The Southern African Customs Union: A Reappraisal
Abstract The paper attempts to evaluate, as far as possible quantitatively, the costs and benefits to the countries of the ‘Southern African periphery’ (Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland) of participation with South Africa in the current customs union agreement. On balancing the agreement's measurable effects (on industrial development, exports, government revenue and the cost of living) against one another, it appears that on sanguine assumptions only, there would be a substantial benefit to Botswana and a much more moderate benefit to Lesotho if the customs union were dismantled and replaced by separately protected national markets. Such a calculation, however, neglects what may be the most important benefit and cost to the ‘peripheral’ countries of leaving the customs union, namely the increase of ‘economic independence’ and the risk of South African retaliation respectively: themes which are explored in the final section.
Agricultural price policy in the Republic of South Africa, the Southern African Customs Union, and food security in Botswana
This analysis is concerned with the direct impacts of the regulation of food markets under SACU on food security in the BLS countries. There are two basic rules in SACU determining trade in food and non-food products (Ettinger, 1974; Maasdorp, 1986). The first of these is that common tariffs exist for trade with the rest of the world. The second is that the internal market of SACU represents a free-trade area. The common external tariffs of SACU are fixed by the Republic of South Africa. These rules of SACU link the agricultural price policy in the Republic of South Africa with food imports and food security in the BLS countries. It is the objective of this paper to investigate this linkage which has been hitherto ignored in the literature. The paper analyzes quantitatively how the agricultural policy of the Republic of South Africa affects food security in Botswana and particularly how this was transmitted via the rules of SACU during the period 1969-84. The analysis begins by describing the institutional relationship between agricultural price policy in South Africa and food security in the BLS countries. Section 3 considers empirically what impacts agricultural policy in South Africa has had upon the food import sector of Botswana, and the magnitude, trends and instabilities of these economic variables are investigated. The analysis is based upon econometrically estimated food import demand equations for Botswana. Section 4 takes into consideration the effects of the customs union remittances received from SACU by Botswana. The effects of customs union membership, as they apply to food security in Botswana are tested by the hypothesis as to whether the joint impact of the external tariff policy on food and of customs union revenues was positive or negative. Finally, in section 5 the main results of the analysis are summarized and suggestions for further research are indicated.
Strategy and Manipulation in Medieval Elections
There are many goals in developing electoral protocols, including a desire for a system which is transparent, in that it is clear what the rule or procedure to follow is; nonmanipulable, in that it is not in a person’s best interest to misrepresent their preferences; honest, in the sense that it elects the ‘right’ candidate; and not open to strategizing, i.e., bribery or collusion. However, these desiderata are in tension with each other: Often, transparent electoral procedures are the least strategy resistant, and many honest procedures encourage manipulation. Thus a balance between these different goals must be sought. In modern times, since the seminal result on vote manipulation, the Gibbard-Satterthwaite Theorem [5, 6], much attention has been devoted to developing voting rules where manipulation is never in the best interest of the voters [4] or which are computationally too complex for the average bounded agent to be able to manipulate [1]. This focus on computational aspects of electoral methods is one of the hallmarks of modern studies on voting. But pursuit of these goals is not restricted to modern times: Those participating in elections in the Middle Ages also sought transparency, non-manipulability, honesty, and strategyproofness in so far as these properties can be consistently expressed in a single procedure. However, given the lack of computational sophistication in the Middle Ages, alternate approaches were needed in order to promote honesty, discourage strategizing, etc. These approaches can be classified as either external (constraints introduced outside of the electoral procedure, such as incentives for coming to consensus quickly) or internal (constraints introduced within the electoral procedure, such as voting rules which cannot be manipulated without adverse effects, or which are too difficult for the average bounded agent to manipulate). Surveying examples of both approaches in the context of medieval ecclesiastical and secular elections provides an interesting comparison to modern electoral procedures. Elections in the Middle Ages were used for the same reasons that they are today: To select suitable candidate(s) for a particular office, duty, or obligation. However, it is important to note that the term electio was used in the Middle Ages in a broader sense than our modern ‘election’. Its primary sense was ‘selection’ or ‘choice’, and only secondarily ‘election’ in the modern sense. Thus, many records which purportedly discuss elections are not discussing elections of the type which interests us. We can identify four categories of medieval electoral processes: (1) Election by an external authority having no direct interest in the election; (2) Indirect election, where electors name other electors who then select or elect the officials; (3) Election by lot; and (4) Election by ballot. Elections of the first and third types are generally computationally uninteresting; the first type corresponds to dictatorial voting rules, and the third type collapses to probability theory. In general, interesting voting methods are found only in the fourth type, election by ballot, though they can also occur in indirect election.