Ends vs Means and the United Nations

For anyone thinking, "do we REALLY still have to have this debate, again?" I'll try to spice it up - but while Barro makes some great points, he manages to conflate and mangle the two frequently along the way.

Let's start with Peru.  Barro makes the argument that President Fujimori's suspension of democracy was justified, because of the extent of the crisis the country was experiencing at the time, as well as the ultimate success the effective revolution brought upon the country and its economy: "the economic and political situation was sufficiently desperate that President Fujimori's iron hand represented the only hope for improvement" (38). Of course, when Getting it Right was published, the Peruvian elections of 2000 had not yet occurred; Mr. Fujimori had not submitted his resignation, from Japan, following widespread accusations of election fraud, after claiming that the two-term limit on presidents did not apply to him because he had taken office before the writing of the new constitution.  Hindsight is 20/20, and I don't mean to unfairly target Barro, but I believe that one good reason we have constitutions, legal proceedings, ways of assessing actions based on their means, is because it is not always possible to tell how the story will end.  Dismissing your country's legislature does not always lead to more, better democracy, but sometimes it leads to more corruption. 

Similarly, smaller countries may be more ideal insofar as their policies could more precisely match the preferences of their populations.  But this is again a focus on ends, not means.  If I can achieve perfect matching between government size/location and the interests of their people, can I draw these boundary-lines by force, gunpoint? I doubt it, and trust Barro to be more subtle than this, but found little substance to support his position on acceptable and unacceptable means, at least in some of the macroeconomic issues.

On a different note, I thought Barro's discussion on consolidation/competition had some very interesting implications.  He has an agreeable point on moderation, especially in governance - just as it would be problematic to have thousands of small countries with individual policies, languages, currencies, it would be also problematic to have one universal system.  I think implicit in this position is that there are some roles which are appropriate for different levels of consolidation; defense makes sense on a national level, drug policy may make sense on a state level, some things should be left up to individuals.  While Barro comments that we should not "get carried away along the [United Nations] lines of globally centralized government" (34) before assessing how well these international organizations have handled existing responsibilities, I think there could have been some very cogent points on what an appropriate level of governance for international organizations might be.  Perhaps some existing tasks should not belong to them, but there may also be some that are best suited to the international level.  This is an interesting, important question, and separate from whether or not the current UN fills the ideal role.  (We see frequently in our news that some things are extremely complicated to resolve on a national level: http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_21732872/supreme-court-refuses-block-chevrons-18-2-billion ,  for a brief up-to-date example)