FLASH
Shkruar nga Gillian Tett
Most of the 150,000 unpaid parking fines amount to $18 million.
Two decades ago, two economists—Raymond Fisman and Edward Miguel—studied the patterns of parking tickets issued to UN diplomats in New York.
The study showed that some cultures operate with so-called "universal" concepts of law (ie it applies to everyone, always), while other cultures use the "ethics of the moment, i.e. in certain cases they use the power they get from the status they possess to avoid being responsible.
And that distinction offers a way to frame the issues in the 2024 presidential race. More importantly, as the presumptive race between Republican nominee Donald Trump and potential Democratic rival Kamala Harris is being cast as a symbolic battle between male/female candidates, conservatives /progressive and white/non-white, it also presents a conflict between "universal" and "situational" visions of law. And that matters a lot to investors – both inside and outside of America.
To understand this, start by thinking about those parking tickets. Until 2002, UN diplomats in New York enjoyed immunity from fines—there was "essentially zero legal enforcement of diplomatic parking violations," as Miguel and Fisman note. But they did not respond equally to this pattern.
Instead, most of the 150,000 unpaid parking fines, worth $18 million, between 1997 and 2002 came from officials in countries such as Egypt, Pakistan, Nigeria and Brazil. And when New York lifted diplomatic immunity in 2002, Italy became the largest source of unpaid fines. But diplomats from the UK, Canada, Sweden and Australia produced almost no tickets before 2002, and even when they got them, they paid the fines. Likewise for officials from Singapore and Japan.
Fisman and Miguel attribute this to "different rates of corruption": apparently "diplomats from highly corrupt countries . . . have significantly more parking tickets" than others. They also note that violations were higher in cultures with an anti-American ethos.
However, from my training in cultural anthropology, I prefer to see this as a clash between cultures with a universal norm of law and morality, versus those with a situational ethic. Scandinavian diplomats obeyed parking laws even when there was no cost for breaking them and no one was watching; Italian or Brazilian diplomats were tactical in their approach.
Echoes of this can now be seen in American politics. Harris, the vice president who has been endorsed as a presidential candidate by Joe Biden, is a former prosecutor and thus trained in the ideals of universal law. So it's no surprise that this week she described Trump's "type" as "crooks who break the rules for their own gain."
Biden also displays a universalist mindset. He has refused to grant a presidential pardon to his son Hunter Biden for recent convictions; apparently he thinks that no one should be above the law.
Trump, however, has a string of legal convictions to his name and operates with a tactical mindset toward the rules; it's hard to imagine Trump voluntarily paying a parking ticket. In addition, he has asked his supporters to also embrace a vision of the situation, arguing that his legal convictions are "bogus", created by Democrats for political purposes.
Also consider Robert Lighthizer, Trump's former trade representative and now a leading contender to be Treasury secretary if Trump wins. In meetings I have observed with non-US government officials, Lighthizer has argued that no trade agreement is ever sacrosanct, universal or permanent. Instead, as his latest book points out, he believes that agreements can and should be reformulated to support national interests, whenever necessary. For Lighthizer, the law of commerce is about leverage and power.
I daresay some Republicans will scoff at this framing as overly simplistic. Fair enough: these differences are poles on a spectrum, not neat categories, and some Democrats have displayed a situational mentality, while some Republicans pride themselves on being constitutional fundamentalists.
However, there are three key points to note about the election. First, as anthropologist Joseph Henrich has noted, while Trump has a situational mentality, this is not unusual by the standards of global history: on the contrary, most cultures have had it. It is the modern idea of the "rule of law" that is extraordinary.
Second, since this universalist concept of the rule of law has defined the US identity in recent decades and has been a pillar of modern capital markets, most investors are not prepared for a world where the law can be challenged.
Third, anyone who sees the US judicial system as a check on Trump should not only debate whether he has broken (or not) any laws, but shout about the difference between "situational" and "universal" rules.
After all, voters — and investors — need to know what's at stake in this race. So my plea to moderators in any televised election debate is this: please make sure you tell the candidates about the UN parking study - and then ask them what they do if they face a fine, in a state of immunity ? They pay, don't they? The answers would be surprising, especially from Trump's running mate, JD Vance, who is not only shaping populist economic policies, but also himself./ Adapted "Pamphlet" from "Financial Times"
Lini një Përgjigje