One of the awesome parts about my internship is I have the chance to attend many of the events for whose information I condense and make more readable for professional researchers, policy makers, executives etc! Gives me a real good excuse to escape the busy work we get bogged down with at the office :)
Today was our first one. At the Cato Institute! I had a name badge and everything! With MY name on it! Dr. John Mearsheimer, professor, author, and International Relations theorist, gave an introduction to his book entitled: "Why Leaders Lie", in the which he "weighs the reasons for and the effects of the lies that presidents and dictators tell their people and other nations"(Carlos Lozada, Washington Post). He started by explaining that his was a utilitarian view as opposed to a moral one. He explained the difference between lies, categorized them and then provided examples. It was really interesting! And A LOT easier to follow than economics!! I'll provide an outline of the general discussion:
Deception vs. Truth-telling
Truth-telling: facts told best to one's ability
Deception
- Lying
- Untrue
- False implication
- Spinning- emphasizing the positive, de-emphasizing the negative
- Concealment- hiding
Lying
- Inter-state lying
- Leader of one nation lies to foreign audience
- Fear-mongering
- threat inflation
- inner-state lying, within one's own country
- Strategic cover-up
- can't let foreign or own people know
- Nationalist myth
- State creates myth about themselves or the event in order to save face. "we" have to always consider ourselves the 'good guys'.
- Liberalize
- Lie to make the event fit into norms
Anyways so it was pretty interesting. He provided lots of examples, both domestic and foreign and has come to the conclusion that in his research and study has not found as much international lying but there's plenty of lying that takes place within one own's country. Lying works best when there's trust.. not a whole lot of trust in other countries therefore not as much good opportunity to lie. Plus it's too risky most of the time and the cost outweighs the returns. He also talked about how there's more tendency to lie in a democracy than in a non-democratic state. In a non-democratic state the leader, or ruler/dictator, doesn't need to gain permission or support as do leaders in a democracy. In order to gain that support in many cases the leaders use fear-mongering to insight a fear which results in the need to take action. Overall he feels leaders in some instances should lie in order to save the state and in the best interest of the people.
Check out an article about the book at:
And buy the book at:
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