Hurricane Sandy and IPE Development

Given that even the overwhelming election coverage in the U.S. has subsided in the past few days due to Hurricane Sandy, it seems unnatural to post about international politics without relating the most recent and dominating news of late. And despite being somewhat tenuous, our discussion of international development within IPE relates to the recent crisis.

I was initially struck by this Washington Post article that cited politicians’ praise of President Obama in the wake of the hurricane. Even fervent Republican and Obama-hater Chris Christie of New Jersey has been unusually supportive of the President’s efforts in disaster relief, with the comparison made by the article (and undoubtedly countless others) the critique that President Bush faced following the FEMA disaster with Hurricane Katrina.

The article continues on in a political scope by talking about how the storm will affect election politics, but I found my mind wandering back to our reading for Tuesday about the developing world and international influence. For instance, Stiglitz is critical of economic globalization as unmindful of the national infrastructure needed to shape development. What if Hurricane Sandy had hit outside of Bangalore, India, instead of the American Northeast? Perhaps this is unrealistic in terms of weather patterns, but Stiglitz’s Indian example highlights the dangerous juxtaposition of relatively economically advanced, developed cities surrounded by rural areas unaffected by their country’s economic progression.

Stiglitz continues on to insist that “there have been marked differences in performance, that the most successful countries have been those in Asia, and that in most of the Asian countries, government played a very active role” (29). The allusion to Asia brings to mind most clearly one country: China. In the battle of China versus India, Stiglitz suggests that the more active Chinese government has spurred its nation to better development than the democratic India. This is not to say that Stiglitz advocates communism, and his point about necessary infrastructure holds true. And yet, China remains a mystery—its dominance over India is not as clearcut as Stiglitz implies. Yes, the Asian country currently controls a large portion of the world superpower’s trillion-dollar debt, but its population-fueled economy will face structural complications as that population ages. India might in fact pose a more vicious threat to the U.S.’s power monopoly long term.

The discussion is certainly a stretch from one article about the domestic political ramifications of an American hurricane, but I think it has merit in the context of our discussion of development within the IPE. Both India and China would suffer responding to such a natural disaster, but the extent to which their developing infrastructure would hinder national reactions is not quite as clearcut as Stiglitz might suggest.