the end of the twentieth century, we’ll have a totally paved stupid city.” But by connecting neighborhoods to the city’s water and sewer systems and allowing the entrance of city services, such as public transportation, trash collection, police cars, and ambulances, into previously excluded communities, the implementation of paved roads did much to improve living conditions. Rebecca Abers, political science professor at the University of Brasília, noted that mobilization around issues of pavement and sanitation were “not surprising” because “the effect in many cases was to transform dangerous, dark, and difficult-to-reach areas into integrated parts of the city,” highlighting the public’s acute understanding of their own needs, even when the solutions are not as obvious to community leaders or elected officials.

In the United States, the detriments of excluding public insight from governmental deliberations can be seen in TARP’s utter failure – even the Congressional Oversight Panel admitted that they “[saw] no evidence that the US Treasury has used TARP funds to support the housing market by avoiding preventable foreclosures” and that “hundreds of billions of dollars have been injected into the marketplace with no demonstrable effects on lending.” Essentially, the banks failed to effectively use the bailout money to help the average American, something that most citizens – especially those facing the threat of foreclosure – likely could have predicted, even without an extensive background in economics. Putting to public vote whether banks such as Citigroup should have gotten a $414 billion bailout might have yielded a different, and better, outcome.

Some American cities are actually starting to experiment with participatory budgeting. In a trail that began in October 2011, four New York city council districts, including parts of Brooklyn, the Bronx, Manhattan, and Queens, completed their first attempts at using PB to allocate municipal funding for capital expenditures, with votes ending April 1 of this year. The city council members in these four areas each put one million dollars of their discretionary funds up for public input and debate. The council members hoped that PB would encourage community involvement and engagement and increase governmental transparency. In these endeavors, the PB NYC experiment has thus far appeared to be a large success – 33 percent of participants had never previously engaged in community problem solving, and almost 99 percent of residents who participated in the process gave the program a positive rating. While this example of PB takes to heart the idea of listening to constituents and putting their ideas into action, it is important to note that the American version of PB has left out the program’s redistributive structure. In failing to do so, the program has not effectively addressed the lesson of valuing outcomes over opportunities. At a conference held at Pratt University on March 30 and 31, Gianpaolo Baiocchi, professor at Brown University and scholar of participatory budgeting, warned that the program has the potential to be co-opted by the wealthy and may actually serve to reinforce inequality in the United States.

And this lesson might just be the kicker: If America is serious about solving its capital problems, then government must start talking to the people. Regardless of who wins the upcoming presidential election, 2008 proved that real change is not going to come from the ballot box, but rather by mobilizing the public outside of election day. Instead of “Choose or Lose,” MTV’s slogan for this election season is now “Power of 12,” a nod not only to the political power of America’s youth in the upcoming election, but also a concession to the fact that voting is “just one step” in the larger process of political action. For equality to actually be achieved, there needs to be a more fundamental shift in our political and economic system – one that seeks to see equality manifested in society and that matches public policy with public opinion.

Illustration by Sarita Kvam

Just a little over a year has passed since the outset of the massive uprisings that shook Egypt and deposed one of the longest-ruling Middle Eastern leaders in modern history, and they are quickly passing from the realm of current events into history. In the years leading up to what became known as the Egyptian Revolution, the possibility of any substantive challenge to the dictators of the Middle East, and especially Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, seemed unthinkable. In retrospect, the explosion of anger that brought tens of thousands of protesters to the streets on January 25, 2011, and culminated in hundreds of thousands – perhaps even millions – chanting for the fall of the regime, seems to have been inevitable.

Though Egypt, which has traditionally been regarded as the barometer of the Arab World, was not the first Arab nation to revolt in the series of uprisings known as the Arab Spring, it was certainly instrumental in continuing the region’s wave of change. Currently, it stands in a perilous transition period: The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) retains control, but the appearance, at least, of democracy seems to have blossomed. With the freest, fairest parliamentary elections and highest turnout in its history, it is clear that the Egyptian population has been energized by change, but it remains to be seen if the newly-elected politicians will be able to forge a workable and non-divisive constitution, much less a stable democracy.

With presidential elections coming up in May and the explosion of political parties and competing ideologies, as well as the resurgence of the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafi Islamist parties, the stakes could not be higher. The makeup of the civilian government and its interaction with SCAF and the wider population in the next 12 months could determine the trajectory of the next decade in the Middle East, and perhaps the world. With such massive ramifications, it is worth re-examining the revolution, its causes, and its consequences from one year out.

On Politics and Islamism 

Dr. Mohamed Aboulghar

On Economics 

Mesbah Qotb

On Civilian Outcry

Rasha Azb

On Media

Hamdi Kandeel

Illustration by Liz Lee

Offset against grey skies and the black uniform of an average Istanbulite bundled against the cold, the bright yellow and turquoise banners of the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) bring a hint of the Arab Spring to Taksim Square. Occupying the symbolic heart of a vibrant, modern Turkey, Kurdish demonstrators have gathered to protest a move to ban 12 of their candidates from the Turkish general election – a ripple in an occasionally violent wave of unrest that has spread from the Kurdish city of Diyarbakir in the east to the European side of Istanbul. But only blocks away, pedestrians on Istiklal Caddesi, an elegant avenue lined by Parisian-style buildings and an old-time tramway, seem un-phased by the crowds of riot police and demonstrators, following the familiar detours around the square though the crooked streets and alleyways of the Beyoğlu district.

This contrast of the generally well-heeled, Western-oriented Istanbulites and the gradually disenfranchised, working-class Kurds is a potent symbol, representing both Turkey’s past and its present. It is a country that has constantly struggled to define its borders – geographically, ethnically, and religiously – in the context of its own political and social development and in terms of how it is envisaged by the world. But this contrast also reflects the recurring crisis of identity that is seen in the broader Middle East, a region in which Turkey is in many ways an anomaly, but with which it also shares a deeply intertwined history. Turkey is a leader in a region inching toward modern society and democracy, but it also must grapple with the origins of that status and methods used to keep its position intact.

While the steps from Taksim Square down toward the Bosphorus waterfront on the east lead to nightclubs and party spots, the working-class district of Kasimpasa resides to the west – an old and erratic spread of construction along the murky waters of the Golden Horn, today synonymous with its local soccer stadium. The neighborhood is also the childhood home of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the clerically educated, football playing, and generally brash politician who in 1994 jumpstarted his political career by taking the reigns of this sprawling city at the confluence of Eastern and Western culture.

To many forward-thinkers in the Middle East, Erdoğan’s time in both municipal and national government has very much embodied his hometown’s unique self-awareness as the modern, European heart of a far more pious and conservative country. His tenure as mayor of Istanbul, though not free of scandal sourced in his controversial piety, is remembered by many Istanbulites as a rare time of relative transparency and rapid infrastructure improvements. And particularly since 2002, when Erdoğan shrugged off a ban on his participation in politics to form the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and was catapulted into the prime minister’s office by an eager electorate, few areas of government policy have been untouched by reforms aiming to bring the country in line with European Union membership standards.

Indeed, fears among the country’s secular elite that Erdoğan would foist Islamic governance on the Turkish people have been largely unrealized. In the past decade, Turkey has seen democratic values enshrined in a revised constitution, an oppressive military dismantled, and areas from environmental policy to financial regulation brought in line with EU standards. But religious controversy has not been absent from the AKP era; from the lifting of Turkey’s ban on headscarves to the fallout surrounding Erdoğan’s recently professed desire to “raise a religious youth,” the prime minister has constantly butted heads with the old establishment. And unlike his predecessors, Erdoğan has been remarkably successful in pushing back. In doing so, however, he has often redeployed the sinister tactics of the regimes that once restrained him, even amid persistent efforts to reform and democratize the political landscape.

Erdoğan has indeed turned the tables on the military and other prominent skeptics, an alleged network of individuals and organizations referred to as “the deep state,” or Ergenekon, which his supporters claim has long kept the country true to its secular and rather authoritarian roots. Imprisoned himself by these secular officials for reading an Islamic poem at an official event while mayor of Istanbul, Erdoğan has played on fears of Ergenekon’s supposed clandestine activities, forcing the resignation and, in many cases, the arrest of the country’s top military leaders. Ergenekon’s response has been seen by many as a victory, perhaps, for civilian rule in a democracy long oppressed by the military’s overreaching power, but the government’s current hard line has also been to the detriment of journalists and prominent intellectuals.

Erdoğan has come into his own, as well. As an influential leader in a strategically important region and with checks on his power diminished in potency, he has increasingly asserted himself on the international stage. Erdoğan has given himself over, in part, to the widespread sense in Turkey that compliance with EU regulations is not enough, and that despite the country’s past decade of social, legal, and economic reform, it will be forever unable to sidestep Europe’s wariness of welcoming over 70 million Muslims into a close political association. He has declared that Turkey has done all it must to join the union and scoffed at Europe’s current fiscal woes, signaling that future compliance with EU demands may be hard to come by.

And as these once-prized ties with the West continue to wear, Turkey is looking south and east to find allies that are perhaps more accepting of its idiosyncrasies. It is confronting its complex but close past with the Middle East, which has been filled as much with bitterness regarding Turkey’s history with ethnic, political, and cultural domination in the region as it has with admiration.

Until now – a time of diminished interest in Europe and reinvigorated religiosity in the government – forging ties with the Middle East that were both close and amiable was a difficult task for Turkish administrations. When Egyptian intellectual Muhammad Rashid Rida envisioned the rebirth of a pan-Islamic identity at the turn of the century, he scoffed at any inclusion of the rapidly reforming Turkish state, much less as a regional leader. In his eyes, and in prevailing Arab thought at the time, Turkey was not only a shriveled relic of its far grander imperial past, but a nation whose attempts at cultural and political renewal were deepening the severity of its decline. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s newborn secular institutions, seen as imitations of those of its European neighbors, had led it astray – from the path to regaining the glory of the Islamic world, indeed, but from a moral path as well.

And even when Erdoğan came to power in 2002, Turkey found itself still at arm’s length from the people of the Arab world. With its reputation tarnished by a close relationship with the United States and Israel, perceived pandering to the pretensions of the European Union, and the repression of Islamic forces within the country, the Turkish government was given among the lowest marks in regional opinion polls. But much has changed over the past decade, both in Turkey and in the Arab world. The evolution of domestic policy and soft power diplomacy under Erdoğan, along with a renewed need for regional leadership that has been found in Turkey’s free-market democratic structure, has propelled it to become one of the Arab world’s most admired countries.

This phenomenon, dubbed the “Turkish model” by the Western media in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, has been embraced by the emerging democracies of the Middle East. Rashid al-Ghannouchi, leader of Tunisia’s Ennahda Movement, the moderate Islamist party that has replaced Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, has called Turkey “a model country for us in terms of democracy,” according to the Hürriyet Daily News. It is a message that has been repeated throughout the Arab world, from Morocco, where King Mohammed VI has begun to bestow his powers on moderate Islamists, to Libya and Egypt as they navigate their democratic transition.

But the Turkish model, idealized as a multi-partisan, liberal, moderately Islamic democracy, is in reality difficult to properly characterize and even more so to replicate. The Turkey of the moment seems a fragile, even fleeting situation, built out of decades of forced secularism, suppression, and only now the peaceful resurgence of subdued Islamism. Beneath the country’s current sheen, there lies buried internal turmoil, repression, and a return to the autocratic methods of the past. But there is more to this dark side of the country’s history, built out of ideas about national and racial exceptionalism. It is a past upon which even the modernizing changes of today’s Turkey continue to be modeled, contributing to its current failure to allow for the development of political and cultural pluralism. Even more disturbingly, it is a path that the countries of the Arab Spring seem at risk to follow.

In searching for its post-Ottoman identity, Turkey held firmly to the idea that “Turkishness” is central to its national spirit. For a somewhat lost and confused nation that was once a seat of empire, this was initially a positive development that propelled the early Turkish state toward modernity. But it also led to many of the atrocities that mar the country’s past, from the massacre of Armenians in World War I to the “Turkification” of the Kurdish people that has contributed to today’s unrest. Even in modern times, the country’s generals took up the mantle of Turkish nationalism, using it in the process of quelling dissident media and Islamists.

Somewhat unexpectedly, the current system under Erdoğan has not ceased to clench onto this often unfortunate melding of national and racial identity. In an ironic turn, an Islamist party, so often placed among Turkey’s numerous marginalized identities, has embraced the ultra-nationalist assertions of earlier times. The party that, in its nascent stages, had to defend itself against being labeled as “Islamist” by foreign newspapers for fear of its political dismantlement has become unyielding on matters regarding the nation’s narrow views of what it means to be Turkish.

The countries of the Arab Spring, many of them experiencing their own rejuvenation of long-oppressed ethnic, religious, and political majorities, are facing a similar risk as they build and rebuild their institutions. As they navigate their democratic transition, these countries must be careful not to resort to the often careless methods of populism, taking advantage of the return to majority rule to implement their own forms of minority repression. Egypt, for example, is a clear case in which the shift to democracy has sparked an intense and often violent debate over the nature of Egyptian nationalism and the promotion of political participation in a new society. The nation’s Coptic population had long been repressed under Mubarak, and is today victimized by radicals that have taken advantage of the present political vacuum. Though by no means representing the majority of Egyptians, these Islamic fundamentalists, the Salafists, have found a home in the new Egypt, and they appear well poised to push the Copts out of consideration as Egypt’s laws and institutions are reformed.

This is, at least, the model that contemporary Turkey would offer. In recent years, Turkey has been quite deliberate in its steps toward cultural hegemony and has demonstrated that a drive for a clean, persistent, and homogenous idea about what it means to be Turkish extends deep into current politics. This remains particularly apparent in the Kurdistan issue, bred out of efforts to assimilate Kurds into the Turkish population – ethnically, culturally, and politically – in the early days of the Turkish Republic. There have been continued efforts to quell the prospect of a distinct community – through political exclusion, as seen in the case of the banned Kurdish politicians that led to protests last April, and an escalation in the violent suppression of separatist efforts in the east, near and sometimes across the Iraqi border. Even Istanbul remains a city where Kurds feel the need to conceal their ethnicity.

There is a deep irony in considering a country with such antagonism toward multiculturalism a model for the diverse tribal nations of North Africa and the Levant. These countries are similar to Turkey in that, as post-Ottoman states, their borders were largely drawn without concern for cultural or political associations. In the same way, struggles over what it means to be a Syrian, an Egyptian, or a Libyan have largely reached an impasse, with national ties giving way to Islamic, Arab, ethnic, and tribal loyalties. It is dangerous for these countries to look to Turkish-style governance as a model in this respect. One could look even to Iraq, despite its sectarian strife, fragile government, and religious violence, for a better handling of the Kurdistan issue. There, a group of people who were oppressed under dictatorship has been allowed to prosper within a newly constructed federal system.

This kind of pluralism was further affronted in Turkey in 2005 when, buried within penal code changes as part of EU negotiations, the AKP pushed forward Article 301, a law that throughout its formation declared it a crime to “insult Turkishness,” before the wording was changed to “insulting the Turkish nation.” Soon after its inception, it was used to prosecute noted author and current Columbia professor Orhan Pamuk in response to his acknowledgment of the killings of Armenians and Kurds in a 2005 interview with a Swiss magazine. The case offered a curious intersection between the AKP’s oppressive nationalist agenda (again imbued in democratizing reforms intended to kill off Turkey’s past of judicial dictatorship) and the nation’s prevailing attitude toward its Ottoman history.

It is revealing, indeed, how little has changed in this regard since Turkey’s decades of strong-armed military rule. Turkey has continued its attempts to erase the world’s memory of the Armenian genocide, a conflict that much of the world has come to acknowledge despite the government’s efforts. Some have pointed to a “Neo-Ottoman” aspect of this phenomenon, as the AKP has returned to subduing its antagonistic neighbors (in this case, Armenia) while reaching out to others in the region. It is a surprising move by the AKP’s Turkey that, in addition to being an unhealthy example of reactionism and political opacity, highlights the difficulty of reconciling Turkish foreign policy goals with the Arab Spring’s underlying currents of Arab nationalism and pan-Arabism. The same forces that once helped wrest the Arab provinces away from the Ottoman Empire now encourage the nations of the Arab Spring to look to their former imperial master as a model of democratization.

On this point, it is important to note that though dozens more of Turkey’s intellectuals have been scrutinized under Article 301, the Pamuk case that was handled by the newly established Heavy Penal Court 13 was thrown out when the EU described Turkey’s handling of the case as a “litmus test” for membership. The move highlights a difficulty for the Arab Spring states trying to live the Turkish way: Unlike Turkey, they do not remain firmly tethered to the West, nor do they possess a history of productive discourse between a strong secular establishment and Islamist government. In other words, the checks and balances on populism in these countries are not strongly established, nor will they likely be for some time. And, counterproductively, Turkey provides an example of a nation that is striving to tear down those checks, with its government using the mantle of popular, nationalistic support to legitimize that process.

What the Arab Spring countries do have, however, is a region-wide process to observe and improve upon. The Middle East has long been a region of many poles and differing rates of progress, and because of this, it offers a telling window into the process of democratic transition. Turkey, of course, has an important role to play, offering as many foreboding lessons as it does examples of success. But, as a country with great differences in history, society, and external ties, it cannot be held up as a definitive model for Arab nations to follow, as the “moderate, Islamic-based democracy” that many in the region have for centuries fought for. The task of creating stable and free democracy in the Middle East will be far more difficult than simply copying the Turkish model – it will be a process of failures and successes, of triumphs and tragedies, as the democratizing nations of this diverse region learn from themselves and from each other.

Illustrations by Amalia Rinehart

Perhaps the most critical and least acknowledged impediment to the negotiation of a conflict is the manipulation of language. No peace process can come to fruition when representatives from conflicting parties are embroiled in debates on semantics, yet individuals in both government and media inevitably employ strategic language at various stages in the process. Even assuming a common language in diplomatic talks and documents, the development of a mutually accepted terminology is as challenging as it is critical; it is essential both to the communication of a conflict and to the forging of compromise.

Conflicts that capture national or international attention are widely reported on, analyzed, and discussed. Political and military struggles are often the subject of newspaper headlines and television broadcasts, and various approaches to their resolution are promoted by politicians and diplomats of all stripes. But when does the debate over conflict resolution translate from lip service into the visible resolution of a conflict?

Communication can represent the start of reconciliation. Yet, in order for talks to reach a tangible, mutually beneficial outcome, the language each side uses needs to be precise, accurate, and, above all, founded on mutual understanding.

However, in certain conflicts, language reveals disagreement and can itself be an impediment to peaceful negotiation. There can be little mutual understanding, for instance, when both sides in a conflict cannot even agree on the basic terms they use. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict continuously puzzles diplomats and journalists for this very reason. Ethan Bronner, a New York Times reporter who covered the conflict, wrote in early 2009, “[T]he two sides speak in two distinct tongues. … [T]he very words they use mean opposite things to each other.” To Bronner, this disagreement makes the task of communication daunting. “[T]he war of language can confound a reporter’s attempts to narrate — or a new president’s attempts to mediate — this conflict in a way both sides can accept as fair,” he said. Clearly, when two parties cannot agree on the words to describe their differences, they are not yet capable of formally resolving those differences. It is necessary for conflict resolution, then, that the two sides, as well as international media and organizations, begin identifying issues in a more accurate and less politically charged manner. Perhaps, in the quest to address these problems, half of the battle is in defining the problems themselves.

Presently, however, communication is a point of substantial division in this struggle. The same words have entirely different definitions and connotations to Israelis and Palestinians. To the former, a Zionist is a noble hero – to the latter, a racist oppressor. Disparity regarding the connotation of the term “suicide bomber” is a clear manifestation of each side’s fundamental failure to broaden its perspective. The Israelis regard Palestinian suicide bombers as terrorists, citing instances in which these individuals detonated their explosives in public places with the intent to kill Israeli civilians. Many Palestinians, on the other hand, believe that these bombers are responding appropriately to the losses the Palestinians have incurred in contests with Israel. In fact, according to a 2011 Pew Report, 68 percent of Palestinian Muslims feel that suicide bombing is sometimes justified.

Such disagreement can easily be understood: A common maxim reminds us that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. But the divisiveness of language extends beyond both sides’ perceptions of common terms and is especially dangerous when it shapes their definitions of certain key issues. For example, the Palestinians refer to the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), as the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights as the “occupied territories.” The Israeli government, conversely, insists that they are “disputed territories.” Both labels have clearly different connotations and reflect different agendas, and each name draws on distinct legal standards and perspectives.

To call the territories “occupied” is to imply that Israel is a belligerent, invading military force. By international legal standards, officially defining Israel’s control of the territories as an “occupation” also requires that Israel take on a certain level of responsibility toward the Palestinians residing in those territories. This includes maintaining order and safety, as well as protecting Palestinians’ welfare. In contrast, proponents of the term “disputed territories” argue that Israel acted in self-defense in the Six Day War in 1967, in which it lawfully gained these territories. Furthermore, they argue that there was no previously recognized sovereignty in the territories, which is a legal requisite for international recognition of an occupation.

The use of one term versus another is not a matter of slight preference, but of sharply divergent views that render reconciliation difficult. In important diplomatic talks, terminology issues have proven a serious roadblock. A notable example is the Union for the Mediterranean’s Conference on Water Strategy, which was held in Barcelona in April 2010. This gathering of 43 member countries ended in failure entirely because of semantics. Israel rejected any water agreement containing the term “occupied territories.” Israel’s National Infrastructure Minister Uzi Landau did agree to the compromise term “territories under occupation,” but the Arab League deemed this term unacceptable. In another important case, Dr. Mohammad Shtayeh, a senior member of the Palestinian delegation at the Amman peace talks earlier this year, said that the delegates were unable to address the topic of consensual land swaps because Israel’s chief negotiator, Isaac Molho, insisted on calling the land “disputed territories” rather than “occupied.”

In these talks, the two parties quarreled over terms not for the sake of clarity; at the end of the day – occupied or disputed – the status of the territories is still the same. Rather, these squabbles over semantics reveal broader political agendas. By using the term “disputed,” the Israelis wish to draw attention to the circumstances under which they came to control the territories and emphasize their belief that they did not act as an aggressive invading force. The Palestinians imply the opposite by calling the territories “occupied.” These opposing perspectives on the conflict are understandable, yet both hold onto their respective terminology with such tenacity that it hinders negotiation.

Controversy over language has not been confined to these specific regional forums and debates. A prime case in point is the UN Security Council’s Resolution 242, which was passed following Israel’s acquisition of territories during the Six Day War in order to foster peaceful negotiations regarding these lands. There are versions of this resolution in French and English, two of the UN’s official working languages. Nevertheless, as is often the case with translations, the two renditions are not perfectly equivalent.

A prominent clause in the English version of the resolution stipulates that Israel must withdraw from “occupied territories.” But here the use of “occupied” is not the issue. Rather, critical readers point out that while the English version indicates an indefinite set of “occupied territories,” the French version – due to differences in pronoun usage between the two languages – refers to the same clause as “the occupied territories.” At first a seemingly inconsequential difference, the addition of the definite article “the” can alter the meaning significantly. In English the UN resolution demands that Israel withdraw from territories, but just how many territories remains unclear. The French version, on the other hand, suggests that Israel should withdraw from all of the territories. Thus, a lack of the article “the” in the English document has allowed room for pro-Israel parties to argue that Israel only needs to withdraw from some of these areas. This case demonstrates the extent to which merely defining issues to be resolved – across barriers laid by both semantics and translation – can be a major issue in itself.

The presence of such inconsistent language is not only a hindrance in diplomatic contexts; it also creates a challenge for journalists who strive for impartiality and fairness in their coverage of the conflict. Unintentionally or deliberately, a reporter’s use of particularly loaded terms could suggest sympathy for one side. In light of this difficulty, the BBC published a list of key terms in 2010 to serve as a guide to facts and terminology for its journalists. According to this list, the BBC prefers the term “occupied territories,” and cites international law to assert that Israel is the occupying force in these lands. However, it does allow for the use of “disputed territories” when referring to or explaining the territories’ status. The BBC provides a host of other definitions that create a measure of standardization in its reporting.

It should be noted that, while this allows for some consistency in reporting events related to a conflict, it by no means precludes bias. The BBC, like many other media organizations, has been accused of favoring one side over the other. Indeed, a journalist’s opinion may find its way into a news article through his or her choice of details and words. Standardized terminology may thus only partially reduce the individual journalist’s tendency toward biased coverage.

Moreover, in certain cases, explicit definitions can themselves be instruments of bias. The Israeli government argues that the defining of Palestinian refugees is such a case. The Palestinians affirm that, decades after the 1948 war, they are still a displaced people. But this is a controversial contention. While many Palestinians today are indeed descendants of individuals who were directly displaced in the conflict and who sought refuge elsewhere – that is to say, the children of refugees – relatively few were directly displaced themselves. Whereas other refugee groups are served by the UN Refugee Agency, which does not confer refugee status based on ancestry, the United Nations Reliefs and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) operates under what some critics call an exceptional definition. According to UNWRA, a Palestinian refugee is “any person whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period June 1946 to May 1948 and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict.” This definition is consistent with the usual definition, but the UNWRA goes on to officially include “persons who fulfill [this] definition and descendants of fathers fulfilling the definition” (emphasis added). Given this unusually broad definition, criticism has been leveled at the UN for providing Palestinians with preferential treatment.

Beyond abstract issues of territory and refugee status, terms under dispute also relate to more concrete and less overtly sensitive manifestations of conflict. For example, the boundary structure between Israel and the Palestinian territories in the West Bank has a host of different names with divergent connotations—ranging from the innocuous “security fence” to the politically-charged “apartheid wall.”

In their 2005 paper “Coming to Terms,” Richard Rogers and Anat Ben-David use a monitoring method to track occurrences of the various terms used to describe the dividing structure in both Israeli and Palestinian media. They found that Israelis refer to it as a “security fence” in all contexts, while Palestinians refer to it as an “apartheid wall” to outside observers and as a “separation wall” or just a “wall” among themselves. This suggests that there is a disconnect between the perceptions that Palestinians share with members of their own community and those they present in diplomatic talks and to the international media. Israel may also employ a similar multi-term strategy depending on the audience.

But all of this begs the question: Do the different context-dependent words each side uses to describe the conflict express a fundamentally different understanding of it? Analysis of both Israeli and Palestinian media outlets reveals that this is, in fact, the case. Both use words among themselves that reveal a distinct misunderstanding, misrepresentation, and even demonization of the other side, an undercurrent not evident to the same extent in diplomatic discussions and the international media.

Yonatan Mendel, a former Israeli journalist, comments on and criticizes Israel’s skewed media representation of the Palestinians. Mendel notes that “when a violent incident is reported, the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] confirms or the army says but the Palestinians claim.” This selective diction effectively casts doubt on Palestinians’ testimonies. Mendel also draws attention to a study done by Keshev, the Center for the Protection of Democracy in Israel. This organization looked at the way Israel’s leading television and print media outlets reported Palestinian casualties in December 2005. They found 48 items reporting 22 Palestinian deaths, yet just eight of those pieces featured a Palestinian reaction following the IDF’s account of the events. The other forty items solely presented the perspective of the Israeli military. Mendel cites this example and others to demonstrate his belief that the Israeli media frequently discounts the Palestinian narrative.

The Palestinians do not always represent the Israelis with the most understanding or sympathetic of terms, either. The Palestinian Media Watch chronicles various instances in which the Palestinian media calls Israelis and Jews “evil” and “inhuman” and refers to the Israeli army as a “Zionist gang.” Furthermore, the Anti-Defamation League records examples from Arab newspapers in which anti-Semitic symbols and language appear in cartoons and articles specifically to deride the concept of cooperation.

On the whole, then, the semantic differences and unconstructive antagonism between the Israelis and the Palestinians present a multi-faceted problem. Both sides use distinct terms when, in fact, they are communicating about many of the same issues involved in the conflict. Inconsistent language creates a challenge for journalists abroad and for members of the diplomatic and international communities as they try to foster accurate, meaningful discussions about the conflict and, eventually, about peace.

The reason that these semantics are so inimical to resolution may be further considered in light of peace studies research. Anatol Rapoport, a psychologist and peace promoter, examined a similar topic in his 1986 paper “General Semantics and Prospects for Peace.” Although Rapoport was writing in the shadow of what appeared to be an imminent nuclear contest between the United States and the Soviet Union, his conclusions are still helpful in assessing modern-day conflict communication. Rapoport, after studying the prevalence of words like “defense” and “stability” (rather than war) in the political rhetoric of his time, concludes that in order to orient language toward peace, it must first be stripped of connotations that bolster the “legitimacy of war.” This is a useful framework through which to consider Israeli and Palestinian semantics. Words like “security,” “occupation,” and “apartheid” all suggest the possible legitimacy of violent confrontations.

Yet, these semantics reveal a much more pressing, endogenous obstacle to peace: Each side perceives the conflict ­– and each other – in very different terms. The Israelis have been accused of discounting some Palestinian tragedies, while the Palestinians have been charged with cultivating anti-Semitism in their media. Such employment of manipulative language ultimately reveals that, before there can be productive steps toward a resolution of the conflict, each side needs to dignify the other. This involves acknowledging their respective narratives and describing each other in a respectful way, even at home. It starts with the words they use.

With its controversial and politically charged terms, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is an instructive case in the uses and abuses of language in conflict communication and resolution. In any context, words have the power to inform, educate, clarify, or mislead, but language’s powers and perils are heightened when it is used to describe conflicts – when it expresses the deep-seated causes for which individuals daily take up arms and often lose their lives. These conflicts have a real human cost, making small disputes over terminology at first appear petty and trivial. But semantic differences reflect the groups’ divergent positions, including the legal principles with which they argue their case and the means by which they strive to gain international sympathy. Allowed to go unchecked, poor semantics can poison the well of common interest between antagonistic parties from which any mutually satisfactory resolution necessarily draws. As such, the first step toward resolving conflict must be the mutual development of a balanced and appropriate language through which conflict can be defined and ultimately resolved.